I don’t think something of this risk should be left to individual, non-publicly maintained or controlled devices. This is specifically an area where the time to act is short and oftentimes the public is either in the river or river adjacent so they wouldn’t have their phone.

That said, there should be better cell service for the reasons you listed, I just don’t think it is the solution to the loss of life here.

By no means am I an expert so do some reading for your area. That said, here is how I set up my space.

I am a big fan of planting stuff that you can eat, that attracts polinators, and is low maintenance.

We have a couple varieties of basil that we let flower that brings bees in and are perennials and rosemary that flowers I have some really big mint plants that the bees love too. I basically do nothing to any of those and just let them ride. I have a couple of citrus plants that flower and bring in lots of insects. I planted grape vines that the birds love and have been really fun for my kids. They also loved the blackberry vines.

Any time I have the big clumps of clover in the lawn part of our yard, I move them to the flower beds. We also have several jasmine plants that crawl around.

I tend to do the local heirloom wildflower mixes in our side yard areas which was super great to cover up the utility boxes in our yard.

Heirloom stuff is great, I have several plants that I have re-grown from seeds inside fruit that the pests got to. 100% recommend.

I like to keep citronella and lemongrass around to help with the mosquitos. The lemongrass probably doesnt do anything unless you burn it but you can pick the citronella leaves and rub them between your hands then rub your hands on your skin and that seems to work.

Keep a fountain or bird bath around for the bugs/birds. If you can do it low to the ground, you can get frogs and other stuff too.

I tend to keep some brush in a pile for some of the other critters like salmanders, the little garden snakes, skinks, etc. You can get rats/mice though so ymmv. Rock piles are also good.

When the oak/ash trees drop leaves, I mulch them with the mower and collect them for use around the tree bases, that is supposed to be good for fireflys and stuff.

We have not watered our garden at all this year.

If you can find native plants, use them because they are already adapted to your area.

I tried to do microclover for our yard but since we had grass already it didn’t really take off. I also tried using buffalo grass with the same result. I do tend to let our grass go longer, its better for water conservation and I refuse to use clean water for grass growth.

For compost, we do table scraps mixed with leaves and yard clippings. I didn’t do it properly and ended up accidentally planting 10,000 papaya plants in our yard that the freeze killed off.

I have some blue salvia looking tree thing that is constantly covered in pollinators that grew super quick. They plant them on the highway medians around Houston and its been awesome. The flower smell great too.

Tangentially related question:

What is the latency in the soil for this stuff? I spent 8 years working on getting my yard back to a pollinator friendly environment but we are moving now and starting over with a basic grass yard. I am assuming the previous owners were spraying all kinds of shit as we are out in the burbs.

Yeah, I was trying to tell the poster above why a cell message or triangulated gps signal wouldn’t work. This area is remote and needs proper infrastructure with dedicated alarms to function in a safety critical capacity.

There are already tornado sirens in the area around Seguin, so clearly they can afford some kind of warning, but then using budget as the reasons to avoid spending on this kind of thing has always been a bad faith argument.

A lot of that area is remote or in canyons so cell service is spotty at best.

Edit: that is to say, you need a dedicated system specifically for warnings like this with real power sources, physical alarm devices, and either hard wired data systems, or data systems that are on radio towers high enough up to actually function and function properly in bad weather.

The bill was rejected so recently, you don’t even have to adjust for inflation.

I want eaton to do nothing with AI. I don’t want an ai developing circuit breakers, heavy duty automotive drivetrain or control compoenents, or other safety critical things.

I tried kangaroo in Australia and it was not good.

With Att fiber, I had to use their gateway or not have internet. You can set it to passthrough mode but I didn’t really trust that even with my own router and their wifi disabled.

On Comcast/xfinity copper 2.5, I am 100% using my own modem and router. They kept pushing me to get a streaming box, thermostat, camera, whatever the fuck else and it took several steps to get just the basic service.

This is somehow legal in Texas, even without power outages…

Coarse ground peanut butter but not crunchy, with a little salt and honey, plus blackberry or boysenberry preserves is the way. That or a fluffernutter.

The heat from the electron gun vaporizes the liquor next to the vacuum tube which gets everyone just a little leveled out

For me, its the long term viability of older games vs new ones. I can play older games on their original console or pc and they don’t have always onoine functions that break the game when the server shuts down. Hell, I am having a great time re-playing nfsu2 on my og xbox. I don’t find it any less fun than most wanted or some of the newer ones when I only have 30 minutes to play.

Major mix of eras and platforms, but here is my list.

AoE2

NFSU2

Halo MCC

Sim City 2000

Streets of Sim City

Roller Coaster Tycoon

Mario Kart 64

Perfect Dark

Goldeneye

Battlefield 3

Super Mario Bros Deluxe

Mario 64

Overwatch

Half Life 2 +eps

Gary’s Mod

Command and Conquer Generals: Zero Hour

Fallout New Vegas

Now include property taxes and homeowners insurance. Most of Texas would shift bright fucking red.

I hate how the whole process works.

We had one seller essentially manipulate us by telling us there were multiple offers when there weren’t, told no less than three people that they had the house inspected to make sure it was in good shape then gaslight us about that and claim we were lying when we asked for the report. Then they ignored our contract terms, then refuse to make repairs or discount the house after significant work was required when we had the house inspected. Then when we canceled our contract because the option period was about to expire (after offering to extend it if they got the forms back to us before the deadline) because they refused to negotiate on the price or repairs, they asked why we backed out of the deal.

THEN THESE FUCKERS WOULDN’T SHARE THE INSPECTION REPORT WE PAID FOR WITH THE NEXT PROSPECTIVE BUYER UNTIL THEY WERE UNDER CONTRACT. Which is not how that is supposed to go.

The new buyer reached out to our agent and asked about what was up and if we would share the report to which I said of course, here is everything we went through and how these people behave, lowball the shit out of them.

It has more to do with interest rates and home prices than down payment though you aren’t wrong about that being a burden. A $200k house on a 5% down fha loan requires about $10k in down payment and another $10k mortgage costs. Then when it used to be about 3% interest rates, that would cost you about $1000/month in P&I plus insurance and taxes.

That world is gone though. A basic house in the houston metroplex now goes for $300k at 7% interest so while the down payment has only gone up $5k the rest of it has gone up ~100% meaning a basic house is now a $2000/month expense.

That is napkin math but if you do the numbers for real it is probably pretty close.

Some sellers have realized that this market is not the covid market anymore. Those that have not have seen the houses sit for 9+months. In Texas, that’s crazy to me given the hight cost of insurance and property taxes. In real terms, a 400k house costs ~$5000/ year to insure, and costs ~$7000 per year in property taxes so if it sits for 6 months, that costs you a MINIMUM of $6k even if the mortgage is paid off.

We just closed on our new (to us) place last week and while the seller was more realistic about price, they insisted we pay for everything, appraisal, survey, all closing costs which was not how it was 8 years ago when we bought our first house.

How was the weather? I just saw they cancelled the second half of the course because of 80-100 sustained gusts at the top.

One source