My lawn isn't totally natural because I mow it, but I don't use any chemicals. Despite some trees and shrubs, my yard doesn't have ticks. We have grubs, mice, shrews, squirrels, birds, and occasional poison ivy that we pull up, but no ticks. They are in the park (with forest) a couple blocks away, but not in the trimmed lawns in my chunk of suburbia.

from Wikipedia:

Ticks like shady, moist leaf litter with an overstory of trees or shrubs and, in the spring, they deposit their eggs into such places allowing larvae to emerge in the fall and crawl into low-lying vegetation. The 3 meter boundary closest to the lawn's edge are a tick migration zone, where 82% of tick nymphs in lawns are found.

I agree wirth you, but since I'm not a hydrologist nor any other type of expert, I included that contrary piece as an opposing view on whether better planning could have helped. Since we now know that there's been a plan to have warning sirens in the works for years, I think it obvious that the area is a known flood risk and at least that much COULD have been done.

Have you seen the TV show Primeval?

Like so many shows, it kinda petered out once they were cancelled, but it is still worth a watch. https://www.cbr.com/forgotten-sci-fi-dinosaur-series-perfect-for-jurassic-park-fans/

"Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?" -- George Orwell (book link)

Oh there;s lots of new experiences in getting old: going through social security rigmarole, turning grey (or bald), finding yourself unable to do stuff you used to do, arthritis, gout, bone loss, needing a cane, getting up several times a night for the sake of your bladder...

Kerrville is too small to get cited as an example in a big national report on Texas flood issues, so my citations are meant to show this is a problem for the whole state rather than a particular town. If you go to USGS, you'll see they don't even have a flow gauge upstream of Camp Mystic. The closest is downstream at gauge:hntt2(click dot on map to see readings). Simple link without map: https://water.noaa.gov/gauges/HNTT2

We've known for decades that Texas has loose regulations allowing development to ignore flooding concerns. "Texas shoulders the most urban stormwater runoff of any state in the country ". After Hurricane Harvey flooded Houston in 2017, everyone was talking about the development issue, but alas, mostly just about Houston instead the state as a whole.

Post Harvey, The Atlantic had a big piece on how, "The combination of climate change and aggressive development made an event like this almost inevitable."

Also from that 2017 disaster, The Washington Post concluded:

Thus, to ensure acceptable stormwater-system performance, jurisdictional agencies and officials must ensure that the type, timing and amount of real estate development are in sync with the capacity and configuration of the jurisdiction’s storm system. Many communities are at risk because of overbuilding or for allowing building in areas with inadequate infrastructure.

Some argued that "Houston isn't flooded because of its land use planning" ... but while the author there is an expert in urban planning, he is not an expert in hydrology.

Of course the recent tragedy was no where near Houston. It was closer to Austin and San Antonio. On Austin: "Flash flooding is a pressing concern for Austin, so much so that it has been labeled the "Flash Flood Alley" of Texas." On San Santonio:

San Antonio is a populated area in one of the most flash-flood prone regions in North America. SARA manages a series of structural controls (dams and drainage systems) to help prevent and/or reduce flood problems. For example, the San Antonio River Tunnels (see illustration) proved invaluable as they diverted water safely underneath downtown during the 1998 and 2002 floods.

I don't want to hear "No warning at all." This was a risk known for decades where the state and municipalities decided they'd rather allow an eventual catastrophe than spend the money needed to prevent one.

That doesn't work for me because part of the issue is the number of servings I get at the end and the size of the cooking container. Example: random veggie casserole calls for 1 pound frozen broccoli, 1 pound frozen caulflower, 1 medium onion, 3 stalks celery, and a bunch of other stuff (rice, cheese, spices, breadcrumbs, etc.).

Frozen veg is now mostly bagged at 3/4 of a pound instead of a full pound (same with certain pasta). While I can theoretically use 1.5 bags or reduce other measures by 25%, I don't want a bunch of half-bags in the freezer -- and if I make a casserole that's 75% the size... well, I don't have a 75% sized casserole dish so it still has to bake in the dish I've used to decades, but now as a sad thin version of what it ought to be -- and it typically dries out while cooking (if I don't try to fix it).

I don't know if we're all in different places, but I agree with @[email protected]. In particular, every bag of onions and potatoes I've bought in the last couple years have had at least one bad veg so damaged that I couldn't use it -- like rotting on the inside kinds of bad. Lettuce seems smaller and more dirty, and everything generally seems older by the time it gets to the store. The only way I can get fruit with any flavor is by going to local farm standsand paying top dollar.

The article does not got into specifics. It only states the percentage of breeders in each sector that have had violations in the last five years, and the whole thing is basically a reprint from this source . The time spans feel wonky. For the last five years, 41% of the licenced breeders they tracked had a violation. For the last three years, the violation rates of tracked licensed breeders have been: Breeders to stores: 36%, Puppy stores: 63%. Rather than any number of years they only say 'currently' for these rates: Breeders to brokers: 34%, Online sales: 42%.

I must have watched this as a kid because this post got me to re-watch it and I recognized parts of it, but I also read serveral of the Oz books way back when, so I could have been remembering that.

Anyway, I can see where it might scare kids, but it is no worse than the Dr. Who episodes that send kids hiding behind the sofa.

I haven't been thrilled with series TV this year. The best have been on subscription services with not much on broadcast networks. My personal favorite has been 'North of North' about a native woman in an artic native town (contaminated with white hosers). I did not like 'Paradise' but I watched it. I could not sit through 'Suits LA' or 'Doctor Odyssey'. My mom likes 'Grosse Pointe Garden Society' but I don't care for it. She gave up on 'Sherlock & Daughter', but I ended up liking it.

Here's an unsorted list of the new stuff I've at least kinda liked.

• North of North (Netflix)
• Bad Thoughts (Netflix)
• Common Side Effects (HBO)
• Dying for Sex (FX/Hulu)
• Watson (CBS)
• Sherlock & Daughter (CW)

Sure, you're getting worked up about her misrepresenting the number of illegals, but I'm over here all incensed that she's saying a person is just ONE meal for an alligator? As if gators wouldn't join in and make a party of it? How dare she! An adult alligator will eat 20 pounds of food a week during warm weather but can go for weeks without eating during the winter. That means a generic 100 pound human should feed at least 3-4 gators (or up to 5 if we don't count bones as food). Suggesting a person is only one alligator meal is like suggesting a person isn't unemployed once they're run out of unemployment benefits -- and who'd be stupid enough to suggest that?

Given those directors, I recommend Ozon's Criminal Lovers and -- if you can find the uncut version -- Greenaway's Baby of Mâcon . You could try A Zed & Two Naughts as a substitiute, but it isn't as good. You might also try Jodorowsky's Santa Sangre or Solondz's Happiness . I'm presuming you've seen Dogville, Breaking the Waves, The Element of Crime, The Five Obstructions, Dancer in the Dark, Manderlay, Enter the Void, Vortex, Irrevesible, Climax, Eraserhead, Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart, and Mulljholand Drive.

From best to worst:

Tiger Bay (1959)
Gillie, an orphaned eleven year old tomboy who lives with her Aunt, witnesses a young Polish sailor, Bronislav "Bronek" Korchinsky murder his ex-girlfriend after she spurns him. Initially, the sailor does not know Gillie saw the murder, but abducts her once he finds out. Meanwhile, the police investigate everything.

The Brutalist (2024)
Hungarian-Jewish Holocaust survivor and Bauhaus-trained architect László Tóth flees to the United States after being forcibly separated from his wife, Erzsébet, and orphaned niece, Zsófia. He strives to make a go of it, reunite his family, and deal with the demands of a wealthy client.

Eric Clapton: Life in 12 Bars (2018) Documentary film covers Clapton's early childhood, including the trauma of his mother leaving him to be raised by his grandparents, and his career, consisting of "a single-minded mission to raise the profile of the blues in popular culture". Clapton's tragedies, include his infatuation with George Harrison's wife, Patti Boyd, struggles with drugs and alcoholism, and the death of his 4-year-old son Conor are highlighted, but his racist tendencies and other misdeeds are glossed over with only brief mention if at all.

Guns Don't Argue (1957) Low-budget docudrama about the early achievements of the FBI in defeating the most notorious criminals of the 1930s. Inaccurate and dull.

A Minecraft Movie (2025)
Five people transport to the minecraft world. I couldn't be bothered to pay much attention to this stupidity.

Okay, I shouldn't have said 'everyone', but people in the theater cheered for him -- and when the movie let out, I heard people putting him in the hero role. I'm glad to hear a wider audience saw it as I did.

I've come back to mention a few others that hit different re-watching as an adult: Zulu, Khartoum, Kim, Gunga Din, and basically any other grand epic where the Brits are portrayed as gallant heroes battling uncivilzied local populations -- until you look at it in terms of colonialism and see the Brits as pompous captialists parroting government lines about their own greatness and glossing over the legitimate reasons the locals want the colonizers gone.

Unrelated: everyone watches the movie Falling Down as if the lead is our Hero, but try watching it (as I did) seeing him as the unhinged villian.

The gay thing was one of the things I only got when rewatching Lawrence of Arabia.

No idea what tysto is. but I wanted to warn people that it is not secure.

Great film! I've seen it repeatedly because I've had to make other people watch it ("Subtitles???" -- "Yes! Just go with it. Trust me!").