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Cake day: July 2nd, 2023

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  • Farming is always environmentally destructive. There is no such thing as “environmentally friendly” farming. The solution is massive investment into the farming infrastructure and rewilding of vast tracts of land.

    https://ourworldindata.org/land-use

    We use around half of the arable land for agriculture. The sad fact is we only need to use 10% of it. The rest we farm because we can make a profit. Not because it makes sense.

    It would take a complete upheaval of our agricultural system. Massive investment into water storage, irrigation systems and protected culture. It would also mean the forced migration of a millions people from rural areas to be rewilded to areas under intensive agriculture.

    Aka it’s not an easy fix. t’s a systematic change to the way we interact with the environment.

    So, it’s not going to happen.


  • The_v@lemmy.worldtoScience Memes@mander.xyzCannabis
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    1 month ago

    Life is much more complicated than the middle school definition. Some of the more interesting species are “sterile” crosses that have overcome the sterility. For example the ancestry of wheat.

    Wheat is mostly a hexaploid aka 6 copies of each chromosome. It arose from a triploid interspecific cross (triploids are always sterile) that spontaneously doubled (hexaploids are fertile).

    As a hexaploid it can be crossed to diploid rye to produce fertile offspring called triticale (tetraploid). Crossing triticale to either wheat or rye creates sterile offspring (pentaploid & triploid)

    So are they all one species because they can sometimes produce fertile offspring?


  • The_v@lemmy.worldtoScience Memes@mander.xyzBig Science
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    1 month ago

    It’s ironic that what most people think of as a highly intelligent person is a polymath aka somebody who is an expert in multiple topics.

    Academia today is designed for extreme specialization of knowledge. So it actively selects against anyone that would be classified as a polymath.

    It’s a pretty big disconnect between expectations and reality.




  • It makes more sense if you use it as intended. It’s designed to be a simple way for farmers/gardeners to classify the basic soil composition by particle size.

    Take a cup of dirt, put it in a mason jar, fill it full of water, put a lid on tight and shake the hell out of it. Come back in 3-4 days and measure the layers.

    This comes in helpful in applying pesticides and basic water management. It’s pretty much pointless for anything else.



  • I have a strict, “do I give a fuck” policy when it comes to security.

    I keep the harder to crack passwords for critical things like banking, etc… since there’s only a few I can remember them. I also always use MFA.

    For all the other shit that I don’t give a fuck if it’s hacked it’s the good old *Banana$1234" type password that I reuse for decades and save to firefox’s password manager.





  • The_v@lemmy.worldtoMemes@lemmy.mlUSA things
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    5 months ago

    The issue is most of these anti-vax dumbfucks have never lived, seen, or been around infectious disease killing or disabling people. It’s all theoretical to them and wild stories. They have no personal experience with the disease.

    Vaccines had sufficient public buy-in when they were introduced because a large portion of society knew or were related to someone that had suffered the consequences.

    Let’s put it into some perspective. The Spanish flu pandemic is estimated to have killed between 25-50 million people. The population of the globe at that time is estimated to be around 2 billion. That’s 1.25-2.5% of the globe died. 1 person out of 40-80 died. Everyone knew somebody or was related to somebody that died of the flu.

    So even though there has always been dumbfucks who refused vaccination, the majority of the population complied.

    I don’t know anyone personally that died of covid. Currently estimates show 14.8 million excess deaths since 2020. This is likely the number of people who died of covid. Out of 8 billion. Or 1 out of 540 people died, mostly in countries with below average medical care.



  • They have proven many times over that pirating/accessibility have inverse relationship.

    My most frustrating example was when I needed one song for a project my wife was working on a long time ago. I looked to try to purchase it online and could only find it on iTunes. In order to purchase from iTunes you had to download the application and install it. However I had an old machine running Linux… By the time I figured this all out I had spent 2 hours trying to pay $0.99 for one song. I could not find an approved way to do it. So I went the alternative route and had the song in under 5 minutes.

    They keep pushing accessibility down recently. I am not playing their games again. When they want to be reasonable they will get paid.




  • They really need to update that paper with some better information. That is what you get when you chronically underfund the extension services and all the best and brightest bail to private industry to make more money. I had to pull up the source material the article because my bullsit meter went off.

    https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.2134/agronj1996.00021962008800050025x

    After reviewing the source material, you are 100% completely wrong :-)

    First off the “transfer” of N from alfalfa to a grass was stated in the sourcing paper to be from mineralization of roots. Aka decomposing plant parts.

    Perennial species often grow new roots and abandon older roots every year.

    Alfalfa will abandon and regrow new roots after every cutting as the plant pulls carbohydrates from the roots to grow new stems and leaves.

    The thing is that the grasses will do the exact same thing. Older roots die back and newer roots grow. So it’s more of mutual swapping of N rather than a one-sided legume being leaky.


  • Here’s a fun thought.

    In the old world, agriculture started in the Mediterranean and temperate regions. The domesticated species are mostly winter annuals or adapted to a Mediterranean climate (dry summers, wet winters).

    New world species are mostly subtropical or tropical species. Corn, potatoes, pumpkins, beans, tomatoes, peppers, etc are all warm weather crops. This is a major reason the large population centers developed in the tropical and subtropical areas.

    Populations in the North America domesticated other species like lambsquarters and erect knotweed. However these species were not as productive and they gave them up when corn and beans were traded for from present day Mexico.

    So the least experienced farmers with the species, were the first ones the Europeans ran into in North America. :-)