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submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by IonAddis@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

So, I ABSOLUTELY know there's massive variation in this. Just want to get ahead of that.

What I'm looking for is...what do finances look like, casually, when you have a 100% paid off small (SMALL!) home. When a mortgage is out of the way, what's left to eat up your paycheck?

I suppose I'm looking for the sort of casual knowledge of expenses for this sort of life that your kids might pick up if they lived in your area with you in your home. En mass, pulled from multiple lemmy folks, so I can get an idea of general trends. I'm partial for info from the USA, but others reading this might appreciate statistics from other areas. :)

(People mistake how valuable this sort of "general idea" info is, I always see people going into the weeds on how every situation is different without bothering even giving a crappy signpost so I can see if I'm looking at a $5 expense or $500 or $5000. Knowing if something is going to be $5 or $5000 is very valuable, even if it's not some exact precise number. But I don't need to know if it's going to be exactly $392.29 if I wiggle my ears and tug my nose to get the right loophole, I just need to know that closer to $500 is correct, or whatever.)

I don't have family, so I missed out on "casual learning" opportunities, and don't have anyone to talk to IRL to get this info, so it's really hard to apply my city-living experience to try to extrapolate what life might be like if I make a goal to buy a small home in Nowheretown, USA to retire in 20 years down the line.

Anyway. So what do expenses look like if you have a small paid off house? What range do utilities run in for you (in your particular climate), what's home insurance like, what sort of unexpected expenses pop up when you own instead of rent?

What's utilities like for sewer and trash, especially? Those have always been rolled into my rent. Is rural internet still limited to DSL or satellite (or Starlink I guess these days), or has better infrastructure been rolled out in places over the past 20 years since I last looked for this info?

Edit: Also...talk to me about well water and well expenses, and septic tanks instead of sewer lines, and oil heating. I promise I'll listen!

Edit 2: Also talk to me about how propane works.

Thanks everyone. :)

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submitted 1 month ago by IonAddis@lemmy.world to c/frugal@lemmy.world

Mine--don't laugh--is random fruit from fruit trees hanging over walls and over the sidewalk.

Although, I once tried to take a plum from a wasp who was sitting on the fruit, and she turned and looked at me, and I quickly let go and let her have it.

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submitted 1 month ago by IonAddis@lemmy.world to c/music@lemmy.world
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submitted 3 months ago by IonAddis@lemmy.world to c/videos@lemmy.world
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Dry clean the dirty (lemmy.world)
submitted 4 months ago by IonAddis@lemmy.world to c/funny@lemmy.world
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submitted 4 months ago by IonAddis@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

(Reeaaally not looking for terrible or horrifying things here. Want happy or cool stories! And I'll start.)

My job currently has me going into random people's back yards. I see immaculately groomed lawns, overgrown lawns, perfect shrubs, imperfect shrubs. I see weeds up to my hips, I see junk, kid toys, dog toys, real grass, astroturf, basically everything.

But today, I think I accidentally kind of walked into a modern fairy tale setting. Not a beautiful Disney type of fairy tale. More of an urban fantasy sort of thing--like if Abandoned Porn did gardens.

So, the place was a small suburban yard. House was probably built in the 70s, and has been neglected as of late. I had an impression of faded yellow siding, discolored, peeling.

The front yard had an old chain link fence, and was kind of overgrown with some gnomes and such, but that part didn't really register on me too much as I'd seen places similar to it from the front with overgrown plants and junk, and it usually just got worse in the back. On most homes, the front is the nicest part, and everything hidden in back is not so nice.

I go up to the door and ring the bell. An older man with hearing loss answered the door and I eventually got permission to go in back after pantomiming why I was there and what I was going to do. (I wasn't smart enough to get my phone out and type in it...next time, I guess, hah.)

So I tramp around into the back past a few cars that probably don't work, 90s era stuff, and one truck that might have been 70s or 80s.

And at first, all I see is weeds. Weeds, sticks, a gnarled tree that got knocked down in some storm and was still laying there, a wrought iron table that it'd landed on bent and deformed underneath it.

There seemed to be some paths through it all, but still, I was not able to easily move about, and I'm not a large person. My progression into the yard was: Crunch crunch, crack, OW, crunch, brush, rustle.

However...as I worked my way further into the back yard, I began to realize that even though there were clear signs of neglect, this yard wasn't actually ugly. Yeah, it was totally overgrown. Yeah, it needed considerable yard work done to get the old branches and that dead tree out.

But it was also beautiful.

And I realized that, once upon a time, someone with a creative touch had really, really loved this yard.

There were little stonework paths going everywhere to little places that had once been important, lost underneath the overgrown weeds and leaves underneath my feet. Not cheap fake stone or brick crap that someone artistically lacking picked from a catalogue or whatever, I actually kicked some of the leaves aside to see what was underneath, and found that it was nice stonework, the really well-planned kind with the type of artistry you only get if the homeowner themselves has a creative touch. (Basically, you can't buy that type of art, especially not for the tiny back yard of a 70s-built suburbia house.)

There was a gazebo with stone benches, there was a well (probably decorative, but not made cheaply). There was a bit of "cottage chic" stuff about--but it wasn't new, and the yard had grown around it. Tumbled some of it over artistically, tin watering cans lost in stalks of grass, giving it an air of veracity that it might not have started with.

I saw what seemed to be an old grindstone, for sharpening knives, covered in ivy and webs. It looked straight out of Skyrim...if a bit smaller than I expected. Speaking of webs, those were everywhere in the ivy, covering it and other plants thickly, catching detritus from spring like dead flowers and petals.

There were some weeds, but (astonishingly since I'd just tramped through yards full of weeds a few hours prior) they were scarce. The original plants were overgrown but had NOT been pushed out by weeds like I usually see. I'm not gardener enough to know how this even happened...I can only figure the original gardener was very clever at picking their plants to begin with, and chose ones that would strangle any weeds, instead of being strangled by them.

The entire back yard was overgrown, though. Just with those nice garden plants instead of weeds. There was ivy spilling everywhere, there were low-lying evergreen bushes creeping out of old stone planters.

I saw some dry rose thorns in the corner by the AC unit where I was doing my work, and thought, "I'm glad they didn't plant those roses where I am working...but they look pretty dead from neglect and too much shade".

My job had me moving about the entire yard, and I ended up approaching the AC unit from the other side--and saw a single dry rose bloom jutting straight up next to that AC unit. I hadn't been able to see it from the other side, the overgrowth was too thick, but approaching it from the gazebo, there it was. It was half-dead, probably from the rose bush being in total shade, or being choked out by all the ivy. But it was there. One bloom, pale pink and dying, sticking straight up like it was saying, "I'm still here!"

That flower, jutting up in the most inhospitable part of the yard, in this ruined garden that probably only I had set foot in recently, made me take a second look around, and I realized I was in the perfect setting for a modern "Secret Garden", or a modern retelling of Beauty and the Beast.

I thought about it a bit, wondered how everything had come to be in this state, and concluded that whoever had loved that garden had probably become disabled, or had passed on, and the people still living in the house had no ability or desire to go back there and start to clean things up and make it bloom anew.

And I found that sad, because this wasn't a regular bit of landscaping. So much work had gone into it at one point that now, probably at least 5 years later if not 10, I could STILL see the beauty it'd once had, shining through all the dead plants and spiderwebs and fallen objects on the ground. What would the original gardener have thought, to see it neglected like this?

The whole situation sticks with me. An interesting experience, and now a memory I'm grateful to have.

Like, here I am, in this little random back yard with a beautiful abandoned garden that nobody goes into and nobody has seen recently but me.

I think I have to write a story about it someday--a story better than this post. But I'm hoping a post will share a little bit of what I saw for now.

(I don't have a photo because the guy at the front door was near-deaf and could hardly understand why I needed to go back there--didn't want to take advantage of him allowing me back there in the first place by taking photos and putting them online. He deserves privacy. But I might very well write a retelling of some fairy tale, with the deaf guy answering the door...and what might happen when you go in back and get pricked by that rose next to the AC!)

Anyway. What are some things that you guys have come across, if your job takes you onto people's property for a living?

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submitted 4 months ago by IonAddis@lemmy.world to c/videos@lemmy.world
[-] IonAddis@lemmy.world 109 points 5 months ago

Dungeons and (bad) Dragons

[-] IonAddis@lemmy.world 71 points 5 months ago

What an awful woman.

It turns my stomach that this kid was doing exactly what I did 20+ years ago to get out of my situation (reach out to the school for counseling and help and affirmation) and the mom is going scorched earth because her right to get her own way "as a parent" trumps, in her mind, the actual health of the kid.

I mean, the kid apparently already has PTSD they were being treated for.

Thing is, kids with PTSD from a young age usually get it from their home life, you know?

And mommy dearest's behavior going nuclear on the school for respecting the student's wishes with name/pronouns pretty loudly suggests why PTSD might have already popped up.

I loathe authoritarian parents. They have the sheer gall to have children, and instead of treating them like people, like real human beings that they have an actual responsibility towards, they treat them like dolls made to prop up their own egos. And if their living doll does something they don't like, no matter how trivial, their response is to try to break it. Awful, awful people.

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submitted 5 months ago by IonAddis@lemmy.world to c/music@lemmy.world
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submitted 5 months ago by IonAddis@lemmy.world to c/music@lemmy.world
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submitted 5 months ago by IonAddis@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

I was thinking about how I missed having an indoor thermometer that measures humidity. It's such a small specific thing, one I'd never think of getting unless pushed to it (which I was by one particularly dry winter). But I like having one now.

What are your small, "random" or "junk drawer" type of gadgets that you actually use or like having around?

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submitted 7 months ago by IonAddis@lemmy.world to c/frugal@lemmy.world

It's been a week since I posted the last one...right?

I'm afraid I haven't been very frugal this week. Got some things mildly on sale, but still too much, so I don't think they count and won't post them.

[-] IonAddis@lemmy.world 101 points 7 months ago

Nah, you say it to sap unity and make people stay home from voting.

Your vibe is the same as the girls who say they bluntly "tell it as they see it" in their dating profile, but anyone with any relationship experience knows that means they're completely willing to make things toxic as fuck because they'll just vomit their selfish so called truth anywhere without caring about consequences or how it destroys, because it serves some sort of other motivation for them.

Using words to encourage people to embrace hopelessness and not vote is a propaganda technique to put Trump back in the Whitehouse, and him being there weakens the nation so immensely and catastrophically that it's extremely attractive to cash and weapons poor enemies to plop someone in front of a cheap computer to spread propaganda to attempt to destroy a nation from within. People who can't fight the US with military might will use words instead.

In short, your words are not neutral. You're either what is called a useful idiot, an ordinary person who swallowed outside propaganda whole and does the work of other interests here, or you're a knowing perpetrator.

I hope people here use whatever skills they picked up in English class however many years ago to think about not just the exact words of the poster I'm responding to, but why they posted this thing at this moment, their motivations beyond what they claim they are, and the effects of an appeal to truth on a reader and how that can influence perception even when the thing said isn't actually necessarily true or contains such a small flake of some truth that it is effectively turns into a lie when put beside the bigger and more vast and complicated truths.

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Elite Hunters (lemmy.world)
submitted 7 months ago by IonAddis@lemmy.world to c/funny@lemmy.world
[-] IonAddis@lemmy.world 110 points 9 months ago

It legitimately surprised me back when Russia first attacked Ukraine how parts of the internet suddenly reverted in tone to how the early 2000s internet used to be. The posts pushing subtle division in random message forums just stopped for a few days.

Really made me realize how pervasive the social engineering of English speakers by outside agencies has become online. I think about it much more, using that brief cessation as a touchstone. Like, my memories of forums being saner weren't false, heh.

[-] IonAddis@lemmy.world 111 points 11 months ago

Your account has 4 posts over a few months and one comment. Maybe you have actually been using Lemmy for longer on another account, but we can't see that.

I'm an Elder Millennial, used to admin/mod a fandom forum around 1999-2002ish. A small percentage of active users essentially carrying the content of small niche communities on their back until ignition happens has ALWAYS been how communities work. It's like that in real life, and it's like that online. It was like that when niche message boards and forums reigned in the late 90s and early 2000s, it was like that on usenet, in IRC, on email groups. It was like that on World of Warcraft, when you tried to get a guild off the ground for raiding or something. It's like that here on Lemmy, because Lemmy is a social platform too.

The only real solution to grow a community is to jump in and create content yourself, to help communities along until one or two ignite and take off. You have to participate yourself to change the culture, not just bitch in a post that it's "changed" and that you're going to stomp off if it doesn't "change back". (Although, that type of post is, admittedly, also a tradition as old as time.)

Anyway. Communities starting small and needing people to grow is just...a thing. This is how volunteer organizations work in real life--why do you think they're constantly pleading for other people to get involved? Because you need people who actually pull on their adult pants and get in and do the work of organizing things, doing things, instead of sitting about like a lump consuming it.

You can move back to reddit of course, if you want. That's similar to moving from a small town to a big city for the night life, which people do. Maybe you don't have the time or energy to essentially "volunteer" your time on a small community to help it grow.

But the thing you're complaining about is...just part of how communities work. Communities have always revolved around a few people contributing most of the content until the community takes off (or doesn't).

So, rationally, what's the next step? Stepping up your own contributions, or going off somewhere else?

Only you can decide because only you know your IRL time commitments. But one action is going to be more useful to helping niche subs get off the ground than the other.

(Here's something interesting: The Frugal sub has a shit-load of people subscribed who eagerly jump in feet-first if you start a relevant topic. Why doesn't someone here with an interest in that sub go over there and start a post?)

[-] IonAddis@lemmy.world 84 points 11 months ago

Whenever I "can't understand" something, I stop for a moment, and start interrogating my own assumptions of how the world works, because I clearly made an assumption of how the world or how people in general work and need to correct my own thinking.

It's very hard to change how others do things. Much easier to start on yourself.

[-] IonAddis@lemmy.world 63 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

It's a bit depressing to me that we've known this for at least twenty years, and possibly more and it's still a problem.

A major concern has been busing. Even in normal times, districts use the same buses and drivers for students of all ages. They stagger start times to do that, with high schoolers arriving and leaving school earliest in the day. The idea is that they can handle being alone in the dark at a bus stop more readily than smaller children, and it also lets them get home first to help take care of younger siblings after school.

If high schools started as late as middle and elementary schools, that would likely mean strain on transportation resources. O'Connell said Nashville's limited mass transit compounds the problem.

"That is one of the biggest issues to resolve," he said.

This is basically it, school systems not wanting to buy the extra buses or hire the extra drivers they'd need.

Unfortunately I don't see this ever being solved without a major cultural/financial shift in the USA towards properly funding education. Too much financial pressure to have fewer buses and fewer drivers. If my high school and middle school had started at the same time as the elementary, that'd be like 14 new buses alone at $60k-$110k a pop, not including driver wages and the diesel for each one...and we had more than one high school and middle school in our district. So it'd be more like 50 new buses, just to start HS and middle school at the same time as elementary. The cost would eat smaller districts alive. It'd be several million just to procure the buses new.

[-] IonAddis@lemmy.world 159 points 1 year ago

This was a smaller moment, but similar to yours, OP, in that it revealed some unconscious thinking in my head.

But I was playing Crusader Kings II quite a few years back. And I basically had a King with the Genius trait and some other stuff I could pass down to his kids. I think I had somehow lucked into the Byzantine Empire or something, so I was basically seducing and inviting a bunch of lovers with other traits from all around the world (north and south, east and west) so I could spread Genius around. I wanted a smart council full of my bastards, heh.

So my genius slut-king has a bunch of kids. I'm naming them after my absolute favorite characters from books and such, because they're part of my family and dynasty--so I'm giving them names that have a lot of personal "worth" to me.

Then I get to the kid in my dynasty who isn't white, and I couldn't figure out what name to give her. I had all these awesome names that I was using over and over through the generations in my dynasty, but somehow none that felt "right" for her. I tried and tried to choose a name, and none "fit".

And after a while, it suddenly hit me in the face how SUBTLE racism can be. This was just a video game, but I had something that was "high worth" to me to give out, these favorite character names, and I was handing them out like candy until I got to the one kid and struggled, making all sorts of excuses why this not-white video game kid couldn't get the name of this other character I really liked.

Now, if I was doing that in a frickin' video game, imagine what people are doing with REAL LIFE things that are "high worth" to them. Hiring at jobs, giving gifts and presents, selling a house, etc.

And it wasn't like I was going around in the game consciously picking which kids to screw over. (I mean, moreso than you usually do in Crusader Kings, the game where people glitch themselves into marrying their horses and creating witch covens with devil-babies so they can spread satanism across the world.) I ended up screwing this virtual kid over because I was going on this "gut feeling" that my really cool favorite-character names just somehow "weren't right" for her, even though that frickin' inbred cousin over there with a family tree like a wreath was proudly wearing it already.

So yeah. Learned a big lesson on how internal gut feelings influence you to do racist shit really subtly sometimes.

[-] IonAddis@lemmy.world 73 points 1 year ago

Humor and comedy have always been able to say things too risky to be said in any other way.

Supposedly, the role of a fool or clown or jester in a monarch's court was to fulfill this function. Say things everyone else was too terrified to say to the king.

[-] IonAddis@lemmy.world 65 points 1 year ago

Not just that, but they locked and restricted his access to medical equipment so he had to make a detour to get a different one, and that time cost the person he was trying to save her life.

Complete scum.

[-] IonAddis@lemmy.world 82 points 1 year ago

Vapes.

What will happen is one or another of the flavorings used will be safe to eat because of stomach acid and digestion, but inhaling it into delicate lungs will cause disease long term. Look up popcorn workers lung to see how a common butter flavoring in the past that was meant for eating on popcorn harmed factory workers breathing it in daily.

One of the existing vape flavors... or a new one... will eventually be shown to cause simular lung disease due to daily breathing it in never truly being studied. Someone with a favorite flavor will use it for years, like any smoker with a favorite brand of cigs, then probably get sick from constant long term exposure.

[-] IonAddis@lemmy.world 160 points 1 year ago

Making all these posts on Lemmy be about another site.

The community won't flourish if the only thing people are talking about is their social-media ex.

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IonAddis

joined 1 year ago