I grow our own vegetables. Many hybrid and heirloom varieties are bred for flavor rather than for commercial appeal and travel. There are entire species on the allotment that you can’t easily buy in stores because of this - like salsify, a root vegetable that tastes of fish and shellfish. Our neighbours happily take it to make vegan latkes of alarming similarity to fishcakes. You cannot sell it in stores because - despite looking like a white parsnip - it turns brown when you pick it & if you scrape/bruise/cut the white root in any way, or damage the delicate little hairs, for some reason, it BLEEDS RED and is very upsetting to look at.
There are whole classes of foods like this. Foods that just don’t ship well or look good on supermarket shelves. Forbidden fruits. Vegetables that bleed and taste like meat. Sorry about this
I’m not growing salsify this year, because everyone else in the house is too rude about the part where I actually expect them to eat it. However, an escapee self-seeded outside the allotment and gifted me some lovely purple flowers today
I might be a little biased but I’m honestly starting to believe that there’s no purer form of love than the defensive spite you see from biologists that have devoted their life to the study of a maligned or misunderstood species. For example:
The hyena biologist that arranged for Disney animators to come sketch captive hyenas for The Lion King film (Laurence Frank) was so incensed when the animals were depicted as villains in the movie that he later included boycotting the film on a list of ways the average person could help hyena conservation.
Though it’s commonly known that Charles Darwin’s distaste for parasitic wasps played a role in his development of evolution theory (since he felt no loving God would create animals with such a disturbing life cycle), the biologists who study these wasps find it an unfair characterization. When they were tasked with coming up with a common name for the family of parasitic wasps (Ichneumonidae) that old Charles so disliked, they proposed the name “Darwin Wasps” to spite the famous naturalist who had insulted their beloved family of insects.
Parasitologist Tommy Leung was so frustrated with the way people write about parasites to evoke horror and gore that he started writing a Parasite of the Day blog, that specifically avoids inflammatory or unsettling language to describe them. He also illustrates different species in colorful anime art on Twitter in a series called Parasite Monster Girls—which he calls his “love letter to parasites.”
I guess I’m just saying that if you’re a biologist studying an unpopular species and you have a little bit of a chip on your shoulder about it you can always count on me to be in your corner if you want to get a little petty with the public!
True and sincere answer to all of the people who ask, "I have just seen X animal, what does this mean?":
Rejoice, my friend, for this is a most auspicious sign! You have received one of the greatest blessings known to human kind: you live in a world full of creatures! Take comfort and enjoy this divine blessing.
“The daily routine of most adults is so heavy and artificial that we are closed off to much of the world. We have to do this in order to get our work done. I think one purpose of art is to get us out of those routines. When we hear music or poetry or stories, the world opens up again. We’re drawn in — or out — and the windows of our perception are cleansed, as William Blake said. The same thing can happen when we’re around young children or adults who have unlearned those habits of shutting the world out.”
I'm starting to gain insight into why people turn into conspiracy theorists. Some topics are so totally neglected that it looks like they were intentionally and maliciously erased, instead of falling victim to arbitrary lack of interest.
I think it's a vicious cycle; when people don't know something exists, they're not curious about it. Also, people use conceptual categories to think about things, and when a topic falls between or outside of conceptual categories, it can end up totally omitted from our awareness even though it very much exists and is important.
This post is about native bamboo in the United States and the fact that miles-wide tracts of the American Southeast used to be covered in bamboo forests
@icannotgetoverbirds It already is a maddening, bizarre research hole that I have been down for the past few weeks.
Basically, I learned that we have native bamboo, that it once formed an ecosystem called the canebrake that is now critically endangered. The Southeastern USA used to be full of these bamboo thickets that could stretch for miles, but now the bamboo only exists in isolated patches
And THEN.
I realized that there is a little fragment of a canebrake literally in my neighborhood.
HI I AM NOW OBSESSED WITH THIS.
I did not realize the significance until I showed a picture to the ecologist where i work and his reaction was "Whoa! That is BIG."
Apparently extant stands of river cane are mostly just...little sparse thickety patches in forest undergrowth. This patch is about a quarter acre monotypic stand, and about ten years old.
I dive down the Research Hole(tm). Everything new I learn is wilder. Giant river cane mainly reproduces asexually. It only flowers every few decades and the entire clonal colony often dies after it flowers. Seeds often aren't viable.
It's barely been studied enough to determine its ecological significance, but there are five butterfly species and SEVEN moth species dependent on river cane. Many of these should probably be listed as endangered but there's not enough research
There's a species of CRITICALLY ENDANGERED PITCHER PLANT found in canebrakes that only still remains in TWO SPECIFIC COUNTIES IN ALABAMA
Some gardening websites list its height as "over 6 feet" "Over 10 feet" There are living stands that are 30+ feet tall, historical records of it being over 40 feet tall or taller. COLONIAL WRITINGS TALK ABOUT CANES "AS THICK AS A MAN'S THIGH."
The interval between flowering is anyone's guess, and WHY it happens when it does is also anyone's guess. Some say 40-50 years, but there are records of it blooming in as little time as 3-15 years.
It is a miracle plant for filtering pollution. It absorbs 99% of groundwater nitrate contaminants. NINETY NINE PERCENT. It is also so ridiculously useful that it was a staple of Native American material culture everywhere it grew. Baskets! Fishing poles! Beds! Flutes! Mats! Blowguns! Arrows! You name it! You can even eat the young shoots and the seeds.
I took these pictures myself. This stuff in the bottom photo is ten feet tall if it's an inch.
Arundinaria itself is not currently listed as endangered, but I'm growing more and more convinced that it should be. The reports of seeds being usually unviable could suggest very low genetic diversity. You see, it grows in clonal colonies; every cane you see in that photo is probably a clone. The Southern Illinois University research project on it identified 140 individual sites in the surrounding region where it grows.
The question is, are those sites clonal colonies? If so, that's 140 individual PLANTS.
Also, the consistent low estimates of the size Arundinaria gigantea attains (6 feet?? really??) suggests that colonies either aren't living long enough to reach mature size or aren't healthy enough to grow as big as they are supposed to. I doubt we have any clue whatsoever about how its flowers are pollinated. We need to do some research IMMEDIATELY about how much genetic diversity remains in existing populations.
Many years ago I did some (non-academic) research on native canes in the USA because I thought I remembered seeing a bamboo-like something in the wild that I'd been told was native, and I thought it might make a nice landscaping accent. But the sources I found said something like "unlike Asian bamboos, the American equivilant barely reaches the height of a man", and I went "nah, that is exactly the wrong height for anything." But if it gets 10 feet and up, I think there are a lot of people who would be VERY happy to use it as a sight barrier in public and private landscaping, and if it means putting in a bit of a wetland/rain garden, all the better. The lack of a good native equivelant to bamboo is something I have heard numerous people bemoan. Obviously it's very important to protect wild sites and expand those, but if it'd be helpful, I bet it wouldn't be hard to convince landscapers to start new patches too.
For instance, a lot of housing developments, malls, etc. seem to set aside a percentage of their land for semi-wild artificial wetlands (drainage maybe?) planted with natives, and then block the messy view with walls of arbovitae or clump bamboo from asia - perhaps it would be a better option there?
Good Lord. Arundinaria isn't just a better option, it's perfect.
I was in the canebrake near my house again this morning, and river cane is extraordinarily good at completely blocking the view of anything beyond it. It is bushier and leafier than Asian bamboos, and birds like to build nests in it. It would make a fantastic privacy barrier.
The cane near my house is around 10-12 feet tall. This species can reach 30 feet or more, but I think it needs ideal conditions or to be part of a large colony with a robust system of rhizomes or something.
It grows slowly compared to Asian bamboos, and seems to need some shade to establish, so it would take time to become a good barrier, but no worse than those stupid arborvitae.
plants like this were often intentionally cultivated in planter boxes as a form of water filtration and civil engineering by a bunch of indigenous nations.
There's a reason why Native Americans cultivated canebrakes.
Well, several reasons. As y'all may know, bamboo is stronger than any wood, and therefore it makes a fantastic building material.
The Cherokee used, and still use, river cane to make fishing poles, fish traps, arrows, frames for structures, musical instruments, mats, pipes, and absolutely gorgeous double-woven baskets that can even hold water.
This stuff is, no joke, a viable alternative to plastic for a lot of things. The seeds and shoots are also edible.
Uh I know this is out of left field but I work in plant cloning - it's a lot easier than you'd think to do for plants and it's honestly a really important conservation tool, and good for making a TON of seedlings in a short amount of time. I can look into this genus for like, cloning viability?
Hi y'all, reblogging the Canebrake Post again. It's been over a year since I fell in love with the coolest plant ever. I'm trying to bring it back but I am very small so if any of y'all have a Canebrake nearby you might wanna talk to the owners and contact some local parks and nature preserves yeah?
I love that people are finally realizing that the Mobile-Tensaw Delta really is the American Amazon. After years of research and hard work, I’m glad the public is getting a semblance of it’s importance. We just got a $15m donation from an anonymous person to preserve the area and it really REALLY needs it. It’s sad how little the state puts into taking care of it. My college did more than the state ever will. We even found the last slave ship, The Clotilda, when we were doing eco-cultural research. The politics might be grimey, but Alabama coast is the most beautiful place full of rare and multitudinous arrays of unique plants and animals. The manatees. The fly traps. The giant oaks. The thousands of frogs and birds that flock here. We have a sister city in Japan where we each have a garden dedicated to the other because we are the only two to have Jubilee, where tens of thousands of fish beach themselves and lose oxygen and provide a smorgasbord of food for the people of the coast. Two places in the world. Wild. I just wish the people within could appreciate it the way the few of us do. But I guess football and conservatism take priority, sadly.
Oh, the Canebreaks! There are historical tales of those- the saying goes that a squirrel could run from new york down to the gulf of mexico without touching the ground. That isn't just a reference to old growth forests- it's an acknowledgement of the scale of canebrakes, and how they could, and DID stretch for miles, only broken by the interface with other biomes that also offered canopy cover.
From what I recall, they were mostly removed via a concerted effort at slash and burn farming- the land they grew in was excellent for European crops, and the imperialists noticed that. they didn't notice that the canebrakes kept it that way, which was a part of their folly- in removing it, they depleted biodiversity and soil quality, in addition to the other horrific effects of tearing them out.
This is what is happening with industrial scale farming in Brazil reaching into the amazon to slash and burn to establish crops- loss of biodiversity, short term gain on a corporate level (oftentimes foreign corporation), long term resource and biological depletion and instability, as well as loss of any economic leverage for local populations- this is how these corporations get their hooks in somewhere. They tear it up, offer resources and unimaginable wealth for a decade at the cost of sustainability. And once that decade is up, no one can do anything without external resources since he local ones are depleted, and wouldn't you know it, the corporate weasels who caused this problem are willing to sell them the resources needed to keep the newfound boomtowns alive, if at a constant loss, and for a backbreaking amount of labor for negligible pay. These areas can have incredibly rich soil, but due to the mechanisms of how rhizomatic plants work and reproduce, when you tear them out, the soil goes away fast, and you're left with a layer of unusable bedrock.
The fact that America still *has* some canebrakes is so So SO important and we NEED to keep them safe, and spread them wherever we can, and boost knowledge of them in any way we can.
These are some of the most important plants for long term sustainable living, and we need to keep them safe.
I have a really diverse group of friends, and growing up in a rural area, that does include some people who lean conservative, and from time to time, I encounter people who are so far left that if I even mention I have conservative friends, they immediately react like "HOW COULD YOU EVEN SPEAK TO THOSE PEOPLE???" like I'm a dirty traitor. I am BEGGING you not to fall prey to that kind of polarizing ideology.
Civil discourse is important. And it's important because in order to effectively compromise with, collaborate with, or COMBAT the perspectives of people on the other side, you have to understand where their views come from and how they think.
If you react with fire and fury towards anyone who disagrees with you and encourage others to do the same, all you do is force those perspectives underground. Maybe people stop speaking them out loud, and you think that's a victory, but they're still holding those beliefs and acting on them; voting with those beliefs, giving money to organizations with those beliefs, having real effects on other people based on those beliefs even if they never say a word about them. Then it becomes much harder to figure out why change isn't happening.
Polarization like that becomes a feedback loop where the more people on either side refuse to even hear each other, the less they know about each other, and the more difficult it becomes to make progress because now one whole side has to win to get anything done, and then all that gets undone the next time the other side wins. At times when one party controls part of the government but not all of it, things stagnate because not only is there no common ground of understanding/collaboration, one side may assume it knows the other's motives only to get blindsided by their response when they've misidentified the underlying issue. Because they don't interact. They don't understand each other. So not only can they not collaborate, they can't even predictably anticipate or combat each other's actions.
In short: It does everyone good to understand each other's motives, to converse, to engage in civil debate, etc. To engage with people you disagree with doesn't mean you are accepting the other side's views. Information is power, and having as much of it as you can in activism is invaluable. To engage is not to accept. To engage is not to tolerate. To engage is to gather information that you can use later to make predictions, strike deals, and occasionally find common ground - all that gross but necessary stuff that the worlds of politics AND activism run on.
Japanese Scientists Produce Edible Cement from Food Waste
Researchers Kota Machida and Yuya Sakai from the University of Tokyo recently unveiled a significant breakthrough by developing ultra-strong edible cement derived from food waste. The innovative process involves drying and compressing organic materials like coffee grounds, banana and orange peels, and Chinese cabbage. Unlike previous attempts that required additional elements like plastic for bonding, this new edible material exhibits four times the strength of traditional concrete.
“We also found that Chinese cabbage leaves, which produced a material over three times stronger than concrete, could be mixed with the weaker pumpkin-based material to provide effective reinforcement," said Kota Machida in a press release.
Transforming food waste into construction cement offers a sustainable and eco-friendly alternative. By adjusting temperature and pressure, the researchers pave the way for a groundbreaking solution that addresses waste management and enhances the strength and durability of construction materials in an environmentally conscious manner.
The article Development of Novel Construction Material from Food Waste goes into more detail about the process, which is divided into three steps:
first, they break down the raw materials (orange peels, onions, pumpkins, bananas, Chinese cabbage, and seaweed), and place them in an oven at 105°C.
the obtained dry materials are then pulverized with a blender to obtain a powder.
the powder is then mixed with water and seasonings and hot pressed at 180°C.
Researchers from the University of Tokyo in Japan announced that they had succeeded in transforming food waste into construction cement.
in the future, Braiding Sweetgrass will be assigned to all students to read in school, and mostly they will hate it, because it seems to them like poorly structured rambling about nature and vignettes from the author's life. Soooooooo boring!
We will struggle to explain to them: no, no, this book was actually completely revolutionary for its time. When Kimmerer talks about the honorable harvest, learning to listen to the teachings of the plants, understanding nature as animate and alive, and the relationship of reciprocity and mutual dependence between humans and other life forms, these are ideas that were genuinely new and mind-blowing to us when we were young.
It wasn't just those in power that saw nature as "Resources" or some kind of mechanical system that would be better off without human interference—almost no one else knew another way to think. Yes, yes, we knew about symbiosis, but we hardly ever applied it to ourselves. Kimmerer is serious when she says her cultural perspective was almost wiped out; the culture we inherited as children literally didn't have the concepts she is talking about, and that's why the book was so important!
We will tell the students that it would have been weird even among "environmentalists" of the time to think of trees and insects as your family. I mean, well, yes, we knew that everything was related, but we thought Charles Darwin was the first to come up with that. You don't understand, we will say, most of these ideas about living in right relationship with nature would have been thought of as extra-scientific, sentimental or spiritual crap.
"Did you just not know where food and clothes came from?" they will ask, with eyebrows raised. Yes, but back then, food was mostly grown in enormous fields of only one crop where everything else had been killed with chemicals. We didn't really think of agricultural environments as "ecosystems"—"nature" was a separate thing—I mean yeah, we harvested logs from forests, but that was different. No, we basically thought Earth was divided into "human uses" and "nature," and that people shouldn't be in the "nature" parts. No, really!
The students will be fascinated and ask things like "But what about parks?" "Would a hay field be nature or human uses?" "How about pollinator gardens?" "What about the ocean?" and we will try to explain to them that we really just didn't think that hard about it
@cipher-the-sidhe I realize that I still have much to learn about imagining the future...cause there will be a future where there is no "we" such as the one imagined here, and there will be no shortage of Indigenous educators for whom this perspective was never jarring...
I will say, though, for myself and many others, learning from Indigenous writers and teachers about this perspective wasn't exactly "jarring," but rather... affirming? almost? It was like seeing something with dazzling clarity all of a sudden when I'd been peering at its vague shape through a dirty, grimy window all my life. It was like many things inside me suddenly felt safe for me to express and explore when before they'd seemed like something I had to push into the realm of the unconscious, to "keep in check" because they were irrational or childlike.
I'm writing about this in my journal trying to explore it: I think there is actually some kind of trauma associated with this dysfunctional relationship with Earth? I think children being denied interaction with wild plants through the destructive practice of the Lawn, and being able to interact with wild places only through scheduled excursions to specific places set aside as "preserves" is incredibly damaging to the human spirit.
My love and longing for forests as a child was excruciating. I think the reason it took 21 years of life, 2 1/2 years of college and a devastating mental and emotional breakdown to pursue this love in my life was that I'd repressed it in some way.
When I think of how it felt to be asked the question "What if the Earth loves you back?" I want to cry and cry and cry. I ached for that love so much as a child and then I became callous and numb in trying to accept that I would never receive it.
What is society doing to people when it tells them, "Humans are killing the planet and Earth would be better off without us?" Mainstream Eurocentric texts by the most renowned authors treat humans as a disease or a plague. What a terrible, downright abusive thing to tell a human being, that their Earth hates them and wishes they didn't exist?!?!?!
If you're low on time but want to participate in activism, I highly recommend looking for local causes you align with because 1) Local politics often get heavily overlooked because only the federal U.S. election seems widely important, and 2) Local issues are often going to be lower barrier to entry for local people because you already have some experiential knowledge of the issue, so you don't have to spend as much time researching things to be informed and make a difference. Ex: I don't know much about gang violence (stopping or preventing it) because I was lucky enough to grow up in an area with low gang violence. Even though it's an issue I care about, it's a lot harder for me to become active in stopping gang violence because I do not regularly come into contact with gangs, and because of this, I'd have to do a metric fuck ton of research into ways that I can help stop gang violence in places that have them or prevent gangs from ever moving in here (i.e. through national social media campaigns, reading educational materials, donating to the right orgs, etc.). However, I did grow up in an area with a lot of poverty, and my experiential knowledge of what people need vs. what's hardest to get made me very good at helping to establish and facilitate mutual aid networks without doing much additional research. Ex: When it came time to put out my fliers for one of my mutual aid group chats, I knew where the poor areas of town were without any additional research. However, had I been trying to do something similar one town over, I'd have to do significant research on where the low-income regions of that town are located. It's easier to get involved in issues you already have some background knowledge of, and just because it's easier doesn't make it any less impactful or important.
Indigenous Action looks at basic ways that people can get ‘back to basics’ as the Trump era comes to a close. We are ungovernable on stolen land. Fuck Biden.
Build an affinity group.
An affinity group is a small group of 5 to 20 people who work together autonomously on direct actions or other projects. Affinity groups generally consist of like minded people who come together to get something done. If you already have an affinity group, link and cluster those groups!
Skill up.
Delinking from capitalism and colonial apparatuses requires us to learn how to do things for ourselves and each other beyond buying, selling, working, or asking the state to help us. From self and collective defense, to gardening, building bikes, unschooling, and caring for each other- we can learn a skill and share a skill. We can change how we value skills and dismantle hierarchies of class and ableism.
Establish and practice good security culture.
Security culture is necessary to survive state repression. We can stop a lot of infiltration and disinformation in its tracks by improving our ways of communicating and navigating conflict. We can still be horizontal and transparent without sacrificing security and safety.
Practice transformative and restorative justice.
Strong communities make police and prisons obsolete. We can change our culture to prevent violence and abuse. We can build up our capacities to confront and resolve conflicts. We can strengthen our ties and detoxify our relationships so harm has no space to grow in our communities.
Mutual Aid.
Start a mutual aid group and provide necessary support to those who are in need. Mutual aid organizing can ensure our communities are not dependent on corporations and the state. Shift your use of resources to things you can grow and make or procure from others in resistance. Build networks of aid and resources beyond capitalism.
Mutual defense.
From arms training to street tactics to bystander interventions and safety teams, we need to have the skills and resources to defend our communities from fascist attacks on our people, non-human beings, and lands.
Build and sustain conflict infrastructure.
Conflict Infrastructure is any structure we organize helps us be more effective in our fights. This is infrastructure that goes beyond solely providing awareness and services and instead builds our capacity to wage actual resistance. From community gardens and collectively coordinated farms to infoshops and independent media/communications.
Open squats for unsheltered folx.
Rent is theft. Private property is colonial violence upon the land. Abolish rent and private property. Rematriate lands to original caretakers. Create spaces to live beyond landlords.
Defend and reclaim ancestral lands.
Because #landback means ending colonial occupation and restoring Indigenous stewardship of our ancestral lands. Regenerate our sacred relations, and all that entails spiritually and materially, with our original homelands. Liberate the sacred.
Reparations.
Seize what has been stolen from Black and Indigenous Peoples and liberate it back. Radical redistribution is necessary.
Shut shit down.
Intervene in critical infrastructure at the points where capitalism and colonialism are at their most vulnerable. Seize the streets, factories, ports, fracking pads, pipelines, power stations, smash the borders, be smart and be creative! It’s also an effective way to target those industries perpetuating climate change.
Be fiercely intersectional.
‘Cause we’re not taking those old shitty behaviors with us. Fuck anti-blackness, fuck orientalism, fuck islamaphobia, fuck anti-semitism, fuck transphobia, fuck heteropatriarchy, fuck white supremacy, fuck imperialism, fuck ableism, fuck hierarchy, fuck racism, fuck citizenship, fuck privilege, fuck everything fucked up!
Practice Radical Self & Collective Care.
To remain dangerous to power we must care for ourselves and each other. Learn common triggers and how to communicate without being fucked up. Learn to communicate your needs, boundaries, and wants effectively and nontoxicly – remember that folks in the struggle and resistance have the hardest time accessing resources for mental and spiritual care. Movement work can be unsustainable to those with many experiences of settler policing and violence triggers – find ways to communicate and negotiate group norms and boundaries that accommodate peoples’ needs if reasonable. Identify toxic communication patterns and learn / create ways to dismantle them and communicate in more healthy and less harmful ways.Be honest about your limitations and care for yourself and each other. The christianized, capitalized colonial state has taught us to never rest or heal. Reject any attempts at coercing people to go beyond their limits. Radical self-care keeps us safe and invulnerable when consistently engaging in agitating governability by the state.
Make everything accessible for everyone.
Reject ableism and objectification of our bodies and lives, establish community care networks with people equipped to provide first aid and care support to a full spectrum of needs. Challenge ableism in our language, how we organize, and how we value each other. We are all enough.
Abolish Rape Culture.
Study rape and rape culture and how it relates to the desecration of sacred lands. Transform our culture and practices around dating, humor, relationships, sexuality, consent, parties, sex labor, and play to abolish rape culture. Hold mactivists, rapists, abusers, opportunists, and creeps accountable. Center consent and healthy relationships in everything we do everywhere.
Spread radical and militant joy.
We can fuck shit up while we dance, sing, party, laugh, play, wonder, have deep conversations, tell stories, make art, make love, make magic, make brilliance, make awesomeness, and have fun.
*sighs* and i thought Johnny Cash was the one thing the whole country could agree on. the conservatives liked the melodies and the liberals liked the lyrics. guess not
Nah. This is paying mad homage to him. I think a guy who released live chickens into the audience at a show and ruined the plumbing in a hotel by flushing cherry bombs down the toilet would think this is the funniest thing ever. If there is one thing Johnny Cash loved more than telling the tales of rural America, it’s criminal mischief.
Johnny was a hero of mine. He was invited to perform at the White House and he looked Nixon dead in the eye and sang protest songs to him.
When other artists of his generation were scoffing at my generation's music, he was covering Nine Inch Nails while terminally ill.
There are a thousand stories about Johnny Cash. It's believed he was the first American to know that Stalin was dead. He accidentally killed the condors when his engine started a forest fire. He vowed to wear all black until there was justice on Earth, and he died wearing black.
But the most salient thing of all to me is that this is a man who, at the height of his fame, gave free concerts to prisoners. That photo of him giving the finger? He's giving it to a guard at Folsom Prison in front of the assembled prison population.
Yeah, I think Johnny would have thought this was funny as hell.
“you should be at the club” i should be by the sea. i should be in the mountains. i should be awestruck and rendered speechless by the majesty of the natural world. if you even care
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