Higgenbotham's Dark Age Hovel

[spottybrowncow]

Thank you, Higgy.

I follow the archdruid sporadically, but I always respect his opinions.
This was really interesting, although I'm not sure I (or he) got any solid answers.

I still contend that the Socratic ideal is the ultimate guide for living one's life (earthly life, Jesus Christ notwithstanding). While opinions may vary on the interpretation of this, my take is "Never let anyone convince you that something is true, unless it is apparent to you upon examination of the available evidence that it is so." That has never failed me.

[Higgenbotham]

Thank you, Higgy.

I follow the archdruid sporadically, but I always respect his opinions.
This was really interesting, although I'm not sure I (or he) got any solid answers.

I still contend that the Socratic ideal is the ultimate guide for living one's life (earthly life, Jesus Christ notwithstanding). While opinions may vary on the interpretation of this, my take is "Never let anyone convince you that something is true, unless it is apparent to you upon examination of the available evidence that it is so." That has never failed me.

I heard a story recently about Trump Derangement Syndrome which I will repeat as it was written to me. My sister has some conservative neighbors who have (had?) one liberal son (only child) who worked for NASA. They had some kind of falling out, not sure what it was about, and the son and his first wife would not allow the parents to see their 3 grandkids for 14 years. The son got divorced and remarried, also got a different high paying job with a private company. His new wife is a very high paid nurse who has 3 kids of her own, all autistic. I'm just telling this as it was sent to me in texts. At this point the parents and the son reconnected. They went to visit the son and his new wife over Memorial Day. They brought gifts for the kids and the conservative mother commented to her son that Trump's parents' names are Mary and Joseph. The son then shouted you mean the Antichrist. The mother took a breath and quietly said, well, we don't really think of him like that (I'm just repeating this exactly as it was sent to me). Then the son, in front of all 6 kids, screams twice, this is my FUCKING house. The conservative father then said we should go. The son repeated once again this is my fucking house. The conservative mother started to cry. The new nurse wife then went over to her husband (the son) and was rubbing his face. She said don't touch my husband. The conservative father then got on speaker with his wife to my sister's neighbor to tell her that they were coming home early (the neighbor was taking care of the cats).

[spottybrowncow]

Higgy,

That's so very sad - but also fascinating, if you're interested in psychopathology.
Something really powerful and really weird is going on in these people. I'm sure some mental health professional somewhere knows exactly what it is, but I've never been able to find a truly satisfactory explanation.

[aeden]

https://ponerology.substack.com/p/logoc ... rology-the

I think H and few also already own and read this here.

Sat Dec 06, 2014 6:27 pm
http://ponerology.com/evil_2a.html
Plato was almost correct.

We are now dealing with level extra evil stupid.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUmKUWzbDxg

[spottybrowncow]

Thanks, Aeden. I have the original (2007) version of that book somewhere, you're motivating me to read it.

[Higgenbotham]

But what I can say is that there seem to be indications, despite the natural tendency of people affected by the weather to complain about it, that growing food has become more difficult. There's been news that that is happening with tomatoes, coffee and cocoa on a worldwide basis now. I'm working hard to make adaptations to that, to become resilient to weather extremes in both temperature and precipitation. My goal in designing these pits was to be able to handle a 4 inch or so 12 hour or so rain without flooding them and to hold that water for the dry periods. Also to be able to carry a heat resistant tomato variety through 95 degree heat and still produce. We should see some tests of that in the next 4 months and I'll talk about it once these extremes are seen.

There was a test of precipitation extremes over about a 16 hour period ending this morning. While there was flooding in the yard, the pits were able to absorb about 3 inches of rain without showing any standing water after the downpour ended. There's no rain in the 10 day forecast so this could be the heaviest downpour this year. Some future years will probably be worse but, now that this test has passed, it seems OK to expand the garden in the same way it has been done so far.

Regarding the Texas flooding of the past few days. Since July is typically the driest month of the year (averaging about 2 inches of rain), I had set things up so the garden had adequate moisture to withstand the supposedly coming dry period while still leaving a buffer for (some) unexpected rain. When 5 inches of rain fell here, that was more than planned for and there was about half an inch of standing water in 2 areas yesterday. I had some dry grass on hand and put it in those areas to absorb the water. That didn't do much, though, because it was still saturated underneath (at the time it was too wet to dig down and find out to what extent in the areas that had no standing water). As of now, 24 hours later, water can still be seen when digging down to a depth of 9-12 inches. That might be OK if there is no more heavy rain; seems borderline to me.

The photos up above are from May 6.

The plants look good except one in the area that had standing water. As the soil improves, it will be better able to withstand heavy rain.



I've been harvesting about 3 pounds of tomatoes per day the past few weeks.

[FullMoon]

Be safe and the flooding seems scary being far away from there. I stayed on vacation once where a flash flood warning went into effect on very short notice and it was both scary and good that we knew something could be coming. I've seen reports that no notice or minimal impact level notice was given in your State of Texas and that was potentially a reason why there were many people and belongings swept away. What information do you have regarding this?

[Higgenbotham]

Be safe and the flooding seems scary being far away from there. I stayed on vacation once where a flash flood warning went into effect on very short notice and it was both scary and good that we knew something could be coming. I've seen reports that no notice or minimal impact level notice was given in your State of Texas and that was potentially a reason why there were many people and belongings swept away. What information do you have regarding this?

We get frequent flash flood warning notices. Most of them don't amount to anything. There was one for our area a few days ago warning of 5 to 11 inches of rain and we got nothing here. Then when it did rain, we were not warned, or I do not recall seeing any warning. There are occasional flash floods that happen almost every year. Most of the flash floods occur during the month of May. The only news I've paid attention to is the flash flood in Kerrville. I haven't seen it stated specifically, but my guess would be that the summer camp along the river has never seen a flash flood during July or August (edit - this is not correct - see below). Rainfall here is difficult to predict and can vary substantially even as little as a mile away. There are two USGS reporting stations I watch that are closest to this location and the rainfall amount for the past 7 days is several inches different between them.

A July 1987 flood of the Guadalupe River devastated Kerrville and other communities along the waterway.

https://www.texastribune.org/2025/07/05 ... ecast-nws/

According to our location National Weather Service office, the number of flash flood incidents from 1996-2020 South Central Texas in May was 498, that rises to 506 in June and down to 430 in July. These three months have the highest number of flash flood incidents in South Central Texas compared with any other month of the year.

https://www.kxan.com/weather/weather-bl ... eeks-away/