Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Michael / Chgowiz 🎲🎲 @chgowiz.dice.camp.ap.brid.gy · 3h

This is a neat story of the resilience of Earth, when allowed to be.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/oct/09/toronto-waterfront-soil-plants-worms

Creatures buried in soil for over a century burst back to life in Toronto waterfront

A project to restore coastal wetland leads to astonishing discoveries of a host of life: seeds and plant scraps, as well as water fleas, worms, larvae and plankton

www.theguardian.com

Michael / Chgowiz 🎲🎲 @chgowiz.dice.camp.ap.brid.gy · 14h

Corporations gonna corporate, but people in them will get my loyalty.

I have an amazing hunting seat - Waldrop Pacseat. But the straps (shoulder/waist) aren't great.

I have a XOP (treestand makers) Treestand Transport System w/ buckles on soft loops - you could […]

[Original post on dice.camp]

A hunting chair (Waldrop Pacseat) with an XOP Treestand Transport System attached to it by the soft loop buckles.

Reposted by Michael / Chgowiz 🎲🎲

LiteralGrill @literalgrill.sakurajima.moe.ap.brid.gy · 3d

Ya know, right now would be an AMAZING time for Mastodon's leadership to break bread with the Black programmers that really wanted to help make this place less racist.

Bluesky just banned a prominent Black user from basically being seen by anyone. **Because Bluesky's CEO is mad about their […]

Original post on sakurajima.moe

sakurajima.moe

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Michael / Chgowiz 🎲🎲 @chgowiz.dice.camp.ap.brid.gy · 3d

@Tim_Eagon :rubs hands: Yeppers! Deer hunting starts tomorrow with this cooldown!

Michael / Chgowiz 🎲🎲 @chgowiz.dice.camp.ap.brid.gy · 3d

Bittersweet autumn cleanup - the backyard bucket garden comes down. Now just the fall greens in the backyard and a few herbs.

I also have the parsnips at the community garden plot, along with a few beans left to harvest and the cover crop.

Things are coming to a close!

#gardening

An empty wooden stand that has spaces for holding buckets. In front of it are two pots with herbs and flowers in them.

A small garden bed with a row of lettuce on the left and a row of spinach on the right, surrounded by a chicken-wire fence.

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Michael / Chgowiz 🎲🎲 @chgowiz.dice.camp.ap.brid.gy · 3d

I'm calling this composting experiment a success! I chuck my food waste and yard waste into it, maybe stir it a bit if I think about it, and after about 3 months, I go flip piles.

~ 7 cubic feet of compost over the year, and I used some for my fall greens row and some potted plants. They're […]

Original post on dice.camp

dice.camp

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Michael / Chgowiz 🎲🎲 @chgowiz.dice.camp.ap.brid.gy · 3d

With the drought, it wasn't as wet as it probably should be, so I put three buckets of water from the pond into the flipped pile. We'll see how it goes after winter!

The working bin is now empty, but with fall coming and more cleanup, I'm sure I'll have a decent start to build on next spring […]

Original post on dice.camp

dice.camp

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Michael / Chgowiz 🎲🎲 @chgowiz.dice.camp.ap.brid.gy · 3d

After about 3 more months, I flipped the compost bins again. This time was a lot easier and I ended up with a lot more compost.

The pile measures about 1 ft x 2ft x 3 ft, which, if I'm doing math correctly, is 6 cubic feet. I had used about half of my 1 cu.ft […]

[Original post on dice.camp]

A pile of compost sits in a bin made of wood pallets.

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Michael / Chgowiz 🎲🎲 @chgowiz.dice.camp.ap.brid.gy · 3d

Me, back on July 14th: "I sifted maybe about 5 cubic feet (of compost)"

Narrator voice: He, in fact, did not. It was, at most, 1 cubic foot.

https://dice.camp/@chgowiz/114854290277769986

That was my first go around, when I had about 3 months of getting started. I apparently couldn't measure […]

Original post on dice.camp

dice.camp

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Michael / Chgowiz 🎲🎲 @chgowiz.dice.camp.ap.brid.gy · 3d

[hunting, deer hunting]

Although the (kinda [1]) cold snap starts on Monday, I'm waiting till Tues to go for two reasons - wind will be more favorable where I want to go and it'll be right after some (hopefully) rainfall so easier to navigate woods quietly.

These first few hunts are more […]

Original post on dice.camp

dice.camp

Michael / Chgowiz 🎲🎲 @chgowiz.dice.camp.ap.brid.gy · 3d

None of the Traveller conventions are close enough to travel by auto to. Anyone know if there are any virtual Traveller cons?

#traveller #conventions #ttrpg

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Michael / Chgowiz 🎲🎲 @chgowiz.dice.camp.ap.brid.gy · 5d

The backyard fall greens plot produced a nice harvest of spinach! There's more happily growing, and the lettuce is a few days away itself.

#gardening #harvest

My hand holds a white plastic colander full of damp, freshly-washed spinach leaves.

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Michael / Chgowiz 🎲🎲 @chgowiz.dice.camp.ap.brid.gy · 5d

Following @Tim_Eagon 's lead...

I have 61 followers on Bluesky via the bridged account from here on Mastodon. Hi there! :waves:

If you're there, and the current happenings and goings on of BlueSky don't agree with you, why not sign up for a nice server like dice.camp here (for TTRPGers) or […]

Original post on dice.camp

dice.camp

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Michael / Chgowiz 🎲🎲 @chgowiz.dice.camp.ap.brid.gy · 6d

Autumn garden clean-up continues. All but two of my bell pepper plants are finished - final peppers collected and the plants chopped up for the compost pile.

The lessons I learned from my struggles with tomato seedlings helped me to have better experiences with […]

[Original post on dice.camp]

Bamboo poles, a metal tomato cage, a pale-blue, plastic bucket of harvested green bell peppers, gardening gloves and a large pale-blue, plastic tote full of cut-up pepper plants are on grass. The chopped plants are bound for the compost pile. Garden clean up!

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Michael / Chgowiz 🎲🎲 @chgowiz.dice.camp.ap.brid.gy · 7d

Bittersweet as I removed most of the tomato plants from the plot. From seedlings that I made mistakes with, to wondering if they'd survive transplant, they produced far more tomatoes than I expected. Grateful! Now they're compost.

The cover crop is doing well […]

[Original post on dice.camp]

A community garden plot, in early autumn. Patches of mostly bare earth has tiny oat sprouts, and alyssum plants. To the left are tomato cages lying on the ground, and a pale-blue plastic tote full of cut up tomato vines for compost. In the background is a fence-line with amaranth stalks and black bean vines. In the far background are pine trees and a blue sky.

A view of a community garden plot. A good portion of the plot has bright green oats and field peas, as a cover crop, growing. There are borders of fading marigold plants.

THE CUTEST, TINIEST PUMPKINS YOU EVER SAW! Four tomatoes are lying next to them, and a pair of pruners lie on the ground in front of them.

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Michael / Chgowiz 🎲🎲 @chgowiz.dice.camp.ap.brid.gy · 8d

The penultimate black bean harvest. There are a few late-comers still green on the vines, and I'll give them a couple of weeks.

Later will come the pod shredding and storing of dried black beans. Yum!

2nd sowing of cover crops has sprouted! If I get 4 weeks […]

[Original post on dice.camp]

A large pale-blue plastic tote with a good amount of dried white bean pods in it. Next to the tote is a smaller pale-blue plastic basket, and a pair of gardener gloves on the ground.

If you look very carefully at the center-right of this image, you'll see a large spider suspended in air on their web. It looks like a dark blob as compared to the pale gray ground in the background behind it. The scene is in a garden plot, with yellowing amaranth leaves in the foreground. Oats and marigolds are in the far background.

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Michael / Chgowiz 🎲🎲 @chgowiz.dice.camp.ap.brid.gy · 8d

2nd go-around of threshing dried amaranth seed heads, lessons learned from yesterday!

1. Do at a table. Easier standing!

2. Take seed heads, rough massage them into a strainer, lay stalks aside, work seed heads w/my hand in the strainer to get seeds.

3. Set 2 […]

[Original post on dice.camp]

A table with a plastic sheet on it. A cardboard tray with dried amaranth seed heads is on the table, with a large metal bowl and a fine strainer next to it. A smaller cardboard tray with discarded stalks and flower heads is next to those.

A large metal bowl, with a fine strainer in it. The strainer has amaranth seed heads in it, and a male hand is roughly massaging and manipulating the seed heads to loosen the seeds.

Two cookie sheets are set up on a table, one is propped up slightly over the other. A bowl of harvested seed and chaff is next to the sheets, with a hair dryer towards the end of the table.

A small glass jar sits on a dark wood kitchen countertop. It is over halfway filled with tiny, pale amaranth seeds. There is a masking tape label on the jar which reads "Amaranth 2025".

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Reposted by Michael / Chgowiz 🎲🎲

Venya (he/him/dude) 🇺🇦 @venya.musicians.today.ap.brid.gy · 9d

These are heartbreaking stories.

I used to think it self-evident that no one is owed the right to continue getting paid for work no longer required as markets change. Needs change, and we need to change with them.

But that was also before entire #art and #music worlds were openly stolen […]

Original post on musicians.today

musicians.today

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Michael / Chgowiz 🎲🎲 @chgowiz.dice.camp.ap.brid.gy · 9d

More bean pods dried or drying, and the pepper plants aren't giving up yet!

The 90F days and 55F nights are crazy!

#gardening #harvest

A large, pale-blue, plastic basket containing long, white bean pods. A smaller, round, blue plastic basket is also inside the larger basket, and it has four green bell peppers and a pair of garden snips inside it.

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Michael / Chgowiz 🎲🎲 @chgowiz.dice.camp.ap.brid.gy · 9d

I didn't know what to expect from growing/harvesting amaranth, so this whole process has been a learning experience. I guess my method of getting the seed off the heads produces quite a bit of chaff because maybe 25% of what's the bowl actually was seed.

Not […]

[Original post on dice.camp]

A bowl of seed and chaff, with a fine strainer bowl inside as well, which holds amaranth flowers and seed being shaken and rubbed to get the seed out. Behind the bowl is a cardboard tray with other amaranth seed heads. Everything is on a couch on the closed in porch.

A plastic bowl holds several cups of amaranth seed and chaff.

A small, covered glass jar is about a third full of winnowed amaranth seed. A masking tape label on the jar reads "Amaranth 2025". To the left of the jar are jars of canned green beans, and to the right are jars of canned carrots. Below the seed jar is another shelf full of jars of canned green beans. So. Many. Beans!

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Michael / Chgowiz 🎲🎲 @chgowiz.dice.camp.ap.brid.gy · 10d

My view from taking the boat on the river for the first time (for me).

A view down a small river, with many trees lining the riverbank and a cloudless blue sky above.

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Michael / Chgowiz 🎲🎲 @chgowiz.dice.camp.ap.brid.gy · 11d

I won a thing today at the Illinois Learn to Hunt event!

A box which contains a pair of vortex diamondback binoculars

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Michael / Chgowiz 🎲🎲 @chgowiz.dice.camp.ap.brid.gy · 11d

My job for the next 3 hours...

A grilling station with a gas grill, table, condiments and food set up. Ready to start serving

An older man with glasses, a camouflage hat and an orange vest

Michael / Chgowiz 🎲🎲 @chgowiz.dice.camp.ap.brid.gy · 12d

In celebration of the harvest ending (soon), I made pumpkin/sourdough discard bread. Chopped pecans on top. Very yummy!

#cooking #baking #harvest

A freshly baked loaf of pumpkin bread, covered with chopped pecans, baked in a clear glass bread pan, sits cooling on top of a black iron stove grate.

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Michael / Chgowiz 🎲🎲 @chgowiz.dice.camp.ap.brid.gy · 12d

Last tomatoes from the community garden plot.

The second half of the cover crop is seeded at the plot, now that the squash, peppers and tomatoes are close to being done. It's late for cover crop, but if I get a mature growth of about 4 inches (10cm) or so, it'll […]

[Original post on dice.camp]

A small, pale blue plastic bowl full of ripening tomatoes sits on grass, next to a floppy hat and gardener gloves.

A bell pepper plant in a plastic bucket, in front of other buckets of peppers and tomatoes.

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