MARVEL

I can’t stress this enough. I wish I could get through to everyone I know. If you try to organise and be productive with every minute of your day, eventually, your body will pull the rug out from under you in a dramatic fashion, and you may end up being able to do very little at all, in a world that has no sympathy for people who need to rest.

So rest now. And work on making sure the people around you know it’s OK to rest.

And don’t feel guilty for resting. Practice telling yourself that rest - quality rest, where you’re not stressing about something you feel you ought to be doing - is actually a productive thing to do for your body.

You are an animal. You need to respect that animal’s needs. That includes laying about doing nothing as much as it does enrichment and running about.

Even your fucking computer gets overheated and slow if you don’t allow it to shut down and update sometimes (which is actually a lot of what sleep does for humans, btw). You eve notice how sometimes your browser just crashes sometimes because you have too many tabs open, or one of the tabs is causing the whole machine to run slowly?

So don’t tell yourself you want to work like a machine because guess what? Machines fucking fall over all the time if you overload them, try to do too many things at once, or don’t let them rest.

Because the battery cought on fire too, the fire dept. had to order a special container to put the car in and fill it with water.

According to Tesla, you need about 11.000 litres of water to extinguish their batteries completely. A normal fire engine can fit up to 2.000 litres in their tank.

They also had to put the still hot wreckage in a cooling container for 72 hours after the initial fire went out.

Historian, curator and documentary presenter Dr Lucy Wosley: Actually it was originally called the ‘withdrawing room’, as in the place one withdrew to, and where only family and important guests were allowed to enter. The name got shortened over time.

HOLY SH*T. THEY FOUND NITROGEN-FIXING CORN BRED BY INDIGENOUS PEOPLE IN MEXICO. @botanyshitposts​

“The study found the Sierra Mixe corn obtains 28 to 82 percent of its nitrogen from the atmosphere. To do this, the corn grows a series of aerial roots. Unlike conventional corn, which has one or two groups of aerial roots near its base, the nitrogen-fixing corn develops eight to ten thick aerial roots that never touch the ground.

During certain times of the year, these roots secrete a gel-like substance, or mucilage. The mucilage provides the low-oxygen and sugar-rich environment required to attract bacteria that can transform nitrogen from the air into a form the corn can use.

“Our research has demonstrated that the mucilage found in this Sierra Mixe corn forms a key component of its nitrogen fixation,“ said co-author Jean-Michel Ané, professor of agronomy and bacteriology in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences at UW–Madison. “We have shown this through growth of the plant both in Mexico and Wisconsin.”

…

“ Researchers are a long way from developing a similar nitrogen-fixing trait for commercial corn, but this is a first step to guide further research on that application. The discovery could lead to a reduction of fertilizer use for corn, one of the world’s major cereal crops. It takes 1 to 2 percent of the total global energy supply to produce fertilizer. The energy-intensive process is also responsible for 1 to 2 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. “

Two things make me hopeful that this will not just disappear into corporate-owned varieties: one, this research was largely done through two land grant universities. Over decades. This is what land grant universities are FOR: their stated purpose is to do useful shit that’s too unprofitable for corporate R&D to care about. They are exactly the people you want developing awesome new ag tech. Mars, Inc. is involved with this too, and I trust them…not at all, but they’re not Monsanto, so it could be worse.

The other thing is this, from the linked article:

The municipal authority and community in the isolated village in the Sierra Mixe region were an integral part of this research project. Biological materials were accessed and utilized under an Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS) Agreement with the community and with permission from the Mexican government. An internationally recognized certificate of compliance under the Nagoya Protocol has been issued for such activities.

The ABS Agreement was structured under the terms of the Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit Sharing, which is designed to ensure the equitable sharing of benefits arising out of the utilization of genetic resources and contributing to the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity.

I don’t know the details of the Nagoya Protocol. But at the very least, this isn’t outright theft of indigenous technology for corporate profit. Someone has at least thought through an equitable way for the community that developed this trait over centuries of growing maize to benefit from its use.

Finally: this is (one reason) why it’s important to preserve local crop varieties (also called landraces). Most industrialized agriculture is incredibly homogeneous genetically. It’s from the landraces that people developed slowly for specific conditions that we can find new traits–this is an extreme example, but it’s common to find landraces that are resistant to certain pests and diseases.

Oh and one more thing: Zea mays aka maize aka corn aka “indigenous Mesoamericans were better crop breeders than anyone alive today, apparently” is the WEIRDEST FUCKING PLANT, WHAT THE FUCK.

My standards for “poor soil” are skewed by working in Africa, so what these folks call “poor” seems pretty okay to me, but STILL, they’re reporting 2000 kg/ha maize grain yield with no fertilizer inputs, from a tall, slow-growing local variety. That is pretty good, in the context of low-input agricultural systems on not-so-great soil. Which is a good sign that it’s possible to get decent yields even while the plant is spending extra energy on getting nitrogen.

This is actually not an obvious thing. Nitrogen fixation is a collaborative effort between a plant and some clever bacteria. The plant feeds the bacteria carbohydrates, the bacteria turns N2 from the air into ammonia, which the plant can use to make proteins (plants can’t use N2 directly because it’s too hard to break apart. N-fixing bacteria have special skills). This is pretty cool, but it does have a cost to the plant: carbohydrates that go toward feeding bacteria can’t be put into grain or leaves. So if you can get nitrates and ammonia and whatnot directly from the soil, it’s not worth the extra effort to feed all these hungry bacteria. That’s probably why this trait was bred out of  most maize varieties around today, and why it’s unlikely that N2-fixing corn will become widespread in, say, the US corn belt. As long as fertilizer is cheap, it’ll be more profitable to let the plant focus on making grain and get the nitrogen elsewhere. 

Nitrogen fixation is much more useful in places where fertilizer is NOT cheap or easily accessible (like, say, most of Africa). But there’ll have to be a lot of breeding work done before we can get varieties with the “makes goop for bacteria” genes but not the “grows 16 feet (5m) tall and that’s a waste of energy” genes and the “takes 8-9 months to reach maturity and that’s too long if it only rains for 4 months out of the year” genes.

That breeding work needs to be done by public organizations–universities, national agricultural research services, the CGIAR–or else the profits will go to whatever corporation does it first. Or, more likely, since poor farmers aren’t considered a profitable target market, there won’t be nitrogen-fixing varieties that are appropriate to the wide range of smallholder growing conditions. In the US, this means the USDA and USAID and NSF funding. Long-term funding, because crop breeding is slow (yes, even with genetic engineering).

and exomis:

Perfect

i met someone.

it wasn't god- not really.

what kind of a god would it have been?

when i drowned

we spoke

and he never faced me.

maybe it was shame-

at himself or at his creation, were he the demiurge.

but he faced away.

i only saw his back.

when i drowned

the crushing weight of the world's oceans

covered my corpse like a blanket.

wet, cold, i sank to the muck

and now i pull that blanket taut around me

as i shiver, looking at god's back.

she won't even face me.

when i drowned

they spoke.

in tongues no human has spoken for millenia

and in ones yet well known

but never in mine.

they asked if it was my fault.

when i drowned

i don't remember falling

though i wish i could have

i do, however, remember

when i threw myself aside

when i drowned

god never met my gaze

it stood solitary

expecting an answer when

none came.

it raised its arms to the world it made

when i drowned

i prayed for breath

pulling icy water into a sacred, soft place

buried in my chest where only air was meant to live

and god saw

for i invited the water inside

and god knew

when i drowned

god, arms outstretched

spoke again

he said

what of this world did not satisfy you

he said

what of this earth was not fascinating

each budded flower a gift

each tree a canopy, a roof, a shelter

each fruit, distinct in its saccharine nature

when i drowned

she said

what here that i made hurt you so

and i could not reply, knowing nothing did

she said

what would've cradled you safely that i didn't offer

and i couldn't reply

because she made my family

she made my ship

she made my life jacket

and yet none of it held me upright

when i drowned

they let their arms drop to the side

and spoke again

in a mourning murmur

this world was never perfect

for if it was

the fruit would lose its sweetness

the flower, its beauty

the trees, their strength

your ship, its spirit.

but this world

they said

was never meant to harm you.

when i drowned

it took a sorrowful tone

its voice a dirge to proclaim my passing

and it asked what else it could've done for me

it gave me the world

and

i still drowned

when i drowned

i couldn't answer.

he hadn't hurt me.

his creations brought the only light to my life.

she hadn't condemned me.

her works were flawless in their design.

they hadn't ruined me.

their world ran like clockwork, however rusted.

it hadn't forsaken me.

its affections weren't wasted.

when i drowned

god sighed

and said

it's okay.

i'm here now.

you're safe with me.

when i drowned

god kneeled.

he outstretched a hand in front of him

as if she wanted me to hold it for her

but they had never faced me

and it never moved towards me.

god waited for me to grab on

but i couldn't

i was behind him

and she waited patiently

their efforts for vain,

its time again wasted on me.

and i fell backwards, pulled under the waves,

as god kneeled, beautiful hand outstretched.

as i drowned

god never moved

but i could never reach

so i just looked up

forever

and i could see that

the world was fascinating.

it couldn't hurt me anymore

i had nothing more the world could take

My family and friends have made comments which always knock me. However, those comments remind me why I'm doing this small bit of personal-scale activism; Like for example, my Dad - who has plenty of body hair - not seeing his own (subconsciousy sexist) irony when he's told me I "need to shave".

Despite not shaving my legs myself, I catch myself being slightly 'grossed out' when I see other women do the same. I immediately find myself jumping to the conclusion that it's 'dirty' despite knowing firsthand that it's not, or not registering that same feeling when it comes to men who don't shave.