At Least We Can Laugh About It ..

Having everything provided to us has made us greedy and weak. Self sustainability will allow us to live naturally and successfully.

Just imagine if we could even get 50% of people to do something like this. Get outside, plant something, reconnect to Earth. Plus you will feel the satisfaction of providing for yourself!

If you’re feeling tired or disoriented this could be why. On the positive side I’ve heard these powerful solar flares are helping awaken humanity…Bring it on!👍

https://www.cnet.com/science/space/the-sun-just-unleashed-the-strongest-solar-flare-in-nearly-five-years/

CNET

The Sun Just Unleashed the Strongest Solar Flare in Nearly Five Years

The worst of this one will miss us, but it is a hint of what's to come.

Terrifying!!!

“Report shows that pregnant women were excluded from the trials before they concluded it was safe and effective. They concluded it was safe and effective based on mice and the autopsies of mice fetuses. And horrifically, the Department of Defense data shows that female soldiers’ pregnancies are experiencing an absolutely catastrophic rate of abnormalities and fetal problems…”

— Dr. Naomi Wolf

It is not worth a “higher quality of living” and we do not deserve it.

Noam Chomsky & Robert Pollin | Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal

https://uquiz.com/xq4jYC

I made a uquiz because I’m bored! I may update it eventually but here it is! Try it out and lemme know what you get 🥰

Medieval Irish Nettle Soup

Today, I’ll be taking a look at a staple of Irish medieval cuisine: the humble nettle soup. Late spring and early Summer is the ideal time to make this dish, as the nettle leaves used here won’t have matured fully, and retain a soft, lighter texture than older woodier leaves. Plus they won’t sting your hands as badly as mature nettles. Plenty of Irish families have their own takes on this recipe, and this is influenced by my family’s take on the tradition!

In any case, let’s now take a look at The World That Was! Follow along with my YouTube video, above!

Ingredients 2-3 cups nettle leaves 1 onion, minced 2-3 cloves garlic (or two bulbs of wild garlic, minced) chives (for decoration) butter ½ cup milk/double cream 500ml water or stock salt pepper

Method

1 - Chop and cook the Garlic and Onion

To begin with, we need to peel and chop a whole onion, before tossing this into a pot with some melted butter. You can of course use oil, but dairy products was (and still is) a major part of Irish culinary traditions - so try and use Irish butter here if you can.

In any case, let your onion sauté away for a couple of minutes until it turns translucent and fragrant. When it hits this point, toss in a couple of cloves of crushed garlic - or some wild garlic if you have any!

2 - Deal with the Nettles Next, ball up some nettles and chop it roughly with a knife. Be careful, as the leaves and stems of this plant has stinging fibres (which will get denatured and broken down when it’s cooking).

Nettles act like spinach when you’re cooking them, so have about 2-3 times more than what you think you’ll need on hand. Add your chopped nettles into the pot, and let them cook down before adding the rest!

3 - Cook Soup When all of your nettle leaves have cooked down, pour in 500ml of soup stock (or water) into the pot. Then, toss in about a half a cup of whole milk, or double cream if you have it. Mix this together gently, before putting this onto a high heat. Bring it to a rolling boil, before turning it down to low until it simmers. Let the whole thing simmer away for about an hour.

Serve up hot in a small bowl, garnish with some chives or seasonal herbs, and dig in!

The finished soup is very light and flavourful, but quite filling for what it is! It’s another variation on a medieval pottage, with ingredients that could have been easily foraged in the spring and summer. As it can be made with only a few ingredients, it could have formed the basis of more complex dishes - such as the addition of more vegetables, or meat products.

Given how little the dish has changed from antiquity to modernity, it’s likely that the basics of this soup go back to pre-historic Irish culinary traditions.

SCREW BIG AGRICULTURE

I fully believe everyone needs to be aware of this, it’s not common knowledge but it’s important.

Running a farm is HARD, and I know not everyone is capable of it, but you can still be supporting small farms especially now, when big agriculture is trying to get control of all of our food supply, which is BAD.

Farmers used to be able to reuse seed year after year, the benefits of this include saving money and it’s not genetically modified and the food is completely fine. However, this is not longer viable because now the new law is that you have to go and buy gmo seeds year after year and plant those and if you don’t do that, an inspector will go around and check and if you don’t have those seeds they will literally sue you and your farm. This makes NO sense. That is also why there’s this huge push right now for going vegan, specifically with soybeans, although your body struggles to break down the ingredients in those foods.

None of this is natural and it’s becoming a huge issue because looking at the food supply you’ll notice that it’s extremely expensive to get anything organic when it literally comes out of the dirt and everything is just becoming more and more genetically modified and we NEED now more than ever to start supporting small farms and co ops and places where it’s accessible to get actually good food because that round up and the gmo processed foods it just stays in your body and it’s not good for us.

Please share, it’s important to bring awareness to the recent laws and how they’re changing and how paying attention to them now can benefit us in the future.

The silliest part of our modern culture is the belief that one person deserves any more than the other.

Beautiful post.

I love the natural feeling and the sense of accomplishment felt when we as humans spread/plant life and give back to nature as was intended.

probably the thing I’ve done that’s closest to guerrilla gardening is planting a bunch of shit in my backyard and refusing to consult my landlord

I’m making it better. When I moved in it was nothing but a patch of hot dirt (rocky clay, to be precise) with three sad 4′x4′x6″ raised beds. After almost two years of gardening and “letting the weeds grow” the difference is astonishing.

At first my “weeds” really were weeds: nonnative and invasive plants. But it is the nature of these plants to grow on disturbed ground, so I let them, and as time passed, my “weeds” became unfamiliar to me. These had to be the native plants, I thought. I have yet to get confirmation on that but increased biodiversity is always a good thing. Plants want to grow and the fact that I let them, that I have allowed this, brings me endless joy.

I planted a tree and didn’t tell my landlord. The local electric company subsidizes trees because it’s in their interest to shade the city. (They don’t nearly have as many native trees as I would like but it’s something at least.) Presently my tree is but 5 ft tall. I will not benefit from its shade, but I planted it for the future. It will save electricity in the future, after I have likely moved away. When it is larger, birds will flit among its branches. Hummingbirds and bugs will sip at its flowers, they already do. Give me flowers now, and my tree has done so.

There are so many more birds in my back yard, and bugs too. Foliage increases the humidity, it is not as hot and dry as it once was. Of course, there is always so much further to go in my vision of a lush desert garden but I can sit at the bench I built and watch birds visit my feeder or the flowers and know I have made something that provides for myself and the world around me.

Tracking the Sun’s Cycles

Scientists just announced that our Sun is in a new cycle.

Solar activity has been relatively low over the past few years, and now that scientists have confirmed solar minimum was in December 2019, a new solar cycle is underway — meaning that we expect to see solar activity start to ramp up over the next several years.

The Sun goes through natural cycles, in which the star swings from relatively calm to stormy. At its most active — called solar maximum — the Sun is freckled with sunspots, and its magnetic poles reverse. At solar maximum, the Sun’s magnetic field, which drives solar activity, is taut and tangled. During solar minimum, sunspots are few and far between, and the Sun’s magnetic field is ordered and relaxed.

Understanding the Sun’s behavior is an important part of life in our solar system. The Sun’s violent outbursts can disturb the satellites and communications signals traveling around Earth, or one day, Artemis astronauts exploring distant worlds. Scientists study the solar cycle so we can better predict solar activity.

Measuring the solar cycle

Surveying sunspots is the most basic of ways we study how solar activity rises and falls over time, and it’s the basis of many efforts to track the solar cycle. Around the world, observers conduct daily sunspot censuses. They draw the Sun at the same time each day, using the same tools for consistency. Together, their observations make up the international sunspot number, a complex task run by the World Data Center for the Sunspot Index and Long-term Solar Observations, at the Royal Observatory of Belgium in Brussels, which tracks sunspots and pinpoints the highs and lows of the solar cycle. Some 80 stations around the world contribute their data.

Credit: USET data/image, Royal Observatory of Belgium, Brussels

Other indicators besides sunspots can signal when the Sun is reaching its low. In previous cycles, scientists have noticed the strength of the Sun’s magnetic field near the poles at solar minimum hints at the intensity of the next maximum. When the poles are weak, the next peak is weak, and vice versa.

Another signal comes from outside the solar system. Cosmic rays are high-energy particle fragments, the rubble from exploded stars in distant galaxies that shoot into our solar system with astounding energy. During solar maximum, the Sun’s strong magnetic field envelops our solar system in a magnetic cocoon that is difficult for cosmic rays to infiltrate. In off-peak years, the number of cosmic rays in the solar system climbs as more and more make it past the quiet Sun. By tracking cosmic rays both in space and on the ground, scientists have yet another measure of the Sun’s cycle.

Since 1989, an international panel of experts—sponsored by NASA and NOAA—meets each decade to make their prediction for the next solar cycle. The prediction includes the sunspot number, a measure of how strong a cycle will be, and the cycle’s expected start and peak. This new solar cycle is forecast to be about the same strength as the solar cycle that just ended — both fairly weak. The new solar cycle is expected to peak in July 2025.

Learn more about the Sun’s cycle and how it affects our solar system at nasa.gov/sunearth.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.