2008-12 financially was some of the best years for my wife and I. In 2007 we were both working full time and barely able to cover our rent and expenses when it started.
Housing prices crashed and my wife and I were able to buy our first place with payments less than our rent in 2009. Because of tax credit programs, I had my entire down payment refunded.
Car prices and interests rates fell so we were able to replace our vehicles with ones that were 30% cheaper than a few years before the same year.
My wife got laid off in 2010 but she had unemployment for 2 full years. She was able to stay home with our kids while she looked for work.
Because she was laid off, I kept applying to higher paying jobs. I ended up landing a new job and increased my pay by 90%. She stayed home with the kids for the next 8 years and got her master's degree after the unemployment ran out. She was then able to work from home for the next 7 years.
They went after the brain eating one for shock value, when the most common one is ameobic dysentery.
Tomatillos are obligate out-crossers. They always do better with some genetic diversity. Every few years you'll want to add in some plants from purchased seed or plants. This will help maintain the genetic diversity and avoid a bottleneck due to small plant numbers.
A long time ago I did watch a poor plant breeder decend into a little madness attempting the break the self-incompatability. Tens of thousands of failed pollinations before one mutant was fertile and produced seeds. Eventually she was able to produce inbted lines and make the first hybrid tomatillos variety.
Yeah, Ukraine is going for the complete destruction of the entire facility. They are looking to shut this one down for the foreseeable future.
Hit it hard then wait for the smoke to clear to hit it again. Repeat as necessary until nothing is left but smoldering ruins.
My armchair general take on it:
Up until now in the war Ukraine has mostly been on the defense. Russia has been attacking constantly, daily, without letup for years. Every day another couple Russian battalions attack with horrendous casualties. Then the next day the same thing happens. Russia has many battalions that exist to gain a few inches and die. It looks like Russia is finally starting to run out of men willing to join these expendable battalions.
Russia does have some highly trained and effective people in the rear. They are in the industries manufacturing for the war, the logistics people moving goods and soldiers to the front, mechanics, drone pilots etc. These are the people that Ukraine has to neutralize to win the war.
Recently Ukraine has subtly converted from a defensive position to a more strategic offense. They have degraded the Russian defense enough that they can effectively target the people/infrastructure in the rear. These are not easily or quickly replaced. Each one neutralized creates a weakness that exposes more to attack. Eventually Russia will collapse and be forced to retreat.
Limiting fuel = limiting assaults. At the very least this stops any attempt at a spring offensive in the region for Russia.
If Ukraine can limit access to fuel across the entire front the invasion collapses. An army without fuel quickly runs out of food and ammo.
If they can limit fuel availability across the entire country for long enough, Russia's economy collapses.
Ukraine apparently has some long range drones that pack a larger amount of explosives. Previously Ukraine was aiming at the the delicate portions of Russian refineries with smaller drones. This year they are hitting the main storage tanks (If I am reading the specs right, the crude oil tanks have steel walls 10-30mm thick).
I anticipate Ukraine to keep up the pressure this year by obliterating some oil refineries.
Just surpassed March 2025 for the most artillery destroyed in a month.
It's also going to be pretty close to another record month of UAV destruction. They are destroying around 45 drones/km of front line per month.
Vehicle destruction (cars/trucks) is also looking like close to a record month.
The only thing that has stabilized recently is casualties. 30-35K casualties per month is still an insane amount. That's around 400,000 casualties per year on an army of around 1.2-1.3 million. 1 out 3 end up as casualties.
Oh good they got the fires out in Tuapse. Now Ukraine can see what is still standing and finish it off.
Copywrite like patents originally was a short period to give the creator time to capitalize on their work. It was meant to drive innovation but not stifle it with monopolization.
Then it was slowly changed from that to generational ownership and monopoly. Life plus 70 years is fucking stupid.
Very rude of Russian to not put thos giant fires out sooner. How is Ukraine supposed to pick out their next targets with all that smoke in the way?
He probably paid Iran a sizable fee and promised to let some of their leaders on the yacht with the sex slaves he has acquired.
He has ongoing bribes going Trump's way as a matter of business.
My wife's fluffy white dog I drive around with for work. He likes to eat higher moisture corn and cow shit.
For silage corn the entire plant is harvested, chopped up, and packed tightly in a pile and covered with plastic or very large plastic bag. This creates an anaerobic conditions and yeasts/bacteria convert the sugars to alcohol, then acids. This acid preserves the feed for cattle for up to 2 years.
Silage corn is the most common base feed for all dairies and feedlots.
This isn't even the tallest variety out there. There are others that are 3' (1m) taller.
The machine with the spout is a chopper. They are a million dollar gigantic woodchipper. These things are fucking terrifying and you should absolutely stay out the field when they are running. Every so often a deer jumps into them.....shudder.... nightmare fuel.
Early in the season before a corn plant is waist high it takes a guess on how many kernals it can fill. Sometimes it guesses wrong and so it aborts the top kernals to fill the rest.
The entire top of the damn plant turns bright red.
As sugars build up in the top of the plant with no place to be transported to, the upper leaves start to turn bright red and die back.
You may get a bar bell ear or there may be no ear on the plant. In of field of millions of plants a bright red top narrows the search down.
Start getting your pinky in shape with this weird environmental triggered trait. It's easy to find in any corn field (to be continued...).
This right here is 350bu/acre of corn. 113 day variety on an almost pure sand field. Every damn ear looked the same. Look at that beauty, every kernal is huge and dense.
This here is trichoderma ear rot in an organic field. This 100 day variety was chewed on by an earworm. The damaged kernals allowed trichderma to enter and infect the ear. This ear rot produces many toxins and is a big no for consumption.
The twist - Trichoderma is usually a beneficial organism in the soil. It feeds on other pathogenic fungus/bacteria and is applied extensively for biological control.
Although normally a secondary pathogen, it has mutated to become a primary pathogen in both Italy and Germany in recent years.
This here is a genetically susceptible 113 day variety to fusarium kernal rot. This is a nasty little fungus that produces all sorts of mycotoxins that can give any mammal that consumes it a belly ache or even death. It's easily identifiable by the white streaks in causes in the kernals.
This 98 day little minx has a flirty pink cob. It doesn't look like much but it packs quite the wallop. The ears posted yielded 302bu. Medium high ear placement and a fast drydown makes this an excellent choice for grain.
This is pretty little 102 day number with a bright white cob that threshes very easily. It does extremely well for dry grain, high moisture grain or earlage.
The field in this picture averaged 305bu.
Probably the easiest plant to care for once you figure it out.
I water it every month or two. Fertilize it every 2 or 3 years. Redirect the arial roots into the pot when I water.
It gets 3 hours of direct sunlight in the morning.
Every 5 or 6 years I haul it outside in the summer. Then leach the pot with the garden hose to remove the salt buildup. I also hack the plant back to a more manageable size.
It wasn't really that bad as long as you were reasonable on your debt to income ratio. It absolutely stupid easy to get a loan in the boom before the bust. The contrast is why people remember it being "tight". We had no issues with getting a loan.
I did know some people who were all pissed off that they couldn't get a home loan but they had $120K in debt between car, furniture, and student loans. They had to have their parents help them out with rent every other month.