Mastodawn

ubi

@ubi@ecoevo.social

518 Followers

476 Following

23.7K Posts

Philipp Defner 8h ago

Visiting Penang

https://blog.notmyhostna.me/photos/1752693518

#Malaysia #Penang #Fujifilm

Very interesting and informative crackdown on the different types of (chicken) eggs you find in Singapore/Malaysia, and all sorts of topics/questions pertaining to eggs in general.

▶️ https://youtu.be/RMkAftmzxVE

Are Expensive Eggs More Nutritious? | Talking Point | Full Episode

YouTube

Dr. Divya 🍉 offline 1h ago

Support has stopped but I know we can change that! The emergencies are daily and getting worse for these families, but we can help.

Recently, you’ve helped them with healthcare, shelter, flour/tinned food. This is life-preserving work that you’re doing. Nothing to feel hopeless about 🩷

We’re at 619/1900 by Friday to continue: https://chuffed.org/project/hope-giving-circle

Can’t give? Spread the word! https://linktr.ee/hopegivingcircle

#MutualAid #MutualAidRequest

Keep Hope Alive: a Gaza Giving Circle

We are a team of volunteers in the US and UK, led by two sisters passionate about helping our friends on the ground keep their families and neighbors alive with food, water, & shelter. We saw that their campaigns are extremely stagnant and wanted to find a way to direct steady help to them. We distribute your contributions equally every week for sustainable support.

Chuffed

@PermaSolarPotter This is a test of my memory.

The top bunch is Selom/ Water celery (Oenanthe javanica). I can't recall what the lower bunch of leaves is, but I think it came from a tree. The mixed up veges were beansprouts (the white stuff) and fern fiddleheads mixed in with chillies and coconut shavings, this is a type of Kerabu, a Thai influenced salad.

@PermaSolarPotter One of the good things about Mastodon is getting to meet other permaculture people/ gardeners from the other tropical regions. We share a similar stock of plants. So many ideas to exchange.

@PermaSolarPotter
I've never tried roselle leaves, but I've grown it before for the fruit.

Cassava leaves are very nice when cooked in coconut milk.

Mango, papaya and mulberry leaves are eaten raw in Southeast Asia. Mango is taken with chilli pastes (sambal) to get rid of the sap, papaya is very bitter but can be boiled in salt to reduce the bitterness.

Steve Gisselbrecht 1h ago

Once in lab meeting someone mentioned a fly gene and one of my coworkers turned to me expectantly. I said, What? and he wanted to know details about it and I said, There are like 18,000 fly genes, I don't know them all by name.

(But that one I did, to my mild annoyance, and he gave me a smug smirk when I told him what it does.)

Art History Animalia 3h ago

#GuineaPigAppreciationDay :
Adolf Dietrich (Switzerland, 1877-1957)
#GuineaPigs and #Canaries, 1954
Oil on board, 41 x 53.5 cm
https://www.invaluable.com/auction-lot/dietrich-adolf-3090-c-a4kjfvgz2o

Art History Animalia 3h ago

#WatercolorWednesday :
Charles Ephraim Burchfield (USA, 1893-1967)
June Night (Luna #Moth, Tulip Tree in Bloom by Moonlight), 1959
watercolor & charcoal on joined paper laid down on board
39 ¾ x 33 in. (101 x 83.8 cm)
https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-6134498

Dr. Divya 🍉 offline 3h ago

My recent challenge for our giving circle, which supports 6 families + a mutual aid team serving 15 more in a displacement camp, is to get more of our weekly goal covered by bold folks who click "weekly" on the cost of a cup of coffee. It means reliable support for these families to eat in SO much uncertainty.

And....we're up to 23%, yall 💚 Almost all just a cup of coffee.

Small, steady, sustainable. It's how we free each other. Join in: https://chuffed.org/project/hope-giving-circle

#MutualAid #MutualAidRequest

Keep Hope Alive: a Gaza Giving Circle

We are a team of volunteers in the US and UK, led by two sisters passionate about helping our friends on the ground keep their families and neighbors alive with food, water, & shelter. We saw that their campaigns are extremely stagnant and wanted to find a way to direct steady help to them. We distribute your contributions equally every week for sustainable support.

Chuffed

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Sarah Taber Jul 9

I did a short video on this. For anyone who might need to hear, like, *logistical* reasons for why drafting people into farm work is bad.

https://youtu.be/jyVIqq4VBy4

Thread format to follow shortly.

Sarah Taber Jul 9

Every farm job that CAN be automated, already is. Let's start there.

She thinks... nobody's ever tried to automate picking fruit? Really?

And then we'll talk about the "tehe we'll just make the Medicaid people work the farms" part.

Sarah Taber Jul 9

Produce that's hard, OR destined for processing, can be picked by machine.

So carrots, nuts, sour cherries for pie filling, berries & grapes that will be dried, tomatoes for sauce- those are picked by machine already.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ojqPSMYWEvo

Picking Sour Cherries with Modern Machinery

YouTube

Sarah Taber Jul 9

But berries, fruit, tomatoes, etc that are eaten fresh can't be automated w current technology.

I know because I worked for a lot of the startups that tried!

There's no way to pick fast enough by machine to be commercially viable, without bruising so they rot before they get to the store.

Sarah Taber Jul 9

Having a USDA Secretary who doesn't know or care about any of this is wild!

Sarah Taber Jul 9

Now let's talk this whole "We'll just have the Medicaid people pick the crops!" thing.

And let's just ignore the whole "forced labor is morally bad" issue. Let's focus strictly on logistics.

Sarah Taber Jul 9

A thing that kept happening to me, as a white American who worked manual labor field jobs (we are in fact out here, sorry)

is finding out I was the only fool on the crew who was there voluntarily & getting paid. Everyone else was convicts with a sentence.

Sarah Taber Jul 9

So they were completely new to farm labor & didn't really want to be there. Part of the job is I was supposed to "mentor" them.

News flash: inexperienced people who don't want to be there DON'T DO GOOD WORK. Even if they want to, they don't know how.

Sarah Taber Jul 9

Farmers would hire these crews bc they "didn't want to hire migrants" but also "didn't want to pay real wages."

And they were ALWAYS disappointed w the results. Slow. Sloppy. Kept breaking stuff bc they were clumsy.

No real cost savings compared to just hiring real workers.

Sarah Taber Jul 9

This one Florida crew I was on had a rotating cast of 19yo weed & Xbox kids who'd been caught on minor drug charges.

They were harmless. And also, clumsy af. Big kids who had no idea where their feet were. They kept stepping on the blueberry transplants we'd just planted.

Sarah Taber Jul 9

Another crew was a bunch of minors who were working as "community service" for juvie.

They all smoked, bc juvie. Tobacco is packed with plant viruses that are super contagious; can be spread just by touch. So "don't smoke in the fields" is a key farm rule.

Sarah Taber Jul 9

Not only did the juvie crew not know or care. The FOREMEN didn't know or care. That's how janky this outfit was.

Hope those fields turned out ok 🙃

Sarah Taber Jul 9

Ag is a real job.

It takes real skills, knowledge, & people who gaf about what they're doing.

Stop treating agriculture like society's dumping ground.

(Is this where we go watch some @ufwupdates videos of some skilled ag workers ripping through harvesting fields?)

@alienghic @sarahtaber @ufwupdates

I think we just watch videos of ice raids in crop fields until mobile bands of rebels make chains of linked arms around entire picking operations

Gemma ⭐️🔰🇺🇸 🇵🇭 🎐Jul 9

@alienghic @sarahtaber @ufwupdates The part of this that you are missing is that there is no such thing as "able-bodied people on Medicaid" who aren't employed.

That's federal law, since the Clinton Administration, over 30 years ago. ABAWDs (able-bodied adults aged 18-64 without dependents) do *not* qualify for Medicaid, at all, unless they are employed, period.

Only children, disabled people, people with dependents who are full-time caregivers, and the elderly get a free pass.

Gemma ⭐️🔰🇺🇸 🇵🇭 🎐Jul 9

@alienghic This doesn't even begin to address the fact that even if these putative 34 million people existed, most of them almost certainly do not exist in places where they can be employed as farm labor, because they are mostly not in locations that are suitable for modern agriculture.

We can dispense with the notion that this fascist regime is suddenly going to start providing public housing in farming communities for farm laborers.

Everything she's saying is an obviously blatant lie.

Warren Currie 🦠🦐Jul 9

@gcvsa @alienghic to me this clearly states that the administration wants to gather up people on Medicaid into on-site forced work camps (not that would be able to do this physically taxing and skilled work). Sounds familiar somehow...

Dwight Williams (💉 x9)+😷🇨🇦Jul 10

@DrPlanktonguy @gcvsa @alienghic All too familiar.

John Robinson 6d ago

@DrPlanktonguy @gcvsa @alienghic It’s the logical extension from where they are.

GhostOnTheHalfShell 6d ago

@DrPlanktonguy @gcvsa @alienghic

Oh, please call them health camps like RFK jr talks of, where people will work off their deficiencies of depression and other forms of mental illness or gender dysphoria.

Of course, this has nothing to do with eugenicist ideas

@GhostOnTheHalfShell @DrPlanktonguy @gcvsa

Ah yes depression is treason. I will not forgot to drink my Bouncy Bubble Beverage ration Mr happiness officer.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chief_happiness_officer

Chief happiness officer - Wikipedia

@gcvsa @alienghic @sarahtaber @ufwupdates Thank you! I did say this in another thread about this topic. My stepbrother is 50+ years old, has cerebral palsy, can't speak well and is blind. Yes his care requires Medicaid. But sure they can have him out there harvesting crops 🙄

Gemma ⭐️🔰🇺🇸 🇵🇭 🎐Jul 9

@Star12Mt @alienghic @sarahtaber @ufwupdates I know all this, because I have been an ABAWD on Medicaid, and the restrictions only get lifted under particular economic downturn conditions, and even then, only when the Governor of a state requests the waiver, which they don't always do.

ABAWDs do not get public assistance without employment. Period.

Most recently, waivers were granted during the early years of the COVID-19 pandemic, but all those have since expired.

Gemma ⭐️🔰🇺🇸 🇵🇭 🎐Jul 9

@Star12Mt Furthermore, the *only* forms of public assistance for which ABAWDs can qualify *at all* are:

Medicaid

SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, "food stamps")

and LIHEAP (Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, for heating fuel costs)

except that in 12 states only, ABAWDs can receive General Assistance (cash welfare payments, and it's not a lot).

No one is getting rich, fat, and lazy on welfare in the US. The benefits provided aren't even subsistence level.

Jonathan Jul 10

@gcvsa this is pretty much the same everywhere. It's just a feel good and/or rage bait trope that welfare recipients are out there making bank on the couch

secretsloth Jul 10

@gcvsa I remember being in my teens and learning someone I knew was on Medicaid, disability, and also worked odd jobs (which they very bluntly told me was less pay than a normal job, but a normal job would report their pay and then they would lose their benefits, and they needed medicaid). I was amazed, because I didn't realize how little disability paid - that people are basically forced to game the system just to make rent, basically. Even back then, $300/mo total wasn't enough.

thepoliticalcat Jul 10

@Star12Mt @gcvsa @alienghic @sarahtaber @ufwupdates I'm pretty damn disabled and in almost CONSTANT pain, and I'm not disabled enough to be on Medicaid! TRUST that it is damn difficult to get on it! I just got tired of appealing and said to the spouse, I have savings, I can pay the cost. People who don't have any money at all need this a damn sight more than I do. Sending best wishes for your stepbrother, may he remain safe from these vicious vultures.

Star12Mt Jul 10

@thepoliticalcat @gcvsa @alienghic @sarahtaber @ufwupdates i'm so sorry about the pain, I really empathize with that. We've been lucky enough to save a fair amount, but for how long? And now we have two parents diagnosed with Alzheimer's. This country is going to have to come to a big healthcare reckoning

thepoliticalcat Jul 10

@Star12Mt @gcvsa @alienghic @sarahtaber @ufwupdates Times like these, I'm really grateful our parents are gone. I could never manage this with two sets of aging parents in frail health.

Star12Mt Jul 10

@thepoliticalcat @gcvsa @alienghic @sarahtaber @ufwupdates yes unfortunately I agree. At least two of them don't understand what's happening. But watching my mother watch the country turn into this has been heartbreaking

prom™️Jul 9

@sarahtaber There are many capitalist wank-heads in German ag, and some far-right groups. But the opposite also exists.

Michał "rysiek" Woźniak · 🇺🇦Jul 9

@sarahtaber thank you for this thread!

Yet another example that there is no such thing as "unskilled labor" in general.

@rysiek @sarahtaber

Yes, thank you for this thread & for kicking off such a great discussion on the basics of what it takes to do agricultural work well. 🙂

Points to a wider issue: complete divorce & chasm between real world & wherever it is Thump & his billionaire backers live. Similar to the growing gap between real value (things in the real world) & share market 'value'. 😐

@sarahtaber A few years ago there was a story about vineyard owners who couldn't find workers, because there was no affordable housing near the fields and people in nearby cities couldn't afford cars to commute to the vinyards on the wages offered.
But yeah, people just don't want to work these days 🤦🏽‍♀️

Steve Hersey Jul 9

@rejinl @sarahtaber
This week I heard a piece on our local NPR station where a potato farmer was interviewed; he said he can't get local workers at $17/hr.

Of course, that's just a seasonal job doing heavy physical labor outdoors in the heat, and the housing and transportation issues are real barriers. And I think his is a small farm, so not necessarily representative of the big ag operations.

Indeed, "people don't want to work" doesn't seem like a satisfactory explanation.

@n1xnx @sarahtaber There are so many examples like this. If they do follow through and deport lots of skilled farm workers, the consequences will be widespread.

Steve Hersey Jul 9

@rejinl @sarahtaber
Yes. "Horrific" is not an exaggeration.

@n1xnx @rejinl @sarahtaber No billionaires are going to starve. Thus, the elites don’t give a single god damn about it.

@rejinl @n1xnx @sarahtaber they tried this already about 15 years ago in GA and AL. Millions of dollars worth of crops rotted in the fields. You'd think that this is still within living memory but I guess not everyone has long term memory.

@n1xnx @rejinl @sarahtaber Folks around here pay $35/hr for the exact same job, and still can’t get enough workers. No wonder he can’t find people.

Steve Hersey Jul 9

@sidereal @rejinl @sarahtaber
I really don't think wage levels alone are the core of that problem.

sidereal 6d ago

@n1xnx @rejinl @sarahtaber Yup. I won’t do it, I live in the city and the reverse commute would be crazy.

GhostOnTheHalfShell 6d ago

@n1xnx @rejinl @sarahtaber

I’ve seen other farmers interviewed where they hired Americans. Even where you might consider the wage is pretty decent like in the $20 range. Harvesting crops, particularly fruit is a skilled occupation, as noted in the original post for this thread.

It’s so tempting to make government officials actually try the kind of work they dismiss as unskilled

rk: it’s hyphen-minus actually Jul 9

@rejinl @sarahtaber

I can’t remember who said it but “no one who works in Aspen can afford to live in Aspen.”

(Aspen, Colorado is home to many famous and expensive ski resorts, for those who might not know.)

@rk @sarahtaber And I think there was a town in California that had to build special housing for their teachers. But what a terrible position to be in, locked into a job or lose your home.

Tim Ward ⭐🇪🇺🔶 #FBPE Jul 9

@rejinl @rk @sarahtaber We once tried to define "key worker" so that we could use the definition in housing policy.

We decided that "key worker" was someone who couldn't afford to buy the house they were living in.

We excluded the 20% who were living in social housing. A further 20% *could* afford to buy the house they were living in at today's prices.

Leaving 60% of the population who would meet that definition of "key worker", which was clearly not useful for policy development. So we gave up trying to concoct a useful definition.

@rejinl Yearly stories on the news in Colorado. Tourist towns in the mountains have empty, expensive, 'second' homes but nowhere for a teacher to live.

lonely extrovert Jul 9

@Jestbill @rejinl see also "airbnb"

A Flock of Beagles Jul 9

@rejinl @rk @sarahtaber geez, did they pay the teachers in scrip too?

@burnitdown @rk @sarahtaber Probably deducted the cost of housing from their salaries ☹️

@rejinl @burnitdown @rk @sarahtaber this is commonly what they do with ag workers in Australia, often they are charged exorbitant rates for very overcrowded and often illegal accommodation.

Ben Carver Jul 9

@rejinl @sarahtaber In Italy, it's really noticeable how many immigrant labourers opt for e-bikes or e-scooters as a practical solution to a transportation problem: compatible with local bus and train services, cheaper than a car, no/minimal registration and documentation requirements. It's still, to me, quite a sight, these guys ghosting along in the deep countryside

@rejinl @sarahtaber I picked corn in the summer time as a teen. It was a hard, hot, surprisingly itchy job, and it only paid about $5 an hour back then. I hear they pay $10.60 now. For "hard working honest" people, farmers can't seem to wrap their head around workers needing more than poverty wages.

Sorry, not all of us were gifted 2,000 acres, a few houses and $5m worth of equipment by daddy. Some of us actually work for our money.

@rejinl @sarahtaber We turned a bunch of the best near-urban farmland in the world into suburbs, kicked the farms out so far that few people can commute there, and now complain that there aren’t enough farmworkers.

A planned economy would have easily avoided this. The free market has now rendered a lot of the best farmland in the world unusable for growing crops, to build housing, and also nobody likes living in suburbs and we still have a housing crisis.

@sidereal @sarahtaber See also: why is so much of our produce grown as far away as California, Mexico, and Central America? 🤔

GhostOnTheHalfShell 6d ago

@sidereal @rejinl @sarahtaber

You need to understand something. Suburbia is a planned economy.

Suburbia was designed to separate housing, work and retail two separate areas bound together by very expensive transportation system. It was the concept of specializing the functions of a community, just as businessman, specialized the function of jobs and architect and city planners became influenced by those ideas.

..

GhostOnTheHalfShell 6d ago

@sidereal @rejinl @sarahtaber

But there is more to that than just that statement. The United States faced a huge social problem at the end of World War II, where we had the insanely powerful industrial base crafted for the demands of war, and millions of working men returning back into the economy when the foundation for wartime economy has ceased to exist.

Businessman and politicians were terrified of the consequences of a massive recession facing returning seasoned war veterans