That’s pretty much how I thought it might go. Like, it sounds good in principle, but for one reason or another, they’re people banks won’t lend money to for profit. I’d have to think it’s just inherently more risky. If one can afford to bet on people and accept the risk, I think it’s great some people can get help and hopefully improve their situations.

I like donating local as I can see the people, and in my case, wildlife, that is being helped, and I can also see exactly what their needs are and how they’re being filled. It gives me complete confidence where my donations are going, and that makes me happy with knowing I’ll never see any of that money come back my way.

Like any other investing, one just needs to determine their risk acceptance and have a clear idea what they expect to get out of it.

There are things like microloans you can participate in where you loan very small businesses money to get them off the ground or stay funded for another month and what not.

I don’t believe you make money, so I don’t know if that is considered an investment in that regard, but you are investing in individuals and their communities.

I searched quickly and Kiva looks like it can give you an idea how microloans work. I have no experience with them, I just know this type of program exists.

Alternatively, fund and/or participate in a local charity. I volunteer time and give a humble donation to my local wildlife rescue, but you could also donate or work at your local food pantry, women’s shelter, Food Not Bombs, etc. Again, no money back, but it’s investing in your community and you can see “dividends” from that.

Any investment where you get more money back than when you started has strings attached, so that’s an ethical consideration.

Tons of them. Just today I taught one person about bird biology in regards to feather replacement and another I am helping prepare their family farm to hopefully host a barn owl nest we desperately need in our state.

It is also due to the great conversations I had here with people everyday that encouraged me to get involved with wildlife rehabilitation 2 years ago and it’s been one of the greatest adventures in my life. Everyone has been so supportive and has helped me develop my knowledge by asking great questions and sharing their enthusiasm with me about so many beautiful animals.

I’ve also participated in some political threads when the events were local and I’d been able to add nuance to the conversation. The trick is to just read the room and see if the thread is already trending hostile and just learn who is here to be combative vs to have real discussions.

I also just try to not be a jerk myself. I said something yesterday that got a more outspoken communists a bit insulated and I explained what my point of the original comment was a bit better and they calmed down when they saw I wasn’t being insulting to their beliefs.

I just use the same guidelines for conversation I would in real life here, and almost all my interactions here are positive ones.

It wasn’t specifically intended as the typical anti-communist shot many comments here normally are. More just a general “be careful who you invite in, Poland” as I don’t feel cozying up to Trump and the US military is in any country’s best interest.

While communism isn’t for me, at least not in any way I’ve seen it play out, I do believe Marx got a lot right about capitalism. I can think M-R wasn’t the best deal for Poland while also believing the US and much of the world was wrong for not being better allies to the Soviet Union. Some of us are capable of a little nuance every now and then.

I’m a guy, but much of my childhood was being raised by both my grandmothers who thankfully both lived close by, and for different reasons, they were always my main role models growing up.

Nowadays I volunteer with wildlife rescue and rehab. The field is something like 90-95% women, so you can find strong and amazing women doing every single role, from rescue and transport to all the medical and surgical positions to fundraising and finance. Everyone is there because they are very caring and kind, but also all fiercely self sufficient and dedicated to what they believe.

It’s so awesome and inspiring to be surrounded by so many that embody all the spirit that I saw from both my grandmother’s, and they are my current role models now as a guy in his 40s. Anyone of any age or gender could find things to admire from these ladies I’d say.

And as much as I don’t like having to look at the camera to back up, it does seem to have a wider FOV and the backup sensors see things even further out, and the rear end of cars are just so high and back windows are so small (I think these are now all this way for rear end crash and rollover reasons) that you just can’t see out the back like you could out of an older car. It’s pretty much just how it has to be with the safety requirements these days.

Careful, Poland!

1939: Molotov–Ribbentrop

2026: Trump–Putin

Yeah, that’s why I was fine being nice with him afterwards. Something must have clicked for him. It can take a lot to change.

It was a real head scratcher. The anger seemed like the performance. The improved version seemed more authentic. I always assumed I “earned his respect” or some macho nonsense like that.

I’m happy with the current rate of progress. As it is, I easily spend way more time than I probably should talking to people here almost exclusively about a very niche topic. I don’t need this place to be a be-all, end-all. I just come here to have nice conversations with whoever is around.

On a potentially positive note, they’ve done this before, to little success.

First term Trump attempted to sell off Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and they essentially had no serious takers. While the MAGAs give zero damns about the environment, anyone looking at these leases know how controversial they are. Groups like the National Audubon Society will sue to delay/deter resource extraction, and there will be public protests and other bad reactions.

Also, as pointed out in this article, financiers also know that despite having a permission slip signed, getting those resources out of the ground is not going to be popular, and they will not put up the money to do anything with those leases.

In the first lease auction on December 26, the Trump administration did sell some leases, but many environmentalists see this auction as insignificant since there was inadequate interest from oil companies.

Only three bids were placed in the first auction, paying around $14.4 million, or about $27 per acre, compared to the total $1 billion in lease sales projected by the BLM.

Most oil companies were not interested because they knew that they would be developing a lease in a wildlife refuge, and so many banks have refused to offer financial and public assistance for the project.

In Canada, more than 30 groups have joined the Arctic Refuge Defence Campaign, a coalition dedicated to protecting the refuge that provides breeding habitat to polar bears, migratory birds, and the 100,000 animals of the Porcupine Caribou Herd that Canada shares with the United States.

The State of Alaska purchased most of the leases sold on December 26 through the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, with only two private companies securing tracts of land.

The reason they will continue to offer these leases, despite them not likely to be taken seriously, is the goverment still makes money off the leases even if no resources are extracted. It’s free money for them.

“Today’s sale reflects the brutal economic realities the oil and gas industry continues to face after the unprecedented events of 2020, coupled with ongoing regulatory uncertainty,” she said in a statement.

The lease sale raised a total of $14.4 million in bids, according to the Bureau of Land Management, the federal agency that held the sale. Nearly all of that came from Alaska’s state-owned economic development corporation, the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority.

Half of the cash will go to the federal government, and half will go back to the state of Alaska.

The amount raised is nowhere near what was projected when a Republican-led Congress officially opened the coastal plain to drilling in 2017 as part of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. The bill ordered two lease sales, the first by the end of this year, with the revenue aimed at offsetting massive tax cuts.

Despite the lack of industry interest, Alaska’s Congressional delegation applauded the sale on Wednesday, and so did officials with the Bureau of Land Management, describing it as historic and a success.

Gov lines some pockets, they get to tell the Drill, Baby, Drill chuds “mission accomplished”, and the only companies that bought the leases where fly by night nobodies that have never drilled for oil anywhere.

So it still sucks they’re trying this. We still need to fight to stop it. But it’s far from a done deal, goodbye environment, and we shouldn’t let it deter us from trying to save our environment.

I worked in a Sear Hardware one summer during college. There was a loudmouthed old man that started coming in maybe once a week to buy one or 2 small things, and would make a scene over prices each time with whichever cashier he got. I don’t recall if people gave him a discount or if he just liked the attention or what. Then he made the mistake of seeing me at customer service one day.

He started going off about he could go down the street to Lowes or whatever and get his drill bit set for $3 cheaper or whatever it was. In a polite and professional but firm way I told him: I see you come in here and every time you harass the cashiers and make a scene to where I have other customers apologizing for you. If you take your money to Lowes, me, my staff, and every other one of my customers will be better off and you can save your $3 so we all win.

I don’t remember if he bought anything that day or not. What I do remember is that I did see him back repeatedly after that. He would greet me each time, as you entered past the service desk, and he’d usually come to me to check out and be very friendly and cordial. Never a grumpy peep out of him for the rest of the summer I worked there.

Not sure what changed his mood exactly, if it was just I was the only guy working up front, or if it was just someone finally telling him to cut the crap, but I hope that positive change carried over to other places he patronized. Seemed a legitimately decent guy afterwards. I’m sure this is not the usual way this would have played out, but for the whole $6.50/hr I was making, I wasn’t much concerned, and I did handle him calmly and other customers told me they loved how I handled him professionally but sternly.

The picture is neat! It makes me think of SimCity.

I never heard of a yard jay and Google didn’t show me anything for that.

Stellars Jays are the ones I want to meet, but I’m on the wrong side of the country.

We’ve got to stop meeting like this tonight

Now people are poo-pooing the Burrowing Owl capital of the east?! 😄

Aww, I heard Cape Coral is meh, but I was disappointed I didn’t get a chance to head there when I was in Florida last year. They have a ton of easily accessible Burrowing Owl populations and they put a ton of effort into caring for them.

Thank goodness, I knew I couldn’t be alone in this! So much adult live content has people looking like trafficking victims or has things that are just way too aggressive or violent to seem fun to me. If people aren’t smiling or laughing, I got no interest. Sexy time should be fun, at least IMO.

I’ve always been curious about this kind of stuff also. Without any real data, I just stuck to what seemed to work for me.

I post at 6am EST, right when I’m done breakfast and getting ready to leave for work. That gives early risers here about 90 minutes before I get my laptop set up at work and can bang out the easy replies for the early group. Around lunch I’ll just be at the end of the Top 6 Hour scrollers for the US/Canada ppl and can knock out those questions and any harder morning questions during lunch. That’s about 90% of the interaction with my posts, and I have the afternoon and evening off from Lemmy other than my post prep.

I wish I got more overnight comments because I feel they’d be more folks from other parts of the world and they may ask different questions or share my local knowledge about things I know less about, but I’m not sure how many Asian users we have or anything like that.

Ah, there are owls everywhere! Even in the biggest cities to the hottest and coldest places, there’s some kind of owl that lives there. They have just had 60 million+ years to perfect being antisocial.

Lemmy is what got me to finally volunteer, so I will forever share all the joy it brings me.

I use Summit on mobile because the dev included all my feature requests, so it’s an app built for me, at least for the features I use. They’re a very active developer, and it will hopefully stick around for a long time. On a real computer, I just use the plain website. I do most of my stuff on mobile so I can save drafts. I prep most of my posts ahead of time and I tend to write long things.

I’ve stuck with lemmy.world because they’re big. I don’t want my stuff to just up and disappear one day. I’ve got a lot invested here, content wise, and the .world admin have been really nice to me in the handful of times I’ve interacted with them and they’ve supported me in my real life activities pertaining to wildlife.

I’m primarily here to post owl related educational content and animal rehab stories. It started out of curiosity and now thanks to regularly posting here, I became a rehab volunteer last year.

I’ll also post to news and politics posts if I feel I have something useful to add, but with world events getting worse, those communities get a bit too angry sometimes and I stay out.

When I don’t have owl questions to answer, I scroll by Top 6 Hours so there’s a chance people will still reply to my comments. I ignore the ragebait and find I still get juuuust enough content I don’t feel oversaturated.

It is her sole occupation so it does need to cover everything! Support the arts, people!