Daily OpusEverything I write is freely rebloggable. Just keep the source and tell people about my books :D [Until I decide otherwise, my pronouns are Ze/Hir/Hirself. As in "Ze went to the shops to get hir medication hirself". Thank you for the respect.]
This is a map of Fake Britain - all fictional locations set in the UK mapped to their approximate area, including Camelot, Hollyoaks and Little Whinging.
Repeat after me: - Veganism is not affordable - Veganism is not cruelty free - Veganism is not the best choice for everyone
Repeat after me -I’m an idiot and wrong. -Veganism can be made affordable. -Veganism is fucking cruelty free. That’s what it’s all about. - Veganism is the best choice for everyone, if everyone did it. -I’m a fucking asshole for making this completely wrong text post and should shut the hell up now.
People are literally starving in South America because all the Quinoa crop is being exported mainly for white vegans who want to live “cruelty-free” but don’t care about brown people as much as they do about animals.
plus, 4 of the 8 most common food allergies (soy, wheat, peanuts, and tree nuts) are common vegan substitutes.
o shit
i would literally starve to death if i couldn’t eat cheese or meats because my body cannot process nuts as they are too rough on my intestines and cause inflammation
Veganism is incredibly expensive depending on where you live, mostly if there are no local farms near you. Plant food prices skyrocket, and food deserts exist.
Veganism is not even close to cruelty free. You cannot be cruelty free in this country (USA) unless you 100% grow your own food because we use slave labor to pick it. Plus this doesn’t factor in all the harm being caused by the transport of your food, by the truck that carried it around.
Veganism is not the best choice for everyone, because some people cannot survive off of a plant based diet. I had tried for a good while, and my chronic illnesses spiked from it. Plus the constant monitoring to make sure I was receiving adequate nutrients triggered my ED to hell and back.
Veganism is a great way to start lowering your negative effect on the planet, but that is all it is, a starting place. Your work is not done just because you became vegan and you do not get to throw stones at others because you still live in a glass house.
Furthermore - it is absolutely possible to lower your footprint while still consuming animal products - you just have to be selective about what kinds and where they are sourced from. I have a permaculture based garden planned out for when we get land that actually has a smaller footprint than the typical vegan who buys everything at a store does.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Actually, none of us can survive on a plant-based diet. We cannot manufacture B12, and the so-called “plant-based” sources of B12, it turns out, don’t produce it in a form we can digest.
B12 is found in all animal products.
Additionally, although humans can manufacture taurine (only found in meat), not all of us can manufacture enough taurine. This is why some people get sick when they go vegetarian.
To survive on a vegan diet you need to artificially supplement B12 and possibly taurine. Period.
A diet that requires artificial supplementation is, by definition, unhealthy. And while the cost of vegan B12 supplements is low, when you’re already paying more for your food… Taurine supplementation, if you happen to be one of the people who needs it, is another added expense and hassle. A few vegans have also found it necessary to supplement carnitine, which is considerably more expensive. Oh, and most vegans don’t get enough calcium and end up with bone problems. Many are also Vitamin D deficient, especially if living at high latitudes, if dark skinned, or if religiously using sunscreen. And Vitamin D2 (plant derived) is not as easily absorbed as D3 (which ONLY comes from animals), so you need even more of it.
Then there’s protein.
I personally cannot properly digest nuts. I react the way lactose intolerant people do to milk if I consume pistachios, walnuts, or pecans. Almonds are actively toxic to me. Hazelnuts mess with my brain.
Because I am on thyroid medication, I am not supposed to consume large quantities of soy, as it can make my thyroid worse, throwing off my dosage. I can have some, but I cannot use it as a major protein source. This is also true for trans men (the phytoestrogens intefere with testosterone therapy), cis men with low testosterone (same reason) and women with a family history of breast cancer (elevates risk). Excessive soy consumption has also been linked to early puberty in girls (Again, phytoestrogens) and reproductive/sexual problems in both sexes. Eating a bit of soy is fine, but tofu should not be used as a meat substitute except for the occasional meal.
This limits my access to non-animal proteins to beans and grains. If I was gluten intolerant as well (I’m not, but it’s in my family), it would be a real problem. The only dairy substitute available to me is rice milk (and rice causes many of the same problems environmentally as raising beef).
Oh, but it’s better for the environment, right?
Nope.
In addition to the already-mentioned quinoa, we’re cutting down rain forest in Mexico to grow avocados. Rice production is almost as bad for the environment as factory-based beef production for similar reasons. Also, plant-based foods, esp. fruit and fresh vegetables, are more likely to end up being wasted.
Studies indicate that if we all gave up meat tomorrow, all 7 billion of us gave up animal products forever, the good side would be the reduction in antibiotic use and greenhouse gas emissions.
How about the bad side?
1.3 billion people would lose their jobs overnight. 1.3 billion. 987 of them are poor.
Another thing that Ban Eating Meat Tomorrow types forget is that veganism is not necessarily the most effective use of farmland.
Uh, what?
The statement that if everyone switched to a vegan diet we would need a fraction of our current farmland assumes all farmland is created equal.
It simply is not.
I suspect that a lot of this perspective either comes from city dwellers who have no clue about farming or from people in the US breadbasket where there is a lot of high quality farmland suitable for raising food for humans.
The last global census in 2008 said that at that time, if all 6 billion people went vegan, it would need 3,068,444,911 acres of arable land. At the time there was about 3,212,369,959 acres of arable land: That is to say land suitable for raising crops humans can eat.
However, we’re building on, or otherwise destroying, arable land at the rate of about 1% a year and the population has grown.
We literally do not have enough arable land to feed everyone a plant-based diet.
And there are parts of the world that have a worse proportion of arable land to land only suitable for pasture than the US. Scotland comes immediately to mind. People in these places would have to import most of their food. I’m not sure Iceland could survive without eating fish.
If we all gave up eating meat tomorrow many of us would starve. I’m not exaggerating or being alarmist.
I’m also not criticizing people who choose not to eat animal products (just please make sure you get the required nutrients).
I am criticizing the “I don’t eat animal products and nobody else should either” crowd. Because it’s not that simple.
Also, bluntly, vitamin B12 deficiency can cause mood disturbances and paranoia…
But again, if you have to consume artificial supplements for whatever reason (unless it’s a personal absorption issue) your diet is not healthy.
Sorry, it’s just not.
Reblogging again for added info
Vegan leather is plastic
Vegan fur is plastic
Vegan wool is polyester, which is plastic
Leather, wool and fur are biodegradable. Plastics are overall worse for the environment and don’t go away for hundreds of years.
yeah!! it takes like, five minutes and costs nothing/next to nothing (depending on what plant it is). which is why im especially mad that literally no one talks about it except for like, exclusive gardening circles :/
each plant has different cloning techniques but here are the ones i remember;
basil/peppermint/tomato/most leafy greens with a stem; cut a piece off your main plant about the size of your hand. trim all the bottom leaves, cut stem diagonally, put in jar of water. when roots are about the size of the stem, plant in garden.
onion/garlic; the easiest. just leave whole onion or a garlic clove in a nice sunny area. eventually it will sprout. plant in garden.
pineapple; takes a long time. take spiky leafy part, trim off the bottom leaves, put in water about as deep as the leafless part. wait. a. long. time. (mine took two weeks to root.) when roots are big, plant in garden.
flowers, bushes, trees; get your hands on some rooting hormone (or willow tree branches). cut stems the same way as the leafy greens above, make sure to cut stems diagonally (greater chance of rooting.) dip in water, dip in rooting hormone, shake off excess, and place in water/dirt. these are pretty hard to get to root, especially if you don’t have rooting hormone.
some plants won’t ever root because of gmos (some companies create sterile plants and when they’re cloned they just die off) but generally any plant you get at a garden store you can clone.
This is called propagation!!! And it’s awesome!!!
Water propagation comes with some caution tho! While it’s a great way to watch the roots grow and ensure it’s actually propagating, it can shock the plant to remove it from water and suddenly plant it in soil. Water contain no nutrients, so to go from surviving on no nutrients to an abundance of nutrients in soil can potentially shock the wee baby.
Also, unless the water is changed out every day or every other, the oxygen in the water gets used up. Make sure to replace the water often so there’s a constant supply of oxygen.
If you have a fish tank, that is an excellent place to propagate certain plants! The nutrients the fish leave in the water will help the plant thrive, and ensure less shock when transplanting in soil. Fish might nibble on the roots, but probably not enough to cause any issues. Pothos, philodendrons, and monstera adasonii (vining Swiss cheese) are good ones to propagate this way, as they like the humidity from the tank.
Soil propagation has its own downsides, such as not being able to see if the roots are growing, but you can give the cutting a gentle tug in a few weeks, and if it resists, it has roots!!
And with ANY propagation, there is basically a 50/50 chance it will take, no matter which method you use, no matter how careful and attentive you are to technique and care. So don’t be discouraged if your cutting never roots, or dies. Not all plants can be “cloned” either of these ways, as well. Some need grafting from another plant which fruits or flowers! Some can only grow from seeds. Some cuttings need to scab over before propagation.
So if there’s a plant you really love, just Google how to propagate, and then Google some more. And instead of trying to propagate just a single cutting, try a few at a time, just in case some fail.
Happy planting!!!!!
It’s true that it’s difficult to get trees/bushes to grow roots with this method, but there is a pretty cool technique to get around this! It’s called air layering and it won’t work for ALL trees but it does work for many.
What you do instead of cutting off an entire limb and hoping it will root is you select the portion of the tree you want to be your new tree, and at the bottom of it, scrape off all of the bark, at least an inch long. Then you need to put your root hormone around the top of the shaved portion on the space where the tree still has bark. After that you’ll need to pack the area you want the roots to grow with sphagnum moss and wrap it in a plastic bag to keep the moss in place.
Once you have roots growing (could take a couple weeks) you can remove the bag, and cut the limb at the dead barkless section. Now you’ve got a new tree that’s already producing sap and as thick as the limb you’ve chosen! WAY faster than waiting the YEARS it could take to grow a tree to that size from a seed or a sprout.
Planting the new tree in sphagnum moss is a good way to help it grow lots of new roots and make sure it stays healthy before transferring it to a different soil mix or into the ground.
You also want to make sure that you leave probably a couple inches between the part of the branch you shave the bark off of and the main trunk of the tree, because after you cut off the limb, the wood beneath it will die back a bit and you don’t want part of the trunk to start rotting.
This is a good intro post!
It’s a good idea if you want to get propagating to search “[specific plant] propagation”. Every plant has a different method that works best, and there are bound to be loads of articles and videos out there of folks who have propagated that species before. Experimentation can’t hurt either.
Some plants need extra humidity or misting, some do best when trimmed a certain time of year, some grow roots when dry and some need to be wet
The “gmo plants are sterile and don’t root” thing in the OP though is complete horseshit and a misunderstanding of what GMOs are. There are only a handful of approved GMOs in the United States and they are all agricultural crops. I would assume many of them are also not sterile.
However! Many common plants you see in garden centers have either been selectively bred for less seed production because not going to seed = more flowers or they are hybrids (plant mutts) or often both! Hybrid plants CAN produce viable seed but there’s no guarantee that those seeds will “breed true” aka have the same genetics/qualities as the mother plant. If you are looking for veggie plants and see the word, “heirloom”, you know that you can save the seeds from those plants for next year.
Being sterile has NOTHING to do with producing roots or not, it’s about seed production. All sorts of fancy hybrid plants can be propagated via cutting. Fun fact though: many fancy plants are patented so propagation with intent to sell is illegal. Most plant breeders use a method of propagation called tissue culture (test tube babies but for plants) to continue the plant’s genetics into the next generation.
It’s a common misconception that any kind of hybridization or selective breeding = genetic modification, but this isn’t the case in a legal sense. There must be some kind of actual tampering with genes in a labratory, not just old-fashioned plant breeding. A few years ago actually there was a big kerfuffle because a number of fancy petunias were tested and found to have been genetically modified, not registered or labelled as such, and then sold illegally in the US and used in breeding programs. All those petunias had to be pulled and destroyed.
Kinda got off topic here but the illegal gmo petunias story is actually pretty cool. Mostly because it came out because some plant biologist dude saw some orange petunias went “huh petunias don’t come in Orange last time I checked but this reminds me of some GMO plant experiments back in the day” and he tested the plants and discovered they did indeed contain foreign DNA
I do this all the time when walking the trails at home or if my neighbors have a plant I want a snippet from. I’ve even grabbed cuttings from plants at stores.
So far I have some bittersweet night shade, an olive branch, some decent field mint and a few others. Cloning medium is amazing for guerrilla gardening.
Dorothy just wanted something that she could believe in, A gray dustbowl girl in a life she was better off leavin’. She made her escape, went from gray into green, And she could have got clear, and she could have got clean, But she chose to be good and go back to the gray Kansas sky Where color’s a fable and freedom’s a fairy tale lie.
Alice got lost, and I guess that we really can’t blame her; They say she got tangled and tied in the lies that became her. They say she went mad, and she never complained, For there’s peace of a kind in a life unconstrained. She gives Cheshire kisses, she’s easy with white rabbit smiles, And she’ll never be free, but she’s won herself safe for a while.
Susan and Lucy were queens, and they ruled well and proudly. They honored their land and their lord, rang the bells long and loudly. They never once asked to return to their lives To be children and chattel and mothers and wives, But the land cast them out in a lesson that only one learned; And one queen said ‘I am not a toy’, and she never returned.
Mandy’s a pirate, and Mia weaves silk shrouds for faeries, And Deborah will pour you red wine pressed from sweet poisoned berries. Kate poses riddles and Mary plays tricks, While Kaia builds towers from brambles and sticks, And the rules that we live by are simple and clear: Be wicked and lovely and don’t live in fear
Dorothy, Alice and Wendy and Jane, Susan and Lucy, we’re calling your names, All the Lost Girls who came out of the rain And chose to go back on the shelf. Tinker Bell says, and I find I agree You have to break rules if you want to break free. So do as you like
—
we’re determined to be Wicked girls saving ourselves.
For we will be wicked and we will be fair And they’ll call us such names, and we really won’t care, So go, tell your Wendys, your Susans, your Janes, There’s a place they can go if they’re tired of chains, And our roads may be golden, or broken, or lost, But we’ll walk on them willingly, knowing the cost
— We won’t take our place on the shelves. It’s better to fly and it’s better to die Say the wicked girls saving ourselves.
(Seanan McGuire)
This is breathtaking.
I heard this poem once a million years ago, I have been looking for it ever since, and had now found it.
I love it so much more then I remember.
You might be interested to know that she set it to music and it’s also a song.
@darkmagyk And people have made fanvids set to it! (The CD is out of print right now - I have it and I love it so much, but I she’s re-printing a different one … soonish?)
thanksgiving is a holiday based on a falsified narrative full of white guilt and the erasure of history so what are some good native organizations to donate to this coming thursday
