The Frozen Fjord

For example on a post I made about leaving the way clear for people exiting elevators or public transportation instead of standing right in front of the door blocking it I got a few notes from people saying "haha yeah I always give someone a good body check if they do this and I love seeing the shocked and offended look on their face"

or on a post about leaving room for the flow of traffic I had people in the notes bragging about giving "body checks" to people in their way on a sidewalk or in a hallway.

Do. Not. Ever. Ever. EVER intentionally bump into people aka give them a "body check". Anyone who brags about this kind of behavior in my notes is getting blocked. You are literally physically assaulting someone and then bragging about it. Physically assaulting another person is actually a lot worse than accidentally being in someone's way, and I have no tolerance for it.

The times in my life where someone has intentionally "body checked" me have been when I was disassociating and/or about to pass out from low blood sugar, or quite literally was as far off to the side as possible (literally up against a wall or packed up against other people in a crowded area) and every time this has happened it has ended in me having a full blown panic attack that I need to take emergency meds to come down from due to my PTSD.

You never know why someone could be in your way. They could be visually impaired. They could be disassociating. They could be about to pass out from low blood sugar. They maybe just experienced a disturbing or traumatic event that's shut down their pre-frontal cortext. All sorts of things. So congrats I guess on physically assaulting someone who might be disabled or disassociating or about to faint from low blood sugar. You sure are showing them.

Not only that, but it's unsafe for you too. There are violent and unstable people in this world, and you might "body check" the wrong person one day. I had a friend in secondary school who would brag about this kind of behavior, and when I was talking to my aunt about it one day she said to me "one day your friend is going to do that to the wrong person and find herself cleaning herself up off the floor."

weight of rollator will depend on several factors , but 7 to 9 kg seem like fairly average guess . rollator users , naturally , can weigh 10 or ( many ) more times that . if balance of rollator user is thrown off , that rollator can easily glide ahead . given purpose as mobility aid , very likely for user to have at least one hand on rollator - which means that person will follow , and fall , and possibly get very hurt . this is true even with brakes on - brakes mean very little against full weight of person .

And yes, you are 100% correct, in the second or two you have to decide between those options, you might not notice a mobility aid, and if you go for option c for a mobility aid user you can seriously hurt them.

Also, not everyone who is physically disabled and at serious risk of being hurt from a "body check" uses a mobility aid. My mom really should be using a mobility aid, she has vertigo so badly she sometimes has to old onto my arm if we go anywhere together in public, and she has really bad arthritis in her feet that make it harder for her to walk at quicker than a shuffling pace. And yet because of her not wanting to look "too old" she refuses to use mobility aids, and insists on running errands by herself on days her vertigo isn't "too bad". But if someone were to get annoyed with my mother, who moves extremely slowly and often wobbles from side to side, and they decide to give her a "body check" due to their impatience, they could seriously hurt her.

Not everyone causing an inconvenient situation is being rude. Sometimes there's a reason they're just in the way like that, seemingly oblivious, and whatever is happening to them is beyond normal control.

But even if they WERE just being self-centered, that's no excuse to willfully become aggressive toward them. When you do, the only thing you prove is that you're a bully who cannot be trusted, which is far worse than simply being oblivious or self-absorbed.

It's on topic enough I think. I also prefer when people say excuse me instead of just staring at me. If I'm just standing there trying to decide on what brand of pasta sauce I'd rather someone say "excuse me" then stand there and stare at me. If nothing else because I find a stranger standing and staring at me to be unnerving and uncomfortable, but also it's just easier and gets it all over with quicker to just ask me to step aside for a second.

However, I understand that some people are non-verbal, so sometimes saying "excuse me" isn't a choice, which is why I don't recommend lashing out at someone for standing and staring instead of saying "excuse me". If you really want to say something, you can be polite about it. However, most people I know who do this are capable of verbalizing "excuse me", and if you are capable of saying "excuse me" I do recommend it because plenty of people find it unnerving and uncomfortable to be stared at by a stranger. Plus it saves you time to just say "excuse me" rather than spending all that time staring them down waiting for them to get the hint.

Now, what I really really hate is something I've seen people in my notes call "the German shuffle", except people in Iceland do it too (so presumably in other parts of northern / western Europe) and I cannot emphasize how much I hate it and how rude I think it is. It's where if someone wants to get something you're standing in front of they just slowly shuffle closer and closer to you to basically try to intimidate you away. I hate hate hate standing in the grocery store, trying to decide what kind of bread I want, and suddenly I can feel a perfect stranger's breath on the side of my face because they decided slowly shuffling closer and closer to me is the best method of getting me to move so they can grab whatever I'm standing in front of.

Higher feminine voice: woo, look at you go! You're jogging! Keep it up!

Lower masculine voice (panting): you know it! Last place is still a place, baby!

And goddamn if that didn't rewire my brain a little bit.

Underwater forest with tadpoles, Vancouver Island, BC, Canada

The guy was an institution all on his own; look at this.

The “A” profile in his soil is now 47 inches deep compared to less than 6 inches in 1971 and acts like a giant sponge for water infiltration and retention.

From 1971 through 1989 David used an average of 150-250 pounds of nitrogen fertilizer per acre to grow his corn crops. After adding peas and radishes as a cover crop mix, he cut his nitrogen needs in half and was able to get it down to 125 pounds per acre.

When he added multiple species and became more aggressive with his cover crop mixes, he was able to achieve an additional drop in applied fertility. His starter fertilizer is now just 2 lbs of N, 4 lbs of P, and 5 lbs of K. His corn crop now only requires 20-30 lbs of N throughout the entire growing season. He requires no fertility for his soybeans, relying on fertility gained solely through his cover crops. He uses only 40 lbs of 10 N – 10 P – 10 K for his small grains.

Ten years ago (source study published 2019) David stopped using any fungicides and insecticides. This occurred at a time when fungicide and insecticide use has increased significantly with the average commodity farmer.

Four years ago he stopped using any seed treatment, including neonicotinoids.

His cash crop yields have been increasing by an average of 5% annually for the past 5-6 years, with far less fertilizer and no fungicides, insecticides or seed treatment.

So this is a picture of the soil horizons. The O profile/O horizon is stuff like fallen leaves, sticks, and so on, which are biodegrading into the A profile. A fair amount of soils might have no O profile at all.

If you are a gardener, the A profile is what you're concerned with most of the time; it's what we also call "topsoil." Your seeds germinate into it, and shallower plants might root into it alone without ever reaching the B profile. Worms and other small delvers live in it. It's what you're amending, what you're testing, what you're tilling, what you're trying to fill up with good microorganisms to work with your plants and provide you with food or flowers or cover.

I see this quote around sometimes, attributed to radioman Paul Harvey: Man — despite his artistic pretensions, his sophistication, and his many accomplishments — owes his existence to a six inch layer of topsoil and the fact that it rains.

Without the topsoil, bluntly, we starve. And there are other problems, in places with a lack of it; without the topsoil, when the rains come, the water strikes hard soil. Hard soil doesn't accept water easily, so instead it pools and runs downhill. That action makes flooding, makes flash floods, makes standing water that carries disease, it contaminates the water table. Cholera is a huge problem in places with a low A profile that receive too much water at once.

We are seeing topsoil depletion across the US. I can't speak for other countries, but the heavy-tilling agricultural habits we've adopted here have obliterated inch after inch of our topsoil; in the 1800s the average depth was fourteen inches! Today it is six. Many suburban lawns have even less. This has knock-on effects we don't even consider on the day-to-day (for instance, there's some suggestion that the lower amounts of various minerals in vegetables and fruits today in comparison with earlier decades might be because of the lower amount of minerals in the soil for the plants to take up into themselves).

And this gentleman took soil that had been that abused and not only returned it to what it had been before the aggressive, destructive European agricultural policy had its way, but trebled that earlier depth.

His land protects the land around it from flooding. His land grows plants less susceptible to disease, because of all the various stressors and pressures those plants aren't confronted with. His land almost certainly has a considerably higher concentration of microorganisms and it would follow that we'd also see greater diversity of macroorganisms thereby.

And for those people who have access to mobility devices but might benefit from a second chair they can abuse without risking expensive damage…

Erik Kondo has made a website, Open Source Innovations, that details plans for DIY wheelchairs. These wheelchairs can be made from common materials like wood, plastic, and pvc. They are lightweight and can be custom fit to the user allowing from the same degree of movement you would get from a custom chair. And they are durable and easily repairable. (he has been stress testing his latest design by dropping it down stairs, dropping it out of a car, launching it across a driveway, and throwing it off a deck). Its 12lbs and I think he said its was in the $200 ish range for parts.