Please Share, It’s Important To Bring Awareness To The Recent Laws And How They’re Changing And How

soil is a finite resource and it is being destroyed by years of agriculture. Even if you take drought out of the equation, eroded soil struggles to hold water properly.

I recommend planting and growing your own food if you are capable.

To associate religions/mythology which have nothing to do with Christianity with it is close minded and will only prevent you from truly learning about said religion/mythology.

There does not always have to be an equivalent to a singular god, a hell or heaven concept, or Bible. Do not let Christianity replace and infiltrate your own personal spirituality.

It is important to discover your own spirituality, path and religion for yourself in the way(s) that work and resonate with you, not the way(s) that you have been told are right. It is important to ask yourself “why do I pray?”, “what does this mean to me?” If you do not know the purpose of your own spirituality and beliefs, are they truly meaningful? Or are you going off of what you think is correct based on what others are doing? It is important to truly find yourself in order to find happiness and your connection with and to this world outside of popular culture and what everyone else is doing.

The modern world is greedy, never satisfied and more harmful than helpful to spirituality and a person’s connection to the world around them and Mother Earth than it is helpful. The average person in average society is not connected to themselves or to nature, they are connected to the Christian church which is only thinly veiled as not being connected to the state (it is). It is important to separate yourself from the values of modern society, from the virus that has been Christianity in suffocating any values that do not align with their own. I admit to still finding my way myself some days, but to never stop committing myself to learning, loyalty and honesty with myself and with others.  Values which become increasingly rare.

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.

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.

1970. How is this still relevant? Fuck you, Supreme Court reactionary dickheads.

If there’s one lesson I’ve learned as I enter year four of my foray into farming, it’s that lambs love to be born during the darkest hours of the coldest nights in the most inconvenient way possible. But we still love them, ‘cause they are the sweetest creatures around.

Quick reminder that American * need to shut the fuck up.

Lord stop making every conflict about you

Y’all are so divorced from reality you act as if every single thing affect y’all first

Ukrainiens are dying and all you can do is wonder about your ass.

I’m just …. Tired of American always being in the narrative. Hearing them talk you’d think that they stopped WWII by them self. Dude, the resistance wouldn’t have stopped if y’all had failed. You wouldn’t have been able to step foot on France if not for the French resistance helping you. And you didn’t even enter the conflict till it cause you trouble.

The soldiers from the colonies where fucking braver than any of you, cause they where fighting for a country that fuck them over.

Just stop

It’s not about you

It’s about them

It’s not even about us European. ( I’m talking about the coalition things plus England there)

It’s about Ukraine and it’s innocent, terrified people.

It’s about the innocent Russian civilians protesting against their corrupt government

Both of them are braver than any US marine.

It’s not about you

So shut the fuck up.

* I’m talking about the American without any tie to ukraine

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

China is a major base of cheaper production for multinational companies which means China’s lockdown has effected many companies negatively. What did they expect? Maybe China no longer wants to give all of its resources and labour for cheap to the rest of the world.

For the Love of Peat: Our Best Defence Against a Changing Climate

Canada holds between a quarter and a third of the world’s peatlands. It’s time we took better care of them

Canada holds between a quarter and a third of the world’s peatlands, including acidic bogs and more alkaline fens as well as swamps and marshes. They can be found across the country, from British Columbia to the Northwest Territories to Nova Scotia, growing many metres deep into the ground. Due to their density of decomposed or decomposing plant material, one square metre of peatland in northern Canada holds approximately five times the amount of carbon as one square metre of tropical rainforest in the Amazon. But the country’s peatlands have been so degraded by the construction of mines and hydroelectric dams, by oil-and-gas developments, and by urban expansion that we are losing an ecosystem crucial to the prevention of natural disasters such as forest fires—as well as destroying a key mitigator of climate change.

Read more at thewalrus.ca.

Illustration by Kyle Scott (kjscott.com).