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101·2 months agoIn fact recent famines in Iran and Afghanistan were the result of overproduction of cash crops like Saffron
Do you have sources for this? I’ma be honest: when a country is laboring under brutal sanctions - sanctions designed to create famine conditions, to make ordinary citizens desperate enough to overthrow their government - claiming that the famines are really caused by that government making farmers grow the wrong crops… I’m willing to be proven wrong but that doesn’t pass the smell test to me.
It’s the opposite. More aerodynamic modern cars are more likely to hit insects on the road than the older blockier ones. They’re not hitting insects because there aren’t any insects to hit.
Have you ever lived in a HOA?
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7·3 months agoI mean, if saving seeds wasn’t dangerous to the powers that shouldn’t be, Monsanto wouldn’t have made it illegal.
God, fuck ethanol. Last I checked it literally took 1.5 gallons of oil/gas to produce 1 gallon of ethanol. It turns more fuel into less fuel and pisses away soil fertility doing it.
I read an article some time ago arguing the purpose of ethanol (and ag subsidies in general) is, consciously or unconsciously, manifest destiny - we have to have a “use” for all the land we stole, we have to do something with it even if that something is a complete waste, because otherwise, people might start asking why we don’t give it back. Seems more likely to me all the time.
When I was younger I really liked the idea of communes, but now I think intentional communities are more practical and avoid some of the worst aspects of communes.
The difference, to me, is communes typically collectivize all aspects of life - religion, culture, economy, working for a business owned by the commune and sharing property in common, and so on - and this not only isolates people from the surrounding community, but creates a dangerous power imbalance because of how much power the commune’s leaders hold over every aspect of its members’ lives.
Basically, I think a commune is what you get when you try to run a community like a family. And, unfortunately, there are a lot of abusive families out there.
But communes are only a subset of intentional communities.
In an IC, you don’t have to share in any particular religious or philosophical belief system, you don’t have to give everything you own to the group, you just have to want to live a lifestyle more sustainable and more closely connected to other community members than your average suburb or apartment building.
And you buy into the community and start contributing to common spaces and common meals and that’s that.
You don’t lose your home and family if you criticize the commune’s leader. You don’t have to hide your doubts about the commune’s philosophy for fear of punishment. The community has a bunch of different income sources and doesn’t fall apart if one communal business fails. There’s no charismatic leader who, to give one completely hypothetical example, preys on teenage girls and gaslights their parents into thinking his dick is God’s will. Power imbalances are limited because the power the community’s leaders have over its members is limited.
You might look up cohousing.
There’s always the “cool aunt/uncle/friend with no children who’s always available to babysit” option. Communal child rearing generally starts with extended family - those without minor children pitch in to help the adults with minor children - and you don’t need kids of your own to help out that way.
But you do kind of need a trusting relationship with those adults first, so they’ll be willing to trust you with their kids, and it’s hard to build those relationships from scratch, or rebuild them with family members if you’ve lost that trust already.
1·2 years agoMineral oil is a petroleum distillate, a byproduct of fossil fuel production. I’m not saying it’s necessarily unsafe or unethical to use, but calling it “all natural” is a bit of a reach.
I would say trees growing in neat rows in an industrial monoculture orchard, or squeezed into a 3-ft strip of otherwise barren land next to a sidewalk slowly choking to death on concrete and pollution, have been destroyed in almost every way that matters. They physically still exist, yes, but trees are part of an ecosystem; capitalism kills the ecosystem and raises the tree as a zombie servant. It forces the tree to perform its profitable function, and nothing else, and destroys everything about it and everything around it that doesn’t serve that function.
Zombie trees may be alive, but they aren’t really living.
Or maybe we’re overthinking and the poster is talking about logging and not about absolutely everything in the world that people might use a tree for.