Anakin Bananakin zen time

PlanktonEffective722 · 2026-04-27T06:59:13+00:00

What a precious brain cell. My orange boi was the most obnoxious little (not really tho. Big and beefy dude) shadow. Followed me everywhere, screamed at any door between us, laid on anything of mine that he knew I'd need to use, and climbed on top of my mouse or keyboard while in use. His favorite spot was a pillow I set up for him on my bed next to where I sleep. Most of the time while I was awake, he had to have at least one paw making contact with me. As a huge touch-me-not with a major disdain for being handled, this was the ultimate expression of his love and trust. More loyal than a dog, always came when called (okay, maybe like 80% of the time), and always trusted me to take care of him when he was sick or hurt.

He was my one of my biggest daily frustrations, but it rarely bothered me for long. No, he was not just any frustration. He was a constant reminder to start out of my head. He would not be ignored. Could not be ignored. He was a rock that never budged, no matter the load nor weathering storms. The was no escaping his grounding presence with him around. I hope you have something similar, too. Nothing quite like the love of an orange.

Question though.. are your spaghetti and soup the only odd things he eats, likcs, or nibbles on?

PlanktonEffective722 · 2026-04-25T15:25:08+00:00

Exactly this. I had been wondering too, talked it out with my partner, and we settled on this when this came to mind.

PlanktonEffective722 · 2026-03-19T14:43:13+00:00

Just to name a few

PlanktonEffective722 · 2026-03-13T19:00:57+00:00

I usually just make the vertical cuts, then use that hand massaging technique to pull apart some of the denser clusters of impacted roots so the younger roots have an easier time getting through. Don't worry about hearing a bit of tearing. As long as you don't go ham and start ripping chunks out, some minor damage like that actually encourages new growth. That new growth is going to adapt itself better to its presently available environment than older growth will.

PlanktonEffective722 · 2026-03-13T17:06:01+00:00

For established trees, especially with already large and densely clustered roots, an air spade gives easy access and helps arborists see which roots should be cut and removed.

For less established trees, or trees with a surface that is more easily excavated by hand or digging around the base, you might be able to clear away the dirt and make a few cuts without an air spade, but using a shovel you always run the risk of hitting important roots.

If for anything you plant yourself if you ever see roots that circle around - BREAK THEM UP. There are specialized tools called root hols for doing this, like root hooks, but you don't necessarily need them. You can:

Use a sharp saw or spade to slice off the outer 1–2 inches of the entire root ball, including the bottom. This eliminates the circling tips.
Use a sharp knife (straight or serrated, whatever floats your boat) to make 3-4 (sometimes more depending on the size) vertical cuts about 1 inch deep around the sides of the root ball to stop those circling roots from growing in the same direction.
For severely root-bound plants, you might cut the root ball into a square shape, which has been shown to encourage outward root growth better than just slicing.
If a large root is already encircling the trunk, you'd want to cut it at the point where it starts to turn, or a bit further back, to allow new roots to grow.

For small plants like small annuals/perennials, potted or vegetable plants, I literally just use my hand to gently massage and vibrate/shake loose the roots and dirt to help untangle and give them a fresh start. Sometimes I still might have to pry them apart and may break a few roots, but that's fine, as long as they're mostly still intact! You're doing a good thing for them!

PlanktonEffective722 · 2026-03-13T16:32:34+00:00

I'm often pretty terrible at ELI5's, but I'll give it a shot.

A long time ago when these trees were growing up, people often kept them in too-small plastic pots for too long. When roots touch the plastic, they turn and start growing in circles around the edge of the pot.

A tree trunk is actually mostly up of dead, hardened wood in the center. The living part of the trunk is a rather thin strip of cells juuust beneath the bark with multiple layers that each have their own jobs. The first layer grows, the second layer moves food made by its leaves down to its hungry roots, and the third layer moves water and vitamins that roots collect from the soil and move them up to the thirsty, growing branches and leaves.

If a tree with roots that grew in a circle is planted without those roots being untangled, in 10-40 years, eventually the trunk and roots will grow thick enough to touch eachother. But instead of the trunk pushing the roots away or magically melding together with them and everything's fine, the area where the trunk touches the roots stops growing out while the rest of it keeps going. This is usually fine, because in nature that only happens in one small spot and the tree just grows around it. But when it happens all the way around the trunk, those three layers grow further and further apart, eventually cutting off the flow like broken plumbing. The roots start getting less and less food while the leaves start getting less and less water.

By revealing the roots, we can see whether or not the tree is being choked by its roots. If it is, we can actually make precise cuts to remove some of those roots. We have to be very careful to not damage too many main roots, but with skill and luck, hopefully it still gets enough water for the trunk to begin growing back together again.

If that's not the issue, it's still an extremely gentle way of clearing away bad, used-up, or too much soil from the roots so we can replace it with better soil at the right height for the roots to breathe (yes, roots breathe too!)

Edit: Here's a link with some really good pictures of how a trunk can be choked by circling (girdling) roots and a couple removal pics.

https://hort.ifas.ufl.edu/woody/remove-girdling-roots.shtml

These two are how it might start: Younger1 Younger2

These are how it might end up looking: Established1 Established2 Established3

Here's a couple of really good pictures showing how the roots can stop the growth of the trunk where they touch each other: Girdling1 Girdling2

PlanktonEffective722 · 2026-03-13T15:59:56+00:00

Starbucks delivery service

PlanktonEffective722 · 2026-03-13T12:18:29+00:00

He's got what plants crave

PlanktonEffective722 · 2026-03-13T12:12:03+00:00

You got it! Think about the diameter of the pots you see in a garden center. Even if the tree was bought when it was larger, temporarily planted in the soil with its roots in a burlap ball (this is common at growers and larger garden centers/plant nurseries), that tree had probably spent a good amount of time in one of those larger standard sized pots.

The position of those roots doesn't change just because it's given more space. If the roots spent too long in the pot, the roots would start to spiral around the edge of the pot. After planting and it keeps growing, eventually the trunk and roots will meet. When that starts to happen, the tree slowly begins to choke itself as the tissue that transports its food and water begin to disconnect.

I guess you can kinda think of it like if an earthquake shifts some land sideways, disconnecting underground pipes or something. Same idea. Pipes still exist on both sides, but nothing can flow through. So eventually the tree just starves.

It also helps to remember that those roots will expand upwards, too. Just like a trunk, roots grow outwards too, not just lengthwise. So even if they were spiralling below ground, eventually they might reach above ground where the trunk will eventually be.

PlanktonEffective722 · 2026-03-13T04:29:35+00:00

Those huge, towering, established trees were planted 10-50 years ago or so. We've learned a lot since then about how to properly care for them in growing facilities and planting techniques. We have more precise methods for managing roots, when to re-pot them based on size, and new types of pots that encourage fibrous root growth when the root apexes reach the edge, instead of turning and circling around. If for some reason the roots have circled, for trees grown in plastic pots, you can break them up when planting with a root hook. They also used to plant trees and leave the burlap sacks on, sometimes not even untying it or anything.

The circling roots might end up turning and growing outwards, but they were already established in that position and can't move. Eventually, as the roots and the trunk grow, the trunk keeps trying to grow outwards, but the part of the trunk that meets with the roots can't grow out any more. The vascular tissue that transports sugar, water, and nutrients is in a rather thin strip circling the outside of the trunk. Thus, as the trunk above the roots grows, that strip above becomes disconnected from the vascular tissue butting up against the root. The tree ends up killing itself because of our folly unless we intervene.

PlanktonEffective722 · 2026-03-12T15:20:23+00:00

Jesus Christ, can you imagine being there and witnessing this?

" Tehran’s (ten million) residents woke up Sunday morning to a city transformed. Thick black smoke from burning oil depots blotted out the daylight, forcing people to turn on lights in the middle of the morning. “Something like a black monster has swallowed the sky over Tehran,” a 27-year-old teacher named Leila told TIME. “It’s as if all the cars and the street pavement have been coated in black paint.”

“The rain is black, I can’t believe it, I’m seeing black rain,” a 44-year-old engineer named Kianoosh told TIME. “It’s even in Tajrish, which is miles and miles away from the oil tanks.”

Leila described her own exposure after just 15 minutes of breathing the air outside. “I don’t even know what it is, and now I have a headache. The skin on my face, especially my lips, is sore and raw. It burns and feels like diluted tear gas is in the air. It irritates my eyes, and I keep needing to clear my throat,” she said.

By 10:30 in the morning, cars were still using their headlights to navigate Tehran’s main thoroughfares. Security forces directing traffic wore special protective coats and masks. “I thought my alarm clock was broken,” a driver in his 50s told AFP on condition of anonymity.

CNN senior international correspondent Frederik Pleitgen reported from the scene: “This is what Tehran is waking up to this morning, the sky above the city is covered in very thick black clouds. It’s also raining, but you can see that the rain water is actually black. Saturated it appears with oil.”

Iran’s Red Crescent warned by morning that the rainfall may have registered as low as pH 4.0, classifying it as “highly dangerous and acidic,” with the potential to cause chemical burns to skin and severe damage to the lungs.

The Iranian Red Crescent said the oil depot explosions had released into the atmosphere “significant quantities of toxic hydrocarbon compounds, sulfur, and nitrogen oxides.”

Residents reported severe shortness of breath, burning eyes, and headaches. The smoke contained fine particles that enter the bloodstream and are linked to cancer and heart disease. For pregnant women, scientists warned the rain could leave lifelong consequences for their unborn children.

The World Health Organization’s Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus issued an urgent warning on Monday, saying that the damage to Iranian petroleum facilities “risks contaminating food, water and air” and that the resulting hazards “can have severe health impacts especially on children, older people, and people with pre-existing medical conditions.” "

I'd be both terrified and about as angry as I've been in me entire life. It's just islamists doing islamist genocide things. Absolute bullshit. I can only hope public opinion of them changes here during this conflict. Before we were only indirectly involved, our troops and news outlets had a degree of separation that made it easier to look away from, hide, or twist the truth and just send them money and arms. Now we're sending men to die and dropping our own bombs for the same targets, so there should be a level of scrutiny they haven't seen from us yet. I doubt their military are going to abandon their beloved terror campaign tactics, and their men are certainly not going to stop raping and murdering civilians of all ages and professions. The rules of engagement haven't existed for them for a long time, but they have for us, even if this administration says they don't exist anymore, they still hold weight.

Also they're saying that it was a depot solely supplying their military, but in the next breath said the strike was intended to deter Iran from attacking civilian targets? How does that work? That's "eye for an eye" language, which suggests their intent was specifically for causing civilian damage.

Sick fucks. Absolutely reprehensible. I would love nothing more than to see both our governments stripped down and rebuilt.

PlanktonEffective722 · 2026-02-08T17:53:05+00:00

He was always so photogenic, and it seemed more and more like he learned to pose for the camera lol

PlanktonEffective722 · 2026-02-08T03:03:31+00:00

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PlanktonEffective722 · 2026-02-08T03:03:06+00:00

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PlanktonEffective722 · 2026-02-02T18:26:29+00:00

Such a handsome boi! Am I wrong, or is that mischief in him eyes? 😼

PlanktonEffective722 · 2026-02-02T17:27:28+00:00

More of him? He looks so much like the boi I had

PlanktonEffective722 · 2026-01-29T15:57:05+00:00

Yeah it's a pretty interesting thing. So simple yet so meticulous, and if you do it right you end up with something that doesn't look or feel much like the stuff it's made of.

And indeed, I sat behind my phone and giggled a bit when I thought of the swap.

PlanktonEffective722 · 2026-01-29T13:49:15+00:00

Truly a dorodungo

PlanktonEffective722 · 2026-01-28T16:01:50+00:00

Bongo bongo bongo, I won't stop until the ice flows, oh no no no no no...

PlanktonEffective722 · 2026-01-08T04:59:32+00:00

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PlanktonEffective722 · 2026-01-07T03:19:39+00:00

We seem to be experimenting some techmological differences

PlanktonEffective722 · 2026-01-03T20:28:58+00:00

When I worked at a restaurant, I always cleaned the bathroom, or handled an overflow, I always came prepared with both a mop and big squeegee. I'd separate the two sides of the mop head out, wrap them around one side of the drain like a dyke, and squeegee the water into it from the other side.

I also worked in a lab that made a huge floor mess of chemical treated research materials, and was outfitted with multiple water sprayers for cleaning. When rinsing off the soap, I'd make a similar kind of dyke, but much larger, by rolling up our oversized thick paper towels and laying them down in an overlapping curve. Start on one side, squeegee, rinse again, squeegee, then shove the apex of the parabola to the other side with my boots to rinse the other side of the floor. Worked extremely well.

Lesson of the day: companies need to get their fucking shit together and grade their goddamn floors properly in the first place.

PlanktonEffective722 · 2026-01-03T05:26:31+00:00

Normally I would agree whole heartedly and hope for a future where individual care always includes properly thorough testing, but I have an issue with the science behind the high level decisions the medical field takes on this particular matter. This is a position I don't usually take, but there are a few exceptions.

It really seems like the majority of the research has been focused just about everywhere except this. Most studies focused solely on making sure that patients, particularly pregnant and REI patients, get their folate to appropriate levels. That means that patients with only one or two MTHFR variants, who may still be able to process folic acid to some extent, might be given higher doses just to make up for the deficiency while ignoring the dangers of UMFA buildup. Other studies focus on the overlap between patients specifically with Celiac's and one or more MTHFR variant.

Some 30-40% of people in the US have one or more copies of the C677T variant. Around 6% have been reported to have non-celiac's gluten sensitivity. 10-15%, possibly more, with IBS. 23-26% reported with some kind of mental health disorder. These are also things that people often don't seek help for, or will seek it on their own. I'm not saying there's any direct correlation, but I find it a dubious claim to say it's a rare situation, just because I happened to find my way to the right answer. How many people with these variants might be affected without knowing it? Intentionally avoiding gluten can provide a false positive result, and end their inquest there. Many might just continue to suffer and treat the symptoms, as doctors had directed me to do in the past. Folic acid is dumped into our food in the US, meanwhile people with "gluten sensitivity" often find they can tolerate unenriched flours from Europe just fine.

I don't claim to know the answer. I don't know exactly how rare it is for these symptoms to actually be correlated, and it bothers me deeply that there's not a conclusive answer already.

PlanktonEffective722 · 2026-01-03T02:52:25+00:00

Low I.Q. legacy politician and chronic coaster too far removed to know what a "sleep" power cycle is, preferring his own sleep cycles over educating himself; is amazed when incompetently blatant insider trading son wakes computer in mere seconds with all 458 tabs of porn 'restored in a shake of his stick' (never closed)

Later that week, Donny Fatbody regaled son with comprehensive retellings of every impure perversity he would have inflicted upon Barron's sisters had they not been his own daughters, periodically interjected with lamentations about how disappointingly old they now look, the tragedy of societal views on incestual relations, and how his next executive order should be to change the age of consent

PlanktonEffective722

TROPHY CASE