MoonMelon

Oak are great. A lot of the understory in oak/hickory forest is now maple and tulip poplar due to shifting climate and possibly deer pressure. It's called mesophication.

My property is also oak/hickory complex and I can say anecdotally that the native understory has a lot of tulip poplar.

In my experience if you have access points for mice they will get in whether you have a suburban turf grass lawn or not, and a cat can't get them if they are in the walls or crawlspace. So the best bet is to seal up any holes and keep all vegetation, native or not, at least a couple of feet away from the house.

You're going to have ticks in the native area too, especially the marginal zones. They love those. Ticks are native, unfortunately. Remediating your land for native insects' benefit will actually be better for ticks than having an acre of 2" turf grass, but that's just because short lawns are totally ecologically dead.

When I was more uninformed I was more of a purist. The more I've done on my own property, and the more I've consulted with experts, the more I've learned that it's actually a balance between human needs and ecology. Now I'm sort of in the "if planting turf grass by your house is what you need to be on board with the rest of it, fine."

We can't promise people ticks will go away, more like teach people the critical value of native insects. Keep tall grass away from your house, sure, but think about walkways instead of acres of lawn for the rest of it. People plant lawns and call Mosquito Joe to fog it all so "their children can play" but consider your children living in a world with no bugs at all. That's the trade off. IMO it's a lot more scary than ticks, and I fucking hate ticks.

Decades later I still have to say this, in an Orson Welles voice, any time I'm cooking with peas.

ROSEBUD

This isn't new information really. As the link mentions, arsenic occurs naturally in the water of different regions and rice absorbs this. Since making white rice involves polishing off the most arsenic-ity part of the rice it isn't a problem, but brown rice is.

Don't feed infants and children things sweetened with brown rice syrup and, if you eat shit tons of brown rice, consider cooking it like pasta (boil it in extra water then strain out the excess water, instead of boiling it "dry"). You can also soak it before hand and discard the water. Arsenic is water soluble so any step like this will reduce the arsenic.

Arsenic is a carcinogen but so is low gut motility from not eating enough fiber so you really have to pick your poison.

We got a free, breakfast-themed Doom total conversion .wad in boxes of Chex. Truly a golden age.

I doubt he could put in a full day or even deal with ten seconds of a rude boss or customer, but working the fries was the only time he's ever seemed genuinely happy.

Well, that and that tape where he's shooting the shit with Epstein at some party.

You're fucking incredible, Cowbee. I've watched you spend literally days patiently and politely responding to dozens of confrontational, probably bad-faith posters in thread after thread with nothing but solid information. I really admire it.

I honestly find those sections of his books kind of comfy. If I "wrote what I know" about those days in my life the protagonist would wolf down a boiled chicken breast over the sink in complete silence.

I liked the four or five books I read, but I did laugh out loud the third time a bachelor character cracked a beer, put on a jazz record, and prepared an elaborate dinner for one.

A pack of six light bulbs. Five of them sheared right off the metal base like wet tissue when I screwed them in, just one right after the other. Fortunately the last one worked. I was a poor college kid with no transport then, so getting that pack of bulbs for my single lamp was a lot of effort, I was disappointed.