These are all farms outside of city limits of course, that way the energy companies can avoid the most local layer of government and just interact with the county/state level.

I’m honestly not sure how I feel about these projects. On one hand I don’t want to see fewer small farms, on the other I’m happy to see more solar and wind energy come online, plus if they’re looking at setting up solar/wind at the scale of acres upon acres of solar, their only options are either to take up existing farm land (which lets be real, only about 5% of is producing food that we eat) or to mow down all of the trees and natural growth on undeveloped land that folks keep for hunting, thereby taking away space from wildlife

Would also require an isolation switch to be effective. With a grid-tied solar install it’s going to dump all of the energy into the grid, and during a power outage that energy will simply not be collected.

I could see that becoming a thing where during a power outage you flip a switch near the electrical panel and then every green-colored outlet will run entirely off the solar panels when the sunlight is available. Or if we really want to make it technical solution, create special outlets that are dual power (grid and direct from solar) and then appliances plugged into these special outlets will switch between power sources as they’re available. Potentially some issues with two different AC circuits touching depending on how it’s implemented on the appliance side, but it could be a good solution especially if the controller can still backfeed excess energy production back into the grid

Goats aren’t incompatible with urban environments, especially if they’re only brought in to graze every month or so.

Goats are however incompativle with many solar deployments because they will climb up on top of the panels and cause trouble for no other reason than they can (goats are lovable assholes like that)

Solar has gotten so cheap to install that solar and wind contractors have been going around the farms around where I live and using high pressure sales and political tactics to buy up good farm land that’s been farmed for generations by small family farmers to instead setup solar panels. It’s been interesting watching the fight and reactions from the sidelines because there’s misinformation being thrown around by both the pro- and anti- solar factions (much more by the anti-solar faction of course) but there’s no avoiding that they bought out 2 family farms to do a particular solar project near me, so that’s two fewer small farms that will probably never return to growing crops

Only problem is many pasture animals are not compatible with agrovoltaics. Cows tends to rub on the supports and may chew any exposed wires, goats will find their way on top of the panels no matter what you do, pigs will chew on any exposed wire or insulation, and sheep, well they’re actually okay for agrovoltaics.

There’s the alternate approach of basically using solar panels as fences which might work better for some pastures. Ultimately agrovoltaics is one of those combinations of factors that is going to take time and experimentation to perfect

I learned this when I went hard into biking, I initially was trying to go for a ride every day but once I got to riding 20-40 minutes at a time the physical stress on my body of not taking rest days was starting to be felt so I started taking rest days. Now I’ll try to do one day of no riding immediately after a 20 mile ride, then one to two days of really light riding (only 4-6 miles) before even considering another long and hard ride. So far my record is 75 miles in a week!

For me the caffeine addiction was a big part of it and I couldn’t kick both the caffeine and sugar at the same time

I never was a soda drinker but I did pick up a nasty caffeine addition via overdrinking coffee when I was a young adult that I spent several years architecting my quit.

I spent about 2 years reducing how much coffee I drank each day until I was down to about 8oz of coffee a day, then I got a nasty stomach bug and went 3 days without drinking coffee because I wasn’t confident I could keep water down, and on the 4th day I decided “I’m already 3 days into quitting, so I’m already halfway through the week that the internet says it takes, so let’s just power through the last 4 days” it took more like 2-3 weeks to fully feel like I’d kicked the habit (and some of that time might have simply been relearning how to wake up in the morning rather than actual withdrawal symptoms)

Now I only drink really good coffees on rare occasions as a treat and struggle to drink more than a couple of ounces, but most importantly, I can get up, take a big gulp of water and get on with my day without having to spend 10 minutes with the coffee maker each morning (which with the amount of chaos kids introduce into just getting out the door in the morning is a ton of time saved and added flexibility!)

When I was reducing my coffee intake with the intent to quit one of the things I’d do is put a nice bottle of ice cold water right next to the coffee mug. Every time I’d go to reach for the coffee, I’d first redirect my hand to the water and drink that, then if I still really needed that coffee then I’d drink it.

This method alone was extremely effective at reducing my coffee intake, and I went from about 24oz of coffee a day down to about 8-10oz per day just with doing this. I also had the added bonus of drinking less sugary creamer and therefore getting my body used to a lot less sugar, so when I quit coffee completely I was already so used to water and drank so little sugar I basically switched to only drinking water

The important part is ice cold water. That sensational shock of the ice cold water makes it an easier transition

So I’ve had two things that kinda go hand in hand that have really made a big improvement in my quality of life:

1. I started working out. During the pandemic lockdowns I picked up a basic fitness routine called Hybrid Calisthenics (they no longer list the basic 5 day routine I was doing but still brilliant explainers on that site for starting a new routine!), and went from struggling to lift 50lbs to being able to perform my first pullups ever. I changed jobs and lost my time for workouts but then I went and took my old bike for a tuneup to start riding it again with the goal of biking my kids to/from school and immediately realized how out of shape I was, so that became my new goal (and I rapidly fell in love with cycling) then I saw an ad for a 4th of July 5k and went “oh that’s like a quarter of how far I ride my bike I should totally do that!” And now I run 5ks too! The old me could never do that and would never have dreamed of doing any of these things but now I have races to look forwards to!

2. I’ve started a long term process of reducing my screen time. I’ve noticed how no matter what I’m doing with screens it just isn’t making me happy and everything off screen gets neglected. So I’ve started focusing more on trying to pick up more hobbies to do with my hands. I’ve started building a model railroad, I’ve been reading a ton of books (I think about a couple dozen books or more in just the last 12 months) and not spending as much time soaking in news and doomer takes on the internet has greatly helped me be a much happier and more realistic person. This one’s an ongoing struggle though. The screens are right there and offer so much momentary entertainment (such is why I’m typing this right now) and doing stuff like drawing is really hard as my hands struggle to draw what I have in my head since I haven’t really drawn in a long time. My ultimate goal is a healthy balance of screen and non-screen time during my free time

Oh and a bonus item that I didn’t even think of initially: going back to college. A few years ago I decided to go back to college at the worst possible time. I had a baby on the way and was working full time, but I made it work. Even when my wife had to quit her job and I was the sole income while going to school full time, I threw all of my irons into the fire, pumped the bellows as hard as they’d go and worked myself to the brink of burnout and got a degree, immediately landed a job paying twice what I was making before with way better benefits and coworkers, a super chill work environment and through an insane series of events I now only work about 30 hours a week fully remotely and make enough money that not only can my wife be a stay at home mom but I could afford to go on my first international trip last month and have 2 more (much smaller in scope!) trips planned for this year still. I seriously never thought I’d be able to realistically afford intercontinental travel before, and now it might well be a thing we do every year or two!

Internal combustion engine cars don’t consume gas at a constant rate. You can think of it like as you press the gas pedal you’re making the fireman on a steam engine shovel more coal into the fire. The harder you press on the pedal the faster the fireman is grabbing shovelfuls of coal and tossing it into the fire, and the harder that engine has to work. The more the car can just coast with just a tiny bit of fuel tossed in to maintain speed, the less fuel goes into the fire.

A relaxed driving style where you slowly accelerate, brake gently, and don’t speed/change lanes a lot means a lot less time pressing hard on the gas pedal and a lot less time burning lots of fuel. Also gentler braking will mean less wear on your brakes and tires so they may last a bit longer (tires and brakes are wear items that need to be replaced regularly, but the frequency is impacted by your driving style)

Such a relaxed driving style is also much safer because it gives you and other drivers more time to react and it’s more predictable to all road users

I realized recently I do envelope budgeting except by flinging money between different bank accounts instead of any normal and sane method of doing so. On the upside, I have enough money earmarked for computer upgrades to upgrade every computer in my house, but none of them really need it and I don’t want to pay AI bubble prices so I’m just letting that cash stack grow for now

I’ve realized for myself, the social media platform itself can make a difference. Lemmy with the clear direct replies makes it much too easy to get into a direct back and forth, whereas on Mastodon it’s way harder

But also, finding things to do with my time offline has helped immensely in breaking some of those nasty feedback loops that digital stuff is designed to sink people into