Wassup growers this is James Prigioni comin at cha live from Jersey. Today we’re going to talk about micorisal fungi and what it can do for your seed starts.
Man I love gardening YouTube. James Prigioni is a nut. I love the way he says “Tuck and I decided to try and grow these tomatoes…” Tuck is his dog. Did Tuck have a hand in deciding to grow those tomatoes on top of buried bananas? I feel like Tuck would have just eaten the bananas were it up to him.
Real character, James Prigioni. Surprised some gardening reality show hasn’t snapped him up.
Speaking of which, what ever happened to the reality show starring Tim Allen and famed DIY Youtuber April Wilkerson? I was half-heartedly hoping to watch that. April Wilkerson has real Annette Bening in American Beauty energy it is really pretty awesome. That woman is the boss.
An old friend from Fairbanks died last night. We were pretty close for, like, one season. We had very little in common, he was dating a friend of my sister’s, my sister and him were closer, I think. The circumstances were murky, cops maybe involved. On my trips home of late I’d heard he’d become a business magnate of sorts, owned some old hallowed Fairbanks institutions. He was also always a bit of a hoodlum, maybe. Hard to tell. Criminal gone legit with a heart of gold sort of thing, though was he ever a criminal, did he ever have a heart of gold or did that gorgeous baby face take him far.
Hearing the news after making that little comment about make friends long gone hit kinda hard yesterday.
Sail on, Nate. You had your demons, but I absolutely know you will be missed by a lot of people. Lot of people cared about you.
Ho hum someone you once cared about died time to make the donuts gotta keep going keep writing keep living keep working keep parenting what is the point of stopping to think about it too much and dwelling on mortality, nope nope nope. Nate you will live on in our hearts and the pain will fade but the memories will remain and sometimes we need these things to break through the crust of the now and the crust of whatever religion or substance with which we maintain balance, break through that crust to the soft interior all but the most pure and touched of us shield from the outside.
Read more of the Amazon antitrust case last night. They are defining two markets in which Amazon is operating as a monopolist: the fulfillment market, which makes a lot of sense, and the “Online Superstore Market,” which… um… okay. I mean, after I read more of their reasoning on this I think it makes some sense, but I’ve never heard this before: in my mind there is the brick-and-mortar market and the online market. I wonder why they didn’t just go for the online market. Or I guess the online non-perishable goods market. I wonder what giant retailer they are carving out by defining it as the “Online Superstore Market.”
Also the amount of redacting is really pretty insane. They redact things like “in one study it was found that Marketplace accounts for XXX% of all of Amazon’s revenue.” I mean, if this was a study, and that study was published, why redact the number you can get elsewhere? It is really weird. I don’t understand this.
Through all of this, though, reading the thing just feels like common sense. Yes, of course Amazon has gotten enshittified. And yes, of course wholesalers are held hostage to it, and if you’re not in the “buy box” you’re screwed, and man I didn’t realize the cost of my prime membership has doubled over the years they really boil the frog with that one.
Anyway, Amazon sucks and we are all stuck with it. I mean, I suppose could quit amazon, somehow. Ignoring the streaming channel, just looking at my cart, the things in it are… let’s see. The first one I could def buy at a hardware store and actually plan to. Oh god, that’s a whole other thing, I use my Amazon cart as a notebook, really, because where else can I easily maintain a list of obscure stuff I need. Second one might be at Home Depot or something. Def. not the local hardware store. Third one, yeah, no, I doubt there’s anywhere in the Triangle to get it. I could find some online specialty retailer, but I guarantee their site would look janky and terrifying and I’m only gonna need one thing from this whole industry and I’d have to spend, like, four hours figuring out where to buy it from. The third thing I could probably get from, like, REI, but nowhere else locally. Fourth thing definitely not available locally. Same with the fifth thing, maybe some specialized online retailer with concerns of shadiness.
Blah blah blah it sucks we are trapped. And, of course, even if I spent all that time on the research — maybe 6-8 hours just for the things in my cart at this moment — we’re looking at, oh, an extra $100 or so, easy, on shipping. I know this because I buy all my records not on Amazon and even with media mail you’re often paying, like, $10 for shipping it is insane. Shipping is so expensive.
Well this all sounds pretty bleak today. It has been a hard week. It will be a hard week next week. But I am alive. Sometimes the hardness of a week is so much that you cant mope and you gotta just act, do things to get through it. I am often my most depressed when I have a little bit to do. I can rock nothing to do, that shit rules. I can rock too much to do. I cannot really handle just a little bit. Which is why I front load my days. Get ‘em started right.
Jane bedtime really was fantastic last night. She whined a lot to mommy all afternoon after school but we went out and got burgers and then walked around Southern Village so she could parkour then came home and did bedtime and it was all splendiferous. She wrote me that cute note up above and she was just so happy during bed party and dance party. She named the push-on-the-arm-with-the-legs game but honestly I think she was phoning it in when she named it:
The push game.
Here we have a W Hotel Lobby in a Better, Alternate Universe playlist for you. Man I really need to set foot in a W Hotel this decade to see how their playlists are doing. But luckily some of you have sent me W Hotel lobby recordings so I’m pretty sure I’m still on point here.
Have a lovely Thursday. May your burdens be ever shared.