I’m an expert on capitalism and everywhere I look I just see pain and ecological destruction.
That’s only logical. You should have become a taco expert instead.
Taco experts looks at the aftermath of a Taco Bell meal, “I just see pain and ecological destruction”
Some girl called me cheap today because I’m learning to sharpen my knives instead of just buying new ones. Consumerism is a cancer.
This blows my mind. I’m that guy who lives rurally and has been poor for a good portion of my life. I make, build and fix pretty much everything we have because we could never afford another one and it’s stupid to not do that anyway. It hurts my brain to think people live like that.
It hurts my heart. This is the society that has been built and those skills you have from necessity were completely forgotten and ignored as generations were raised.
Now it is just too much we don’t know that yes, I could learn how to sharpen knives but teaching myself isn’t cheap. It costs the money to buy the tools, time to research, money for any mistakes, and a mental load vs “ok well I guess I can spend $20 and get a new chef knife” It sounds so simple when it is one thing but you have probably come across dozens of people lacking a skill one would assume to be basic knowledge.
Anyway that person was just an ignoramus
Ignorance might be bliss, but knowledge is joy.
Eh. More often than not knowledge is suffering as well.
Hot damn is that a good book recommendation!
on second look it seems its somewhat sloppily misrepresented. Apparently the book is not actually structured around the same walk taken 11 different times with different perspectives. some of the walks are the same, but others are in completely different locations. There also are reviews complaining about an excess of filler content.
This is basically the entire concept of the podcast 99 Percent Invisible
not nerd enough to see it
Over the last few years I have been working on getting into botany, herbalism and urban foraging. Basically I am working on trying to identify every plant I see in my neighborhood and finding what their uses are. So in my yard and walk around the neighborhood I look at every plant and try to see if I can identify it. Since its easiest to identify while flowering I guess for weeks and months until then to determine if I am right. As the seasons change I get better and better at identifying things after or before a bloom. It really brings magic and interest as I move around the world
Oh my gosh this is so me! I started by trying to figure out what our lawn was made of and now I’m seeing NPFs (Noxious Plant Fuckers) all over the place! I’ve gone through my states Noxious Plant list and I’m obliterating giant ragweed as we speak.
I’ve found so many cool facts about the history of plants in my neighbors garden, too! I’m just starting, but plants are so cool! There’s a type of invasive honeysuckle that whitetail deer love, and it tends to choke out all other plant life around it. One day, we might have whole forests of deer and honeysuckle, with not a predator in sight. Whoops, haha!
Its nice to be able to see what you should remove. I have defeating the Creeping Bellflower in my new wildflower section of my yard. (The thin strip between my fence and the alley sometimes called the Hell Strip). If you are like me and want to know what is good to have in your yard I would recommend Prairie Moon Nursery if you live in North America. The shop sells native plants and lets you filter by location, bloom season etc. in case you need to buy plants or seeds. It also has a great range map, great pictures and good descriptions in case you are interested. I highly recommend looking at the website to get plants to names
Oh, that’s delightful! Thank you! Good luck with the Hell Strip
It’s a lot of Black Eyes Susans right now. But I got more longer lasting perennials under most of them. It’s super low maintenance and beautiful. I seed in the fall and sometimes the spring. I mow yearly (early spring) to kill any tree saplings and do some weeding in the spring but not much.
I’m planning on harvesting some seeds from my Susans and maybe the coneflowers this year. I usually just let them fall. It would be fun to give the seeds away or spread them around empty lots
Me too! I prune my yard of invasives and let the natives grow, cataloging with iNaturalist as I see new species. My yard was a dirt slope last summer, this summer it is full of a wonderful variety of plants! My crotchety gardener mother and aunt keep trying to offer me non-natives to transplant – I tell them I’ve got plants growing already but thank you – they say, “yeah, weeds.”
Funnily enough, my yard with milkweed, primrose, violets, tickseed flowers, black-eyed susans, a walnut sapling, pepperweed, and st johns wort (not actually native here but not as invasive as some other plants) looks better than theirs and probably requires way less maintenance.
You would fit right in on our instance
I have been trying to live a solarpunk / permaculture lifestyle one step at a time. I am starting with plants
Makes sense.
When I spend a lot of time doing 3D design work I find myself looking at the world afterwards in terms of underlying mathematics, angles and shapes. Like I’ll look at a cabinet and see rectangles and cylindrical cuts that could reproduce it in 3d, or a lamp-post as a circle extruded along a path.
People who are really into rocks probably notice more about that stuff because their brains are hyper-focused on such
Dang, I’m reading that next. That sounds fascinating
Being an expert in software has gotta be the most boring version of this.
“Oh that point of sale system? It’s running Android 11. I can tell from the status bar at the top. That’s probably because the SOC in it was cheap in bulk and supported Android 11.”
There’s probably some history there still too.
“Pos systems used to only run this specific kernel that had very limited memory because this buttface company lobbied themselves into a monopoly in the industry and we were stuck with 50yo tech until only very recently, which is how we got problems like that credit card input fiasco - this lady could never get her credit card to work because every time she leaned over to swipe, as she was swiping, her belly would nudge the keypad somehow and introduce an extra digit! We couldn’t even separate inputs whilst we were streaming movies off the internet, it was so backward. Now we’ve got a new monopoly with apple and android, it’s all held together by this dude in a basement somewhere. I met him once. He’s not a guy you can forget easily, even though everyone wants to. Also, he has eight fingers. But one of his hands only has two.”
Well that can be less of a wonder and more of a curse. I have a very huge phobia of earthworms, and I can see them very well. People who know me well go outside and are like “it’s all clear, I checked!” and then I go outside and I see them everywhere.
I also get “Oh just don’t look down” by people who I tell this to all the time. Like, sure, stepping on that will totally be ok as long as I don’t see it? That’s not how this works.
Same goes for these stupid tiny green caterpillars hanging from trees. You wear hats to protect yourself from the sun. I wear them as head condoms against these fuckers. But the truth is I see them from miles away. Miss me with that shit.
Learning to ID plants is a curse too because you see so many invasive monocultures everywhere.
I’m always noticing things. Interesting things, weird things, funny things. My mom has asked me multiple times, “How do you find so much interesting stuff?”
All I’ve ever be able to respond with is, “I look around.” She misses a lot around her, my brothers and I even mess with her sometimes by “hiding” things in plain sight around my parents’ house and waiting until she says something.
Lead poisoning is a hell of a thing
This is my answer to people who are sad that FTL space travel is probably impossible. There are wonders right around you that you don’t even know about. Space will always be there for humanity to explore. We don’t have to be in a rush. Tons to learn about right here. It’s not worth going to space if we leave a burnt cinder of a planet behind us.
Or even people who insist on going to other countries for their holidays. For most of us using Lemmy, there will be so much in a 200 mile radius of us that is wonderful but we will never see because we insist on holidays going even further afield.
Unless you live in the Midwest, in which case I don’t blame you for going further.
Im from the Midwest but moved in my twenties. Rediscovering the Midwest when I travel home to visit has been great.
Last time I was there I ate my first mayapple. They just grow there and are a tasty fruit you cant buy in the store. Most locals haven’t even ate one because of it isnt in the grocery store it might as well not exist for most people.
Next up is a pawpaw. I can’t wait. I’ve already been watching tree identification guides.
Aye, that was a bit of a tongue in cheek comment. I was hoping someone would pop by to correct me!
I have been doing a lot of vacationing “at home” this year and it’s been a blast. Helps that it’s been the warmest summer in recorded history (as long as I don’t think about it too hard).
Going abroad and discover other cultures and climates is great and all, but it’s so easy to miss how great it can be close to home or just a few hours by train.
My colleague insists on always flying abroad “tickets are so cheap!” When we live in one of the most scenic country on the planet.
When I started paying closer attention to all the small insects around me, I felt like I was in an alien world. There are so many otherworldly and bizarre looking creatures just outside your door, you just have to get used to looking for them :)
There are truly alien things on our planet of we just look at the edges.
Life seems to spring up everywhere.
Also the upcoming field of plant intelligence is so interesting.
what’s that feynman quote about science making things more beautiful?
You’re likely thinking of this quote from a 1981 BBC interview in the series The Pleasure of Finding Things Out:
“I have a friend who’s an artist and has sometimes taken a view which I don’t agree with very well. He’ll hold up a flower and say, ‘Look how beautiful it is,’ and I’ll agree. Then he says, ‘I as an artist can see how beautiful this is, but you as a scientist take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing.’
I think he’s kind of nutty. First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people and to me too, I believe. Although I may not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is … I can appreciate the beauty of a flower.
At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees. I could imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside, which also have a beauty. I mean it’s not just beauty at this dimension, at one centimeter; there’s also beauty at a smaller dimension.
The fact that the colors in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting — it means that insects can see the color.
It adds a question: does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms? Why is it aesthetic? All kinds of interesting questions which the science knowledge only adds to the excitement, the mystery and the awe of a flower. It only adds.
I don’t understand how it subtracts.”
oof, that’s a lot more fart-huffing than i remember it.
then call me high on Feynman’s fumes lmao
after reading a bunch of the books about him, i started noticing a pattern; he needs a butt to every joke. like, in isolation this quote is good but when you look at how he talked about people in general you realise that he always has to belittle someone to make his point. the artist friend is “nutty” because he has a difference of opinion, and richard can of course appreciate the beauty same as him, you don’t need a degree for that. and he does that constantly. it rubs me the wrong way.
same with his propensity for rule-breaking, he did it even though nobody but him thought he was entertaining. he was asked repeatedly to stop and he didn’t. he pissed people off who were just doing their jobs.
Yeah, if I noticed that pattern (I only know the one quote and was hoping the dig was just awkward) I’d be put off, too. Eww. I do like most of the quote, though.
It’s a pretty easy way to respond to being put down for being perceived to be smarter. When I was a middle schooler, I felt that way. I was in the advanced programs (btw. Still riding that high :) and certainly had a very “you’re just too dumb to see it like me” reactionary phase. I did grow up, though, lol. I realized Im also too dumb to see it any particularly special way.
I took way too many words to say that I think having a better understanding of the world is better and not worse.
oh i fully agree and understand the perspective. i also agree with the point feynman was making in the quote (otherwise i wouldn’t have brought it up obviously) and i think he may have been misrepresented a bit in that most of his quotable and memorable stuff (as printed in books about him) is of the more… i-am-so-smart kind.
if you have about three hours oh geez to spare, i recommend angela collier’s video on the books about him.
Irish archeologists walking through the countryside with nothing to talk about because farmers keep tearing down their own country’s historical sites (reading Irish archeology books is depressing)
The archeology book Im talking about was mentioning they were on a time limit because the farmer who owned the land wanted to tear down the over a thousand year old ruin (maybe even over two thousand) because he wanted the land’s use as farmland. They weren’t able to finish their study of the ruins and its artifacts despite working overtime because they hit their time limit and the farmer had the ancient ruins demolished. That’s just depressing.
Yea, it’s extremely common.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rescue_archaeology
We get what we can get out.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy
