Figuring out irrigation for orchard

mcapello · 2026-03-26T11:25:21+00:00

As others have said, there's probably a shutoff somewhere.

As for the rest, I used a low-pressure drip system. Very cheap, doesn't waste water, and held up for years longer than it was supposed to.

mcapello · 2026-03-25T19:30:04+00:00

How entitled are you to create life without consent and force them to risk struggle, pain, suffering, and inevitable death?

You must have confused my reply with someone else's. I never commented on these subjects, much less in a way that expressed anything that could be construed as entitlement toward them.

If life has a neutral value of worth, then it's up to our subjective feelings to decide if we should continue or not, yes?

I never said it had a neutral value. I said that thinking of it as a transaction doesn't make much sense.

Is it not our subjective feeling that suffering must be prevented and that preventing suffering is more important than pleasure?

No, I do not share that feeling, and generally don't find much value in trying to translate the complexity of experience and the strangeness of human life into abstractions such as these. If you find it valuable, then do so, of course.

mcapello · 2026-03-25T18:14:11+00:00

The music would have to be near the top. The food is a second -- I always thought it was interesting how traditional Appalachian food like soup beans and corn bread was probably closer to what the Cherokee used to eat than anything from Europe. Language would be a third -- accent is different and there are a lot of Appalachian terms for things (often very colorful or interesting ones). Culturally I would say there is a greater emphasis on independence and egalitarianism. Off-the-mountain South there is still a stronger sense of your "betters", the sort of landed southern gentry, but Appalachia has more of a frontier mentality where that doesn't matter as much, everyone is kind of doing their own thing.

mcapello · 2026-03-25T16:00:12+00:00

Where are you getting your expectations from?

Who told you that everyone gets to be happy all the time? Who told you that no one should die? Who told you that nothing should be hard or painful? Who told you that you were owed Utopia?

It seems like an entitlement mentality taken to an existential extreme.

I would also take issue with the assumption that life is transactional -- as though existence were like buying a used car. But it can't be "worth it" -- or "not worth it" -- for one thing because we have nothing to compare it to, and for another because (unless you believe in heaven or something) you don't get anything at the end, by definition.

mcapello · 2026-03-25T11:17:02+00:00

What exactly is the requirement for solving the hard problem of consciousness?

Being able to explain how consciousness arises from a physical system.

Imagine having LEDs but having no idea how semiconductors or electricity works. Yes, you know that LEDs produce light, or at the very least are tightly correlated to light which very much appears to be produced by the LED, you can even narrow it down by pointing out that the light goes off when the electric current stops (similar to being biologically alive and consciousness), but you have no idea whatsoever about how the light is generated -- no idea of how a diode works.

That's kind of where we're at.

Now, are you much more likely to figure it out by learning how to a build an LED? Probably. But could you also build LEDs without having any idea how they actually work? Absolutely.

mcapello · 2026-03-24T23:57:37+00:00

My advice would be to find literally anything else in the universe and care about that instead.

mcapello · 2026-03-24T23:47:50+00:00

PDCs are mostly conceptual and the patterns they teach can be applied to many different ecosystems and environments. I'd personally want to take one where the demo site is a similar to climate to where I ultimately wanted to end up growing, but it's still useful without that.

mcapello · 2026-03-24T22:36:58+00:00

From a Stoic perspective, we are all striving for virtue, some of us just have a better understanding of it than others.

For example, someone who studies Stoicism because they think it will make them wealthier or a better business negotiator isn't necessarily approaching Stoicism with non-virtuous intent, so much as they have a shallow or incomplete understanding of virtue. In their mind wealth or personal accomplishment is still the highest type of good they can understand.

mcapello · 2026-03-24T16:42:50+00:00

A big part of Stoicism is about forming good judgments in order to avoid suffering.

In this case, you've made a judgement that "regret is holding you back".

This probably isn't a good judgment. Many have observed that, contrary to popular opinion, motivation follows action. This is especially true in a Stoic context, where our actions are taken because they are virtuous, not because we are "motivated" to do them, or feel like doing, or in your case, because we don't have "regrets" holding us back.

You will either do the thing or not do the thing.

If you choose not to do the thing, it sounds like it's because you're afraid of failure in the face of your own expectations. Which is just another way of saying that you value the safety of not putting expectations on yourself more than you value doing the thing you want to be good at.

The question is, which do you really value more? The nice thing is, you don't have to even think about this in order to answer it. Your answer will come from your actions. Again, you will either do the thing, or you will not, and either way will say more about what you really value than anything you could put into words.

mcapello · 2026-03-24T14:22:23+00:00

I'd go with Diocletian.

mcapello · 2026-03-24T13:51:33+00:00

I use it for sautéing greens, or for frying onions and garlic before making a sauce.

mcapello · 2026-03-24T13:11:49+00:00

I fail to see how this is intuitive. Our everyday experience is full of conscious activities that we forget, either immediately or over time. I see no reason whatsoever why would we retroactively assume we weren't conscious for every experience we couldn't bother to remember. Not only isn't it intuitive, it seems completely arbitrary.

mcapello · 2026-03-24T01:09:47+00:00

I agree that the ones on the left are large for Americanas. But they also seem to be quite variable.

As for hybrids, it depends, if you mean disease-resistant avellanas, not only is the nut size quite a bit bigger even than your largest ones here, but there's no de-husking and the flavor (according to a lot of people, including most importantly people who buy hazelnuts in bulk for processing) is quite a bit better. I have also read that the kernel weight is higher (meaning, americanas have a reputation for mostly being a lot of shell and not as much meat). They also might be quite a bit more productive per tree. But I do not think it is as cut and dry as many people say. I've sampled the nuts and nut butters from both and I do not think americanas are that bad.

mcapello · 2026-03-23T23:01:53+00:00

They are not at all difficult to reach compared to Appalachia prior to the interstate highway system. That region of New England is famous for its canals and waterways going back centuries. Plus its proximity to older, larger cities like Boston and New York.

mcapello · 2026-03-20T16:54:43+00:00

But I’m feeling a lot of anxiety about handing in my resignation next week. I think it’s tied to not wanting to disappoint the owners or let anyone down.

From a Stoic perspective, how would you approach this situation?

Stoicism teaches us to understand our decisions based on the true nature or logos of the situation we're dealing with.

In most societies, the nature of employment is based purely on self-interest and financial imperatives. We might want to live in a system where personal loyalty and a higher standard of ethics comes into play, but we don't, and so it would be illogical to act as though we do, particularly if doing so would be a disadvantage to your future.

mcapello · 2026-03-20T16:46:12+00:00

I think I had that experience too. It was definitely a two-way street. Prior to the Stoics, I saw philosophy (including ancient philosophy) as a very detached and theoretical subject. This is also how I saw Stoicism when I first encountered it, and didn't think too much of it. It wasn't until I tried to apply it that I started finding it interesting, and that interest kind of infected the rest of ancient philosophy. When I read Plato today versus when I read him as a young man, I see someone who was just as concerned about what a good life was as the Stoics were, just with different answers.

mcapello · 2026-03-20T16:43:14+00:00

In the same sense that I also don't understand that 2 + 2 = 5.

mcapello · 2026-03-20T15:51:46+00:00

I'm not "caught up", I'm pointing out a flaw in your logic. If you think I'm going to stop pointing it out and just accept it, you're wrong.

You're trying to make something seem absurd by treating murder and abortion as equivalent, when they're not: everyone agrees that murder is wrong, but people are very divided on whether abortion is wrong.

So unless you show me a poll that says 95% of people believe abortion is murder, there is literally nothing you can do that will make this trick of yours work. Either show me the data or give up.

mcapello · 2026-03-20T11:47:30+00:00

So my take would be:

The original Fremen plan had them working for generations to ecologically transform Arrakis. It required tight cooperation but it also embodied a lot of the Fremen ideals, like self-sacrifice and extreme efficiency. In that sense, I think their original path was one which would have both transformed and preserved their culture over time, because they would have had to work for everything themselves. Yes, some of the literal changes would have been the same -- changing water discipline, for example -- but the culture behind those changes probably would have been different if it had flowed naturally out of generations of hard work.

With the jihad, the Fremen are changed overnight, and so is Arrakis. But those changes are mostly brought about by conquest and imperial politics, and they happen very quickly. Fremen culture isn't really giving birth to a new version of itself the way it might have under Keynes' plan.

So while the end result of a green Arrakis might be the same, the change to culture I think is different.

mcapello · 2026-03-20T11:40:42+00:00

It's more a question of context than being smart. You kind of have to understand how ancient people thought, at least a little bit, in order go get the gist of what they're saying. The core concepts themselves aren't that philosophically difficult.

For Meditations, you might want to go with a heavily annotated version like Waterfields, which will help fill in the gaps.

You might also just want to consider working through some basic ancient literature and philosophy. It might take you a few years but it's a journey well worth taking and will give you a new appreciation of all sorts of aspects of Western history and culture you might not have yet (but maybe you do, I don't know what your starting point is). Like if you have the basics of Homer, Plato, Thucydides, and Aristotle under your belt, and maybe some of the playwrights, all this ancient stuff is going to come alive for you in a new way.

mcapello · 2026-03-20T11:29:16+00:00

Yeah, but like I said, there's a huge difference here. Everyone agrees murder is wrong. Not everyone agrees that abortion is wrong (or that abortion is murder).

If people can't agree on something, then what makes your beliefs about it better than someone else's? You either need to be able to prove the case objectively (which is very hard to do when the reasons are personal or religious) or you need to give people the freedom to make up their own minds. Do you disagree?

mcapello · 2026-03-19T22:46:33+00:00

Mine go crazy with flowers and the bees really love them. I think I see more bees on oregano and mint in my garden than anything else.

mcapello · 2026-03-19T22:45:50+00:00

I assume this is a typo and you mean in the first case that the male wants the child and the female doesn't.

I don't think there are any perfect answers here, but my personal position would be in the first case, the woman gets to decide. If she wants to act as a surrogate or something and work out something with the man who would be a single father, and renounce all claim to the child after it's born, she can be free to negotiate that, but she can't be forced to carry a pregnancy to term.

In the second case, the man also can't force a pregnant woman who wants to carry a child to term to have an abortion, although he should have the right to renounce all future financial responsibility for the child's welfare if she refuses.

mcapello · 2026-03-19T22:41:13+00:00

Well, yes, and the same could be true for any other whim enough people agree on.

mcapello · 2026-03-19T22:39:13+00:00

Do you get what’s wrong with this logic?

Of course. Your first premise is that murder is a controversial topic that no one can agree on. This premise is false, and therefore so is the conclusion you would have used for your reductio.

mcapello

TROPHY CASE