“potential policy violation” View quoted note →

til, we do not actually fully know how trees move water up to their tops. we understand 3 mechanisms which trees use to move water, but combined, those mechanisms don’t explain the amount of water pressure generated in early spring, or why Swiss researchers have detected trees emit barely perceptible sound at night during those times of the year.

for those who like the think and reason, this is compelling and thought provoking.

excited to have discovered the work of Wendell Berry. Somber that i discovered it 2 weeks after his death

The Contrariness of the Mad Farmer by Wendel Berry I am done with apologies. If contrariness is my inheritance and destiny, so be it. If it is my missionto go in at exits and come out at entrances, so be it. I have planted by the stars in defiance of the experts, and tilled somewhat by incantation and by singing, and reaped, as I knew, by luck and Heaven’s favor, in spite of the best advice. If I have been caught so often laughing at funerals, that was because I knew the dead were already slipping away, preparing a comeback, and can I help it? And if at weddings I have gritted and gnashed my teeth, it was because I knew where the bridegroom had sunk his manhood, and knew it would not be resurrected by a piece of cake. Dance, they told me, and I stood still, and while they stood quiet in line at the gate of the Kingdom, I danced. ‘Pray,’ they said, and I laughed, covering myself in the earth’s brightnesses, and then stole off gray into the midst of a revel, and prayed like an orphan. When they said, ‘I know my Redeemer liveth,’ I told them, ‘He’s dead.’ And when they told me ‘God is dead,’ I answered, ‘He goes fishing every day in the Kentucky River. I see Him often.’ When they asked me would I like to contribute I said no, and when they had collected more than they needed, I gave them as much as I had. When they asked me to join them I wouldn’t, and then went off by myself and did more than they would have asked. ‘Well, then,’ they said ‘go and organize the International Brotherhood of Contraries,’ and I said, ‘Did you finish killing everybody who was against peace?’ So be it. Going against men, I have heard at times a deep harmony thrumming in the mixture, and when they ask me what Isay I don’t know. It is not the only or the easiest way to come to the truth. It is one way

' The year 1913 marks a watershed in the history of modern medicine. Around that year a patient began to have more than a fifty-fifty chance that a graduate of a medical school would provide him with a specifically effective treatment (if, of course, he was suffering from one of the standard diseases recognized by the medical science of the time). Many shamans and herb doctors familiar with local diseases and remedies and trusted by their clients had always had equal or better results. Since then medicine has gone on to define what constitutes disease and its treatment. The Westernized public learned to demand effective medical practice as defined by the progress of medical science. For the first time in history doctors could measure their efficiency against scales which they themselves had devised. This progress was due to a new perspective of the origins of some ancient scourges; water could be purified and infant mortality lowered; rat control could disarm the plague; treponemas could be made visible under the micro- scope and Salvarsan could eliminate them with statistically defined risks of poisoning the patient; syphilis could be avoided, or recognized and cured by rather simple pro- cedures; diabetes could be diagnosed and self-treatment with insulin could prolong the life of the patient. Paradoxically, the simpler the tools became, the more the medical profession insisted on a monopoly of their application, the longer be- came the training demanded before a medicine man was initiated into t:Q.e legitimate use of the simplest tool, and the more the entire population felt dependent on the doctor. Hygiene turned from being a virtue into a professionally organized ritual at the altar of a science.' -- Ivan Illich, Tools for Conviviality 1975

perhaps its time to break the false binary propaganda of “if you do not support massive institutions, megacorporations, and a technocratic state, you must be a communist”. the labels are a weapon.

if your technology does nothing but, make it easier to consume, make you more easily watched, and makes a few people billionaires, your technology is a crime.

realizing that my goals for exercise are no longer to increase strength. but rather to maintain and improve fluid mobility, flexibility, and nervous system speed.

til, when tannic acid comes in contact with iron oxide, it becomes iron tannate. or, a dark blue rust resistant surface. 🤔

new experimental metric: click out of any instructional video where the person shows their face.

i think i stumbled onto something with my tree tannin dyeing of canvas experiments. i sewed up a simple shoulder bag with a shoulder strap. at the point where the strap meets the bag, the canvas winds up being 6 layers thick. After dyeing with boiled red Alder bark two times, that seam is harder than leather. I did some research and discovered that tannins bind to the cellulose in canvas, but also create hydrogen bonds with other tannins. The short of it being, the layers of canvas become a kind of cellulose/tannin laminate. or sort of a pseudo wood.

im only 4 chapters into “The Hidden Life of Trees”, and my thinking is changing. As westerners, we think of things in individualistic terms, seeing things in isolation. Not understanding everything is connected. We are ignorant of the depth of our ignorance. But we can learn…

til, planted forests behave differently than naturally occurring forests. trees in planted forests act more like individual organisms which happen to be close to other individual organisms. where as trees in naturally occurring forests act collectively, often creating root connections, and sharing resources with each other, in some cases, preventing trees which have a less favorable spot from dying.

til, the fasting plasma glucose levels used to diagnose diabetes have incrementally been lowered from 1979, when the baseline was set, to today. Meaning, each time the baseline numbers were lowered, a whole new segment on the population suddenly had diabetes, when they would not have the year before.

coin vending machine that drops a random local artist sticker. 🙂❤️

analog field kit

some annual revenues: cancer industry - 280 billion adderall - 9 billion ozempic - 59 billion pharmaceutical insulin - 20 billion pharmaceutical cholesterol medication - 34 billion global pharmaceutical industry - 1.8 trillion

did @old man shouts at mahdood get detained in juan quantanamo for criticizing passing mattresses?