Sarnia, Ontario has an entry labeled "Dumpster (edible)". It sounds like something you'd encounter in Nethack.
Food is free if you know where to look
81–90 of 100 posts
Re: Food is free if you know where to look
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
Around 2000-2001 I rented a house in the small town where I grew up, and there was a plum tree in the yard. I mentioned to the landlord that I had been approached by the neighborhood kids asking if they could harvest from the tree, and the landlord said he had no problem with it if I didn't mind (that was his arrangement with the last renter). Kudos to the kids for asking first, and at first I didn't mind, but they e…
I recall a reasonably similar incident when I was a kid, where we were taking fruit, with permission, from a farmer's trees and setting up a little roadside table to sell it from. We damaged his fence and he told us to screw off. I ran home and complained to my father, who said, "Yeah, that's not right at all, I'll talk to him." I thought I was golden and that mean old guy was gonna get what was coming to him. It was…
And your dad did you a huge solid in the long-run.
Re: Food is free if you know where to look
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh of course I'd be upset! (I don't have a car, but will entertain your theoretical scenario.) If someone stole fruit from my tree I'd be upset too!
I'm so lost; what is your point?
I'm not the OP or at all involved in this thread until now, but fruit trees will yield fruit again and again, a car will not. Now, if you owned the means of production for a Model T and I took a Model T, how upset would you be? That's more like "taking an apple" since you own the "tree"
Re: Food is free if you know where to look
#84I see it has listed a fruit tree in my yard... Is there a way to revoke that? I've given permission to my neighbors to pick as long as they knock, not to randoms.
It's somewhat amusing when you rediscover the tragedy of the commons and the idea of scarcity by providing free access to your fruit tree.
There is some problem beyond tragedy of the commons, though. There are some people who seem to gratuitously trash things which are free even when it costs them little to nothing. They'll break branches to get free fruit. They'll stomp through a flowerbed instead of walking 5 feet around. They'll consider anything else they find laying around to also be free.
I put a tv on craigslist for free. I take every offer in the order it arrives and communicate with everyone. The 2nd person (within 30 minutes of posting) is unhappy that I'm waiting to confirm with the first and swears up and down at me. I've found that free listings really bring out the nutjobs.
Re: Food is free if you know where to look
#85I'm going to be the cynic here and assign a high probability that eventually the insiders running the site will keep the really good spots to themselves, e.g., make it so that information about the really good spots is visible to the user id or IP address that uploaded the information and to the insiders, but not to the general public. In the 1994, the last time I had information about them, the employees of the San…
Yeah, that's like "Facebook keeping all the good friends for itself." It's kinda hard to "hide a tree" when they live multiple decades and people can keep independent databases. Not really something worth trying to hide imo. Perhaps technologically feasible on a day-to-day level, but if it were ever discovered, the scandal that would ensue would be disastrous to the whole project. And the whole point is to connect more mouths to more fruits, hoarding is actually counterproductive. That's wild about the Food Bank -- similar things probably happen in general for the "people who keep score for the game tend to have a higher score" thing. I wonder sometimes about the creators of those dating apps, and if they are also skimming top applicants.
Re: Food is free if you know where to look
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
Around 2000-2001 I rented a house in the small town where I grew up, and there was a plum tree in the yard. I mentioned to the landlord that I had been approached by the neighborhood kids asking if they could harvest from the tree, and the landlord said he had no problem with it if I didn't mind (that was his arrangement with the last renter). Kudos to the kids for asking first, and at first I didn't mind, but they e…
Sounds like half the story. It'd be interesting to hear the other half.
Yeah, I'm with you. I can believe parents being upset and irrational, but it seems odd that the landlord sided with them. There is information missing from this recounting of events.
Re: Food is free if you know where to look
#87I was directed to a pair of ponderosa pine trees. Yum!
Aren't those the trees steaks grow on?
Re: Food is free if you know where to look
#88I was directed to a pair of ponderosa pine trees. Yum!
I was directed to a live oak tree. Tasty!
Re: Food is free if you know where to look
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m not sure what you’re getting at, that is what happened. The only thing to add is that a few years later I noticed the house had been torn down and all the trees and bushes cleared off the lot. I have no idea of the circumstances surrounding that.
I'm just guessing the talk with the kids might have gone a little different than what was recounted. Sounds all rational and even-tempered. Perhaps some scolding or yelling was involved. We always remember ourselves as being perfectly polite in recounting stories.
No, it was pretty straightforward “hey I told you guys you could pick plums but I never said you could climb on my truck. Now it’s dented and I’ll have to fix it, so I’m not going to let you pick plums anymore”. I mean it was nearly 20 years ago so that’s paraphrasing, but that’s the tone I used.
Re: Food is free if you know where to look
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm just guessing the talk with the kids might have gone a little different than what was recounted. Sounds all rational and even-tempered. Perhaps some scolding or yelling was involved. We always remember ourselves as being perfectly polite in recounting stories.
Someone who went out of their way to ask permission from their landlord, before letting kids in to pick fruit, might well be a modern day Mr. Rogers.
Not at all, it was more that the tree didn’t belong to me so I made sure the landlord was aware of the kids’ request, and that’s when he told me the previous tenant and he had allowed it. I was mostly worried about liability (kid falls and the parents sue me).