Doesn't seem to bother people to be associated with fsck.

>... don't plant water-intensive crops in a drought zone? Naaa, that would require actual understanding of the situation. As it is, the only thing that will help is all those water-wasters going bankrupt. Reality is merciless.

I know several almond farmers here in the Central Valley.

Contrary to what you and TFA think, they've been engaging in very significant water cutbacks on their crops for years now, testing to see how little water they can get by with needing. I think they're currently at about 10% of the water that they were using a decade ago. How? They have water sensors in the soil, making sure they don't overwater below the root line, that wirelessly report back their findings to the farmer, who can then turn on a very small amount of water as needed to trees that are bone dry. They've also found the trees are a lot more drought tolerant than anyone thought, and can get by with less water than is recommended.

Overall, their water efficiency is about 90% currently, with the remaining 10% waste being hard to get rid of, as its used for things like backwashing dirt out of filters and the like.

Farmers here aren't these naive "water wasters" as you so ignorantly put it, and have a much better "understanding of the situation" than you do.

I vaguely recall that he quit Greenpeace because he wasn't happy with the direction it was taking.

And what he says in TFA actually makes sense, somewhat to my surprise.

I'm a pro dog trainer, specifically retrievers, which need to have good distance vision. I've noticed that if puppies around weaning age don't have a long line of sight available, they never really learn to see distance later on, either. (Incidentally, there once was a bloodline that was infamous for myopia, so there is an inherited component too. Those dogs are not improved by environment.)

I recall a study some years back that found if babies sleep in a lighted room, they are likely to become myopic.

I'm thinkin' there might be a stall point in eye development that can glitch if the eye lacks a certain cycle of stimulation and rest, and the result of this stall is that the eye never develops past the myopia that's normal in infants. (It's certainly normal in puppies from 2 to 4 weeks old; after that they need stimulation.)

The immediate effect I'd predict is more suicides, because the suicidal user who already believes they don't count because no one listens to them now has hard evidence that no one listens to what they have to say -- after all, they're just been silenced by Facebook.

The entire film industry does this. Every extra you see on the screen is an 'independent contractor'.

The mafia style tactics were probably a reference to the sad case of Karen Silkwood, a whistleblower in the nuclear industry who had died under mysterious circumstances only a few years earlier.

This is why my domains are all on automatic renewal. Also if for some reason an auto-payment doesn't go through (Discover card was bad for this, which is why I don't use it anymore) 1&1 sends me a second notice, rather than automatically confiscating the domain at the first opportunity.

I checked out their pricing estimator
https://www.nearlyfreespeech.n...
and while they're inexpensive for most stuff, they'd cost me an arm and a leg for storage. I keep an FTP mirror that while it gets very little traffic, presently has over 40GB of files. That pulled the storage charge up to about 10x what I'm presently paying, and rather considerably offset what I'd save on my two dozen domains.

Anyway, I've been using 1&1 since 2003 and been nothing but happy with 'em. Shameless affiliate link:

http://www.1and1.com/?k_id=676...

I speak only a little Spanish (my first impluse was to type "Tengo solamente un poquito de Español"), and read it but slightly better, but I find that I don't translate at all (nor did I during the obligatory semesters of French and German in junior high, nor in a year each of Latin and Spanish in high school... mind you this was over 40 years ago). I either have the word-and-meaning, or I don't. There's no groping for the English word.

If your depression is indeed low thyroid, that's one of the very easiest things to fix, and that in turn fixes loads of other stuff. And if you can persuade 'em to prescribe natural desiccated thyroid instead of or in addition to synth, that's usually better (not always. But I definitely do better on NDT.)

Yeah, the spay/neuter craze has done dogs no good. (In most of Europe it's considered mutilation, and in some countries is even illegal, but that's changing -- not for the better.) Cancer rates skyrocket (four times higher in some breeds). Other health issues that increase significantly: temperament issues, especially fearfulness and inappropriate aggression. Joint disorders, notably ACL and hip dysplasia. Immune issues including fatal blood disorders.

A good overview:
http://speakingforspot.com/blo...

another, with numerous citations:
http://www.naiaonline.org/pdfs...

a few studies I happen to have bookmarked:

http://journals.plos.org/ploso...

http://avmajournals.avma.org/d...

a vet's rant:
http://www.angryvet.com/neuter...

Unwanted puppies? There's an ancient invention that adequately covers that problem. They use it in Europe. It's called a leash.

Be well. I'd miss you. :)

Forgot to mention -- spaying/neutering in dogs causes hypothyroidism in a significant percentage of individuals (up to 20% depending on which stats you look at).

34. Milne KL, Hayes HM Jr. Epidemiologic features of canine hypothyroidism. Cornell Vet. 1981;71:3-14.
35. Panciera DL. Hypothyroidism in dogs: 66 cases (1987-1992). JAVMA 1994;204:761-7.

I have Hashimoto's thyroiditis, which is commonly not well understood by general practitioners (to the point of doing exactly the wrong thing for the patient's welfare, because that makes the numbers look good, but leads to immune attacks on not only the thyroid gland, but also sometimes the eyes and other organs). In sheer self-defense, I've had to become an expert, mainly by reading the Journal of Endocrinology.

Removal of the testes is going to affect thyroid production, tho that's something I haven't looked into. If thyroid proves normal, you might ask about slightly increasing your testosterone (females need this too) and/or estrogen intake, or progesterone (which is a mood elevator in some people). Your TG hormone cocktail isn't going to be quite stable if the thyroid isn't right, either.

Low thyroid can affect just about everything. If your depression is at all alleviated by eating, that's a strong redflag, since the food serves to improve blood sugar (albeit temporarily) when thyroid is not doing the job.

https://soylentnews.org/commen...

and that was just what I could recall at that moment; about a dozen more came to mind later, like constipation, chest pain in the region of the heart, mild palsy, loss of coordination, and vertigo.

Also, thyroid production trails off with age... a great many "problems of aging" go away with thyroid replacement, but it is seldom done for that sort of patient. A lot of elderly are suffering needlessly as a result.

My notion of exile is closer to Botany Bay than Escape From New York. Exile shouldn't be prison by another name; rather, a chance to start fresh, maybe in a harsh place but where one can build for the better and not be that second class citizen who is always compared to the non-felons and has NO chance to get past that. But we no longer have available that unclaimed land with the potential to be made into something more, and where 'escape' isn't an issue (cuz you don't want 'em 'going over the wall' either; indeed, ideally they should not want to do so).

I don't think most Americans are any more comfortable with unending punishment than the rest of the world (in my observation, it's more the reverse), but we have a more prominent media machine that thrives on emphasizing the extremes, and a political process that tends to reflect extremes more than norms.

BTW I took a notion to check your journal... and for heaven's sake get a full thyroid panel (not just TSH, which by itself can be extremely misleading) and it needs to be done in the depths of depression, not when you're feeling fine. Undiagnosed or borderline hypothyroid is a major cause of unexplained depression, especially when accompanied by malaise and brain fog. There might not be ANY other symptoms. -- There's also a relationship between TSH and blood glucose.