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Joined 13 days ago
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Cake day: May 11th, 2026

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  • When you do the math on how much it costs both a private citizen along with the public to enable cars as transportation it’s mind boggling.

    The province I live in makes around $90-100B / year in tax revenue, and spends around $4.5-5.5B / year on roads and road maintenance.

    There’s also the hidden cost of road work caused by utilities being replaced, struck, or newly installed. We pay thx bill for that through our telecom, power, sewer .etc

    Insurance, gas, car payments…

    If a road is built to last 10 years then technically on average you’re replacing ⅒ of your roads every year. Utilities are the same and trenching/patching is horrible for roads necessitating rework on them earlier than the life expectancy. A fiber line might have a 40 year life span, but installing it turned a 20 year road into a 10 year replacement.


  • If you haven’t seen It the largest steam train in the world was restored by union pacific, #4014 big boy. It’s basically two heavy freight locos welded together into one machine over a hundred feet long. Lots of great videos of it online including a great video where it helps out a stalled mainline freight train running actual customer UP freight.




  • There are a lot of plants we consider weeds that used to be cultivated as staple crops. Industrialization meant only the most productive species got attention for mechanization. Less productive species fell out of favour and now are kind of lost knowledge.

    Lamb’s quarters: also called goosefoot or wild spinach. It’s related to quinoa and both the seeds and the leaves were eaten.

    Purslane: grows in poor soils and is hardy. Still used in Mediterranean cooking but is considered a garden weed in a lot of the world

    Dandelions and amaranth: both were cultivated, and most amaranth varieties are considered weeds now

    Sorrel: tough leafy green with a tangy flavour used prior to citrus in Europe.

    Ground elder: hated by gardeners and farmers. A nice spring leafy green planted around monestaries

    Mallow: used to thicken soups and stews. Still used in the middle east and Mediterranean but is considered a weed elsewhere.

    Nettles: you’ve probably heard of this one? Not farmed anymore to my knowledge.