Nice art. Please mark nsfw for those of use who like to use Lemmy at work.

For me sometimes I scroll Lemmy when I’m on break at work. I would not (and DID NOT) appreciate something like this coming across my screen without an NSFW tag.

Not Safe For Work

Cover cropping does not constitute monoculture when done ideally. In my personal experience with cover crops I have used multiple types of cover crop concurrently in one space.

Here is a great source on cover cropping: https://growingformarket.com/articles/cover-cropping-notill-systems

Excerpt from my source: “Rarely in nature do we see a field covered in just a couple of plant species; the natural soil care principle of maximizing diversity inspires us to do better. At Frith, we aim for at least three species in each mix, but some mixes may contain six or more.”

And I don’t think we’ll be able to keep feeding the world with our current style of agriculture, which is generally depleting soil health and setting us up for future failure. We need more people to be active or semi active in agriculture on smaller scale farms and to eat more local food.

Crop rotation is a great thing but still falls within monoculture. Planting a field with only one type of thing is the definition of monoculture.

I seriously believe that cover cropping, intercropping, and examples like MonkderViete posted are the way forward - they result in higher crop yield per square foot and are more resilient in the face of climate change and pest pressure.

You should learn about the benefits of no till market gardens - they are real and they work.

From my perspective this “pinnacle of human ingenuity” is actually a farse, because it relies on a monoculture and is therefore unsustainable in the long term.

Don’t get me wrong, the engineering is cool and I understand how important the mass production of food has been up to this point in human history, but there is another side of the story. The advent of machinery like this is part of why modern farmers use so many pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers - a monoculture depletes the soil of its nutrients and decreases natural pest control, necessitating the use of chemicals. The use of those chemicals has in turn driven huge ecosystem changes that we are only just beginning to understand the impact of (such as mass pollinator die-offs, changes to soil microbiology, pollution of fresh water sources, pollution of cropland soil, and more) as well as impacting humans in ways we don’t understand since some of those chemicals make their way into our bodies.

If the buffer says 7.5 and it makes up 6 when mixed, either far too little of the buffer was used/there was already something else buffering the solution or the buffer was prepared incorrectly.

By selecting the correct buffer and the correct ratio of salt to acid (such as acetic acid and sodium acetate) an exact pH within a certain range can be reached.

I think it isn’t that these other things you mentioned aren’t war crimes, but rather that this particular instance involves a lot of evidence that could prove that this was a war crime unequivocally.

1. You heard other people say that, not me. Go respond to other people who are saying that instead of responding to someone who is NOT saying that (me).

2. What is your argument here? Honestly I’m confused about what your stance is. How far do you extend this moral equivalency? A strong case can be made that Russia’s oil industry is a vital part of its war machine, but I don’t think you could say the same about a Ukrainian coffee shop. Is it just as bad to kill a child by bombing a school as it is to kill an adult by bombing a weapons manufacturing facility?

From my perspective Ukrainian strikes are carried out in self defense against military related targets, while Russian strikes are often purposefully hitting targets not related to the military.

You can learn more about Russian strikes on Ukrainian civilians here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attacks_on_civilians_in_the_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine

I think your implication that a strike on Russian oil infrastructure that kills a civilian working there is equivalent to a strike on a Ukrainian apartment building is wack.

IIRC the reason most caps used to be unrecyclable (many still are) is that they had a liner in them made of a different material. Because such caps were composite materials (using different types of plastic for the liner and the cap), they would make an impure product if recycled. The same problem applies if the cap and bottle are different types of plastic, which used to be more common.

Wish we got a more complete understanding of the truckers’ side in this article - why is it so hard to turn off your engine instead of idling?

The guy quoted in the article says that some trucks need to operate their lift gates 15 or 20 times in a day. First of all, turn on your engine to operate the gate and then turn it off when you’re done… Secondly, if it is impacting business too much to take that extra time to turn the engine on and off, invest in an auxiliary power source to operate the lift gate.

Maybe I’m missing something?

How useful of a platform is it if only selected information is allowed to be shared? From my perspective, it is only useful for Reddit admins want it to be useful for.

In your particular case, it was NOT useful for communicating very important information to your local community, unless I am misunderstanding your post here.

So by you and others continuing to use Reddit instead of committing to another platform, the suppression of information is facilitated/implicitly supported.

Why are you still using Reddit? Haven’t Reddit admins proven over and over that they are willing to manipulate content on their platform to influence their users? Haven’t they shown you that their platform is worth abandoning??

If nothing else, this experience should demonstrate that it is time to switch to Lemmy full time.

This article about spontaneous formation of knots may be relevant:

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.0611320104

TLDR: If you put a string in a box and move it around, the string will most likely knot itself.

So what do you suggest? No cars allowed at all? Even in European countries with strong public transportation cars are still useful and allowed (except in crowded city areas). It’s hard to imagine life out in the boonies without access to a car…

I think we should pursue better public transportation primarily, but I also think efforts to make electric vehicles better are an important piece of the puzzle to transporting ourselves sustainably.

Don’t understand why anyone was still on the masts when they hit the bridge…

They had lost power and all sails were furled, so they couldn’t have been moving very fast. And according to this article the ship was taller than the maximum clearance under the bridge. So it seems like someone fucked up big time not getting crew out of harms way.

Sure, I can agree that division of labor is crucial. But I work in a factory where what I suggest is somewhat of a reality. Cross training is a purposeful practice because it creates a more flexible/robust workforce. Jobs that are the worst to work are typically shared amongst a large number of people so that nobody has to do it all day, which promotes worker wellness and thereby efficiency. Ergonomic and safety concerns are addressed so that workers stay healthy and can work more efficiently.

The place I work is a B corp.

Your implied stance that people should only do one thing ever doesn’t make sense to me. For the more specialized roles at my facility that are potentially odious, they generally have a much easier workload, and they aren’t doing only that one task anywhere close to all day most days.

So let’s not say that people should give up on making factories places where workers can be happy. You can have efficient workers who know how to do more than one thing.

I think we are generally in agreement that standing in front of a blast furnace all day would suck pretty badly. But I am not sure such work must always be miserable. To be fair I have never worked with a blast furnace, but I don’t see why someone’s job should be to do the same thing every day for years on end. Management should switch up worker roles frequently, perhaps multiple times a day if the task is particularly odious. And if there are ergonomic or environmental reasons it isn’t tolerable or safe, those reasons should be addressed, such as providing better PPE or custom built tools.

Adding extra incentives is part of making factory work sustainable in the long run, but it’s going to take more than an extra $(insert number)/hour to make workers safe and happy. And I really don’t think we should give up on trying to make factory workers safe and happy.

Fair to point out that Trump and Lutnick suck bad and aren’t really going to do anything to help factory workers. I guess that point feels obvious to me so I gloss over it in my comments. When I read an article like this, my takeaway may not always be the author’s intended point.

I still resist the idea that it must always be better to “escape” the factory and work elsewhere.

You say you aren’t shitting on factory work. But you also seem to feel that the ability to exit the factory is fundamental to having a good life. I agree that people should be able to choose what field they work in, so no I don’t think that every person should feel locked in to factory work, but I do think that we should focus on how to make factory work appealing, unlike it is now.

We need to be talking about more than just worker protections (although that is where policy needs to start and I agree they are the foundation for any further progress). We need to talk about government recommendations for management practices, grants for labor research, and possibly incentives for progressive management styles. We need to make factories into places that people don’t want to escape.

And as consumers, we need to push for the reality we want to see. If we have the ability, we should do our best to support companies with better labor practices - for example, the B corp and the Well certifications require certain employee wellness minimums, so when buying mass produced goods, prioritize ones with a certification like that.

So then it would seem more productive to bash the Trump administration’s labor policies than to bash the idea that there should be factory workers. The take away from this article for me is not that it is crazy for people and their children (once grown) to work in factories, but that we need to advance the policies you point out to make that into a reality that is sustainable.