I am Cringe but I am Free

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See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

Sounds perfect Wahhhh, I don’t wanna
reasonsforhope
reasonsforhope
Vacant Office Near D.C. Turns Into Indoor Farm–Using Empty Buildings to Grow Food
Area 2 Farms is growing greens, herbs, and root vegetables in a vertical farm thanks to the dearth of traditional office tenants
Good News Network

"Arlington, Virginia is like a gateway to the city of Washington D.C. Part of the Metro line, but across the Potomac, it’s nevertheless a busy area and not the kind of place you’d expect to be able to get minutes-old, farm-fresh produce.

But Area 2 Farms is growing greens, herbs, and root vegetables in a vertical farm thanks to the dearth of traditional office tenants. With high-rise office space remaining vacant even after the end of the pandemic, landlords are open to ideas.

Jackie Potter and Tyler Baras pitched the idea of an indoor farm and it was obviously a good one because Area 2 is already well-established in the Arlington area such that they offer subscription delivery of fresh veggies to fellow urbanites starting at $40 per week.

Area 2 Farms uses a sophisticated conveyor belt system called Silo to cut down on the more laborious hours of indoor farming. It’s not a hydroponic system—there is soil inside Area 2 Farms which means they can grow root vegetables like potatoes, carrots, and radishes.

When executed correctly, vertical farming can produce as much as traditional farming but with a lot less space, and no concern over weather or pests. Obviously as well it can be done in the center of a city, where land is at a premium...

“Cities are changing every day,” Potter tells Modern Farmer. “There’s a really great economic opportunity as well. Our farms create new green jobs, they beautify spaces and provide fresh food to local communities. That’s something that’s really precious.”"

-via Good News Network, 7/14/23

reasonsforhope
reasonsforhope
Soil improvements could keep planet within 1.5C heating target, research shows
Better farming techniques across the world could lead to storage of 31 gigatons of carbon dioxide a year.
Grist

"Marginal improvements to agricultural soils around the world would store enough carbon to keep the world within 1.5C of global heating, new research suggests.

Farming techniques that improve long-term fertility and yields can also help to store more carbon in soils but are often ignored in favor of intensive techniques using large amounts of artificial fertilizer, much of it wasted, that can increase greenhouse gas emissions.

Using better farming techniques to store 1 percent more carbon in about half of the world’s agricultural soils would be enough to absorb about 31 gigatons of carbon dioxide a year, according to new data. That amount is not far off the 32 gigaton gap between current planned emissions reduction globally per year and the amount of carbon that must be cut by 2030 to stay within 1.5C.

The estimates were carried out by Jacqueline McGlade, the former chief scientist at the UN environment program and former executive director of the European Environment Agency. She found that storing more carbon in the top 30 centimeters of agricultural soils would be feasible in many regions where soils are currently degraded.

McGlade now leads a commercial organization that sells soil data to farmers. Downforce Technologies uses publicly available global data, satellite images, and lidar to assess in detail how much carbon is stored in soils, which can now be done down to the level of individual fields.

“Outside the farming sector, people do not understand how important soils are to the climate,” said McGlade. “Changing farming could make soils carbon negative, making them absorb carbon, and reducing the cost of farming.”

She said farmers could face a short-term cost while they changed their methods, away from the overuse of artificial fertilizer, but after a transition period of two to three years their yields would improve and their soils would be much healthier...

Arable farmers could sequester more carbon within their soils by changing their crop rotation, planting cover crops such as clover, or using direct drilling, which allows crops to be planted without the need for ploughing. Livestock farmers could improve their soils by growing more native grasses.

Hedgerows also help to sequester carbon in the soil, because they have large underground networks of mycorrhizal fungi and microbes that can extend meters into the field. Farmers have spent decades removing hedgerows to make intensive farming easier, but restoring them, and maintaining existing hedgerows, would improve biodiversity, reduce the erosion of topsoil, and help to stop harmful agricultural runoff, which is a key polluter of rivers."

-via The Grist, July 8, 2023

reasonsforhope

Btw, since I saw some people in the comments saying this isn't going to go anywhere because they didn't turn it into a product

They did, actually, turn it into a genuinely useful product lol

Excerpt from above:

"The estimates were carried out by Jacqueline McGlade, the former chief scientist at the UN environment program and former executive director of the European Environment Agency. She found that storing more carbon in the top 30 centimeters of agricultural soils would be feasible in many regions where soils are currently degraded.

McGlade now leads a commercial organization that sells soil data to farmers. Downforce Technologies uses publicly available global data, satellite images, and lidar to assess in detail how much carbon is stored in soils, which can now be done down to the level of individual fields."

She figured out how to commercialize her science too - and is providing/selling it to the people who are both a) going to be most interested and b) most able to do something with it

rhaaclaws
chroniccoolness

ocd is not fucking destigmatized

chroniccoolness

"intrusive thought" gets thrown around by assholes talking about putting strainers on their heads or stepping on a leaf who in the next sentence will say "if your thoughts are about actually hurting people they should put you in a psych ward". compulsions and rituals get seen as proof you're "crazy". ocd insight CAN be delusional, even. pocd and sexual ocd is especially demonized, though even something as "harmless" (to others. not *us*) as contamination OCD is still mocked, belittled, and seen as a sign something is fundamentally wrong with you. I have seen people twice my age advocate for violence against anyone who thinks the way I've been forced by my mental illness to think since i was 6, maybe 7 years old.

OCD is not destigmatized.

deepseametro
alwayswasalwayswillbeourland

i just realised i never seen the Indigenous America map so…this is what I found

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The bottom one is spoken languages.

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bucephaly

Here’s a map that includes the names of groups in their own languages, plus a bunch of groups that aren’t on the above maps. And here’s the full sized PDF.

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Aaron Carapella - Tribal Nations Maps
Comprehensive Tribal maps of the Native American and First Nations, Inuit Nations of North America, Tribes of South America , Central Americ
TRIBAL NATIONS MAPS