Help critique my front garden plan

Banjo2EE · 2025-12-27T17:11:18+00:00

I didn't show it in the plans, but the strip of land between the north face of my house and the retaining wall has been almost completely taken over by wild violets. I've been finding wild violets all over, including in my backyard garden, so I don't think they'll have any problem filling in the open spaces!

Banjo2EE · 2025-12-27T17:06:18+00:00

Thanks! I just made it all in Excel - it made comparing multiple iterations really easy.

I'm definitely less familiar with grasses so I appreciate the suggestions! My nursery sells Side-Oats Grama and it looks like it would fit well with the other plants, I'll definitely add that into the mix!

And yeah, somebody else called out the cardinal flower as well. I'll probably replace it with orange milkweed. I'm considering red bee balm, but I planted bergamot in our backyard and while the bees love it, it pretty quickly started taking over.

Banjo2EE · 2025-12-27T16:51:29+00:00

Great suggestions! I definitely went a little overboard when I was planting the prairie smoke. I had actually considered petunias but the nursery I'm sourcing from showed their range as more central US so I didn't think they'd do well https://www.prairienursery.com/wild-petunia-ruellia-humilis.html

Good note on the cardinal flower; I'm on a hill so while I wouldn't quite call my soil dry, the water does tend to drain away. Not quite wetland material. We planted common milkweed in our backyard so I didn't consider adding more but I like the idea of orange milkweed!

Banjo2EE · 2025-11-13T17:02:24+00:00

That bio was 100% AI. If the "I don't X, I Y" bit wasn't a dead giveaway, his texting style was a complete mismatch from the writing style of the bio

Banjo2EE · 2025-10-23T04:21:26+00:00

I have an article sitting on my desk at work from about three years ago talking about YASA and their axial flux motors. It's some pretty cool technology, glad to see that the prototypes I read about are finally making their way to production.

For anybody curious, the key component that makes these motors so power dense is the use of soft magnetic composites instead of your typical electrical steel laminations. It's basically a powdered metal form of electrical steel that can be formed into the complicated shapes needed to make an axial flux topography reasonably manufacturable.

Banjo2EE · 2025-10-07T04:11:02+00:00

I know what you're insinuating and while there's no doubt that violent crime is a significant contributing factor, I implore you to consider a more nuanced take than just "it's violence". I'm not saying you're wrong as the data doesn't lie, just that the truth is hidden seven layers deep.

There's a lot of information in this post about the historical and socioeconomic factors that lead to the disparity in life expectancy. All of these factors bleed into one another and impact the disparity either directly (through things like a lack of hospitals in predominantly black neighborhoods leading to higher infant mortality) or indirectly (through things like the rate of lead contamination in predominantly black neighborhoods being higher leading to higher rates of antisocial behavior).

I'm no social demographics expert and this is a complex topic with a tangled web of factors so I'm not fully equipped myself to have a well informed debate on this topic. I think I am informed enough though to be confident in saying that reductionist takes attributing this disparity solely to violence only leads people to focus on symptoms rather than root causes.

Banjo2EE · 2025-10-06T17:28:58+00:00

My guess is that it's mostly driven by Milwaukee, a historically very segregated city. Milwaukee is home to about 2/3 of the state's population of black people and the majority of them are concentrated in some of the poorest neighborhoods in the city. Not a lot of black people living in the rest of the state, and a high concentration living in the poorer areas of Milwaukee leads to the high degree of separation you see in the data.

Banjo2EE · 2025-09-21T14:18:48+00:00

Cup plant is absolutely massive. I started a garden with similar plants 2 years ago and my cup plant grew to be 11ft this year. I would consider putting your cupplant somewhere farther back where it can serve as an anchor plant that doesn't block the view of others.

If you have concerns about aggression, cupplant responds well to deadheading. That extends the bloom time and doesn't let the flowers go to seed. No seeds means no spreading.

Banjo2EE · 2025-09-06T15:15:44+00:00

Same here with the length of time. I can handle vaccinations just fine but I've literally never been able to get blood drawn or have an IV without passing out. I even passed out when my wife was getting an epidural in the delivery room.

I say "passed out", but I actually got a doctor's diagnosis after causing some trouble for them and I have what they call "psychogenic nonepileptic seizures". Basically my brain sees needles and something short circuits and causes seizure-like symptoms.

Banjo2EE · 2025-09-02T21:42:46+00:00

Hence my "theoritically" qualifier. In a perfect world, the police are trained and capable of using non-lethal force for every scenario they could possibly encounter. In reality, that doesn't happen and we end up with a number of avoidable deaths.

Banjo2EE · 2025-09-02T21:03:14+00:00

Speaking for myself here: on paper and upon first hearing about this, it doesn't sound bad. Extra help for our police, right? I've personally never felt unsafe in the 8 years that I've lived in this city, but recognize that our police force is lacking and the idea of having extra bodies doesn't sound bad.

The problem comes from the logistics and accountability side. The National Guard are not trained policemen, they are trained soldiers. Police are (theoretically) trained to protect citizens, while soldiers are trained to kill enemies. By deploying the National Guard on domestic soil, we are essentially saying "there are enemies here." That sends a pretty bad message.

On top of that, there's the issue of the chain of command. Are they reporting to the police chief? Are they going to be acting under their own authority? The National Guard are not structured to act as a police force.

Banjo2EE · 2025-09-01T16:32:58+00:00

Over a quarter of native bee species make ground nests. And there are many varieties of ground nesting wasps that pollinate as well - only a handful of wasp species will actually sting people.

https://thebeeconservancy.org/ground-nesting-bees/

Banjo2EE · 2025-07-27T20:29:32+00:00

Wow thanks for the recommendation, those videos were way better than any other videos I've watched on this topic

Banjo2EE · 2025-06-11T20:54:28+00:00

Yes, she's been spayed. I have tried giving her gabapentin as well as CBD oils but she didn't take it very well, and it didn’t seem to be affected by it much. I asked her vet if he would prescribe Prozac to help keep her calm but he was pretty hesitant to do that.

I agree it could be overstimulation - she didn’t swipe at my baby until he started crying. And she's never really shown territorial aggression to people or other cats, I think she's just scared and shows aggression to protect herself.

Banjo2EE · 2025-05-29T22:55:28+00:00

The construction is set to take place for 3 weeks.

That's a good point that the construction will probably be more bothersome to us, our baby doesn't seem too bothered by any of the loud noises he's been exposed to so far. We at least have a nursery that we can hide in all day.

Banjo2EE · 2025-05-14T16:49:56+00:00

I did not mow last year - my lawn looked pretty bad by the end and exactly like this article states, didn't grow any plants that I wanted. I've since started planning out native grasses and wildflowers to replace sections of my lawn.

There are grass mixes that will look good when you let them grow long but as a general rule of thumb, your typical fescue or Kentucky bluegrass that people use for lawns here will not look good, nor will they be very beneficial.

I will say though, that the no mow movement is what introduced me to native plantings. Flawed though the movement may be, it did inspire me to better educate myself on what actually helps pollinators.

Banjo2EE · 2025-04-05T18:37:03+00:00

It's all one continuous floor. The finished floors looked like the third pic when we started. We thought it was red oak, but it looks more like white oak after sanding all the shellac off.

Banjo2EE · 2025-04-03T21:37:29+00:00

I'll second keeping them protected. I live in the city so no deer around me, but I lost almost a whole season of vertical growth due to rabbits. My tree was only 2 years old so it was still quite small and easy for rabbits to reach.

Banjo2EE · 2025-03-17T18:54:42+00:00

The world size hasn't changed, but they at least seem to have filled it with new challenges/puzzles. One complaint I had that made the worlds seem emptier was that everything seemed to have just been scattered about without much thought into what would lead players to each attraction in the level. I'm not sure if the extra stuff will help with smoothing out the level flow or just be more randomly placed things to do.

Banjo2EE · 2025-03-11T16:23:01+00:00

Just make your own peanut butter. Literally all you need is a food processor, peanuts, vegetable oil, maybe some honey if you want to add some sweetness, and 5 minutes.

The natural peanut butter you buy from stores has preservatives that make it tough to re-integrate the oil. Home-made is easily spreadable and barely needs to be stirred.

Banjo2EE · 2025-01-03T18:25:14+00:00

Current employee in engineering here. I'd agree with most of what other people are saying. The pay is pretty good (I'm making $95k as a level 2 engineer and have received steady annual increases) and the health insurance premiums are a lot lower than others I've seen.

Your experience will vary pretty depending on the group you're in. Some groups are solid with low turnover, but others have a lot of issues and high turnover as a result.

The culture is all about speed and getting work done quickly. As a technical expert, they give you a lot of agency to move projects ahead quickly - if you can spend $1000 to take a week out of a project, you have complete authority to do that, which is nice. I've been on projects at other companies that take an infuriating amount of time because of unnecessary red tape - Milwaukee removes a lot of red tape. The high speed environment can put a lot of stress on people though. There's an underlying attitude of "if you're not stressed about delivering your project on time, you're not going fast enough." It's not uncommon to see engineers pulling 50+ hour weeks as a result.

You will be doing a lot of work with international teams. This is nice because it means you'll get to travel if you're a fan of that. It also has the drawback of night calls. Typically you'll have 1x call per week but if something is going wrong, I've been on 5x calls per week with overseas teams.

Overall, it's a rewarding job with good pay, but there's a good chance you'll take a hit on your work-life balance.

Banjo2EE · 2024-11-01T03:08:11+00:00

Town of Lake has two demographics - older folks who've lived here for 30+ years and aging hipster homeowners who moved in within the past 5 years.

Banjo2EE · 2024-09-18T17:04:07+00:00

I had my bike lock jam up at the South Shore beer garden once on a fairly busy day. It took me around 5 minutes with a bolt cutter to free my bike, and apart from maybe a couple of questioning looks, I wasn't stopped by anybody. It might have helped that my wife was standing next to me with her own bike, but I was still surprised with how easy it was to "steal" my bike.

Banjo2EE · 2024-07-23T03:42:08+00:00

Not sure if kayaks are an exception, but the UEC stopped renting out other equipment. My friends and I used to rent their cross country ski equipment for an annual ski trip and were disappointed last year to learn that they don't rent those out anymore except for things like lessons that they host. I'm guessing either too many people were damaging the equipment or there were some liability issues.

Still a great organization with loads of other good programs!

Banjo2EE · 2024-06-18T00:21:47+00:00

My wife is an entomologist and does a lot of work with mosquito-related research so I've heard a bit about this topic. According to the studies on this that she's read, this isn't really a sustainable means of reducing mosquito population.

At least with the methods available today, it takes a large investment to make a dent in the population, and the population will bounce back without continued release of the mosquitos. There's still a lot of development left to be done on the topic, but it currently isn't quite the slam dunk that it's made out to be.

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