#pesticide not required

[sexhaver]

i've been playing a bunch of Pesticide Not Required recently and might do a more in-depth writeup soon going over the characters and weapons, but this game is fucking infuriating if you don't figure out the objectively correct strategy so im posting this to hopefully save someone some stress:

NEVER BUILD INTO CRITS. Crit Chance and Crit Damage sound good on paper but unfortunately due to human nature it works out that you actually get a way better build by picking every single levelup perk "balanced" out by reducing your crit damage/chance. there are like three perks and one weapon that maybe justify a crit build and none of them will get you past the massive difficulty spike on day 6 or 7 in higher difficulties

mine a few ores during the first day so you go into the first shop with around 600-800 gold

your top priority with shopping during the first few days is to fill out all 5 of your weapon slots so you'll only see those weapons in the shop (making upgrades easier). this is basically the only thing you'll ever need the rerolls for so don't be shy with them

although some weapons are better than others, all of them can be viabahahahahaha im just fucking with you! half of the weapons are straight up useless and should never be picked. when rerolling, you're looking for the following weapons in this order:

weed whacker. S-tier, unquestionably the best weapon in the game, you cannot get past day 6 on higher difficulties without this. like all other weapons that spin around you (i.e. the next two) this benefits highly from projectile speed and attack duration: faster spinning + spinning for longer = more hits per activation

scythe. "weed whacker at home". A-tier, hits the same area as weed whacker to keep enemies off your back while weed whacker is on cooldown. i know im making it sound boring but "slightly worse weed whacker" is still far and away the second best weapon in the game

sprinkler/water sprayer. "weed whacker but big". doesn't really hit its stride until level 4 or 5 but is essential in the late game to soften enemies up before they get in range of weed whacker + scythes. ALWAYS take the +4 amount upgrade on the left for level 5, ignore all of the buffs on the right side, shooting 8 beams out at once is the reason you took this weapon

toad oil. very mediocre early on but once you hit level 5 you can have pretty much the entire screen as a damage-dealing area

DO NOT BUILD CRIT. I MEAN IT. YOU WILL UNLOCK THE CRIT CHARACTER AND THINK "OH MAYBE THIS GUY CAN MAKE IT WORK" AND YOU WILL GO INTO WINTER 3 AND FEEL GOOD ABOUT YOUR BUILD AND THEN THE DAY 6 WAVE WILL TURN YOUR ASS INSIDE OUT EVERY SINGLE TIME WITHOUT FAIL BECAUSE YOU HAVE NOTHING BUT DAMAGE AND EVEN THAT DAMAGE STILL ISN'T ENOUGH. THIS IS A PSA.

[veebs-hates-video-games]

I've been slacking on posting when I finish/give up on stuff again, so you get to drink from the firehose.

Everything is going to be OK: On the surface it's cute and silly in a kind of cartoony edgy way, but actually it's all about coping with adversity through absurdity (and poetry), whether that's depression or trauma or misogyny or the devaluing of artists or any number of other things. I haven't managed to do everything in it yet because it does not play nice with the Steam Deck and my desktop has no sound for a couple more days, but what I've managed to get through without it breaking is good.

KarmaZoo: I love the idea of a multiplayer game that actively uses game design to incentivize and require cooperating with other players and being nice to them. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be anyone playing it anymore when I've tried.

The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom: Most of my time with it was actually closer to when it came out, but this is when I've officially decided I'm done with it. I get along with it a lot better than BotW/TotK, but I still don't like the core design principles of the current phase of the Zelda series. Like I get why other people do, but they're just not doing much for me. I hardly ever feel like I came up with a clever solution to a puzzle, just threw random kludged together crap at it and it worked anyway, so it's not very satisfying. The handful of more challenging/interesting puzzles have been totally optional stuff like a few of the heart pieces. I think I'm done with Zelda until they get this out of their system and try something else in another 5-10 years, which is a shame because I've been playing and mostly enjoying them since the first one was the only one.

Be My Horde: Or what of it is currently finished anyway. Another bullet heaven game, this time with a dommy mommy necromancer. I like how it plays a bit differently from the typical stuff in the genre because of how everything is built around resurrecting the enemies you kill and ways to modify that ability, but how well it works in the end will depend on how much more they add to the base that's there now and if that manages to create some more interesting interactions and viable ways to build.

Pesticide Not Required: Also bullet Heaven, but this time it's...a hybrid with a farming sim? Also you're a frog. Sure, why not? Very silly idea that actually somehow works, fighting off bugs while growing crops, mining ore, and catching fish. Different builds ultimately don't feel very different (aside from focusing more/less on farming/mining/fishing), and a lot of weapon combinations ultimately end up playing exactly the same. Also for such a cute and lighthearted games the different frogs' abilities feel designed less in a "here's an interesting puzzle for you to solve" way like Halls of Torment's unlocks and more "screw the player and I hope you enjoy having stat nerfs that make the game feel bad to play". I say all that, but I still think it's mostly reasonably fun overall.

Golf Club Nostalgia (or Golf Club Wasteland, depending on where you look): Surprisingly more interesting than I expected. Post-apocalyptic golf (which I'm glad I played on "you can't lose" story mode, because I suck too much at it to even attempt getting par on some of those levels) with a not-so-subtle story that doesn't name names but is clearly about Elon Musk having destroyed Earth and now moving on to destroy Mars. The most interesting bits are the worldbuilding done through the radio station that plays in the background, both the songs and the stories people tell about the past.

Spitkiss: I really want to like it more than I do, and I actually did for the first couple chapters. It's I guess technically a puzzle platformer? Except about little guys who communicate through bodily fluids and emojis. This is not the first time something like this has lost my interest by adding moving creatures/enemies of some sort that make the puzzles a lot more timing-focused right after I started getting into it. Oh well. In conclusion, these bitches gay. Good for them.

Will The Man Get Frog: I had to find out what it was just from the name, and what it was is a PICO-8 haiku game based on very limited and randomly chosen words. I had coincidentally just been remembering magnetic poetry was a thing, so great timing with that. Great idea, fun to mess around with, and I could see myself keeping it installed and spending a few minutes with it here and there when I don't know what else to do with myself.

[belghast]

Weekend Recap with Frogs

Weekend Recap with Frogs - This morning I do one of my semi-regular weekend recap posts talking about Minecraft, Last Epoch, Pesticide Not Required, and The Cure.

Good Morning Folks! It is another Monday and here comes another one of my semi-regular weekend recap posts. I am still in a really odd place gaming wise where I am not necessarily hardcore motivated by anything. I thought I might dive into Space Marine 2 or Final Fantasy XVI this weekend… but neither happened because I just did not feel like playing anything that “heavy”. I’m not sure how to…

[kurogamu]

Cuttest Bullet Heaven? - Pesticide Not Required Gameplay

[coolocgod]

So i have a new favorite game

Yep, its called pesticide not required and its way to fun XD, idk what else to say i just wanted to say my new obsession

[tea-withnofixinsplease]

Just read the weirdest thread on my suggestions,

A.V. : Oh so now Cattle is a danger to the planet? Well riddle me THIS "VEGUNS" (they mean like, the U.N. but whatever), Replace All those grazing livestock with a Soy Field Monocrop and what will you have?? 40 years from now, it'll be the same if not W0rse! You want Pesticide drenched, Toxic sludged, Water Draining, Small Rodent killing harvesting PLANT FARMS is that what you want?!

Me: ....im hopin for a hydroponic farm in a gutted out building near the grocery store?

[31n13]

i wonder what egyptian cotton feels like. would never buy it for myself but i am curious after all the attention it's gotten.

[reasonsforhope]

"In 2021, scientists in Guelph, Ontario set out to accomplish something that had never been done before: open a lab specifically designed for raising bumble bees in captivity. 

Now, three years later, the scientists at the Bumble Bee Conservation Lab are celebrating a huge milestone. Over the course of 2024, they successfully pulled off what was once deemed impossible and raised a generation of yellow-banded bumble bees. 

The Bumble Bee Conservation Lab, which operates under the nonprofit Wildlife Preservation Canada, is the culmination of a decade-long mission to save the bee species, which is listed as endangered under the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation...

Although the efforts have been in motion for over a decade, the lab itself is a recent development that has rapidly accelerated conservation efforts. 

For bee scientists, the urgency was necessary. 

“We could see the major declines happening rapidly in Canada’s native bumble bees and knew we had to act, not just talk about the problem, but do something practical and immediate,” Woolaver said. 

Yellow-banded bumble bees, which live in southern Canada and across a huge swatch of the United States, were once a common species.

However, like many other bee species, their populations declined sharply in the mid-1990s from a litany of threats, including pathogens, pesticides, and dramatic habitat loss. 

Since the turn of the century, scientists have plunged in to give bees a helping hand. But it was only in the last decade that Woolaver and his team “identified a major gap” in bumble bee conservation and set out to solve it. 

“No one knew how to breed threatened species in captivity,” he explained. “This is critically important if assurance populations are needed to keep a species from going extinct and to assist with future reintroductions.”

To start their experiment, scientists hand-selected wild queen bees throughout Ontario and brought them to the temperature-controlled lab, where they were “treated like queens” and fed tiny balls of nectar and pollen. 

Then, with the help of Ontario’s African Lion Safari theme park, the queens were brought out to small, outdoor enclosures and paired with other bees with the hope that mating would occur. 

For some pairs, they had to play around with different environments to “set the mood,” swapping out spacious flight cages for cozier colony boxes. 

And it worked. 

“The two biggest success stories of 2024 were that we successfully bred our focal species, yellow-banded bumble bees, through their entire lifecycle for the first time,” Woolaver said. 

“[And] the first successful overwintering of yellow-banded bumble bees last winter allowed us to establish our first lab generation, doubling our mating successes and significantly increasing the number of young queens for overwintering to wake early spring and start their own colonies for future generations and future reintroductions.”

Although the first-of-its-kind experiment required careful planning, consideration, resources, and a decade of research, Woolaver hopes that their efforts inspire others to help bees in backyards across North America. 

“Be aware that our native bumble bees really are in serious decline,” Woolaver noted, “so when cottagers see bumble bees pollinating plants in their gardens, they really are seeing something special.”"

-via GoodGoodGood, December 9, 2024

[goinggoats]

I went to my union meeting for the first time. They refer to everyone as Brother or Sister [name] and start the meeting with the pledge of allegiance. They approved motions to donate about $300, gave away hundreds of dollars in gift cards as door prizes, and said that they had over $5000 in credit card processing fees to pay. Is this how unions usually operate

[multifandomhoodies]

seven hours of pesticide seminar today. truck buddy and i suffered together for a majority of it. our review? truck buddy "my buttcheeks hurt" (from sitting in shitty chairs) and mine "holy fuck" several times over. good thing it's three years till the next one

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Expert agencies and elected legislatures

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/21/policy-based-evidence/#decisions-decisions

Since Trump hijacked the Supreme Court, his backers have achieved many of their policy priorities: legalizing bribery, formalizing forced birth, and – with the Loper Bright case, neutering the expert agencies that regulate business:

https://jacobin.com/2024/07/scotus-decisions-chevron-immunity-loper

What the Supreme Court began, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are now poised to finish, through the "Department of Government Efficiency," a fake agency whose acronym ("DOGE") continues Musk's long-running cryptocurrency memecoin pump-and-dump. The new department is absurd – imagine a department devoted to "efficiency" with two co-equal leaders who are both famously incapable of getting along with anyone – but that doesn't make it any less dangerous.

Expert agencies are often all that stands between us and extreme misadventure, even death. The modern world is full of modern questions, the kinds of questions that require a high degree of expert knowledge to answer, but also the kinds of questions whose answers you'd better get right.

You're not stupid, nor are you foolish. You could go and learn everything you need to know to evaluate the firmware on your antilock brakes and decide whether to trust them. You could figure out how to assess the Common Core curriculum for pedagogical soundness. You could learn the material science needed to evaluate the soundness of the joists that hold the roof up over your head. You could acquire the biology and chemistry chops to decide whether you want to trust produce that's been treated with Monsanto's Roundup pesticides. You could do the same for cell biology, virology, and epidemiology and decide whether to wear a mask and/or get an MRNA vaccine and/or buy a HEPA filter.

You could do any of these. You might even be able to do two or three of them. But you can't do all of them, and that list is just a small slice of all the highly technical questions that stand between you and misery or an early grave. Practically speaking, you aren't going to develop your own robust meatpacking hygiene standards, nor your own water treatment program, nor your own Boeing 737 MAX inspection protocol.

Markets don't solve this either. If they did, we wouldn't have to worry about chunks of Boeing jets falling on our heads. The reason we have agencies like the FDA (and enabling legislation like the Pure Food and Drug Act) is that markets failed to keep people from being murdered by profit-seeking snake-oil salesmen and radium suppository peddlers.

These vital questions need to be answered by experts, but that's easier said than done. After all, experts disagree about this stuff. Shortcuts for evaluating these disagreements ("distrust any expert whose employer has a stake in a technical question") are crude and often lead you astray. If you dismiss any expert employed by a firm that wants to bring a new product to market, you will lose out on the expertise of people who are so legitimately excited about the potential improvements of an idea that they quit their jobs and go to work for whomever has the best chance of realizing a product based on it. Sure, that doctor who works for a company with a new cancer cure might just be shilling for a big bonus – but maybe they joined the company because they have an informed, truthful belief that the new drug might really cure cancer.

What's more, the scientific method itself speaks against the idea of there being one, permanent answer to any big question. The method is designed as a process of continual refinement, where new evidence is continuously brought forward and evaluated, and where cherished ideas that are invalidated by new evidence are discarded and replaced with new ideas.

So how are we to survive and thrive in a world of questions we ourselves can't answer, that experts disagree about, and whose answers are only ever provisional?

The scientific method has an answer for this, too: refereed, adversarial peer review. The editors of major journals act as umpires in disputes among experts, exercising their editorial discernment to decide which questions are sufficiently in flux as to warrant taking up, then asking parties who disagree with a novel idea to do their damndest to punch holes in it. This process is by no means perfect, but, like democracy, it's the worst form of knowledge creation except for all others which have been tried.

Expert regulators bring this method to governance. They seek comment on technical matters of public concern, propose regulations based on them, invite all parties to comment on these regulations, weigh the evidence, and then pass a rule. This doesn't always get it right, but when it does work, your medicine doesn't poison you, the bridge doesn't collapse as you drive over it, and your airplane doesn't fall out of the sky.

Expert regulators work with legislators to provide an empirical basis for turning political choices into empirically grounded policies. Think of all the times you've heard about how the gerontocracy that dominates the House and the Senate is incapable of making good internet policy because "they're out of touch and don't understand technology." Even if this is true (and sometimes it is, as when Sen Ted Stevens ranted about the internet being "a series of tubes," not "a dump truck"), that doesn't mean that Congress can't make good internet policy.

After all, most Americans can safely drink their tap water, a novelty in human civilization, whose history amounts to short periods of thriving shattered at regular intervals by water-borne plagues. The fact that most of us can safely drink our water, but people who live in Flint (or remote indigenous reservations, or Louisiana's Cancer Alley) can't tells you that these neighbors of ours are being deliberately poisoned, as we know precisely how not to poison them.

How did we (most of us) get to the point where we can drink the water without shitting our guts out? It wasn't because we elected a bunch of water scientists! I don't know the precise number of microbiologists and water experts who've been elected to either house, but it's very small, and their contribution to good sanitation policy is negligible.

We got there by delegating these decisions to expert agencies. Congress formulates a political policy ("make the water safe") and the expert agency turns that policy into a technical program of regulation and enforcement, and your children live to drink another glass of water tomorrow.

Musk and Ramaswamy have set out to destroy this process. In their Wall Street Journal editorial, they explain that expert regulation is "undemocratic" because experts aren't elected:

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/musk-and-ramaswamy-the-doge-plan-to-reform-government-supreme-court-guidance-end-executive-power-grab-fa51c020

They've vowed to remove "thousands" of regulations, and to fire swathes of federal employees who are in charge of enforcing whatever remains:

https://www.theverge.com/2024/11/20/24301975/elon-musk-vivek-ramaswamy-doge-plan

And all this is meant to take place on an accelerated timeline, between now and July 4, 2026 – a timeline that precludes any meaningful assessment of the likely consequences of abolishing the regulations they'll get rid of.

"Chesterton's Fence" – a thought experiment from the novelist GK Chesterton – is instructive here:

There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, "I don't see the use of this; let us clear it away." To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: "If you don't see the use of it, I certainly won't let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.

A regulation that works might well produce no visible sign that it's working. If your water purification system works, everything is fine. It's only when you get rid of the sanitation system that you discover why it was there in the first place, a realization that might well arrive as you expire in a slick of watery stool with a rectum so prolapsed the survivors can use it as a handle when they drag your corpse to the mass burial pits.

When Musk and Ramaswamy decry the influence of "unelected bureaucrats" on your life as "undemocratic," they sound reasonable. If unelected bureaucrats were permitted to set policy without democratic instruction or oversight, that would be autocracy.

Indeed, it would resemble life on the Tesla factory floor: that most autocratic of institutions, where you are at the mercy of the unelected and unqualified CEO of Tesla, who holds the purely ceremonial title of "Chief Engineer" and who paid the company's true founders to falsely describe him as its founder.

But that's not how it works! At its best, expert regulations turns political choices in to policy that reflects the will of democratically accountable, elected representatives. Sometimes this fails, and when it does, the answer is to fix the system – not abolish it.

I have a favorite example of this politics/empiricism fusion. It comes from the UK, where, in 2008, the eminent psychopharmacologist David Nutt was appointed as the "drug czar" to the government. Parliament had determined to overhaul its system of drug classification, and they wanted expert advice:

https://locusmag.com/2021/05/cory-doctorow-qualia/

To provide this advice, Nutt convened a panel of drug experts from different disciplines and asked them to rate each drug in question on how dangerous it was for its user; for its user's family; and for broader society. These rankings were averaged, and then a statistical model was used to determine which drugs were always very dangerous, no matter which group's safety you prioritized, and which drugs were never very dangerous, no matter which group you prioritized.

Empirically, the "always dangerous" drugs should be in the most restricted category. The "never very dangerous" drugs should be at the other end of the scale. Parliament had asked how to rank drugs by their danger, and for these categories, there were clear, factual answers to Parliament's question.

But there were many drugs that didn't always belong in either category: drugs whose danger score changed dramatically based on whether you were more concerned about individual harms, familial harms, or societal harms. This prioritization has no empirical basis: it's a purely political question.

So Nutt and his panel said to Parliament, "Tell us which of these priorities matter the most to you, and we will tell you where these changeable drugs belong in your schedule of restricted substances." In other words, politicians make political determinations, and then experts turn those choices into empirically supported policies.

This is how policy by "unelected bureaucrats" can still be "democratic."

But the Nutt story doesn't end there. Nutt butted heads with politicians, who kept insisting that he retract factual, evidence-supported statements (like "alcohol is more harmful than cannabis"). Nutt refused to do so. It wasn't that he was telling politicians which decisions to make, but he took it as his duty to point out when those decisions did not reflect the policies they were said to be in support of. Eventually, Nutt was fired for his commitment to empirical truth. The UK press dubbed this "The Nutt Sack Affair" and you can read all about it in Nutt's superb book Drugs Without the Hot Air, an indispensable primer on the drug war and its many harms:

https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/drugs-without-the-hot-air-9780857844989/

Congress can't make these decisions. We don't elect enough water experts, virologists, geologists, oncology researchers, structural engineers, aerospace safety experts, pedagogists, gerontoloists, physicists and other experts for Congress to turn its political choices into policy. Mostly, we elect lawyers. Lawyers can do many things, but if you ask a lawyer to tell you how to make your drinking water safe, you will likely die a horrible death.

That's the point. The idea that we should just trust the market to figure this out, or that all regulation should be expressly written into law, is just a way of saying, "you will likely die a horrible death."

Trump – and his hatchet men Musk and Ramaswamy – are not setting out to create evidence-based policy. They are pursuing policy-based evidence, firing everyone capable of telling them how to turn the values espouse (prosperity and safety for all Americans) into policy.

They dress this up in the language of democracy, but the destruction of the expert agencies that turn the political will of our representatives into our daily lives is anything but democratic. It's a prelude to transforming the nation into a land of epistemological chaos, where you never know what's coming out of your faucet.

[cognitivejustice]

Agroecology—a science, practice, and movement that seeks social, political, economic, and environmental sustainability in the global food system—is gaining momentum in the U.S., according to a new Dartmouth-led commentary in Nature Food. As the co-authors report, the approach requires coordination among scientists, farmers, and activists.

"Agroecology is different, as it strives to achieve both ecological and social sustainability of food systems without sacrificing one for the other. We cannot save biodiversity and ecosystem integrity without also preserving farmer livelihoods and ensuring that the food systems we create provide food that is culturally relevant to local communities, and not simply meeting a calorie quota," says Ong.

Supporters of agroecology say the U.S. food system is dominated by industrial agriculture, which is characterized by monoculture production, reliance on agrochemicals like pesticides and fertilizers, and advanced technology and machinery that depend heavily on fossil fuels.

Prior research has found that challenges facing global food systems—which include food insecurity, public health crises, biodiversity loss, and climate change—are perpetuated in part by the U.S. food system and the political influence of its big players.

//Granny's comment: Agroecology is solarpunk AF

[herpsandbirds]

Rusty Patched Bumble bee? I'm kinda bummed that they havent been seen in my area for over two decades

ENDANGERED BUMBLEBEE:

Rusty -patched Bumblebee (Bombus affinis), family Apidae, found in the eastern U.S.

CRITICALLY ENDANGERED.

Massive population declines ar due to overuse of pesticides, habitat degradation and loss, and pathogens.

This large bumblebee requires 3 different habitats for different life stages: nesting, foraging, and hibernation.

Relatively cold tolerant, and sometimes found at higher elevations.

photographs: Larry Reis, Heather Holm, & Barbara C. Williams

[belghast]

AggroChat #494 - Stardew Survivors

AggroChat #494 - Stardew Survivors - This week we cover Pesticide Not Required, Pokemon Go, Beatmania, Space Marine 2, Tactical Breach Wizards, Minecraft, and Echoes of Wisdom.

Featuring: Ammosart, Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tamrielo, and Thalen Hey Folks! This week we continue to chip away at the massive list of topics from our time off.  We start off the show with an adorable Frog version of Vampire Survivors meets Stardew Valley called Pesticide Not Required.  From there we talk a bit about Pokemon Go and what it is like playing it with your kids.  Ash…

[anipgarden]

Un-Actions, or Restriction of Activities

This is my first post in a series I’ll be making on how to increase biodiversity on a budget! I’m not an expert--just an enthusiast--but I hope something you find here helps! 

There’s a good handful of ways you can help increase biodiversity in your yard that don’t require buying things--in fact, these may actually help you save money in the long run! They may seem small and simple, but every bit counts! Whether you can do these in totality, or just limit how often you do these actions, it’ll make a difference.

Not Mowing, or Mowing Less Often

Turf grass lawns are considered a monoculture, meaning they don’t provide much opportunity for insects to find habitat--so few other creatures find them enjoyable either. An expanse of turf grass is, in many ways, a barren wasteland in the eyes of wildlife--too exposed to cross, with few to no opportunities for food or shelter, leaving them exposed to blazing hot sun, freezing cold, or any predators that may be lurking nearby. A place to be avoided. The simple act of letting your grass grow unbothered gives a chance for wildflowers to grow, and for your grass to grow taller--providing more habitat for insects, which then provides more habitat to birds and other creatures that feed on said insects. Wildlife want nothing more than to skirt by unnoticed, so even leaving the grass tall along the edges of a fence or yard can help a little. Even restricting mowing to every other week, or at a higher blade setting, can be a huge help. If HOAs or city ordinances are fussy about lawn length in the front yard, you can likely still keep grass higher in the backyard. Or, you can create a ‘feature’ where grass is allowed to grow long in a specific area. If it looks purposeful, people are more likely to accept it. Not mowing under trees or close to shrubs not only leaves space for wildflowers to grow, but also means you don’t have to deal with mowing over bumpy roots and other difficulties. Cutting different areas at different times can be an option for letting grass grow long in some areas while still having available places for play and entertainment. I’ve seen some people plant flower bulbs when pulling up weeds, so in the future they'll bloom in early spring before mowing is usually necessary. This could be another fun way of adding biodiversity to a lawn without--or before you--begin mowing in spring.

Not worrying about mowing, or doing it less often, saves you in time, money, and energy. You won’t have to buy as much gasoline for your mower, and Saturday afternoons can be free to be enjoyed in other ways aside from being sticky and sweaty and covered in grass stains. In addition, you’ll likely be lowering your own carbon emissions!

If you do have to mow your lawn, I’ve got ways you can use your grass clippings to boost biodiversity later in the post series!

Not using pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, etc.

One of the next-biggest non-actions you can do asides from not mowing is using fewer fewer to no herbicides, fungicides, and pesticides in your yard. This’ll easily allow for more biodiversity. Allowing more insects and a wide array of plants to thrive will feed back into the entire food chain in your area. In addition, these types of chemicals have been tied to algae blooms, death of beneficial insects, harm to birds, fish, and even humans. Soil is supposed to be full of fungi, especially fungal mycelium that essentially acts as a network for plants to communicate, share nutrients, and support each other--fungicide kills that, and typically makes all other lawn problems even worse in a negative feedback loop. It may take awhile to see the benefits of avoiding these chemicals, but once you see it, it really is astounding.

However! I can’t lie and say that there haven’t been points where I needed to use pesticides at some points in my gardening journey. In these cases, try to use products that are organic--like diatomaceous earth, neem oil, etc--and use them accurately, correctly, and sparingly. Follow instructions on how to apply them safely and responsibly--for example, on non-windy days and during times when bees and other pollinators aren’t likely to be out and about. With some pests (read: oleander aphids, in my experience), a simple jetstream of water is enough to force them off the plant where they’ll be too weak to get back. Eventually, you should have a balanced enough ecosystem that no one insect pest causes a major issue with the work you’re doing to boost biodiversity.

If you can bear to, try handling pests manually. Squishing pest bugs in your hand is a pretty foolproof way to get rid of some problems, or spraying them with a mix of soap and water can do the trick on some insects. Alternatively, picking them off your plants and into a bucket of soapy water is also a valid option. You’ve heard of baptism by fire, now get ready for… baptism by soap?

But also! Try reconsidering what you consider a pest! Tomato hornworms are hated by gardeners, for devouring the foliage of beloved tomato, pepper, and potato plants. But killing the tomato and tobacco hornworm means getting rid of sphinx moths, also known as hummingbird or hawk moths! Hawk moths are vital to the survival of many native plants, and are sometimes even the only species that pollinates them. If you can bear to, consider sacrificing a few tomato plants, or growing a few extras, so we can continue having these beautiful moths for years to come. After all, they may not even do significant damage to the plants!

With that in mind, be friendly to your natural pest managers! Lacewings, ladybugs, praying mantises, wasps, birds, bats, and more will help manage pest populations in your environment! Encourage them by planting things they like, providing habitat, and leaving them be to do their work! Avoiding pesticides helps make your garden a livable environment for them, too!

Letting Weeds Grow

Many of the plants we know as 'weeds' are actually secondary succession species and native wildflowers. Milkweed was regarded as a noxious, annoying weed for a long time, and now people are actively trying to plant them after learning about the important role they play in our environments! Weeds are adapted to take over areas that have been cleared out of other plants after a disaster, so they're doing much of the initial work in making a habitat for other creatures. In fact, many of them will simply die back as the environment repairs itself.

An important thing to note is to please make sure that your ‘weeds’ are not invasive species. Work on learning how to identify native and invasive species in your area, and pull out what’s harmful to leave room for what’s good!

Don’t Rake (Or At Least Don’t Bag Your Leaves)

Many insects overwinter in piles of leaves that we often rake away and bag up in the fall and winter. By doing this, we are actively throwing away the biodiversity of our neighborhoods! If you can, leave the leaves where they fall! 

If you do need to rake, put the leaves in places wildlife can still access it instead of bagging it up. Move your leaves into garden beds to serve as mulch, or along the edge of fences to rest while keeping egg cases and hiding bugs intact and free to release come spring.

Leave Snags Where They Are

Snags are dead trees/dead branches on living trees. They provide an important wildlife habitat--many birds nest in them, or use them to seek cover from rain, and many insects will also live in snags (making them an additional food source for birds and other creatures). Tree cavities are used as nests by hundreds of bird species in the US, and many mammals use them as well, such as bats, squirrels, raccoons, and sometimes even bears. Some trees form cavities while they’re still alive, but in conifers they’re more likely to form after death. Crevices between the trunk of a dead tree and its peeling bark provide sun protection for bats and amphibians, and leafless branches make great perching areas for birds of prey to hunt from above. The decaying wood is home to insects and fungi, who then feed birds, mammals, amphibians, and reptiles.  Do check on the snags regularly to ensure they don’t serve a threat to any nearby structures, but whenever possible, leave them be! 

Keep Your Cat Inside

If you have an outdoor cat, consider making the adjustments to have it be an indoor cat. If you have an indoor cat, keep it as an indoor cat. Free ranging cats impact biodiversity through predation, fear effects, competition for resources, disease, and more. Keeping little Mittens inside does a lot more to help than it may seem from the outside.

That’s the end of this post! My next one’s gonna be on things you can add to your space that aren’t directly related to growing plants. For now, I hope this advice helps! Feel free to reply with any questions, success stories, or anything you think I may have forgotten to add in! 

[she-is-ovarit]

Heads up for those of you who don't know this. Heavy metals such as arsenic and lead were found in popular protein powder brands, and 55% of the brands tested contained BPA pesticides, and other contaminants (over 150 contaminants in all!!!).

Plant based protein powders had the highest amounts of contamination in comparison to whey or egg based protein powders—it's assumed that this is because the plants directly bioabsorb the contaminants whereas the digestive system of animals might reduce it a little. More specifically, they had higher levels of heavy metals.

It didn't matter whether the product was marked as organic or not. Organic products actually had higher concentrations of heavy metals than non organic protein powders.

The most contaminated products were Garden of Life, Nature's Best, Quest, 360Cut, and Vega. Only Garden of Life responded when the researchers reached out, and their response was declining to comment.

Also, as this article describes, like protein powders even FDA approved supplements are loosely regulated. There really isn't enforcement on the manufacturing processes or what goes into these products. The manufacturers aren't required to prove they're safe. This is important to know considering some manufacturers of protein powders also make vegan and vegetarian supplements.