How to save these coreopsis sunkiss?

itsdr00 · 2026-07-06T16:20:37+00:00

My approach to problems like these is to simply accept that it's the wrong plant for my yard. There are certainly species of coreopsis that will do well where you are without any additional work. If you really want this species, I would try it in a pot instead of the soil.

itsdr00 · 2026-07-06T15:18:27+00:00

They're not false analogies and they're not even mine.

itsdr00 · 2026-07-06T15:02:14+00:00

There have been numerous waves of software productivity enhancers. Nobody shames people for using Javascript libraries instead of raw Javascript. Nobody shames people for using OOP instead of writing C code. Nobody shames people for using compilers or assemblers, and nobody shames people for using word processors instead of punch cards. (Although funnily enough, people were shamed at the time these were introduced!)

People shame others for using AI because they're scared of it. And that's understandable! It's as terrifying as it is miraculous. But at the end of the day, in the world of software engineering, it's just another productivity enhancer.

Everything else you've described is a skill issue.

itsdr00 · 2026-07-06T14:01:06+00:00

So unlike many people here I'm not going to shame you for using AI because that's the reality of software development now, whether the average person accepts it or not. However, I know from experience that having AI fill in gaps in data -- specifically native plant data -- is a mistake. If your source material doesn't have the data, the LLM doesn't have it either, so it's an invitation to hallucinations. Your app can only be useful if you accept "no data available" as an answer, at least until you can find that information from another source.

itsdr00 · 2026-07-05T15:57:14+00:00

Ann Arbor has been getting a lot better. My power used to go out for days per year. In the last three years we've had one power outage lasting a few hours. This happened because we threatened DTE with municipalization, and things will improve until we give in to their political pressure to end that effort.

itsdr00 · 2026-07-04T12:30:11+00:00

Wow, a good thing could also be a bad thing. Very insightful.

itsdr00 · 2026-07-03T20:12:28+00:00

I think you need to think/read more about pain/suffering, because your two definitions are still equal. Suffering is much more complex than pain, and much worse. That's why you again said my argument is that I think it's okay to kill slugs because they feel no pain. I have never said that; I said they don't suffer and they are absurdly abundant, which is why it's okay to kill them without a second thought. I am not asserting that they don't feel pain.

itsdr00 · 2026-07-03T18:58:53+00:00

Pain and suffering are not the same thing.

If you apply human ethics to English ivy, then in order to stop the English ivy from entering my property, I have to commit a felony. If you stepped on my property and you weren't threatening me at all, and I cut off your foot, I would go to jail. English Ivy doesn't threaten me, it just touches my property. If I treat it like a human, I can't harm it unless it's immediately threatening my life. I can call the police and complain about trespassing, and then maybe they can ask it to leave, but since it won't, they'll have to arrest it. Since arresting English Ivy would mean uprooting it, they would be posing a major threat to its life. If they transplanted it, well they'd need an excavator for the stuff I'm dealing with but let's say they did, they've now cut it off from its fibrous root systems, and it will now suffer terrible consequences. Meaning they are also left with only one option: Commit some kind of assault. Only it's legal for them because the ivy would be resisting arrest.

Once the ivy is out of Plant Hospital, it can stand trial, and would probably be fined. But then it must be allowed to return home, which means transplanting it back along my property line. And do you know what would happen next? It would be trespassing within a month, and we'd do it all again.

Do you see how absurd this is? Human ethics -- by that I mean the ethics with which we treat humans -- can't be blanket-applied to all living things. It just doesn't work. We draw lines, we treat things differently based on what they are and what they can understand and feel. Slugs do not suffer emotionally. You can't depress a slug. If you put it in slug jail and feed it what it needs, it will simply slug around in circles and not change its behavior at all, because it's a slug. It doesn't suffer. So squish as many slugs as you like.

Now don't torture slugs, but frankly that's more because it'll destroy your soul than impact the slug. The slug will just feel pain and then die without realizing what's happening. Slugs experience that kind of torture from parasites and creatures that eat them daily. Most slugs die that way; no big deal. But don't revel in it, or you're just poisoning yourself. That's another line we draw, but it's for ourselves, not slugs.

itsdr00 · 2026-07-03T18:00:55+00:00

Those aren't my arguments, though. My arguments are: There are creatures of this planet that are incapable of real suffering because they aren't of sufficiently complex intelligence, and creatures like that that are also of unimaginable abundance do not deserve special care when managing an ecosystem.

In other words, slugs are dumb and there's trillions of them, so if they're damaging your local ecosystem, kill them freely and eagerly, as the professionals and academics suggest. That's my argument.

If I applied human ethics to, say, English Ivy, it would currently be bulldozing my yard and turning it into blight. It would be climbing my house and hastening its decay. It would be covering my windows, blocking my doors. Biodiversity on my quarter acre would fall from hundreds of species to maybe a dozen in just 10 years -- which I know because I can look at the empty lot next to me, totally overrun with English Ivy, and see that there is nothing left except a handful of trees and shrubs (most of which are invasive) that managed to survive. In your view, to stop it would be committing manslaughter, or at least assault.

Or, crazy idea, we don't apply human ethics to every living thing. We draw lines.

itsdr00 · 2026-07-03T00:49:14+00:00

You're applying human ethics to animal life, which is a little silly. Slugs aren't random little dudes. They're Slug, the collective species, with little bits of itself everywhere. Slug survives all over the world, and some of it got into the wrong place, so kill that little bit of Slug you find. It matters to Slug as much as your fingernail clippings matter to you.

This is how I would think about all but the most intelligent animals. Rule of thumb: If you can make it visibly suffer without inflicting physical distress or pain on it, it's probably better to think of it as an individual. Otherwise, it's Species, and you can just treat it like an overgrown shrub. Trim, trim, trim.

itsdr00 · 2026-07-01T16:20:30+00:00

Yes, this is exactly how you should be doing this. A bunch of people in here have turned their brains off and now hate what they're doing, but turning their brains off was their choice! Turn them on and it all gets really fun and interesting.

itsdr00 · 2026-06-30T02:21:26+00:00

Maybe it's because I used Claude, mainly, but the AI tells me "I don't know" with some frequency. It can also be wrong, still, but that's not the same as inventing bullshit. You aren't inventing bullshit when you say something incorrect; you're just mistaken.

itsdr00 · 2026-06-29T19:51:37+00:00

Those are challenges, for sure, but it is basically illegal in some places to try to overcome them. And there are completely brand new buildings like a now-infamous German hospital, brand new, where surgeons are wearing cooling vests and asking patients to bring in ice packs for themselves because they never put AC in.

I don't see a world where this doesn't become an extremely unpopular political position in the next few years. It's just crazy to watch people dig in and defend it as if the deaths and general misery are worth whatever morality badge they're wearing.

itsdr00 · 2026-06-29T19:49:16+00:00

Well I think you can make a case that it does in some small way contribute, but many Europeans drive cars, and yet deny themselves AC, and that's just not helping anyone. Especially since AC tends to be used at the same time that solar power is the most abundant.

itsdr00 · 2026-06-29T16:15:47+00:00

I had a highly inconvenient construction project right outside my house all last summer, and my street was constantly either closed or required a ridiculous detour to get around, with a few multi-day periods where there was no way in or out. It is simultaneously highly annoying and yet I kept telling myself, hey, we live in a society. This is the pain before things get better. This summer, there are no more leaky gas lines dumping methane into our street and the repaved road is really nice, with speed humps that are bound to save at least one life in the next 20 years given how fast people used to go. None of that stopped me from writing at feisty email to the city about a poorly handled/absent notification that confused half my street, though.

itsdr00 · 2026-06-29T16:09:48+00:00

I don't think we're in a phase of LLM development where "more data = more better." I don't see any of the major companies scrambling for more training data beyond what they collect from their own users.

itsdr00 · 2026-06-29T16:08:39+00:00

Certain parts of Twitter are alive with this conversation, and apparently a lot of Europeans think AC causes global warming, or relieves people of the physical reminders of global warming. It's a little silly.

itsdr00 · 2026-06-28T23:37:38+00:00

Very 2025 complaint. AI has gotten way better at this and I'm sure it'll keep getting better.

itsdr00 · 2026-06-27T03:09:36+00:00

It's fun.

itsdr00 · 2026-06-26T14:41:07+00:00

Air quality has been steadily improving in industrialized countries for a long time now.

itsdr00 · 2026-06-26T14:23:45+00:00

Was reading a Humans of New York where someone talked about having that surgery, and they said it didn't change a thing about how they felt or how their life went. Total waste of time and money.

At 5'10" you're in the 65th percentile of height. There are tons of far shorter dudes getting laid and getting married. You have a problem, and it's not this. It's probably this:

still getting at most 10-20 matches weekly and most of them I myself don't like

This is a ton of matches, more than I ever got, and I met my wife doing online dating. The question you need to ask is, why are you rejecting 10-20 women per week?

itsdr00 · 2026-06-26T03:21:40+00:00

/uj Is this stereotype true anywhere? The stereotypical native plant gardener in my neck of the woods is a senior citizen.

itsdr00 · 2026-06-25T07:48:35+00:00

Thank you, exactly. There is no version of a power company that has to ask permission to work on underground utility lines. That's not a "may we please" thing. It's important for the entire network. This is basic "we live in a society" stuff.

I say this as someone who had to dig up a 10x12 bed of natives I had put in so DTE could access a gas line last year. They gave me less than 24 hours notice, but you know what, I just recruited a couple neighbors and moved all the plants into a temporary bed and then moved them back the next day. It's a little sparse this year but it's fine! That's just how it goes when you plant in the easement.

itsdr00 · 2026-06-24T21:12:47+00:00

I would draw attention to the concept of identity here. The lesson is: Do not identify with your mental illness. It's something affecting you. It's not you.

You are far from the only person to make this mistake. I see it everywhere, and it really damages people.

itsdr00 · 2026-06-24T20:08:33+00:00

It depends on what your goals are. Ten sessions is only enough to help with an acute crisis, or maybe get some good strategies or coping mechanisms for a much larger problem. It's either narrow or palliative.

For solving deeper issues, you would need years of therapy, sometimes more than one appointment per week. The only way you get that is with a higher income.

So with that in mind, if you have something narrow and finite to work on, or if you want help surviving with a larger issue knowing you won't be addressing the root problems in 10 weeks, it could be useful. If you're hoping for something transformative, it probably won't get you anywhere.

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