#agriculture up

[headspace-hotel]

I will write this thought about Veganism and Classism in the USA in another post so as to not derail the other thread:

There are comments in the notes that say meat is only cheaper than plant based foods because of subsidies artificially lowering the price of meat in the United States. This is...part of the story but not all of it.

For my animal agriculture lab we went to a butcher shop and watched the butcher cut up a pig into various cuts of meat. I have had to study quite a bit about the meat industry in that class. This has been the first time I fully realized how strongly the meat on a single animal is divided up by socioeconomic class.

Like yes, meat cumulatively takes more natural resources to create and thus should be more expensive, but once that animal is cut apart, it is divided up between rich and poor based on how good to eat the parts are. I was really shocked at watching this process and seeing just how clean and crisp an indicator of class this is.

Specifically, the types of meat I'm most familiar with are traditionally "waste" parts left over once the desirable parts are gone. For example, beef brisket is the dangly, floppy bit on the front of a cow's neck. Pork spareribs are the part of the ribcage that's barely got anything on it.

And that stuff is a tier above the "meat" that is most of what poor people eat: sausage, hot dogs, bologna, other heavily processed meat products that are essentially made up of all the scraps from the carcass that can't go into the "cuts" of meat. Where my mom comes from in North Carolina, you can buy "livermush" which is a processed meat product made up of a mixture of liver and a bunch of random body parts ground up and congealed together. There's also "head cheese" (made of parts of the pig's head) and pickled pigs' feet and chitlin's (that's made of intestines iirc) and cracklin's (basically crispy fried pig skin) and probably a bunch of stuff i'm forgetting. A lot of traditional Southern cooking uses basically scraps of animal ingredients to stretch across multiple meals, like putting pork fat in beans or saving bacon grease for gravy or the like.

So another dysfunctional thing about our food system, is that instead of people of each socioeconomic class eating a certain number of animals, every individual animal is basically divided up along class lines, with the poorest people eating the scraps no one else will eat (oftentimes heavily processed in a way that makes it incredibly unhealthy).

Even the 70% lean ground beef is made by injecting extra leftover fat back into the ground-up meat because the extra fat is undesirable on the "better" cuts. (Gross!)

I've made, or eaten, many a recipe where the only thing that makes it non-vegan is the chicken broth. Chicken broth, just leftover chicken bones and cartilage rendered and boiled down in water? How much is that "driving demand" for meat, when it's basically a byproduct?

That class really made me twist my brain around about the idea of abstaining from animal products as a way to deprive the industry of profits. Nobody eats "X number of cows, pigs, chickens in a lifetime" because depending on the socioeconomic class, they're eating different parts of the animal, splitting it with someone richer or poorer than they are. If a bunch of people who only ate processed meats anyway abstained, that wouldn't equal "saving" X number of animals, it would just mean the scraps and byproducts from a bunch of people's steaks or pork chops would have something different happen to them.

The other major relevant conclusion I got from that class, was that animal agriculture is so dominant because of monoculture. People think it's animal agriculture vs. plant agriculture (or plants used for human consumption vs. using them to feed livestock), but from capitalism's point of view, feeding animals corn is just another way to use corn to generate profits.

People think we could feed the world by using the grain fed to animals to feed humans, but...the grain fed to animals, is not actually a viable diet for the human population, because it's literally just corn and soybean. Like animal agriculture is used to give some semblance of variety to the consumer's diet in a system that is almost totally dominated by like 3 monocrops.

Do y'all have any idea how much of the American diet is just corn?!?! Corn starch, corn syrup, corn this, corn that, processed into the appearance of variety. And chickens and pigs are just another way to process corn. That's basically why we have them, because they can eat our corn. It's a total disaster.

And it's even worse because almost all the USA's plant foods that aren't the giant industrial monocrops maintained by pesticides and machines, are harvested and cared for by undocumented migrant workers that get abused and mistreated and can't say anything because their boss will tattle on them to ICE.

[nightmarearian]

blood dripped from Poseidon's mouth, red.

red.

the day they overthrew Kronos, child-eater (stomach acid crawling around them, after maw of teeth grazing his small, child body), his golden ichor bled red.

god blood, degraded into a mortal's.

the day Typhon, father of monsters (as big as their father was, as big as the Titans with sharp claws and teeth) ripped out Zeus' tendons, his blood was red.

Poseidon, god of the tides, son of Kronos, looked up at the dark shape stood above him, his own golden trident in his hand, the teeth like prongs drenched in red.

Odysseus is a mortal. was a human.

sharp webbed ears spread out on the side of their head, scales grew around their neck and arms, shining like a coral reef, illuminated by their growing red eyes, that were shrunken to slits.

Odysseus' teeth glinted in the lightning, showing their unnaturally sharp point.

monster.

[wisebeth]

why does the pjo series have to unnecessarily villainize goddesses (hera & athena) or show them as silly ladies (aphrodite & demeter) BUT posiedon and apollo are somehow shown as the coolest/most likeable gods, even though arguably, they're right after zeus on terms of corruption?

ares shown as the worst god after zeus and hera amuses me. last time i checked, he was the patron god of amazons and literally killed a man for attempting to rape his daughter but guess who cursed women for rejection? apollo. guess who raped women when they said no (aside from zeus)? posiedon.

[muninnhuginn]

The thought that goes into the fake science in dungeon meshi can be something so special actually. Using golems to explain crop rotation and how removing predators from an ecosystem can have knock-on effects. Talking about symbiotic relationships and parasites too! And characters are actually interested in the science so they keep explaining about it. Finally, some exposition I can get behind.

[lonelysocksclub]

Oh boy I need patience this weekend. My cousin is visiting and he just explained to me, a biologist who has worked with maize genetics, how to make a kind of supermaize by using electromagnetic fields to manipulate DNA expression. The goal is to trick the maize to express the genes it had millions of years ago, a time when maize as we know it definitely existed and agricultural yield was famously high. And it's only Friday.

[lost-estradiographer]

I

know that voting for the status quo sucks.

To say it "sucks" massively understates the exact amount of suffering that exists under the status quo, an amount that I acknowledge I am too privileged to ever fully grasp.

I cannot magically provide some viable third-party candidate just barely a month before the election. I cannot solve Israel/Palestine Conflict that has haunted the world for over 70 years. I am a 29-year old transgender woman working her way through her own mental illnesses, trauma, and an undergraduate degree. I was never going to be the one to solve anything here.

All I can tell you is that regardless of whether you vote or not, there will be a presidential election. It's going to be a shitshow, regardless. Whether you vote or not, there will be a different president in January. Voting for the status quo may not be directly in your interests.

We had four years of Trump and we are still trying to unfuck ourselves from that. The beginning of my antagonistic relationship with the government was protesting in the streets of DC under his administration. I've fled from the Metro PD. I've put on a change of clothes and slipped out the back door of a gay sports bar.

Fucking vote.

Fucking vote.

Fucking vote.

Honestly, I

I don't want to see this voter apathy shit anymore.

People are going to keep dying under any president. Any president can, and probably wil, be morally culpable for the deaths of innocent people, both in the country and abroad. Carter might be the last president we had that wasn't overtly a war criminal and we still had foreign civilians killed by U.S. military involvement under the Carter admin.

I'm torn between asking you to block me, or asking you to message me, if you're taking the route of voter apathy. I'll tell you right away, here and now, that I probably don't have a solution to whatever problem is keeping you from voting for Harris. I can't even solve my own problems right, tbh. The government isn't really here for me, either.

But there isn't going to be some sort of miraculous revolution that results in The Ending Where Everyone Lives. If there's a revolution, then supply chains will falter and children and the infirm will die of preventable diseases and infections and complications in hospitals that would have otherwise been able to easily deal with such things. That's what happens in a revolution. I'm after the long-term idea where Humanity as a species lives. I'm after the route where we don't have an ending, we keep going.

Fucking vote, because exactly one of the two leading presidential candidates believes climate change is real, and it is the single greatest threat to all life on earth. We have spent the past 250 years, not just playing God with the environment, but actively creating an ecological niche in which future generations of humanity must continue to play God with the environment, dragging it back to a healthy place drop by drop, inch by inch, a degree at a time.

Or, I mean, don't vote. Either way, we'll all die at some point. Perhaps some of us will be lucky enough to die standing by our principles.

Those lucky few will become soil one day, just like I will.

I am begging you on my hands and knees to fucking vote, though, because our options are The Status Quo vs. Worse. That's

That's it.

There is no door number three right now. Our system, our flawed and broken and imbalanced and unjust system, does not accommodate for a third door. Whether you vote or not, you will be dragged through either Door 1 or Door 2 with all of humanity, as we whirl through the cosmos upon our tiny little speck of dust. The only other legitimate option is to allow oneself to become trampled; to become soil early. I don't say legitimate to give this option legitimacy, but to make clear that again, there is no door three. Door three is a casket. A one-way bed.

I didn't vote in 2016, and I'm hoping that you'll vote for the status quo this time, because that's the route that gives me the best odds of having a long and healthy life to regret my failure through inaction.

Just please

Fucking vote.

Or again, if you're taking the apathy route, probably just save me the time of blocking you, because you're not going to magically pull a viable third-party candidate out of your pocket less than six weeks before the election.

[popsicle-stick]

YES!!!!!!!!!!! OH YEAH BABY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (sickos) OH YES!!!!!!!!!!!!

[fjordfolk]

people really be out there like “I wonder what this breed called a Shetland sheepdog was used for historically? alas it’s impossible to tell, we may never know” 🤦‍♀️

There is, believe it or not, some actual controversy regarding the breed origins and most of it (imo) stems from many people's mental image of a working sheepdog is a border collie, and not quite grasping that border collies are freaks and the way that we now work border collies didn't exist prior to the development of the border collie, and in some parts the way we keep SHEEP didn't exist prior to the border collie. There's also been some debate around old letters written by non-shetlanders after visiting the isles or talking to locals and having mmm interesting ideas of how people handled sheep over there. This leads to statements like:

Sheltie legs are too short to outrun sheep

They're also too small to grab the sheep and hold it (don't get me started)

A sheltie could never take sheep through a- (name specific type of herding trial)

Maybe they were actually placed with flocks on peripheral islands to keep watch for birds??

Shelties never existed and were made up in the late 1800s just for shetlanders to make money off of selling cute puppies to gullible tourists

There was an original sheepdog on Shetland but it was a much bigger dog (see reasons above) and the current sheltie was made up in the late 1800s, by breeding cavaliers to pomeranians and maybe a collie, just for shetlanders to sell puppies to tourists

...and so, clearly, they can't have been sheepdogs and we have No Clue what they were actually for (except scamming foreigners)

Meanwhile we know that traditional shepherding on Shetland relied on roaming sheep, keeping them off the property rather than on it (because that's where your crops are) and you'd only be rounding up your sheep a couple of times a year, and that island-bred shelties were smaller and spitzier type than even the current UK type.

[tetedurfarm]

wanted to take some photos of my van gogh hotots (van gotots?) but my plant light makes them look very ethereal

their mom is smashbox, my severe head tilt doe. because of her neck, she can't get into a nestbox or really pull any fur, so i put her in a small solid-bottom cage for the night of her due date so she could kindle in deep shavings. however, because she can't really pull fur, the kits still chilled a little before i got to them. rabbit instincts say that if kits are going to die, they need to be disposed of, so she had already begun eating them; i actually knew she'd kindle before i got to where her cage was because i could hear the kit she was working on at the time squealing (it was not particularly pretty, the condition it was in. helios the corn snake got an extra dinner that week.) fortunately, the rest of the litter made it out unscathed except for these two, who are down an ear each.

all in all, this litter turned out as good as it possibly could have. all but one kit is alive and well, fostered off to another doe. it was a good sized litter (six live!), and there were miraculously no sports (mismarks) and no boxers (eyeliner on only one eye)! like genuinely insane odds on that.

just watch the earless ones be the nicest ones in the litter 🙄

[clodiuspulcher]

today im thinking about malaria in ancient rome.

about the fact that P. falciparum (the most dangerous kind of malaria) was likely endemic at least from the 2nd century BC onward that Galen said semitertian fevers (P. falciparum infections) were more common in Rome than anywhere else in the Roman Empire that the most severe manifestations of P. falciparum (quotidian fevers + cerebral malaria) were most common in babies and young children, an epidemiological observation that indicates the transmission rate of P. falciparum was extremely high in Rome that Quintus Serenus said there was no Latin word for semitertian fevers (they used a transliteration of the Greek, 'hemitritaeos') because "no one, i think, could have named it in our language and mothers would not have wanted to"

[accala]

My favorite fanfic iteration of Shigaraki is where he becomes a monk after the LOV thing didn’t work out. It’s the most random thing you could think of for him but somehow it makes sense.

[faithfromanewperspective]

don't know how to say this in a nice way but. the food recalls we're having? the shortages of (and high prices) of eggs due to bird flu? they're not JUST because of lax regulations under trump though they are. they're also because animal agriculture when done intensively is fraught with risk and because we literally don't have the space to sustain ourselves like this. and some of us are so privileged by the fact that this global clusterfuck of a food system we have is designed to feed the western empire that they don't realise how bad it is

I know going vegan or even eating less meat is not possible for many people but i am BEGGING you to please, let's all collectively get our heads out of our asses and realise for one more time that just because individual behaviour does very little it doesn't mean that there isn't a LOT of collective action and systemic change that needs to happen. because nutritious food from plants should be cheap and easy to access but it isn't! because animal products, despite taking a lot more resources to get to the point of consumption are heavily subsidised. because our whole food system is based on competition rather than making sure everyone gets enough to survive, starting with the most vulnerable who aren't going to have as many options as the rest of us.

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...

[ahsokatanoe]

i came out of s2 loving sydrichie even more 😭 the tension between them was perfect and now they’ll have a new dynamic to continue to discover ever since richie’s character growth. very exciting!!

[alex51324]

Besides the farm box, my other adventure today was going to the agricultural fair!

This time, I became fascinated with a contest called "vegetable dress-up," where kids enter vegetables that they have arranged to look like animals, people, vehicles, etc.

My favorite was this Red Pepper Sheep:

Or cow. I'm not sure, but either way, it's great! The head and feet are scallions, and the horns are green beans. Tragically, this entry did not win anything. I am not privy to the judging criteria for this contest, but my tentative assessment is that this child was robbed, I tell you. Robbed.

The winner in the animal category was this zucchini dog:

He's nice, but I continue to have my doubts about the judging. The potato pup came in third. His spots are oatmeal!

Vegetable train was also rather good:

First place in Vehicles was something that I assume looked a lot better at the time of judging. (I think exhibits were entered this past Saturday.)

This potato family was first in People, I think.

I took a picture of this one because I do not fully understand it:

Spider-beet in the back is kind of neat, though.

Here's another angle each on Potato Pup and Pepper Sheep:

Over in the grown-ups exhibits, I always like looking at Homemaker Of The Year:

They have to do sewing, baking, canning, flower growing & arranging, and a category of their choice from the arts & crafts division. They usually do some sort of a theme to tie the items together; I guess this year's winner picked "purple."

And here's the year's Best-in-show quilt:

It's a jellyfish! (They put plastic up over the textile exhibits so people don't spill snow-cones on them and stuff; you can still see them pretty well in person, but it's not great for taking pictures.)

Here's a really intricate crocheted...tablecloth, I guess? Big doily? Anyway, it's neat!

Another one that's fun to look at is the Artistic Arrangements in the houseplants and flowers section. Fairy gardens were big this year. Here's a fairies' tea party, in a teapot!

This was the winner:

The county extension office had a butterfly exhibit:

And then I didn't take many pictures of the animal exhibits, but here's Mr. Hopps!

He won a ribbon for being such a good French Lop.

Extreme nose closeup!

And then this is Hector, the Demonstration Bunny:

He is very soft, and his human friend was spinning yarn from his fur!

Anyway those are my pictures from the fair. I also had a cheesesteak and bought some raffle tickets; if I win anything I will report back!

[cowboymeemaw]

yeah do NOT sell your stock through your local county 🙃. I was supposed to get my check from them September 1st, last update was September 11th all it said was "we're working on it." Buddy I sold my steer and hogs August 5th. can't you work on it harder - I've been acquainted with the stockyard you work for, for years. They do not take this long. I don't care anymore, $1.60lb is not worth this hassle. who knows what the poundage rates for hogs are, they don't tell me shit. "MeeMaw calm down they're volunteers" yeah county volunteers. All I want is some solid updates please. Takes one Facebook post at least. I want. My money.