In today’s chautauqua…

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Joined 2 months ago
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Cake day: September 15th, 2025

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  • I know it’s weird to think about, but you can buy them online, too. Just make absolutely sure you are home when they’re delivered! I think mantis may help with aphids, if you can find any of them hanging around (probably not).

    I would suggest Neem Oil, then. You dilute it in water, and apply in the twilight hours. It eats away at the exoskeletons of the aphids, but it can also eat away at good insect exoskeletons, too. This is why you need to apply only once a day at a particular time, when the good insects are not active. You could just go crazy and kill everything for a fresh start, too. Aphids and Mites will lay dormant and keep coming back, especially in enclosed greenhouse spaces with lots of protection from the elements and outside bugs.


  • On first glance, looks like aphids or mites. The fact that they’re large enough to see at this distance on a camera makes me think they aren’t aphids, but I’m not super familiar with the species in your area.

    For aphids, the best natural solution is a healthy population of ladybugs / asian lady beetles, their food source are aphids. If you saw less of them when you saw a lot of ladybugs, then I think this is the answer. You can find some places that will sell you ladybugs in different stages of life that you can then let loose in a greenhouse. Otherwise, you could try Neem Oil, that does the trick if you’re persistent enough in application, because aphids can be sneaky and hide on the underside of the leaves. Soak the plants!

    If it’s mites, though, depends on the type. Those can be much harder to deal with with, and are even sneakier / survive through many rounds of treatment. Immune to some treatments, even. I think ladybugs may still help to some degree, but Praying Mantis will also do some damage in this situation. I had 3 Mantis in my garden for a while, the three Musketeers!

    I don’t use chemicals, so I don’t have any suggestions on stronger stuff for either case.











  • I’ll never touch Windows again, and stopped using it over a decade ago. I unfortunately don’t have any experience related to this laptop, but when it comes to dual-booting other OS’s it’s no different than any other machine. I can’t imagine it would have issues with Windows, and System76 has some info on installing Windows

    I don’t have to do anything special to run games, though. I pirate a lot, and play legit Steam games as well. Only issues I run into are related to anti-cheat, but that’s nothing new for Linux gaming. Once you’re in Windows, it likely won’t be any different than using Windows on another machine.



  • The System76 Pangolin has an AMD APU that’s pretty powerful. I have the Ryzen7 model, but the newer ones are Ryzen9. Comes pre-installed with Pop_OS!, but they also provide firmware packages for Arch, Ubuntu, Fedora, and NixOS. I’ve also tested Nobara and Bazzite on it with good results.

    https://system76.com/laptops/pang15/configure

    I can play pretty much any game, as long as it runs in Proton normally, with very little FPS issues. Only games that chug are poorly optimized to begin with, but usually dropping the res to 1600x900 with FSR on will fix most issues.

    Also, “most economical” is tough these days with the tariffs and all. I got my Pangolin for $1000 shipped, then a few months later the tariffs hit and the price rose to $1500 before shipping.




  • Not OP, but I also live in the woods (albeit I’m in a 4x4 vehicle and don’t stay in one place for long periods).

    The point for me is not to, and nature is my TV. When I do need internet, though, I’m in town stocking up on supplies or hanging out in a coffee shop.

    Also, though, 5G and the abundance of towers means that hotspots work in a lot more places than they used to. More often than not, my phone still gets data even deep in the middle of nowhere. I’m not doing any gaming or streaming, but again I don’t necessarily want to. It’s just a tool to get information some times and make dumb internet comments.