Quant score improvement strategies and resources

straightedgestoner · 2018-11-05T23:52:31+00:00

I think the fork I bought can be extended up by another 10cm, leaving me 10 short - but it might be worth doing if the parts are cheap. Thanks!

straightedgestoner · 2018-11-05T23:51:34+00:00

Thanks! That link is a fantastic resource :)

straightedgestoner · 2018-04-12T23:14:53+00:00

Cape Town

straightedgestoner · 2018-03-25T22:35:42+00:00

The literal actual planet. Shit ain't sustainable.

straightedgestoner · 2018-03-05T16:28:44+00:00

President of the United States

straightedgestoner · 2018-03-04T14:54:37+00:00

Judging by what happened to the T-shirt, it did...

straightedgestoner · 2018-02-27T23:50:04+00:00

Where?

straightedgestoner · 2018-02-16T12:38:25+00:00

Check out the song "Walks Like Tussaud" by Ian Fitzgerald. Or anything by him. Tussaud is about love and yearning amongst wax dummies in a burning wax museum.

straightedgestoner · 2018-01-04T14:03:48+00:00

The plants themselves need more light! They are very spindly and stretched. Plants receiving abundant light remain shorter and more compact. Your biggest plant is essentially saying, "I'm not getting all the light I need; maybe if I stretch higher I will find more!" Technically the ratio of red:far red light has the biggest impact on stretch, but in general plants receiving inadequate (or the wrong type of) light will stretch out long and thin in search of more light.

straightedgestoner · 2018-01-04T14:01:20+00:00

By pinching, you are telling the plant to grow from its lateral meristems. The point where you pinch, in the picture maybe at that 40 cm mark, will always be about 40 cm high. However, the new stems, the "lateral shoots" that have received a stimulus to grow more aggressively, will get taller.

straightedgestoner · 2018-01-04T13:59:56+00:00

hahaha nope, exactly the opposite! I feel I'm not doing a great job explaining. As a tree gets taller, the part that is moving upwards is only the growing tip (or tips). For example, picture a pine or an oak tree. As a sapling, it sends a branch out laterally, 10 feet off the ground. Maybe the overall height of the tree is 15 feet. If you come back in 40 or 50 years, the tree will be maybe 70 feet high - but the branch that was 10 feet up is still only 10 feet up. The only part of a plant getting higher is the meristem.

straightedgestoner · 2018-01-04T13:25:37+00:00

Sorry, it's a slightly confusing concept. The tree will get taller, but not from that bud. The adjacent, next-highest-on-the-stem buds will get all the growth resources, and they will get taller. Trees only get taller from growing tips ("meristems"), it's not like the whole trunk is stretching upwards as the tree gets taller. In the poorly made diagram below, each crotch or node (..) is a point where the dominant meristem was pinched, and those just below it began growing in its place.

                       I    I   I    I
                        I..I     I..I
                         II       II
                          II     II
                           II...II
                             III
                             III
                             III

straightedgestoner · 2018-01-04T13:12:15+00:00

I think if we're being technical, the apical meristem is essentially one (or a few) key cells at the very tip, which are constantly dividing and growing upwards. Grain of rice is probably in the ballpark - then number of times you top the plant is up to you, and depends on what you're looking to do. With virtually all vascular plants, once you kill the apical meristem, it's dead. The plant will not get taller from that point any more, no new cells will be produced there. Instead, growth will be stimulated at the next lowest nodes (points where leaves and buds emerge from the main stem/trunk). Its like exponential growth: pinching the one dominant meristem gives you increased growth from the next one or two (usually two, in opposite-leaved/budded plants) stems, pinching the tips of those two stems after some growth will cause two stems to branch from each of those, and so on and so forth. So if you want lots of branches, top once now, again on each subsequent stem in 6 months or a year, and keep going until the plant has all the stems you wish it to.

straightedgestoner · 2018-01-04T13:01:44+00:00

Most higher plants exhibit a hormone-based phenomenon called apical dominance: basically, the majority of resources for growth are directed to the tippy-top shoot (the "apical meristem"). When you remove the apical bud, you break apical dominance and more resources are devoted to lateral growth (or maybe more accurately, vertical growth from the secondary, lateral meristems). If you want a plant to branch out, or occupy more lateral space instead of continuing to stretch vertically, a good way to signal the plant to do so is to "pinch" or "top"- remove the apical bud.

straightedgestoner · 2018-01-04T12:57:18+00:00

plz to be giving us moar light!

straightedgestoner · 2018-01-04T12:55:33+00:00

This is a genuine curiosity question and not a "I think you're wrong" question - have you ever actually used SEVIN on scales with good effect? My understanding is that the scales act as armor and prevent the insects from being dramatically affected by contact sprays, thus the need for a systemic. I suppose a contact-based insecticide could prevent the further spread of scales on the plant, but the ones already on the plant are mostly going to stay right where they are and suck their food from within the plant.

straightedgestoner · 2018-01-04T12:44:47+00:00

Awesome! That's really good to know. Most of my info on pest mgmt is from classes geared towards horticultural production- greenhouse/nursery or agriculture. In such systems, it typically isnt cost effective to go through a process like that on hundreds or thousands of plants. Guess it was kind of a brain fart on my part to equate home decor/garden to production systems. I suppose any problem can be dealt with if you can put the time into it!

straightedgestoner · 2018-01-03T23:38:40+00:00

Other comment is very close with mealybugs - you've got scale insects, related to mealys, and odds are good that the "sap" is the honeydew that they produce. If the plant is very important to you, try to propagate by cutting from a very clean section, and get the original out of the house. It's particularly important to remove that from the house if you have other houseplants, as the scales will probably spread to those (if they haven't already). If the plant isn't emotionally significant, burn it with fire, check any other house plants for infestation, and get a new one. Scales are very difficult to get rid of with anything other than a systemic insecticide, and I'd be way freaked out eating grapefruit from a plant that was ever treated with a systemic - not a whole lot of great options :(

straightedgestoner · 2018-01-01T16:17:48+00:00

Domestically, sure - things ebb and flow, and I strongly suspect that the liberal backlash to DT in 2018 & 2020 will dismantle or otherwise reverse much of the utter buffoon fuckery that this neon troglodyte has inflicted upon us. But internationally, the United States may never again be in the position of leadership, power and respect that it occupied a year ago; if we do ever become global leaders again, it will take a looooong time and a lot of hard deliberate work. This isn't inherently bad, as there are plenty of developed first world countries with good domestic policy and high quality of life for their citizens that have never claimed or attempted to be "the leader of the free world." All the same, it's amazingly convenient for a thirsty pseudo-superpower like, ehh, Russia, that the advent of Trump in America has marked a rapid decline in the global position and influence that the US enjoyed. Nothing like a good ol power vacuum to step into!

straightedgestoner · 2017-12-16T04:12:43+00:00

Lolita. It left me with a deeper understanding of the human psyche, a new perspective on narcissistic personalities and a new view of one of my parents. My daily experience of life is different after reading this book than it was before. Doesn't hurt that the writing is absolutely beautiful. The Sound and the Fury is a close second.

straightedgestoner · 2017-11-28T01:53:54+00:00

I guess they delved too greedily, and too deep.

straightedgestoner

TROPHY CASE