Random Rants LXXXVI: OH, FUDDLE-DUDDLE!

[aimeeandbeatles]

Dammit!

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Dammit!

"The whole thing"?

That's rather informal for an academic study.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I got another survey not long after this one.

Anyways, for another small rant: I had to switch to Waterfox for my surveys, because Prolific Assistant (which notifies me of the surveys) quit working for Vivaldi.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Trouble ahead for sure:

Scientists hope to stop ‘murder hornets’ before they ravage US bees

Multiple stings from the insects can be deadly to humans

BY MARISA IATI

THE WASHINGTON POST

As if 2020 weren’t terrifying enough, now we have to worry about “murder hornets.”

The world’s largest hornet — the size of a matchbox — is known for invading honeybee hives, decapitating all the bees in a matter of hours and carrying the mangled thoraxes back to feed their young.

And now they’re in the United States.

The Washington State Department of Agriculture is trying to track down the fearsome insects, also nicknamed “yak-killer hornets” or “giant sparrow bees,” after officials received and verified four reports of them in December in the northwestern part of the state. They were also spotted in two sites in the Canadian province of British Columbia in the fall.

In a New York Times story that made the term “murder hornets” trend on Twitter on Saturday, Conrad Bérubé, a beekeeper and entomologist in Nanaimo, Canada, described being stung by an Asian giant hornet as “like having red-hot thumbtacks being driven into my flesh.”

The hornets primarily attack insects but will direct their aggression toward people if they’re threatened. Their quarterinch stingers, which can penetrate beekeeping suits, deploy a venom potent enough to dissolve human flesh. Absorbing multiple stings can be deadly. The nervous system can shut down, and an allergic reaction may occur and cause anaphylactic shock. The insects kill 30 to 40 people each year in Japan, where they’re most common. But the giant hornets are primarily a danger to bees. Scientists are now hunting for the insects, whose queens can grow to two inches long, in hopes of rounding them up before they become rooted in the United States and destroy bee populations that are crucial to crop pollination.

“This is our window to keep it from establishing,” Chris Looney, an entomologist at the Washington State Department of Agriculture, told the Times. “If we can’t do it in the next couple of years, it probably can’t be done.” Some insects native to the northwestern United States have been confused for the invasive hornets, but real Asian giant hornets have distinctive qualities: large orange and yellow heads with teardrop eyes, black and yellow striped abdomens and papery wings that span up to three inches.

A colony of Asian giant hornets can kill nearly 30,000 bees in a few hours. The attack begins when a scout finds a new hive and marks it with a pheromone secreted from glands in its back legs, signaling to other hornets that they should gather. As the bees try to defend their colonies, worker hornets use powerful mandibles - appendages near their mouths - to chop up the bees and chew them into gooey “meatballs” before carrying the protein- heavy remains back to their young.

Asian giant hornets mostly fly under the radar in the winter, when queen hornets hibernate in soil or other covered places. Mated queens emerge when the temperature warms between mid-March and May and eat sap for energy to start a new colony. The hornets launch most of their attacks on bees in the late summer and early fall.

Scientists don’t know how Asian giant hornets found their way to the United States, but Looney said in a video presentation that they may have been hibernating in a ship’s ballast or in a product that was transported from Asia to North America. In a less likely scenario, Looney said, someone might have transported the hornets here to cultivate them as a food source. Some people in Asian countries eat the meaty hornets.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Crap.

 

[Synobun]

They've been clearing invasive nests of theirs since last year. Not a 2020 thing.

This obsession over the curse of 2020 is getting tiresome.

 

[Broken_Erika]

Oh No! Killer Bees are coming!

 

[Synobun]

Laptop is out for delivery today, but UPS is making it unnecessarily difficult to work with them. I don't have access to the front of the house unless I go outside, and I very rarely if ever can hear the doorbell. Solution, sign up for UPS My Choice which has a feature that can text you before the driver arrives. Then I can just wait outside with ID and intercept them. But the order won't associate with my account, and due to COVID-19 the call centre isn't handling delivery matters anymore. They only offer support via Twitter. Of course, they won't answer me on Twitter.

My Choice is also supposed to give you a time window of when the delivery will be happening, but it hasn't for this. Just says it'll be here before 7 PM. So I guess I will be sitting very quietly for the next 9 hours and hope that I can hear when the driver gets here.

 

[H4run]

Laptop is out for delivery today, but UPS is making it unnecessarily difficult to work with them. I don't have access to the front of the house unless I go outside, and I very rarely if ever can hear the doorbell. Solution, sign up for UPS My Choice which has a feature that can text you before the driver arrives. Then I can just wait outside with ID and intercept them. But the order won't associate with my account, and due to COVID-19 the call centre isn't handling delivery matters anymore. They only offer support via Twitter. Of course, they won't answer me on Twitter.

My Choice is also supposed to give you a time window of when the delivery will be happening, but it hasn't for this. Just says it'll be here before 7 PM. So I guess I will be sitting very quietly for the next 9 hours and hope that I can hear when the driver gets here.

Can your roommate pick it up for you? Just to make a fair balance after all the free toilet paper he wasted?

"man I cannot go outside, but my laptop will be arrive shortly perhaps at 7PM, -tell the circumstances- do you have any suggestion? and btw now I'm looking for toilet paper on web, it get wasted a lot now we need to find a new one, can you also give part of the share? like 50 50?"

if he say "no I can only give you 35, because my money is blablablbala"
say "alright I will take care of that problem, but can you please help bring my laptop to me? here take my ID, thank you for your help"

If he have an atom of shame, he will do it. If not, plan to find another roommate.

 

[Synobun]

I don't get a choice on who I live with. Evictions are delayed right now anyways. Of the 10+ people I've lived with in the past six years, exactly zero of them have ever paid a dollar toward common-use items. It's not a fight worth having, and I can't afford to make someone I'm stuck with hate me.

But I don't see what asking my roommate would do here. He has the same issue I do. The house is split into three units. Ours doesn't have front access.

I would never trust anyone I live with with my ID or my belongings. I replaced my bedroom doorknob with one that locks and I lock it when I'm gone.

 

[H4run]

I don't get a choice on who I live with. Evictions are delayed right now anyways. Of the 10+ people I've lived with in the past six years, exactly zero of them have ever paid a dollar toward common-use items. It's not a fight worth having, and I can't afford to make someone I'm stuck with hate me.

No no man, don't do it if it going to task you psychologically then don't. I'm not going to give you a suggestion that burden you. But it pains me knowing sharing a life with someone who never share for common use item. We are here quite relax in comparison to Western culture in term of what belong to me or what belong to a friend of mine, but even to my standard that's not good. In friendship you gotta take and gift. Back in University I live with a senior who never finish and quit university and work as a waiter and cooker in small restaurant, I pretty much feed him and pay for his cigs and everything, but he clean the house, buy some stuff and sometime cook for me. In the end I like having him around.

I would never trust anyone I live with with my ID or my belongings. I replaced my bedroom doorknob with one that locks and I lock it when I'm gone.

True don't do it. If me I'm just reckless, I can give my ID to a friend if it's just in front of the door, or to give it to them (like my assistant) so he can bring and leave it to the security in post so we can access certain place (but we must leave our identity first).

You are an organized person, right don't do it.

 

[Synobun]

No no man, don't do it if it going to task you psychologically then don't. I'm not going to give you a suggestion that burden you. But it pains me knowing sharing a life with someone who never share for common use item. We are here quite relax in comparison to Western culture in term of what belong to me or what belong to a friend of mine, but even to my standard that's not good. In friendship you gotta take and gift. Back in University I live with a senior who never finish and quit university and work as a waiter and cooker in small restaurant, I pretty much feed him and pay for his cigs and everything, but he clean the house, buy some stuff and sometime cook for me. In the end I like having him around.



True don't do it. If me I'm just reckless, I can give my ID to a friend if it's just in front of the door, or to give it to them (like my assistant) so he can bring and leave it to the security in post so we can access certain place (but we must leave our identity first).

You are an organized person, right don't do it.

Ah, no, I don't ever have any sort of relationship with the people I'm forced to live with. If I see them more than once a month, something's gone terribly wrong. I don't really understand how people live with strangers. It stresses me out. When people move in I give them a pamphlet with all the information they could possibly need for living with me, but none of them use it. All cleaning, all common-use items, if I don't do it myself or fund it myself, they're content to live in utter filth. I'm not. My landlord specifically looks for people here on Visas who are being funded by their parents overseas, so I inevitably get stuck with adult babies who have never known a life where someone wasn't there to cater to their every whim and who have no idea how to function.

All I really expect from a roommate is that they don't destroy things, they replace what they use, and they clean sometimes. My fail rate on this is 100%, whether I'm confrontational, avoidant, I talk to them IRL, I leave them notes, etc.

Trying to confront them usually has one of two results, or a twofer: they either pretend they don't understand English, or they act like what I said is the most incredible, unbelievable thing they've ever heard. When I asked my roommate to close the door when he comes home at 3 AM, I got response #2, and he was very surprised that I would ask such a thing. Usually when I bring up the common-use items, roommates will assure me they'll pay me back, but then they never do.

The obvious solution, then, is to just keep everything in my room somewhere, but I'm not especially interested in trying to fit things in a space where there is already no room (my "desk" is a hospital tray... and I still have to turn to the side in order to get to my door and out of the room), nor am I interested in the subtle escalation of it. If everything I pay for suddenly disappears, it'll be taken as aggression. It's something I've tried before, and it didn't end well.

I also once trusted a roommate with something of mine, a library card, and they thanked me by keeping it until the day they moved out and racking up late fees for several months. Never again.

The day I can live by myself is the day my passive, daily stress levels drop by at least 80%. Having to deal with landlords sauntering in without notice, never having a say in who I live with, the people I'm forced to live with being basically feral little monsters... well, let's just say I don't enjoy it very much.

I normally don't rant this much about them, but this morning he woke me up at 5 AM while he did his monthly cleanup of his room. That's another thing this guy does: he just stacks garbage in his room, and then takes it out once per month if I'm lucky. It reeks. He doesn't even put the garbage in plastic bags. Just makes a big pile in his room of empty wrappers, bottles, etc. Then when he cleans it up, he doesn't put it in bags then either... he just takes it all outside to the trash piece by piece, and this takes HOURS. Opening and closing his door, walking back and forth in the hallway, again and again and again. This month he decided to do it before 5 AM. At least the smell will be better for a while.

 

[The_J]

On the plus side: This is very entertaining for us .

 

[H4run]

Ah, no, I don't ever have any sort of relationship with the people I'm forced to live with. If I see them more than once a month, something's gone terribly wrong. I don't really understand how people live with strangers. It stresses me out. When people move in I give them a pamphlet with all the information they could possibly need for living with me, but none of them use it. All cleaning, all common-use items, if I don't do it myself or fund it myself, they're content to live in utter filth. I'm not. My landlord specifically looks for people here on Visas who are being funded by their parents overseas, so I inevitably get stuck with adult babies who have never known a life where someone wasn't there to cater to their every whim and who have no idea how to function.

All I really expect from a roommate is that they don't destroy things, they replace what they use, and they clean sometimes. My fail rate on this is 100%, whether I'm confrontational, avoidant, I talk to them IRL, I leave them notes, etc.

Trying to confront them usually has one of two results, or a twofer: they either pretend they don't understand English, or they act like what I said is the most incredible, unbelievable thing they've ever heard. When I asked my roommate to close the door when he comes home at 3 AM, I got response #2, and he was very surprised that I would ask such a thing. Usually when I bring up the common-use items, roommates will assure me they'll pay me back, but then they never do.

The obvious solution, then, is to just keep everything in my room somewhere, but I'm not especially interested in trying to fit things in a space where there is already no room (my "desk" is a hospital tray... and I still have to turn to the side in order to get to my door and out of the room), nor am I interested in the subtle escalation of it. If everything I pay for suddenly disappears, it'll be taken as aggression. It's something I've tried before, and it didn't end well.

I also once trusted a roommate with something of mine, a library card, and they thanked me by keeping it until the day they moved out and racking up late fees for several months. Never again.

The day I can live by myself is the day my passive, daily stress levels drop by at least 80%. Having to deal with landlords sauntering in without notice, never having a say in who I live with, the people I'm forced to live with being basically feral little monsters... well, let's just say I don't enjoy it very much.

I normally don't rant this much about them, but this morning he woke me up at 5 AM while he did his monthly cleanup of his room. That's another thing this guy does: he just stacks garbage in his room, and then takes it out once per month if I'm lucky. It reeks. He doesn't even put the garbage in plastic bags. Just makes a big pile in his room of empty wrappers, bottles, etc. Then when he cleans it up, he doesn't put it in bags then either... he just takes it all outside to the trash piece by piece, and this takes HOURS. Opening and closing his door, walking back and forth in the hallway, again and again and again. This month he decided to do it before 5 AM. At least the smell will be better for a while.

I never in your position before, the one that stay with me usually a friend that I know. When they don't have money to buy cigs, I buy it for them but they need to take the motorcycle and go to the market. When they get a debt, if they don't pay the initial they will not ask for more, if not I will say the truth sincerely, it makes them ashamed.

There are several occasion that I stay with stranger, once we got a room for 4 people, and I'm the fourth and new one, it was in student dormitory. But there are no meaningful confrontation.

In your situation, I don't know. If someone have no shame they can do whatever they like. Perhaps it sound conditional, but good people should have a concept of pay back, you know Syns, pay-back kindness with kindness, politeness with politeness, help with another helping hand, you got money I got feet, I got hand you cover part of our bills. Maybe Yung not agree with me in this, but this "trade" is important, we need to know our place so do our friend, if not we ask them politely to go to their place.

But if they cannot communicate with common sense, instead trying to be aggressive I still don't know how to deal with this people maturely. Because I'm someone who cannot express myself quite good verbally this becomes worst when I'm emotionally agitated, mostly I try to avoid them but if we are in the same neighborhood, house or office and I stuck with them, the way I sort thing can be quite stupid but until now I'm still lucky that it's not escalated to a huge problem.

edit: Focus your mind on working, get some saving, and rent your own studio (one room) apartment.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Focus your mind on working, get some saving, and rent your own studio (one room) apartment.

Unfortunately, Synsensa lives in a city where a falling-apart dump can cost at least $1 million. That means that even though every province has landlord/tenant rules that say landlords cannot enter suites without notice or cause (an emergency would be a valid reason to enter without 24 hours notice, as would the tenant's verbal permission), landlords who don't like that can make life miserable for a tenant because they know the tenant doesn't have a realistic chance of finding anything better.

 

[H4run]

Unfortunately, Synsensa lives in a city where a falling-apart dump can cost at least $1 million. That means that even though every province has landlord/tenant rules that say landlords cannot enter suites without notice or cause (an emergency would be a valid reason to enter without 24 hours notice, as would the tenant's verbal permission), landlords who don't like that can make life miserable for a tenant because they know the tenant doesn't have a realistic chance of finding anything better.

How much is rent per month in Canada for 1 room apartment? Last time I try research fellowship in Oxford England (I was not admitted-it's fierce competition) and at that time with my student stipend IIRC around 2000 or 3000 pound monthly I can rent quite a nice house in the neighborhood, and I think "hey living aboard is quite nice actually!". (edit it was around 2014)

Now Syns got two problem, his egoistic landlord and baby-like (whom he cannot escape) roommate, but with one room apartment he got only one problem, that is landlord problem. I really hope he get a chance to stay in one room apartment if he can save some money and be patient and lay low for-a-while-so no more roommate.

This is very strange, so how about you are married but you cannot afford a house currently, you can only rent a humble decent house, you can share rent with your wife can't you?

 

[Synobun]

How much is rent per month in Canada for 1 room apartment?

Depends where you are. I live in Vancouver. We don't really have studios here; we have more in the realm of "micro suites," where you get a single room with maybe a hot plate and mini fridge and then share a communal bathroom with an entire floor of people. Like a motel, except worse. These start at around $700/mo and are typically near the DTES, which is where the city puts all its undesirables.

Studios are few and far between. They're usually small DIY suites inside a landlord's home. When they're available, they're around $750 to $800/mo.

One-bedroom apartments that are in someone's home start at $1100/mo.

One-bedroom apartments that are actual apartments and managed by a company start at $1400/mo.

I make less than $700/mo.

 

[H4run]

Depends where you are. I live in Vancouver. We don't really have studios here; we have more in the realm of "micro suites," where you get a single room with maybe a hot plate and mini fridge and then share a communal bathroom with an entire floor of people. Like a motel, except worse. These start at around $700/mo and are typically near the DTES, which is where the city puts all its undesirables.

Studios are few and far between. They're usually small DIY suites inside a landlord's home. When they're available, they're around $750 to $800/mo.

One-bedroom apartments that are in someone's home start at $1100/mo.

One-bedroom apartments that are actual apartments and managed by a company start at $1400/mo.

I make less than $700/mo.

Back in Turkey people put ad to search for a roommate, or friends join together to pay for a house or apartment. I'm sure you already try this also but there must be a reason that this also not working.

Stuck with someone sucks is inevitable, you got your own-house with family like me, but you stuck with someone that you not necessarily like in the office-in the past now everything is good. Sometime confrontation makes matter worst, just lay low makes everything smooth with politeness until time and opportunity fix everything.

But whenever you need ears, mine is yours.

 

[Takhisis]

Oh No! Killer Bees are coming!

 

[Ajidica]

Depends where you are. I live in Vancouver. We don't really have studios here; we have more in the realm of "micro suites," where you get a single room with maybe a hot plate and mini fridge and then share a communal bathroom with an entire floor of people. Like a motel, except worse. These start at around $700/mo and are typically near the DTES, which is where the city puts all its undesirables.

Studios are few and far between. They're usually small DIY suites inside a landlord's home. When they're available, they're around $750 to $800/mo.

One-bedroom apartments that are in someone's home start at $1100/mo.

One-bedroom apartments that are actual apartments and managed by a company start at $1400/mo.

I make less than $700/mo.

If you don't mind me asking, is there any reason you live in Vancouver? From your posts it doesn't sound like Vancouver's social support services are all that great and I don't believe you have any strong connections to the city. Given you work entirely over the internet, is there a reason you can't move somewhere with much cheaper rent?