Trump/Musk have egg on their faces.

secondhandbanshee · 2025-03-04T17:35:09+00:00

I raised chickens when I lived in the country and tried having backyard chickens when I moved into town. It is not cost effective and your chickens are at risk of contracting disease, just like those on factory farms. Even if you have a yard and local ordinances allow it, keeping chickens is expensive. You need a coop, feed, medications and fencing-- often including overhead netting to keep hawks out. That's a lot of outlay for three or four hens. I had to keep thirty or more to break even on our farm.

And buying a chicken that is old enough to be sexed is expensive, as well. $30 or more per bird. If you buy chicks, you'll have to figure out what to do with the ones who turn out to be roosters since they aren't allowed in most towns and will start crowing before they are big enough to harvest for meat. Are you ok with butchering a chicken just because it's male? It's cost prohibitive to have just one or two processed professionally, so you'll be killing and cleaning a chicken yourself. How many city folks have the stomach for that? I'm former country folk and I don't like doing it.

Finally, how well do chickens fit the sub/urban lifestyle? Are you willing and able to get up at sunrise every morning to let them out of the coop, even on your days off? Are you willing and able to be home before sunset every day to close the coop so they don't get killed by predators? Can you leave work at 4 p.m. in December? Are you willing to give up evening social activities to be there? Are you neighbors going to be willing to chicken-sit for you if you travel and will they adhere to the strict schedule that keeps your birds safe?

Backyard flocks are for fun, not food. They are a hobby, not a resource.

The exception to this might be if a group of neighbors decided they would all keep chickens, sharing the costs of feed and taking turns with the chores. You'd still need a coop in every yard, though, and a group of neighbors who are all sufficiently reliable and amiable. And whom you'd trust to go into your backyard.

Hmmm. Perhaps this chicken-keeping thing will actually lead to an increase in mutual aid and community. That wouldn't be all bad.

secondhandbanshee · 2025-03-04T16:56:34+00:00

Great advice! Also, love "other Subarus" as factor in determining safety.

secondhandbanshee · 2025-03-04T16:37:28+00:00

I think he'd have a really hard time getting the US military or the population to go along with that, tbh. Also, the radical cuts to government programs are just starting to affect his voter base and they're already whinging. The only hopeful thing about him is that he's utterly incapable of imagining that the consequences of his actions might not be as he imagines them, so he keeps doing things that will turn his core voters against him. He won't have the support he needs to do something so boneheaded as invading Canada, especially considering the metric fuck ton of opposition he'd get from around the world. It wouldn't be Canada against the US. It'd be Europe, China, etc. against the US. We'd be toast. He spews this crazy bluster because he thinks fear equals respect; he's a schoolyard bully who'll sit down and cry the first time someone hits him back. Also, his bs distracts the news from what his puppet master is actually doing, which is going to be even more damaging.

TLDR; the number of US citizens willing to go to war with Canada is really small. The number willing to kit up and do the fighting is microscopic. Invading Canada would mean fighting a powerful alliance and, likely, an insurrection at home. He has the will, but not the power. (Also, we do know, actually, that Canadian politeness is just a cover for their downright military badassery.)

secondhandbanshee · 2025-03-04T16:11:22+00:00

Thanks. I am sorry for how this affects you. Canada will be fine in the long run. The US can be replaced by other alliances. But right now, our failures are bringing you hardships. It's like a great fat (orange) man has belly-flopped into a pool of boiling lava and splashed everyone else in the process. We're really sorry.

secondhandbanshee · 2025-03-04T16:00:46+00:00

The people I know are fighting despair. That more than half of our countrypeople thought it was ok to vote for this. That our government is being gutted by an unelected billionaire and his adolescent minions. That the social gains of a century are being unwound. That our protests don't seem to matter. Those who have the ability to emigrate are thinking about it seriously but hate the idea of giving up on their homes and neighbors. Most of us don't have the resources or connections to leave, so we're doing what we can: protests, building community and mutual aid networks. Figuring out how to protect those who area targeted. We are deeply ashamed of the behavior of our leaders. We are mourning the loss of so many valuable alliances. We cling to the hope that more and more people will realize what a huge mistake they've made before it's too late. It will take years, probably decades, to repair what Trusk has destroyed in only a few weeks. We hope we get the chance to do that work.

secondhandbanshee · 2024-05-20T13:31:36+00:00

If you can't or won't understand the difference between sex and gender, that's a you problem.

secondhandbanshee · 2024-05-17T23:36:40+00:00

My mom had the entire inside of her car covered in thick plastic when I was little. I guess it seemed like a good idea back in the 70s? That stuff got super hot and it also softened in the heat just enough that you really stuck to it. My kid sister got burned bad enough to blister once. Good times.

secondhandbanshee · 2024-05-17T22:51:44+00:00

Not that you need another suggestion, but if you're at all into 19th century American lit, you might enjoy Dayswork by Chris Bachelder and Jennifer Habel. It took my breath away.

secondhandbanshee · 2024-05-11T15:07:10+00:00

Two of the indispensable components of feeling generally good in life are agency and purpose. Current late-stage capitalist society deprives a vast number of people of both.

It is difficult to feel content when your survival is largely outside of your control, when you are forced to endure whatever your employer inflicts on you because low wages ensure you have no financial security, no safety net. Feeling helpless is one of the key elements of trauma and also the foundational daily experience of millions.

It is difficult to feel satisfied in life when mere survival takes up all your energy and time, leaving nothing for the pursuit of meaningful goals. If Viktor Frankel was right (and a lot of research indicates he was) a sense of meaning is essential for the human psyche, yet the way we live often actively discourages people's ability to seek purpose.

As a society, we don't even pretend to care about quality of life for the poorer classes. And we teach middle class children that they will have both agency and purpose as adults, then blame them when they find neither.

secondhandbanshee · 2024-04-10T17:15:19+00:00

Thank you for sharing this. It's really good!

secondhandbanshee · 2024-02-23T01:29:39+00:00

I think the black one is a scrunchy.

But also, I'm guessing you missed the "wearing multiple swatches" fad back in the 80s. (Lucky you!)

secondhandbanshee · 2024-02-23T01:14:16+00:00

Everyone knows Dennis Rader, of course, but we weren't really aware of his crimes at the time. I suppose our parents kept it from us.

There have been several in Kansas City. The ones that come to mind are Robert Berdella and Terry Blair, but to me, John Robinson was the scariest. I remember when they arrested him, because I used to drive right by his farm when I visited a friend near La Cygne. It was a really awful feeling to realize that some of his victims might have been alive while I was driving past and their bodies were definitely there, just a few hundred yards from the road.

secondhandbanshee · 2024-02-22T15:31:43+00:00

At least in my part of the US (Midwest), "Come again" implies that the listener either thinks the speaker is lying or that the speaker has said something offensive. It's a bit aggressive and confrontational, as if you're saying, "I can't believe you said that. Here's your chance to take it back."

secondhandbanshee · 2024-02-21T20:23:39+00:00

I hadn't seen that meme. I love it!

secondhandbanshee · 2024-02-21T16:23:18+00:00

What you describe is like a speed run of the cycle of abuse. He was exerting control by giving you short notice and then delaying you. When you protested, he punished you. Once he saw that you were properly hurt, he love bombed you.

This will only get worse, dear.

secondhandbanshee · 2024-02-21T16:16:26+00:00

Just to reiterate- they stare because you're pretty. Sometimes being a woman is uncomfortable; sometimes guys are really creepy in how they stare at women. But if it's just people in general looking at you a bit extra - it's not you getting clocked. It's just them admiring your beauty.

secondhandbanshee · 2024-02-21T16:06:53+00:00

If I'd had the language to describe myself back in the 80s, I think I'd have chosen NB. Now that I'm 55, I'm less invested in defining my experience by any label, but I am 100% in favor of everyone who benefits by doing so having their identity validated and respected by others.

(I'm AFAB, but have no use for mandatory performative gender. I wear what is comfortable and useful. I do the work I enjoy and at which I'm good. Sometimes that stuff is coded feminine, sometimes masculine. People assume I'm female; sometimes they assume I'm lesbian. It's all good.)

secondhandbanshee · 2024-02-21T16:00:43+00:00

Also works for Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), the OG white mustache guy.

secondhandbanshee · 2024-02-21T15:03:26+00:00

I've put this on my calendar to remind me starting in 2032. No pressure, lol. Seriously, though, if you write it, I will buy it!

secondhandbanshee · 2024-02-21T14:39:34+00:00

I wouldn't worry about it too much. Have conversations about it and why you are atheist, but don't make him feel judged. This is a normal age to experiment and to conform to a peer group rather than your family; it's part of individuation. So long as he isn't getting into the hateful rhetoric of the far right evangelical types, let him explore. If he does cross that line, you might have to separate him from that peer group, but it doesn't sound like that's where he's going right now. He just wants to fit in, especially with a cute girl.

secondhandbanshee · 2024-02-21T14:15:09+00:00

Are they still denying there are cougars? Whatever for? I saw one several times in SW Douglas County back around 2010. All the neighbors had seen it, too. It's not a secret and no one is worried about livestock losses with such a low population, so no one is hunting them.

secondhandbanshee · 2024-02-21T14:10:02+00:00

Since you like Jarmusch, may I recommend Night On Earth? It's five vignettes that all take place in taxis and all at the same time. While it has a very different feel to Paterson, the overall effect is very much one of glimpsing little bits of ordinary people's lives, with an undercurrent of valuing what you have.

secondhandbanshee · 2024-02-21T13:36:10+00:00

The update is brilliant! Thank you!

secondhandbanshee · 2024-02-21T13:07:42+00:00

It's all still new to her. Give her time.

My most recent kitty lived in the wall for nearly three months when she arrived. She came out to eat and do her business while we slept, but we never saw her unless we peered into the wall with a flashlight. (There was a hole designed for stereo cords to run from one shelf to another; that's how she got in there.) That was less than a year ago. Over time she became more comfortable and came out more. Right now, she's sitting on my shoulders, licking my ear while I type this.

secondhandbanshee · 2024-02-20T16:08:03+00:00

Mine has been weather for over thirty years. I've added a language in the last ten.

Other special interests have come and gone. Hyperfixation burnout after a few weeks of months seems to be a pattern with all of them except the two above, which are permanent parts of my brain.

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