"For decades, beavers were considered pests – trapped & shot on sight. Now the attitude towards nature's best engineers is changing, & farmers are working to bring them back. #Beavers are vital to #ecosystems, as their dam building habits spread water through parched landscapes. This can not only help to regulate the flow of water, it provides another important service – keeping fires under control. Beavers are nature's firefighters. In northern New Mexico, Darr has seen farmers "drastically" change their perception of beavers. "They were pretty hesitant, but they saw first-hand how the beavers provided sustained, reliable #water sources throughout the year, even during the hot dry summer we had. To see it is to believe it. We just have to show people what beavers can do for other wildlife, & humans." #permaculture#climate#drought#floodhttps://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240111-the-us-is-bringing-back-beavers-because-theyre-natures-best-firefighters
1/ How to quit capitalism. by @Daojoan "Let’s start with something controversial: Capitalism is not an economic system. It is a philosophical & ideological force that shapes our lives, environment, & perception of humanity.
It’s a behemoth that thrives on relentless growth, often at a devastating cost. Under its reign, we witness the widening chasm of inequality, where the affluent soar on the wings of wealth while the less fortunate are left to the whims of an unforgiving market.
Our planet, the cradle of life itself, is treated as a commodity, its resources extracted with reckless abandon, its delicate #ecosystems pushed to the brink for profit.
In its unbridled form, #capitalism has ushered in an era where consumerism is king, & possessions are the yardstick of success. In this relentless pursuit of more, we have lost sight of what truly matters — our connection to each other, our harmony with nature, & our sense of #purpose beyond material gains." https://joanwestenberg.com/blog/how-to-quit-capitalism #permaculture#economics
Many people buy new brooms (all too often made of plastic🤮 ) and replace them every year or two. A well-made broom, properly cared for can look like new 25 years later. Hang them or stand them on their handles, not the bristles. Caring for our tools saves money, time, energy, & resources. https://storables.com/articles/how-to-store-brooms/ #permaculture
Narcissus, updated. I was looking for this in my files but misplaced it. Found it again. Renamed it for easier recollection. A classic painting of Narcissus gazing at a reflection of himself, with Echo looking mournfully on. Photoshopped into the scene & replacing the reflective water is a large cell phone, linked to an Instagram account with the reflection of Narcissus' favorite person, himself peering back up at him from the screen. Original painted by John William Waterhouse in 1903. Smart ass Photoshopper unknown.
"The mega-scale impacts of climate change were theorized to arrive around 2050. They're arriving now. This is something like our First Extinction Summer. People are startled and bewildered to see the planet going haywire. First, Greece went up in flames. Canada's still burning from coast-to-coast, and nobody knows how to put out the megafires. Lahaina, the historic town on Maui, was levelled, incinerated. Ocean temperatures have soared off the charts--and Antarctic ice is melting at disturbing rates, and not reforming fast enough to be considered "normal." 2050 is arriving...right now." https://www.theissue.io/how-bad-is-climate-change-going-to-get-you-dont-want-to-know/
1/ Genuine, homegrown American / USAnian #apartheid. Now in its 60th year (#Cuba, ICYDK) & what a coincidence, Israel's Gov.is ALSO pro-'economic warfare'. (Creating the "need" for bomb$$$$$$...and baricade$$$$$$.🐍 ) 187 to 2 to...1 busy.
(Who wrote the shitty script for this reality? I'd like a few words.)
Lost Forest Gardens of Europe "In the hills above the Po river in N Italy, there are a handful of #farms that look almost the same today as they would have 3000 years ago. There are rows of short pruned trees, with fruit-laden grape vines festooned between them. The trees are common natives that produce #fruit, firewood, #basketmaking materials, & #fodder for farm animals. The grapes are ancient cultivars that have been grown for millennia. Between rows of grapes & trees are diverse plots of cereals, hayfields, vegetables, & herbs. In a single field, one can find all of the staples needed to live & support the farmstead. This is a resilient system modeled on a #forest. Unlike monocultures of grapes or grain, diversity is the strength here. Disease outbreaks & unseasonable weather have a limited impact. If one crop has a bad year, there are a dozen others to pick up the slack. Designed to last millennia & that is what they have done." https://www.shelterwoodforestfarm.com/blog/the-lost-forest-gardens-of-europe#The-Continent-Wide-Orchard#permaculture#agroforestry
Thread, 1 of 8. "We have been betrayed. For three years, we have been abandoned, misled, shepherded to our dooms. Millions have died. Hundreds of millions have been disabled. All the while, respectable faces with plastered-on grins breathlessly offer hopeful platitudes, assuring us we’ll all be ok. Just trust the system.
You could be forgiven for not realizing we’re still in the middle of a pandemic, considering the total absence of media coverage. If it was important, you’d surely be hearing about it, right? The last variant you heard about was likely omicron. The last you heard about vaccines was likely “we strongly encourage everyone to get boosted.” The last you heard about masks was that they work, but they’re not required. And why would you bother wearing masks anyway if, as the United States president himself proclaimed, “The pandemic is over”?
4/ COVID screws with your immune system. Upon infection, SARS-CoV-2 immediately gets to work suppressing attempts to stop it. It hijacks your cells’ machinery to shut down production of crucial immune system alarms. This includes the component used to present pieces of the virus on the surface of the cell to tell the immune system “Hey! This cell is infected, & here’s the culprit!” This component is necessary for specific immune cells to identify the target and proceed with the adaptive immune response, leading to both delayed innate and adaptive immune response."
"Except this isn’t even close to the whole story. For one thing, the snapshot stored in your immune memory is just a physical piece of the pathogen, & viruses evolve very quickly. As the virus changes, the real thing starts to resemble the record being kept by your immune system less & less, and it becomes easier & easier for new variants to evade adaptive immunity. The more people that get infected, the more times the virus randomly mutates — & the more likely it is that a particular combination of those mutations makes a virus that is unrecognizable to your immune system."
2/ "You can get COVID over & over. The idea that you become immune to COVID after getting infected or vaccinated is based on the concept of immune memory. Every time a pathogen enters your body (through infection or vaccination), your immune system mounts a defense to stop it: first a broad “kill anything that moves” phase we call innate immunity, then a phase of adaptive immunity, which is targeted to kill the specific thing that triggered the immune response. Pieces of the invader are used to create, recruit, & activate a variety of immune components — including antibodies, T cells, & B cells — that are trained to recognize that specific pathogen. Some immune system cells, called memory cells, are kept around from that 2nd stage as a sort of permanent record. If the exact same pathogen shows up again, the immune system already knows what to look for. This is the key behind vaccination: expose your immune system to a harmless piece of the virus, and it’ll remember it when it encounters the real thing."
5/ "Worse still, the population is steadily becoming more vulnerable to infections of all types. We are in the middle of an alarming surge of diseases beyond just COVID: RSV, influenza, strep A, and many others are hospitalizing people in record numbers — opportunistic infections, handed the gift of a softened-up population of victims."
🌈💚 Editorial Guild at Permaculture Design Magazine / Teacher-Designer #Agroecology #EarthRepair🌎https://www.permaculturedesignmagazine.com/Born@312ppm CO2 (1952, organic garden farmer since 1975)#TerraformEarth1st (w/ human-scale #earthworks, #water catchment, #restoration#Homestead 10 A of partly forested sand in MI with my co-conspirator of 25 yrs, Peter Bane, (prev. #editor / #publisher of #Permaculture Activist, now Pc Design Mag, author Pc Handbook)Be Fruitful & Mulch Apply