Jordyn > Recent Status Updates

“…in 1933, he witnessed a riot over milk. Milk prices had fallen, and in some places milk workers went on strike-tipping over milk trucks and beating anyone who got in their way. Nearby, hungry citizens just wanted food, and when they surrounded a milk truck on the streets of Minneapolis, a brawl erupted.” Riots in MPLS aren’t new 👀

~The study found that surviving bats were fatter. Putting on a few extra grams, it turned out, seemed to be a good thing, aiding in the bats' survival…the conclusion suggested some strategy for conservation efforts, such as helping bats fatten up before the cold sets in.~
Or were they fatter bc less comp for resources when they did wake during hibernation? Corr =\= cause

~scientists tried and failed to find a replacement or breed a resistant, palatable hybrid banana. Eventually industry losses began draining millions of dollars a year... It wasn't just United Fruit or just Central and South America; the fungus hit growers in Asia, Africa, Latin America, wherever Gros Michel grew. And the growers were to blame. They just kept planting the same old thing in different places.

The industry's response was to cut virgin forest and create new fields. Some fields were flooded and then replanted with shoots from infected plants. Because flooding suffocated both the disease-causing fungus along with much of the beneficial soil microbiome, the disease came back with a vengeance. Old plantations were left to rot.

~One of Pocasangre's research interests is beneficial microbes and a fungus called Trichoderma to prevent insect pests like nematodes. Some strains of this common soil fungus, along with other amendments like composted banana plants, are a biological treatment for the nematodes that eat roots. Untreated plants lean… because their roots can’t support the tall stalks. The alternative is injection of pesticide gas.

It was in pursuit of precisely this freedom that the
American colonialists originally fled Europe…that their descendants would now seek to suppress the Indians' own religious freedom was an irony apparently lost on most Americans, including the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court. In a shocking 1990 decision written by Justice Antonin Scalia, the Native American Church lost its right to practice its religion.

Author repeats himself in text sometimes but overall I’m enjoying the read. The lack of breaks in the caffeine section compared to the opium one is very clever too. I have to give myself arbitrary stopping points because I could easily just blow through the whole section and not go to bed on time.

“The market system artificially creates scarcity… Grain may rot in the warehouse while hungry people starve because they cannot pay for it. The result is famine for some and diseases of excess for others. The very earth that sustains
us is being destroyed to fuel injustice. An economy that grants personhood to corporations but denies it to the more-than-human beings: this is a Windigo economy.”

Conventions for efficiency and precision make reading scientific papers very difficult for the rest of the world... This has serious consequences for public dialogue about the environment... For what good is knowing, unless it is coupled with caring? Science can give us knowing, but caring
comes from someplace else

“Ceremony focuses attention so that attention becomes intention. If you stand together and profess a thing before your community, it holds you accountable. Ceremonies transcend the boundaries of the individual and resonate beyond the human realm. These acts of reverence are powerfully pragmatic. These are ceremonies that magnify life.”

“It is an odd dichotomy we have set for ourselves, between loving people and loving land. We know that loving a person has agency and power-we know it can change everything. Yet we act as if loving the land is an internal affair that has no energy outside the confines of our head and heart.”

“Plants answer questions by the way they live, by their responses to change; you just need to learn how to ask”

“I envision a time when the intellectual monoculture if science will be replaced with a polyculture of complementary knowledges”

I love the idea that the earth loves us back. Why couldn’t my garden love me? We can describe things in “non-scientific” ways and have that description still be valid.

“If gifts and responsibilities are one, then asking “what is our responsibility” is the same as asking “what is our gift?””

I realize the pond story is likely an allegory but the thought of shoveling thousands of pounds of sludge from a pond sounds like actual torture and a serious labor of love

The witch hazel story 🥹🥹🥹 so bittersweet.

Love the coverage of how linguistics shape our worldview.

Loved the wrap up of the coffee story. Many traditions have earned deep meaning when they started as something mundane, and those stories tie us together.

Good so far. Definitely a denser read than my last two.

I’m flying through this book and loving it. It’s so relatable and real. It feels attainable and makes me proud of my garden. Too many books go 0 to 100, but this one is normal and I love that.