Baby-bust in rural areas world-wide

It was notable as I looked through various "Village life" type videos on Youtube that rural areas are aging. It is difficult to find videos of young families working in agriculture. Nepal may be an exception.

Picture by Steven Hanks

Young people move to cities. Young people are the ones who make the babies.

At least two more children off-screen. One is an infant and other is an older daughter "watching" the infant. Carpathian mountains, planting potatoes.

The four steps to "crashing" the population is to first introduce the young woman to refrigeration so she does not need to go shopping every day.

The second step is to provide contraception services/sterilization. 

The third step is to provide her with a TV or smartphone so she become envious and to desire "things".

The last step is to get the young women deeply into debt so they have no choice but to go to work. "I owe, I owe, so off to work I go". They are trapped economically. They cannot afford daycare. They cannot afford to lose the paycheck.

Another painting by Hanks

There is a lot to chew on. Women captured the education industry with most guidance counselors expected to have advanced degrees. Many teachers chose career over kids. It is human nature to present our own, personal choices as optimal and other choices as "inferior". Kids are impressionable.

Half of the US population lives in the red counties

Cities originated due to geographic advantage. It could be a harbor or the confluence of several rivers. It could be a navigable river next to a broad, fertile prairie or an oasis in a desert.

Then, cities were the logical place to put factories because that is where the labor was and where non-native resources funneled through.

In the post-industrial age, are there any compelling geographical reasons for Detroit existing at its current location? How much economic support does a tunnel and a bridge to Canada provide? Detroit is a legacy city that COULD support 40k people (about the size of Jackson, Michigan)  based on the current economy as it interacts with geography.

Turkey. Cultivating sweet potatoes. The youngest "kid" is at least 40.

Some pictures

 

Our last jar of 2024 apple sauce

If you think ahead you can lay down some supports to keep the log off the ground. That makes it easier to buck-up into more manageable lengths.

48" lengths

Looking up the log from the butt-end. Please don't tell Mrs ERJ that I am posting pictures of butts on the internet.

Diameter at the 8' mark

Diameter at the 16' mark

Diameter at the 24' mark. A major side-branch left the main stem shortly below this point.

Diameter at the 32' mark.

Three dead, standing trees circled in red. They will have to wait.

Presented without comment

 

How long to "reinvent" yourself?

Back in the pop-psychology days of the mid 1970s, it was sometimes claimed that every cell in your body replaced itself in seven years. That "factoid" was used as the launching point for insisting that we have the ability to recreate ourselves every seven years from a clean sheet of paper.

I got to wondering about the veracity of the "...replaced itself every seven years..." factoid.

It varies by organ and by age  Source

Intestinal linings: Every 5-to-10 days

Taste buds: Every two weeks

Skin cells: Three weeks 

Lung tissue: Every two or three months

Joe notes: Cells that interface with the environment get replaced more often than cells that are complete surrounded by the immune system. 

Liver: Every 1.5 years with some types of cells turning over every five months

Kidney cells: Years 

Bones: Every 10 years

Skeletal Muscles: Life-time with the option to "recruit additional muscle cells" from a pool of satellite cells. 

Heart muscle cells: Decades

Central nervous system: Life-time with very limited regeneration. 

It is worth noting that if it takes your bones ten years to completely replace themselves then more than half of them will be "new" in seven years.

So...if you had to pick one number "seven years" is not a bad guess. And while you can quibble that our brains (CSN) define us and "it doesn't change",  I would counter with the fact that our brains constantly reprogram without liveware updates. They are designed to change without new hardware.

*A reference to a recent post by John Wilder on his blog. 

 

Shirley, Goodness and Mercy*...

 

I estimate that this pile of wood and the three in the sled will be in the neighborhood of 300 pounds of wood once it is dried.

Another day in paradise; my sled over-floweth.

I had to take a break in the afternoon. Our air temperatures hit 35F.

The next tree on the docket is pretty good size. It is a Black Locust with a +12" diameter stump. I am cutting the trees that are leaning away from the power lines first. I am leaving one large, well-situated tree to use as an anchor-point for the rope puller. My back-of-envelope calcs suggest a center-of-gravity about 15' up, 600 pounds of wood and the C-of-G about a foot offset from the center of the stump for the biggest trees leaning toward the power wires.

One option would be to cut the hinge so the tree falls parallel to the wires. Another option is to fight gravity and convince them to fall away from the wires. The third option is a hybrid, anchor to a tree and cut the hinge so the tree falls diagonally, away from the lines. Then if things go to heck the geometry is still in my favor.

That means that about 80 pounds of tension in the rope will be required if I attach the end of the rope to the tree 8' above the cut. Since I am a firm believer in over-kill**, 200 pounds should do the trick. Using wedges would require about 1200 pounds of upward-force to overcome the "moment".

200 pounds of tension for a device advertised as capable of 3000 pounds seems very doable. 

*Shirley, Goodness and Mercy are the Guardian Angels of wood-cutters. 

**A gust of wind can raise havoc with precise calculations.

When it doubt,
Make it stout,
Of stuff you know
A lot about! 

Fifty "Collectables" that are now worthless

Combed from an article by Rose Reilly.

If you find joy with these items, then they are not worthless. However, the fact that they give you satisfaction does NOT translate into their being able to command high prices on the resale market.

• Ty Beanie Babies
• The Majority Of Vinyl Records
• Norman Rockwell Collector Plates 
• Pez Dispensers
• Pandora Charms
• Newer Star Wars Toys
• Royal Family Memorabilia
• New Comic Books
• Stamps
• Pogs
• Antique Silverware 
• Porcelain Dolls
• Model Train Sets 
• Barbie Dolls
• Vintage Playboy Magazines
• Precious Moments
• Cabbage Patch Kids
• Baseball Cards
• Funko Figurines
• Hummel Figurines
• Franklin Mint Collectibles 
• Vintage Band T-Shirts
• Film Cameras
• VHS And DVD Collections
• Morgan Dollars
• Indian Head Pennies
• Happy Meal Toys
• "Brown" Furniture
• Children's Books
• Vintage College Pennants
• Hot Wheels
• Autographed Sports Memorabilia
• Cookie Jars
• Souvenir Bells
• Salt And Pepper Shakers
• Old Playbills
• Thomas Kinkade Collectibles
• Hess Trucks
• License Plates
• Vintage Pins
• Vintage College Clothing
• Wheat Pennies
• Costume Jewelry
• Farm Tools
• Unremarkable Vintage Clothing
• Disney VHS Tapes
• Pokémon Cards
• Old Newspapers
• iPods And Other MP3 Players
• Patchwork Quilts 

Some commonalities:

The medium is not archival-durable. Beanie Babies? Get real. VHS tapes, nearly everything made of fabric. Anything made of wood-pulp paper.

The items were mass produced by the millions or billions. Hummel figurines were stamped out like pop-bottle caps. McDonalds Happy Meal Toys even more-so. Coins. Hot Wheels. They don't have the artistic detail or rarity to appreciate in value.

Many of them were sold (new) by hucksters at inflated prices. The hucksters sold them as speculative, profit generating vehicles. "It doesn't matter that I am charging you five-times what they are worth because they will be worth even more tomorrow."

Many of them had little intrinsic, underlying function. They were ornamental/dust-collectors. Cameras, farm tools, quilts, vintage clothing, "brown" furniture and MP3 players are exceptions to that.

Many of them "created rarity" by proliferating variants. Beanie Babies and (vanity) license plates being prime examples.

Of the items like coins and stamps, the market-makers create a market with extreme concave-up quality/price characteristics. They can sell you a coin as super-duper extra minty prime good in 2015 and then grade it as super-duper extra minty good in 2026 when you sell the exact same coin back to them and you will lose money even though prices relentlessly rose in the intervening 11 years.

Another factor that comes into play with stamps and coins is that many collectors will sell a "lot" of their collection when they need some money. The market-maker only needs to mark down the quality of one high-value items to low-ball the entire bid. Of course, the market-maker marks up the quality of that item when he resells it. 

To quote Ken (Stan) Howell, the wine expert at Michigan State University in the 70s and 80s "A good wine is any wine you enjoy." If an item gives you joy, it is good. But don't spend your hard-earned money on something that gives you fleeting joy just because a "market-maker" tells you it is guaranteed to make you a fortune.

I am in favor of buying out-of-fashion items that provide solid utility to the user when the price is right. But buy them for their utility and personal, sentimental value. Don't expect to make a fortune on your collection of Harmony House, Sage Green china. Buy it because that is the pattern that Grandma had and it brings back very fond memories.

And it may come to pass that your solid oak and sugar maple, vintage furniture will still be soldiering on while four generations of disposable, minimalists, IKEA, tropical-hardwood, press-board vundar-furniture has been sent to the landfill. 

Hat-tip to Lucas Machias the tireless. 

Giving the devil her due

An entertainer named Bili Eyelash (give or take a few letters) made a stir when she claimed that "nobody is illegal when we are living on stolen land".

Completely apart from her embrace of the bubbleheaded, thoughtless slogan, Mz Eyelash did donate about 20% of her net worth to fund food security in under-served areas. That degree of putting your own money behind your mouth impresses me, even though I realize that most of the benefit will be distorted and skimmed before it hits the people who need it unless there is very aggressive bird-dogging of the execution.

At another level, Mz Eyelash might be starting to get a grip on the fact that the zealots are driven by envy. No amount of slogan chanting or donations will be enough to satisfy them. They want to humiliate those who have done better than they did, whether by effort or talent or luck or avoidance of mind-altering substances (most likely at least three-of-the-four).

The zealots ALWAYS eat their own. 

Finally, the entire concept of "stolen" presupposes a modern understanding of "private property". My perception of Native Americans is that were largely nomadic and followed the resources as they clocked through the season. If another family or tribe got to the rapids where it was easiest to spear fish, then it was that family's for the duration. The family/tribe that was johnny-come-lately would then move to the second or third choice.