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"Yes, the kids a have lots of individually packages stuff for their lunches. Oreos, small bags of snacks, juice boxes"
- Note that this and restaurant food are not in line with your stated goal of eating healthy.
Generally the healthy food is pretty okay price wise: fruit and veggies, pulses, oats, healthy oils, low or no meat etc, basic stuff you prepare yourself.
LateStarter - See above for my argument that Bitcoin is already mainstream, especially that 1 in 6 adults have owned it.
My understanding is that the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve (SBR) is being setup using Bitcoin that "was forfeited", not new purchases. For example, when the FBI seizes Bitcoin used for illegal activity, from now on that Bitcoin will be transferred to the SBR rather than sold.
"The Strategic Bitcoin Reserve will be capitalized with bitcoin owned by the Department of Treasury that was forfeited as part of criminal or civil asset forfeiture proceedings. Other agencies will evaluate their legal authority to transfer any bitcoin owned by those agencies to the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve."
https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/03/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-establishes-the-strategic-bitcoin-reserve-and-u-s-digital-asset-stockpile/
This is really cool thanks for posting. I had a similar experience with our little solar setup. During covid my then 14 yr old son and I built a "portable" solar generator that we could use on the camper when we went dry camping. We also wanted to be able to use for things around the house as the camper spends most of its time in the back yard. Like you, we started small and just kept adding on.
I mean it is still small, but, we started out with 600W worth of panels and a charge controller that could handle that much. Now we doubled that to 1200W with 2 charge controllers. We started with 4 Interstate SRM4d RV batteries wired in parallel literally 500lbs of lead acid). Now that they have worn out, we upgraded to 2 LiFePo4 batteries a couple months ago before the big bad tariffs would kick in and they supposedly do 7.2KWH. 52lbs each so like 400lbs lighter on the camping gear. We are running all kinds of stuff. That battery upgrade has been huge it was $1600 all in for the batteries. I want to say it probably would have been triple that price 5 years ago. When it feels like the whole world and all the people in it have suddenly gone retrograde it is fun to see cool useful tech still following Moores law.
The charge controllers have a neat feature of keeping track of every drop of energy produced. It is funny the counter rolls over to 0 after producing a MWH kinda like the odometer on my old 1986 ford mustang would do that at 100k. We are coming up on 2MWH real soon. While kinda disheartening to look at all the money spend on equipment and realize power companies purchase a MWH of energy from each other for approximately $75-80 I still love it and it makes me smile. I think if I ever want to go bigger I need to scrap the "portable" idea and wire a switch into the panel box as right now I am capt extension cord.
As an aside, my aging father who is an old school wrench turning broken knuckle rural diesel guy bought a Renogy Lycan unit out of the blue. I was psyched to know he has this so he is not out slipping on the ice farting around with generators when the power goes out and it is -10 degrees and he's an hour away. He keeps it plugged in the wall and it is ready to go when needed. Our family had a real wakeup call a few years ago when an elderly member who still drove and was independent slipped on the ice in their driveway. Most likely froze to death overnight. Didn't have their phone on their person and the sheriff found her when he was driving past the house the next morning. Family had no idea had just seen her the night before.
At least you now have something to wave under the noses of people trying to get your kids to exercise in inappropriate conditions.This was put out by the Australian Institute of Sport (where our elite athletes train for things like the Olympic Games) after the 2019 - 2020 fires which sent smoke completely around the world.
https://www.ais.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0003/1111098/37016_Exercise-in-bushfire-smoke.pdf
Well, that's not making me feel any better.
PM 2.5 from 51 to 150 - Poor conditions for exercise
• It is highly recommended to complete prolonged high intensity endurance activities (e.g., rowing,
cycling, long-distance running) in a facility with better air quality
• Intermittent exercise (e.g., tennis, netball, beach volleyball, cricket) and power activities (e.g., sprint
training, javelin training, jump training, rugby skills training) represent less risk than prolonged high
intensity endurance activities. However, risk remains elevated above baseline and susceptible athletes
should have a current asthma management plan and relevant medications accessible during the session
• Non susceptible individuals may unexpectedly develop symptoms at these concentrations and should seek medical review early
PM 2.5 of over 150 - Hazardous to exercise outdoors
• All efforts should be made to reduce smoke exposure as much as is practical
• Reschedule events, relocate them indoors, shorten overall time outdoors etc.
• Where there is an intention to play organised high level sport and there are medical staff on site to advise,
these levels of pollution should trigger a discussion between medical staff and officials about the
advisability or otherwise of proceeding with the event.
Consecutive days of exposure to polluted air can have a cumulative effect, lowering an athlete’s threshold for symptoms. There is no research into the effects of repeated smoke exposure. This should be considered if your region has been exposed to increased smoke for several days in succession
Acute smoke exposure also results in dose dependent changes to the local immune cell presence in the lower respiratory tract. In patients admitted to an intensive care burns unit, bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) fluid demonstrated a shift towards a predominant neutrophil presence in those with worse smoke inhalation injury. (34) The normal macrophage percentage from BAL fluid is 95% and 0.7% for neutrophils. (35) Patients with a grade 0 (no injury) according to the Abbreviated Injury Score demonstrated 41% of neutrophils and 54% macrophages, compared to 94% neutrophils with 6% macrophages in the highest
severity grade 4 category (34) BAL neutrophilia is an indication of the acute inflammatory response caused by the bushfire smoke.
Similar, but lower magnitude changes have also been observed in young healthy firefighters who had a controlled exposure to woodfire smoke. After woodfire smoke exposure standardised at a PM 2.5 of 485ug/m 3 for two hours including a light cycling activity. Bronchoalveolar lavage was conducted 20 hours post intervention. A significant increase of absolute neutrophil percentage to above 8% (36) was observed. Moreover, when healthy participants were exposed to woodfire smoke at 224 ug/m3 for
3 hours with mild aerobic exercises, no changes to BAL cell counts 24 hours after exposure was observed. (37) It is possible that exposure at a level between these two exposure conditions is where healthy individuals begin to experience subclinical effects.
An absolute neutrophil percentage equal to or greater than 50% is generally considered diagnostically supportive of acute lung injury, aspiration pneumonia or suppurative infection. (38) The exposure studies noted above indicate the minimum exposure that
can initiate a localised neutrophilia is likely between 224 ug/m3 and 485 ug/m3, for 2-3 hours. (36, 37) Both studies (36, 38) reported there were no changes in pulmonary function, and a paucity of symptoms. Importantly, these studies were only a one-off exposure without an elevated background exposure. Currently there is no evidence regarding the time required to recover from a one-off exposure or compounding effects of repeating the exposure prior to recovery.
Long-term consequences of bushfire smoke exposure, and other sources of air pollution, are beyond the scope of this position statement.
In June of 2023 we had 21 of 30 days where readings were at or above the 'poor conditions for exercise' level. We were at PM2.5 reading of 75 or higher most of last week, and looks like we'll be in the 100 - 180 range for the rest of this week according to forecasts, with today, Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday going into hazardous territory.
Welp, with this current Trump Elon fight, I don't think the ACA subsidy thing will be in the spotlight for awhile. Big Beautiful Bill is pretty dead.You sure the big bogus bill is dead?
Repubs still are pretty receptive of it despite Musk's schizophrenia half now objecting to it
