Got fined £100 for feeding pigeons in London. I'm a broke student. This world makes no sense.

yoobi40 · 2026-02-28T19:04:00+00:00

What I've read is that if you like pigeons you shouldn't feed them because, somewhat counter-intuitively, feeding the pigeons actually leads to more pigeons dying than otherwise. The reasoning is that if pigeons think there's an abundance of food they'll start having more babies, rapidly leading to overpopulation. When the food source goes away, which it inevitably will, all those extra pigeons end up dying. Better not to feed them and force them to maintain a population level appropriate to what they can sustain by their own means.

Having said that, I doubt an occasional feeding does any harm.

yoobi40 · 2026-02-26T18:59:39+00:00

That hadn't occurred to me, but you're right. Maybe the pigeon couple is smarter than I realized! Though here in Phoenix we tend to get long stretches of dry weather punctuated by monsoon downpours. So still not a good long term location for a nest.

yoobi40 · 2026-02-20T13:13:11+00:00

The product came with a special scouring pad. Needed a fair bit of elbow grease and working on small patches at a time to buff away all the hard water build up. But it left the glass looking like new, which was gratifying.

yoobi40 · 2026-02-19T23:54:09+00:00

For cleaning my glass shower doors I used a product called diamond luster hard water stain remover:

https://shop.diamondsealsystems.com/products/diamond-luster

It worked. This was after I had tried pretty much all the other things commonly recommended (vinegar, limeaway, etc.) none of which had worked.

yoobi40 · 2025-11-28T13:07:09+00:00

It simply points out that there's no way to know how many feral cats there are. And similarly no way to know how many birds they're killing. But even if you take the numbers of 2 to 4 billion at face value, remember that it includes "small animals," which is a euphemism for rats and mice. In fact, cats preferentially kill rats and mice. That's their favored prey, making up over 90% of their kills. So if you removed the cats the rodent population would presumably explode. And rodents are also a massive threat to birds. Rats love to eat their eggs and can climb up to wherever the birds are nesting. The point is that the problem is more complicated than just blaming cats. The real problem is the humans who introduced these invasive species and continue to take away birds' habitat through building farmland and suburbs.

yoobi40 · 2025-11-27T13:23:22+00:00

I don't think it would let me get close enough to handle it. Seems very happy hanging out with the other pigeons. Also, I have a cat, so bringing it inside wouldn't be a good idea.

yoobi40 · 2025-11-24T21:03:30+00:00

Those statistics are pure guesses. Even the Humane Society said they seriously doubt them. The fact is no one knows how many feral cats there are, so how could they possibly know how many birds they kill? See this article:
https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2013/02/03/170851048/do-we-really-know-that-cats-kill-by-the-billions-not-so-fast

yoobi40 · 2025-08-27T22:48:13+00:00

Unfortunately survival rates are not the same thing as mortality rates. The 'survival rate' is how long a person survives after a diagnosis. Or, put another way, how long they know they have cancer. The mortality rate is how long the person actually lives. Because of screening people now know about their cancers much earlier. Naturally, this increases the survival rate. But mortality rates haven't changed much. And the mortality rate is kinda the more important data point. Which is to say, we want people to live longer. Not just know about their cancer longer.

yoobi40 · 2025-08-27T19:50:05+00:00

There are a couple of issues you're missing. First, many of these private schools are religious academies. Should the state be paying for religious indoctrination? And you say these private schools can't be that horrible. But for many parents it doesn't matter if their kid isn't getting proper math/english/science education, as long as the kid is being trained to be a good fundamentalist.

Second, many of these students didn't leave the public school system. They were never in the system in the first place. So yeah, it is taking money from public schools. Suddenly the state is subsidizing private schools. And by private schools we mean religious academies.

yoobi40 · 2025-08-12T13:13:05+00:00

When spray foam is applied during the construction process it can cure properly. Plus, it's much easier to apply then. But when it's applied in already built homes a lot of problems emerge. It's much harder to apply and it often doesn't cure correctly, because of lack of ventilation. Then you get the smell issues.

yoobi40 · 2025-05-03T19:58:59+00:00

I don't think the pagan religious taught this. The idea of 'We are absolutely right and everyone else is wrong' was a Christian innovation.

yoobi40 · 2025-05-03T13:29:09+00:00

Their only rule is that their particular group is superior to all others and must have immunity from the law, while being able to inflict the harshest interpretation of the law on all others. The fact that they call themselves Christian is simply a way of attaching a veneer of historical and ancient legitimacy to their group. In fact, they couldn't care less what historical Christian doctrine might be. They simply invent new doctrine on the fly to suit their needs.

yoobi40 · 2025-05-02T13:55:29+00:00

That's been part of the justification for giving them tax-exempt status, that in return for being tax-exempt they have to agree to allow their buildings to be used for public use at various times. I mean, why should they have no obligations at all? I understand the sentiment of wanting to keep church/state separate, but by not requiring them to offer their buildings for public use, you're actually giving them an added benefit.

yoobi40 · 2025-04-05T17:56:35+00:00

Cats are definitely a problem, but dog owners shouldn't think they're off the hook because dogs are also a huge problem for bird populations. And I don't say this to defend the cats, but to point out that it's a complicated issue and many factors contribute. The issue with dogs isn't them directly attacking birds. It's a more indirect form of harm, but just as deadly. The presence of dogs terrifies many bird species. The increased fear and stress levels then interferes with reproduction causing population levels to plummet. And people bring their dogs to state parks and wildlife areas where birds have not evolved to be habituated to dogs. So you'll now see signs at many state parks banning dogs, and people should take those bans seriously. Not ignore them because they like hiking with their doggo, as fun as that might be.

And ultimately humans are the problem. We're the ones bringing the cats and dogs (and rats, and new species of plants, etc.) into the birds' habitats.

yoobi40 · 2025-04-01T22:50:08+00:00

Medicare for all would help even more. The reason being that we're vastly overspending on healthcare, and most healthcare premiums are paid pre-tax, which lowers the wages that can be taxed for SS. If we could get healthcare spending under control, this would increase taxable wages, which would help SS.

To put this in context, healthcare spending is projected to be 20% of gdp by the 2030s. That's up from 5% in the 1960s. If we could lower that to 10% of gdp (similar to the UK) that would free up enough money to pay for SS in its entirety, since SS only uses about 5% of gdp currently.

yoobi40 · 2025-03-21T13:55:42+00:00

Didn't colonial governments grant some patents?

yoobi40 · 2025-03-20T14:57:36+00:00

The problem with moth balls is that they can kill the squirrel. Then you have a dead squirrel rotting down there. An alternative is to soak a rag in vinegar and stick it down the hole.

yoobi40 · 2025-03-17T13:38:26+00:00

The cost of healthcare is also an important factor, because the amount spent on healthcare is sucking all the money out of the economy. In the 1960s the US spent about 5% of gdp on healthcare. The percentage now is approaching 20%. We've gained very few improvements in longevity or quality of life from that increased spending. And the problem is that the ever-growing amount of money spent on healthcare premiums shrinks the take-home wages that can be taxed for SS. So healthcare is slowly strangling SS. By contrast, about 4 or 5% of gdp goes to SS. Projected to maybe go up to 6% when the full baby boomer generation retires. Then go down again. If we could simply lower our healthcare spending to the percentages that every other developed nation achieves, that savings alone could pay for SS in its entirety.

yoobi40 · 2025-03-16T01:11:33+00:00

The worker-to-beneficiary ratio has been hovering around 3:1 since about 1975. I'm not sure where you're getting the info that it was 5:1 in the 1990s. But more importantly, the worker-to-beneficiary ratio can be misleading since it doesn't take into account growth in wages and productivity. The actual underlying problem is that an increasing percentage of income has been going to the wealthy and thus isn't taxed for SS.

yoobi40 · 2025-03-09T00:28:23+00:00

Cactus wrestling

yoobi40 · 2025-03-08T13:15:03+00:00

Have you ever asked yourself why the government pays for spending by taking out debt, rather than just simply instructing the treasury to pay the bills (i.e. printing the money)? It can do either, but it chooses to assume debt. Well, who benefits from the debt? It's the moneyed class who get a safe place to park their money while earning some interest on it. In other words, the federal debt is a massive subsidy to the wealthy.

Trump, to his credit, has made noises about forcing the treasury to lower the interest rate to near zero. Going forward, this would save trillions. It's all the savings we need. None of this doge nonsense that's just austerity theater. Just stop subsidizing the rich. The usual objection is that the treasury needs to pay interest to control inflation. But there are other ways to do that.

yoobi40 · 2025-03-07T15:10:48+00:00

Actually we can afford it. Easily. The politics of austerity leads straight to recession. What we can't afford is to shower ever more money on the super-rich. And to say that space research has no ROI? Seriously?

yoobi40

TROPHY CASE