WilsonWilson

balloons, drones, ufos it's always some weird distraction

ghostarchive

summary: murder is bad m'kay

I found this article in a link from comrade Malekafzali's twitter account written by Luke Carneal. It is a good overview of agricultural issues in Palestine and food issues in Gaza specifically. A few excerpts:

Michael Fakhri, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, found in his most recent report that “Israel has destroyed approximately ninety-three per cent of the economy of the agriculture, forestry and fishing sector.” That report, released in July, contextualizes Israel’s attacks on Gaza’s food system as a key strategy in its genocide.

Heirloom seeds have been largely replaced in Gaza by hybrids, which large agribusiness monopolies import. These seeds, especially when combined with other modern farm technologies like synthetic nitrogen fertilizer, can increase yields substantially. It is not common practice to save hybrid seeds, as the next generation is almost guaranteed to produce diminished results. This situation keeps growers as perpetual patrons of the multinational corporations who own and sell these elemental farm inputs.

The vast majority of farms in the Gaza Strip are smallholdings. I spoke with an agricultural expert in Gaza who estimated that more than ninety-five percent of the farmers in the strip cultivate plots that are between a half and three dunams (a dunam is equivalent to 1,000 square meters). In most US cities, less than one percent of the food available to consumers is grown on urban farms.

I’ve been trying to summit Mount Diablo since I was a teenager. I don’t live in the bay area but I have a lot of family that does so been there many times. Got farther than ever before so I consider it a success. About a 1/2 mile from the top we came to a stretch with a skinny path and a 1000 foot drop and I just couldn’t do it. About 50 ft in I got down on my hands and knees and the people I was with laughed at me and said yeah that’s not gonna work we should just go back so we did. If I lived near mountains I would do this every week. Got a mild fear of heights but as long as the drop offs aren’t too severe it's a lot of fun the views are amazing and a great workout.

1)First watch the video and see a very rare USA win.

2)Then read Allen Miller's post, click on his name and read his profile.

43 comments and no one did 2)

(illustration by Joe Biden)

Sunshine Protection Act. When the worst person you know etc... (marco rubio)

I just spent all day thinking it was an hour later than it is. I was planning on going for a bike ride in the last hour of light so I waited till 5pm and went outside and it was dark already. Went back inside looked at the clock on the wall - 5pm - then checked my phone - 4pm - and remembered daylight savings time. It feels like mild jet lag twice a year and I think I would prefer no DLT. Orange man says he will sign it so if he wins the election it might be the only useful thing he does in 4 years.

“Boldly Go: Reflections on a Life of Awe and Wonder,” co-authored by Josh Brandon, was published by Atria Books on Oct. 4, 2022.

William Shatner:

So, I went to space.

Our group, consisting of me, tech mogul Glen de Vries, Blue Origin Vice President and former NASA International Space Station flight controller Audrey Powers, and former NASA engineer Dr. Chris Boshuizen, had done various simulations and training courses to prepare, but you can only prepare so much for a trip out of Earth’s atmosphere! As if sensing that feeling in our group, the ground crew kept reassuring us along the way. “Everything’s going to be fine. Don’t worry about anything. It’s all okay.” Sure, easy for them to say, I thought. They get to stay here on the ground.

During our preparation, we had gone up eleven flights of the gantry to see what it would be like when the rocket was there. We were then escorted to a thick cement room with oxygen tanks. “What’s this room for?” I asked casually. “Oh, you guys will rush in here if the rocket explodes,” a Blue Origin fellow responded just as casually. Uh-huh. A safe room. Eleven stories up. In case the rocket explodes. Well, at least they’ve thought of it.

When the day finally arrived, I couldn’t get the Hindenburg out of my head. Not enough to cancel, of course—I hold myself to be a professional, and I was booked. The show had to go on. We got ourselves situated inside the pod. You have to strap yourself in in a specific order. In the simulator, I didn’t nail it every time, so as I sat there, waiting to take off, the importance of navigating weightlessness to get back and strap into the seat correctly was at the forefront of my mind. That, and the Hindenburg crash. Then there was a delay.“Sorry, folks, there’s a slight anomaly in the engine. It’ll just be a few moments.” An anomaly in the engine?! That sounds kinda serious, doesn’t it? An anomaly is something that does not belong. What is currently in the engine that doesn’t belong there?! More importantly, why would they tell us that? There is a time for unvarnished honesty. I get that. This wasn’t it.

Apparently, the anomaly wasn’t too concerning, because thirty seconds later, we were cleared for launch and the countdown began. With all the attending noise, fire, and fury, we lifted off. I could see Earth disappearing. As we ascended, I was at once aware of pressure. Gravitational forces pulling at me. The g’s. There was an instrument that told us how many g’s we were experiencing. At two g’s, I tried to raise my arm, and could barely do so. At three g’s, I felt my face being pushed down into my seat. I don’t know how much more of this I can take, I thought. Will I pass out? Will my face melt into a pile of mush? How many g’s can my ninety-year-old body handle?

And then, suddenly, relief. No g’s. Zero. Weightlessness. We were floating. We got out of our harnesses and began to float around. The other folks went straight into somersaults and enjoying all the effects of weightlessness. I wanted no part in that. I wanted, needed to get to the window as quickly as possible to see what was out there. I looked down and I could see the hole that our spaceship had punched in the thin, blue-tinged layer of oxygen around Earth. It was as if there was a wake trailing behind where we had just been, and just as soon as I’d noticed it, it disappeared.

I continued my self-guided tour and turned my head to face the other direction, to stare into space. I love the mystery of the universe. I love all the questions that have come to us over thousands of years of exploration and hypotheses. Stars exploding years ago, their light traveling to us years later; black holes absorbing energy; satellites showing us entire galaxies in areas thought to be devoid of matter entirely… all of that has thrilled me for years… but when I looked in the opposite direction, into space, there was no mystery, no majestic awe to behold . . . all I saw was death. I saw a cold, dark, black emptiness. It was unlike any blackness you can see or feel on Earth. It was deep, enveloping, all-encompassing. I turned back toward the light of home. I could see the curvature of Earth, the beige of the desert, the white of the clouds and the blue of the sky. It was life. Nurturing, sustaining, life. Mother Earth. Gaia. And I was leaving her.

Everything I had thought was wrong. Everything I had expected to see was wrong. I had thought that going into space would be the ultimate catharsis of that connection I had been looking for between all living things—that being up there would be the next beautiful step to understanding the harmony of the universe. In the film “Contact,” when Jodie Foster’s character goes to space and looks out into the heavens, she lets out an astonished whisper, “They should’ve sent a poet.” I had a different experience, because I discovered that the beauty isn’t out there, it’s down here, with all of us. Leaving that behind made my connection to our tiny planet even more profound.

It was among the strongest feelings of grief I have ever encountered. The contrast between the vicious coldness of space and the warm nurturing of Earth below filled me with overwhelming sadness. Every day, we are confronted with the knowledge of further destruction of Earth at our hands: the extinction of animal species, of flora and fauna . . . things that took five billion years to evolve, and suddenly we will never see them again because of the interference of mankind. It filled me with dread. My trip to space was supposed to be a celebration; instead, it felt like a funeral.


I learned later that I was not alone in this feeling. It is called the “Overview Effect” and is not uncommon among astronauts, including Yuri Gagarin, Michael Collins, Sally Ride, and many others. Essentially, when someone travels to space and views Earth from orbit, a sense of the planet’s fragility takes hold in an ineffable, instinctive manner. Author Frank White first coined the term in 1987: “There are no borders or boundaries on our planet except those that we create in our minds or through human behaviors. All the ideas and concepts that divide us when we are on the surface begin to fade from orbit and the moon. The result is a shift in worldview, and in identity.”

It can change the way we look at the planet but also other things like countries, ethnicities, religions; it can prompt an instant reevaluation of our shared harmony and a shift in focus to all the wonderful things we have in common instead of what makes us different. It reinforced tenfold my own view on the power of our beautiful, mysterious collective human entanglement, and eventually, it returned a feeling of hope to my heart. In this insignificance we share, we have one gift that other species perhaps do not: we are aware—not only of our insignificance, but the grandeur around us that makes us insignificant. That allows us perhaps a chance to rededicate ourselves to our planet, to each other, to life and love all around us. If we seize that chance.

Kroger made final arguments for merger with Albertsons. Albertsons owns Safeway so now Kroger meglo corp international gmblz will be the largest grocery business in the usa. Kroger will own Alberstsons, Jewel-Osco, Safeway, Dillons, Food-4-Less, Fred Myers, Frys, Harris Teeter, Home Chef, King Soopers, Mariano's, QFC, Ralphs, Roundy's, JayC, Smiths and Vitacost.

Aldi is German owned. They own trader joes and recently bought Winn-Dixie & Harveys making them second largest food meglo corp

In 2024, Trader Joe's joined SpaceX in a lawsuit to have the National Labor Relations Board, which enforces U.S. labor law in relation to collective bargaining and unfair labor practices, deemed unconstitutional.

Bro consuming enough caffeine to paralyze an elephant. Any yerba-mate drinkers on hexbear? I'm looking for a source of caffeine cheaper than coffee. Last two months I've seen the largest food price increase since the pandemic and coffee is just about off the menu at this point. I kept going cheaper but I realized that as you go down the cost structure the coffee has less caffeine (img below) and I'm at diminishing return level now. Yerba-mate is a sub tropical woody long growing plant so even If I could grow it I probably wouldn't be able to get enough caffeine out of one plant but if I can get seeds I might give it a try. Amazon has a 4.4 lb bag for $19. Thats much cheaper than coffee but I can't get good info on how mate compares lb for lb wrt caffeine.

My new favorite version of Misionera.