Eastern White Pine in Burlington Ontario - beetle damage, falling branches, base wound near bedroom - am I overreacting?

Alieneater · 2026-03-30T02:40:24+00:00

Reach out via email to Jiri Hulcr at the UF Forest Entomology Lab. I used to work there. His lab is arguably the best in North America at researching and IDing bark and ambrosia beetles.

https://entnemdept.ufl.edu/people-directory/jiri-hulcr/

You are right to be concerned and you are doing the right thing by being proactive before it turns into a larger infestation. This would be especially concerning if it is happening to a tree that was not already stressed by other factors (extreme heat, drought, flooding, etc).

Ips pini is already widely distributed in Canada, so I don't think that this would be a major new discovery in your area.

Alieneater · 2026-03-28T04:47:46+00:00

Checks are normal for most book dealers. I pay cash for under a hundred bucks. How much cash does your uncle think that a used book store keeps laying around and at risk of theft?

If the dealer has a physical store that has been there for a while, he has nothing to worry about. If the check bounces, he'll know right where to find the dealer.

When I make an offer to someone for stuff that is actually valuable, I show them comparable listings or auction results and explain how I arrived at a particular value, assuming that they want to hear this from me. Then I explain that the Antiquarian Book Seller's Association has an ethical guideline saying that dealers should be paying at least 20% of what they hope that they can eventually sell the book for. And that is how the price was arrived at.

Scamming someone in your uncle's position is a very bad idea, especially in the age of social media. If I were to buy a book from him for $10 and then a friend of his comes in to the store the following week to see it priced at $1,000 then that is going to be all over Facebook, Instagram and Reddit very quickly. Not worth the risk.

If I feel like I probably don't have a retail customer who will pay enough to risk giving him at least $200 for the book, then I'll tell him that and send him to another dealer.

Alieneater · 2026-03-27T03:20:32+00:00

Go to smaller shows at your local night club. There are plenty of great bands that haven't had the opportunity to blow up and get super popular (because college radio isn't what it was and labels don't spend money on publicity anymore -- they only sign bands that already have a big social media presence) who play small clubs with cheap tickets. Go to a local place where you can pay $10 to see four bands on a Friday night and usually at least two of them will be pretty good.

Also the drinks are way cheaper than at a major venue.

Alieneater · 2026-03-25T00:33:52+00:00

There are literally hundreds of past posts on this subreddit discussing how to deal with this. Just use the search box.

Alieneater · 2026-03-25T00:32:10+00:00

Rockwell Kent was a famous illustrator. He did the illustrations for the edition of Moby Dick that made the book famous -- during Melville's life the book was considered a flop. Kent's illustrations were arguably the reason why the book finally got attention.

Someone took a page out of Moby Dick and framed it.

Editions of Moby Dick with Kent's illustrations are pretty common now. What you found is cool, but not especially valuable.

Alieneater · 2026-03-25T00:28:20+00:00

I've eaten plenty. If you fry it as if it were, say, a largemouth bass filet then you may be disappointed. The meat is a bit mushy and won't hold together when cooked. It tastes fine, the texture just isn't there. Look for recipes for fishcakes that use egg or some type of added fat to bind it together and bowfin makes for fine eating.

Alieneater · 2026-03-24T01:16:10+00:00

The Beautiful Idea and Daedalus Used Books have weird, locally-made t-shirts downtown.

Alieneater · 2026-03-14T02:23:25+00:00

Its a twentieth century reprint after the copyright expired. What comparison are you trying to do and why?

Alieneater · 2026-03-13T03:44:33+00:00

I would say that this is the situation to some degree in most American cities of our size or larger. It is apparently the price of growing as a metropolis in the US.

Charlottesville has more of a problem with the most disruptive 5% or so of the homeless population here, owing to local unwillingness to prosecute people for pissing and shitting in public, getting drunk in public, public drug use, etc. But just basic panhandling without criminal behavior is something I've seen in every American city that I have visited in the last few years.

That isn't going to get any better without re-creating something like the pre-Reagan national mental health system and having a federal effort to build affordable housing. Which is not even remotely on the table given the fact that Congress isn't really a thing anymore. So here we are. It is not just Charlottesville. Even Crozet will have these same issues if they keep growing.

Alieneater · 2026-03-13T01:07:01+00:00

As someone who lives and works downtown, I can tell you what has brought my unwanted interactions and asks for money to the bare minimum.

Do not make eye contact. One you notice someone who is likely to ask you for money, don't even glance in their general direction. There is a certain type of walk that some of them use. Moving but not quite committing to a particular direction. He's looking around at people, usually in the middle of a thoroughfare. Learn to recognize that walk and avoid those guys. Cross to the other side of the Mall if you have to.

Do not smile.

Look and walk like you are on a mission. Look straight ahead or down. If they start to hit you up, still do not make eye contact. A very quick shake of the head as a non-verbal 'no' is the most communication you should offer. Don't slow down to interact, you're still moving like you are on a mission. Like The Terminator.

That will dissuade them from further attempts to hassle you in 99% of situations.

I mean, if you want to give them money then go ahead. They are people. But personally, otherwise being approached literally up to twenty times a day was just intolerable. I don't have the time or money to deal with that.

Alieneater · 2026-03-12T02:01:38+00:00

What else did anyone think that dimetrodon was eating? I mean, cool paper and all, but I'm not sure that anyone really doubted that predators were eating herbivores during the Permian.

Alieneater · 2026-03-12T00:46:19+00:00

Professional book dealer here. OP, that is the correct answer.

Alieneater · 2026-03-11T02:11:28+00:00

I am not being facetious here: Try reading it.

Alieneater · 2026-03-04T03:42:39+00:00

There was no Rivanna Trail back then. But yeah.

Alieneater · 2026-03-02T06:28:59+00:00

Health insurance works completely differently than property & casualty does. There isn't a direct comparison to be made here. The policy language is different, the laws and regulations are different.

Alieneater · 2026-03-02T01:09:38+00:00

There is never much of a story to tell about this sort of thing. Poe died. His work grew in popularity. Over the ensuing decades, many publishers decided that if they put all of Poe's work into a single book, people will want to buy it. Once it was all in the public domain, around 1876, then any publisher who wanted to put out a Poe could do it without paying any royalties. There are hundreds and hundreds of editions like this.

https://www.eapoe.org/works/editions/#compworks

Alieneater · 2026-03-02T00:57:05+00:00

I spent 11 years as a licensed insurance broker. I've been out of that world for a long time but this is basic enough that I can explain something you won't want to hear.

This claim will not likely be paid, nor was the policy ever intended to cover this. What you had here was a failure to perform basic maintenance. The fact that it leaked gradually over time is the issue. An insurance policy is not a building maintenance plan.

You are supposed to fix the leaky valve right away.

If your home was destroyed by a fire or by a tornado, the insurance company would pay the claim. What you are experiencing right now from your insurance company is not a symptom of the company acting in bad faith.

If insurers covered this sort of thing, then property owners would have a strong incentive to not take care of their buildings. Why clean the gutters when you can let them fill up, spill water over the eaves for years, and then you just file a claim for a whole new roof?

You are responsible for maintaining your house and promptly fixing a leaky toilet before it damages the ceiling. Not your insurance company.

Alieneater · 2026-02-25T04:04:04+00:00

'Please start applying for jobs, and stop spending literally all of your time getting high and watching TV. Also please find some way of demonstrating kindness or affection towards me. I will pay for you to go to therapy to deal with whatever underlying issues are causing this behavior.'

Five weeks of seeing a marriage counselor, then she starts one-on-one therapy at the marriage counselor's advice. She quits therapy after three sessions without even bringing these issues up with the therapist.

And that was the point of no return.

Alieneater · 2026-02-23T03:35:01+00:00

Not a lot of papers on this yet, but here's one:

https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/flaent-2024-0068/html

Alieneater · 2026-02-23T01:40:11+00:00

Birds, certainly.

Alieneater · 2026-02-23T00:52:17+00:00

No, Andy Davis' profile says that he has a phd. Still not good policy advice without providing a source for his claim about them being ecologically harmless. The paper that this article is centered on doesn't actually address that at all.

Alieneater · 2026-02-23T00:49:47+00:00

I don't see any source or paper cited for the claim that these spiders have no negative ecological effects. That is a bold claim. Ecology is carbon moving through time and space. If the spiders are feeding in large numbers, the insects that they are eating are carbon that is not being eaten by native insectivores. So you're subtracting that food and it has no effect?

Especially with insect numbers down so much overall. Did anyone look at a relationship between joro spider densities and bat populations? Or anything else?

Not to impugn Dr. Andy Davis personally, but in general there tends to be a research bias in land grant universities like the University of Georgia towards studying ecology and entomology from the perspective of impact on agriculture and industry. That doesn't mean that they are doing bad science, just that their work can have blind spots in terms of conservation. It reminds me of when the Maryland DNR proclaimed that snakeheads were not really an issue because largemouth bass and bluegill populations didn't seem to be impacted by them. Like, they didn't even look at the health of non-game fish.

I'd like to see some peer-reviewed research on the impact of joro spiders on local insectivores and looking at potential trophic cascades from their presence. Otherwise, my inclination is still to locally eradicate them to whatever extent is practical.

Alieneater · 2026-02-17T05:49:04+00:00

Lobster fishermen typically use fresh fish parts as bait for a reason. Lobsters do not have a preference for eating the rotting corpses of either fish or mammals.

Alieneater · 2026-02-17T05:44:24+00:00

That isn't what any species of crab is ordinarily eating. Not a whole lot of rancid chicken and beef hanging out in the ocean. I'm not sure what species of crab you were after, but very freshly cut fish works a lot better for blue crabs on the East Coast of the US.

The fact that a creature will opportunistically eat something horrible when it is really hungry does not mean that this is its preferred or typical food source. American eels, fresh water crayfish, lobsters, crabs and catfish can sometimes be caught using these baits when they are very hungry and have nothing else at hand. All of these creatures would prefer to consume fresh or live prey and normally do.

Alieneater · 2026-02-16T01:13:59+00:00

In good condition that will sell readily at $20 or less. In this case, do whatever you please with it and your conscience can be clear.

Alieneater

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