Yeah when I start ranting about the government’s cheese caves under Missouri people think I’ve finally cracked, but they’re real. It started as a program to help farmers during the great depression, but by now it’s just socializing the dairy industry and keeping prices artificially high. I don’t think they sold it to fund the program though, they distributed it through food security programs.

There’s gotta be better foods for the government to stockpile and distribute to the hungry than cheese though, it’s tasty, but it’s not great for you and it’s not filling many nutritional gaps. Not to mention lots of people can’t even eat it without getting sick

This man helped me kill the lawn inside myself, and now I’ve killed my lawn and I’m on my way to kill my parents’ (lawn) too. I might have even accidentally learned some botany along the way

A really great channel

My suggestion, since I’ve done something similar. (Depending on what is there now) I’d recommend killing the weeds by laying down layers of cardboard and mulch on top (after cutting them down). Some plants are too pernicious for that and require digging up taproots or targeted herbicide, but the majority of the stuff under it will die and be nutrients for what you plan on planting there. As the cardboard, mulch, and old plants rot, you’ll have exceptional soil for pretty nearly free (depending on the cost of the mulch and your time). As a neat bonus you’ll get all kinds of interesting fungus to look at too.

Lots of people in a pretty small area in relatively dense cities that currently drive or fly between the cities (technically called strong city pairings). There’s also a pretty enormous tourism industry in Florida that captures much of the Midwestern US/anyone not going to California or Hawaii for their beach or disney vacation. Florida is also flat which makes for very cheap high speed rail. Note how the map goes out of its way to avoid the mountains out West.

That being said, I’m not sure this map is one of the ones made with serious city pairing calculations. I’m skeptical that Quincy, IL has a really strong draw for high speed rail, for example, and that long gap between Portland and Sacramento/San Francisco, while beautiful and filled with cool places, is way too sparsely populated to justify 6hrs on high speed rail. I think it’s a sort of meme map that’s been going around for years, though I wish it were real.

I use transit for transit (it’s in the name) but it also gives fantastic bike directions and transit+bike if I’m not feeling a particularly long ride. I may have had to mess with the settings but it almost always shows biking as an option.

Otherwise I use OsmAnd, but since I almost exclusively get around by bike and bus I am usually looking places up to manually plan routes, not using navigation.

Gimme a break, I don’t expect you to know everything that goes on here, just as all I “know” about Australia is “you” made Murdoch, continue to abuse native people just like us, and dingos regularly eat babies. Like asserting that no Australian people care about those issues is wrong and obviously my fundamental understanding of the country is flawed, it’s also wrongheaded to assert the American people are all broken and spineless for years and have bad moral fiber (I’ll assume this is a normal saying for y’all elsewhere, but that sounds like a nationalistic dog whistle to my ears).

It is especially bizarre to claim that Americans are incapable of direct action a few years after the country had some pretty explosive sustained protests against police violence and racism. The US is filled with broken people, yes, but not because of some nebulous moral failing, and it’s the broken government you have an issue with, not the poor fools who were born here.

Looking to the mentioned protests a few years back might explain the lack of similar reaction now. They burned youth prisons, occupied police stations, ran for office, took to the streets, were shot at, gassed, and went to jail. For what? Nothing changed endured, the establishment “left” abandoned the movement and helped undo any change that occured, the government clamped down harder on dissent, and Trump got reelected. Maybe the methods of resistance have to change to succeed, you cant keep fighting the war of yesterday and expect to win after all, and you sure don’t have to publicize your actions for online strangers to check your moral fiber.

Posting may be meaningless, but I’d say all this to your face if we were talking in person too. Communication is how we change and change minds, and leaving nonsense unchallenged is how we got into this mess in the first place, and I won’t make that mistake here or in my non digital life.