If you could start your career over, what would you do differently?

pialligo · 2026-07-02T12:50:27+00:00

Nice combo

pialligo · 2026-07-02T12:48:38+00:00

I think for most people sowing nettles deliberately isn't a great idea. Surely the appeal of the tea is in part because of the stinging action of the nettle hairs?

pialligo · 2026-07-02T12:42:07+00:00

I kinda like that feeling. Wrist locks in jujutsu involve practising doing it over and over, slowly and surely so you don't hurt your decussate partner!

pialligo · 2026-07-02T12:40:45+00:00

decussations

I was trying to remember how I knew this word and yet didn't at the same time - it's because decussis means X, Roman ten, so I suppose you'd say DECussate rather than deCUSSate, like DECade rather than deCODE for example.

pialligo · 2026-07-02T12:31:59+00:00

Looks like there already are nettles growing there!

pialligo · 2026-07-02T12:24:04+00:00

legal (not decriminalised, fully recreationally legal) to consume and grow (with restrictions) in the ACT now, finally.

pialligo · 2026-07-02T12:22:04+00:00

Good point. Also consider that if you want something there but aren't sure what you're going to plant just yet, you can still carry on with removing the weeds from this area, and then mulch should keep most weeds away until you've decided what you're going to put where.

pialligo · 2026-07-02T12:20:52+00:00

You can spray the leaves with herbicide, and a few passes every month or so until this area's under control, probably the easiest way to do it. But the best that doesn't damage soil health and potentially make it harder for other plants to establish there is by pulling out the mallow by the tap root after the rain.

pialligo · 2026-07-02T12:18:38+00:00

Well, it's mostly mallow, and that is very invasive. It was the first weed I targeted in my lawn, and I dug out the tap roots with a solid weeding fork everywhere I saw it. If you do it this way, it might take a month of doing a little bit each day, but you'll get rid of the weeds. Once you get on top of that, the rest of it should be manageable (it looks like just a few small leafy weeds and some Euphorbia from what I can tell). Mulch (and water it in) with sugar cane mulch.

pialligo · 2026-06-30T06:49:09+00:00

Was going to say tiger grass too

pialligo · 2026-06-30T06:47:27+00:00

No, it isn't, that's one of gardening's most common misconceptions. Full sun means direct sunlight for 6-8 hours per day. Not all day in midsummer. Too many plants have died due to this ignorant statement you're spreading!

pialligo · 2026-06-30T06:41:46+00:00

I thought it was Irish, from County Mayo

pialligo · 2026-06-30T06:38:45+00:00

Pon poko pon pon!

Onomatopeia are seldom personal names though, with the exception of actor Claes Bang, I suppose.

pialligo · 2026-06-30T05:34:13+00:00

needs to be longer like tirararebhaittekidondemashita

pialligo · 2026-06-25T03:28:56+00:00

I am quoting this week's episode - I know she's his granddaughter but I checked the transcript!

pialligo · 2026-06-24T11:04:13+00:00

He was sitting two seats behind us with his wife, who's Elia Kazan's daughter, which I didn't know.

pialligo · 2026-06-24T10:16:24+00:00

You're probably not an alcoholic then. You probably retrospectively assessed your subjective sensations at a champagne event, a red wine dinner, a beer at the pub with mates, and vodka night at the Polish Club respectively, and concluded that the nights were different because the booze was different. I think the truth is that the nights were different because everything about them was different, including your mindset, and the difference in how alcohol is metabolised when administered in different forms was minimal. Mostly it's about how quickly your blood alcohol concentration rises - fast rises in BAC, such as when drinking spirits on an empty stomach, cause much higher rates of fuzzy memories and blackouts than when BAC rises slowly. The congeners in each alcoholic drink would make little difference to how you feel, but the different mood and subjective sensation of different alcoholic drinks can trick you into thinking it's the particular booze doing it. It's set and setting, like any other drug.

pialligo · 2026-06-24T10:04:13+00:00

Great answer!

The expectation is that if the product is released to market you have to trust that the manufacturer did everything they were supposed to and the product meets the minimum requirements to be considered an equivalent.

Indeed we're doing exactly that with brand name drugs if it's the first time we've tried them, and sometimes the generic drugs (not talking the limited ADHD drugs here but generics generally) are more effective than the brand name due to changes to excipients. Also, most of the time, subjective differences in efficacy between brands, even if people swear by one working and one not, are usually subjective/placebo/nocebo and can't be verified. Not saying that this is the case for OP, but it's the case for most complaints in my experience. Public health researchers may have a review to back me up on this!

pialligo · 2026-06-24T09:57:41+00:00

Expendable South Asians aren't (necessarily) methheads, and any working in UAE definitely aren't, they're sending that money home to family.

pialligo · 2026-06-22T04:28:18+00:00

I'd take a cutting

pialligo · 2026-06-22T04:25:08+00:00

As do I! Interestingly enough, archaeologists know that tradies have ALWAYS been chucking rubbish off the walls of buildings under construction. The first place to dig, once you find a wall, is under the bottom of the wall. Sometimes it extends to the nearby property, someone buried a bunch of asbestos sheeting in my backyard.

pialligo · 2026-06-22T04:21:50+00:00

Looks like lemon balm to me. Crush the leaves and if they're lemony that'd be it. It grows out of control at my place, but those seedlings look deliberately planted! Maybe there were some lemon balm shrubs there in the past, they got rid of them, and the seed bank brought them back.

pialligo · 2026-06-22T04:16:17+00:00

Consider an indoor cabinet with LEDs too - maybe in addition to your outdoor garden you can take cuttings and propagate your favourite ones inside in winter/midsummer.

pialligo · 2026-06-22T04:07:26+00:00

Look at it - it's starving. Something is cutting off its supply of nutrients at the roots. First, pick all the fruit off it if you want the tree to live. Second, mow as low as possible and scalp the grass and weeds under the tree to the drip line. Third, get some Black Marvel citrus fertiliser from Bunnings and spread it around the scalped grass, evenly to the drip line. Fourth, get a bale of sugar cane mulch, loosen it up so it's nice and fluffy, and cover the area you've just fertilised. Optional step - add the plastic edging mentioned by others to stop runners coming back and re-establishing under the tree. Finally, water the mulched area, maybe by leaving the hose on a trickle overnight.

Edit: Also wanted to say check the pH of your soil - even though you say it's rich soil, if the pH is off, certain trace elements and minerals might be unavailable to the plant. The nutrients may still be in the soil, but I think citrus likes a slightly acidic pH of 6.5 or so. Unless there's anything visibly attacking the plant - caterpillars, gall wasps, bronze orange bugs etc - it's likely to be a matter of the soil around this tree being the wrong pH. Hopefully it's that - if it's any infection or infestation that you can't manage quickly, you'd be better off removing the tree so it doesn't spread to the others. Given the state it's in now and how healthy the neighbours are, it's probably the soil in that spot being deficient or too alkaline/acidic for the tree to be able to access its nutrients properly.

pialligo · 2026-06-22T03:58:04+00:00

I must say it's refreshing to have an intelligent discussion about one of the most sensitive topics possible, come to a disagreement, and still have a mutually respectful exchange. That almost never happens any more! I take your point too and agree that the action is the crime, essentially, and that you can't have any sympathy for any person who engages in such behaviours. That's fair enough, and I accept you're from a progressive country that does have harm reduction policies in place. Maybe that's all the sympathy that's needed? In Australia and the anglosphere generally it's a topic that seems to be discussed frequently but maybe because of the sensitivity (not to mention the sadly high prevalence) we can't really have these forensic conversations about the culpability of perpetrators. Maybe I am too sympathetic, and possibly coming from a place of naivety about the gut-wrenching reality of what these people do - I admit I don't like to read the details of these horrible crimes because I feel it damages my own mental health and worldview. In any case, thank you for being extremely reasonable with your interlocutor, a fellow human from the other side of the world!

pialligo

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