One thing to keep in mind is getting a blender well suited to whatever task you do the most. It mostly makes a difference in the style of blade and shape of the jar. Some brands will sell multiple styles that interface with one base, which might be the best way to go if you have the space for it.

The reason it’s important is that blending a paste like peanut butter or mole is going to put a completely different demand on the system than turning tomato soup smooth, which is different that crushing ice. Some designs also work really well for large quantities, but not as well for smaller quantities.

I have an old Oster that kinda sucks, so I keep using it, and it will keep using it until it no longer works, and I can’t fix it. If I were to buy one, it would be a vitamix 5200.

Personally, I dont like ninja (or the other half of their business, shark) cause their whole business is making knockoffs, which makes me suspect of their quality. Their blenders seem to often have the giant stack of blades, which is good for shredding up a smoothie, but it’s not well suited to some other tasks.

Personally, I like SeriousEats for reviews and comparisons of kitchen implements.

Just to add in, vitamix themselves sell refurbished units with a warranty.

I think opinel only exists to be a unique look. There’s a reason other companies don’t use a similar lock.

I have their oyster knife and mushroom knife, and they seem to be fine, but only time will tell. Neither gets super constant use.

Brand isnt really the important thing, materials and construction are.

Brands like carhartt, Duluth, etc. make durable workwear, but a lot of people want clothes with the aesthetic of workwear, but in stretchy, soft fabric and slimmer fits, and those brands will accommodate that.

Duluth firehose pants, for example, are really durable. DuluthFlex firehose pants, though, look the same, but include 3% spandex. That means that the heavy duty cotton canvas is actually just held together by spandex, which wears out easily.

Whatever brand you get, just make sure they are 100% cotton, or maybe cotton/nylon blend. Something like wrangler 13mwz might fit the bill for you.

These pants don’t have to be pricy, either. If you are shopping somewhere like rural king, tractor supply, etc, you can find pants like that for $20.

Did you buy stretchy pants from them? I have Duluth firehose pants, and they are basically indestructible.

Usually, on land that is intended to be preserved, they don’t want random people hacking away at vegetation, so they will have rules about it. If a park ranger or someone like that sees you cutting down trees or whatever, you are probably going to get yelled at or fined or something.

It’s also highly dependent on species and location. Some invasive species will basically multiply if you try to tear them out, either resprouting vegetatively, or through seed spread. Species like tree-of-heaven or paulonia also become huge trees, so they probably don’t want you cutting those down.

Some places like Oahu are basically 95% invasive species, so if you remove that, you have nothing left. Oahu is basically all guava and mesquite trees, and without that, the soil washes away, and there’s no hope of recovery, so invasive management needs to be done in consultation with experts.

There’s a pretty big range depending on use and material.

Comments like “x has lasted me y years” don’t really help. If they are being used as hiking boots in an area where the trails are dirt/mud/roots, they will last a while. If worn on rough concrete in a job where you walk around in them every day, they will wear fast.

There’s also a big difference in the type of sole. Some soles have effectively a big stack of foam as the outsole, which gives you some squish, but wears relatively quickly. Those a generally really thick, though, so it will still take a while to wear through. Some soles are softer rubber so you get better grip, but then they wear more easily. Harder rubbers last longer, but then comfort and grip can suffer.

Dr Martens, and i assume solovair, has one piece of rubber that acts as the outsole and the cushioning. If you wear through the outer layer of the outsole, you can expose one of those air chambers and let water in.

If your gait has you grinding through a portion of the sole prematurely, you could potentially talk to a cobbler about swapping to a different type of sole that won’t have that issue.

Ah, I read it as 5 beyond that, but that makes sense

A further five states could join the rush in the next few months

It would be nice if they listed those states.

Everyone who joins the military ends up with like 6 sets they don’t need, and they end up donating them. Usually you find stuff used, but there’s a decent amount of stuff that ends up sitting on storeroom shelves for a decade before being sold to the civilian population.

Here’s a decent place to buy in the US.

https://www.sportsmansguide.com/

And here’s a spot in the EU.

https://varusteleka.com/

If you are looking for cargo pants as work pants, military surplus is a good way to go. The US military (and i assume this trickles down to other countries) spends a lot of money developing uniform fabrics that are abrasion resistant, puncture resistant, etc. They also have reinforced knees. I’m sure there is a range of quality depending on what manufacturer produced what lot, but they all have to meet good standards, and all US uniforms will be made in the US.

That is effectively what I do (with “bushes” meaning tall annuals for the most part). The problem there is the salad and bushes are in competition in the soil.

I suppose the smartest method would involve “alley cropping” with the shorter plants in planters.

I’ve always wanted to create a low-tech version of this concept.

The problem (for me) is that many crops like lettuce can’t handle full strength summer sunlight. The normal solution is shade cloth, but I always feel like that’s just throwing away energy. I’d rather devise a method where rather than having 50% shade cloth over 1 square meter of plants, I somehow split that same amount of light over 2 square meters of plants.

Thats effectively what agrivoltaics do, with some energy taken up by solar panels, but I’d like to sort out a plant-only version that works on a small scale. You could have 2 grow beds stacked on top of each other, and use a one-way mirror and some other optics, but i don’t think there’s a low tech way to keep the sun tracked.

I would still aim for a bandsaw. A bench top band saw doesn’t have a huge footprint, and they are affordable. Even a cheap one can be made to work well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJkg-0G2CJQ

I’m not a fan of any stretchy fabric from a bifl perspective since it wears out. Depending on design it can be replaced if it needs to be.

The main problem with zippers is that they aren’t really made to be load bearing the way they are when used as a boot closure. It’s an automatic weak spot. It probably doesn’t matter for a fashion boot, but the good designs I’ve seen don’t just have a zipper to the top, they have some kind of additional support to prevent the zipper from being pulled apart.

OP, look up paratrooper boots (aka jump boots). I think they fit the look you want, and it seems like there’s plenty of brands that make them with good materials.

The way i look at it is that they make it real easy to seek and destroy trees-of-heaven, even in a forest where all you can see is the trunk.

Net metering is unfair to anyone who doesn’t own a home. If you are connected to the grid, you are relying on it to provide energy when you aren’t producing enough, so you should still pay your fair share of distribution/maintenance/etc.

If anything, they should pay you the wholesale generation rate at the time the energy is sent into the grid, not the year-round retail all-in cost.

In your case, it’s great that you are storing enough energy for your own use, but there are plenty of people without any storage who rely completely on the grid at night, but then rely on their poorer, non-landowning neighbors to cover the cost of grid maintenance and energy production at more expensive times of day.

Solar panels got tariffed by Biden a couple month before trump took office.

I believe it was because they determined that Vietnam was dumping panels at below cost, which is deemed an unfair trade practice. I noticed this because I preemptively bought a couple panels before trump was inaugurated, and like a week after I did, the tariff was announced.

It just got legalized in one state (Utah).

https://grist.org/energy/balcony-solar-took-off-in-germany-why-not-the-us/

The problem is the legislation doesn’t currently allow for solar to run right into an outlet in the US because it’s unsafe without the right cutoff devices (like Germany has), but no one is manufacturing the devices cause the legislation doesn’t allow for things like that to exist (and the voltage/frequency is different, so you can’t just import one).

I think Utah was just the first state to enable it, so hopefully this spur wider adoption.

https://grist.org/energy/balcony-solar-took-off-in-germany-why-not-the-us/