I'm finally reading Dune. This quote, which is in the first few pages, hits hard:
"Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them."
That “pollinator seed mix” might be planting a problem.
A University of Washington study grew out 19 wildflower seed packets and found something wild: Every single packet contained invasive species. Not one or two bad mixes. All 19.
Some had 3 invasive species. Some had 13. Eight contained plants considered noxious weeds in at least one state. A third of the packets didn’t list contents at all. And only 5 accurately listed what was inside.
The most common species? Bachelor’s button. Pretty? Sure. But absolutely harmful. It can spread into native grasslands and crowd out the plants local insects actually evolved to use.
That’s the trap.
People buy “wildflower” mixes because they want to help bees and butterflies. But vague seed packets can introduce aggressive nonnative plants that make the problem worse.
Better move: Buy region-specific native seed mixes. Use local native plant nurseries. Check with your state native plant society. Look for packets that list every species by name.
While everyone argues about data centers and water, California almonds quietly use up to 80x more, AND the whole industry only survives because of trucked-in "livestock"...
Every February, beekeepers transport nearly every commercial honeybee colony in the United States (around 2.8 million hives) to California to pollinate almonds.
It's the largest "managed-pollination" event on the planet. Almonds cover 1.4 million acres and need bees to pollinate so they set nuts.
So why do we need to truck them in? Well, almonds are grown in huge monoculture orchards, meaning the native bee species are all but eradicated...there's nothing for them to eat most of the year.
To fix the problem WE created, we ship in bees from across the country. I interviewed the creator of the 2019 documentary The Pollinators, which followed this migration and brought a lot of this story into public view.
First off, honeybees aren't native to North America. They were brought from Europe in the 1600s. The "bee crisis" you read about, with national colony losses around 55% last year and some commercial keepers losing 60 to 70% in a single season, is happening to a managed, introduced species.
It's a livestock collapse driven by long-haul transport, pesticide exposure at bloom, hives packed together spreading mites and viruses, and a monoculture diet.
Meanwhile, North America has roughly 4,000 native bee species. Most are solitary, don't make honey, don't sting, and quietly pollinate everything from squash to blueberries.
Research out of UC Davis and UC Berkeley has been direct about this: when blue orchard bees, bumble bees, and other natives forage alongside honeybees in almond orchards, fruit set goes UP, not down.
The presence of wild bees changes how honeybees move through the trees and makes the honeybees themselves more effective pollinators.
So the fix isn't more honeybee hives. It's hedgerows, wildflower strips, bare ground for ground-nesting bees, and uncut field edges, aka habitat for the natives who were doing this work long before we started trucking in livestock.
Honeybees are livestock. Native bees are the wildlife, and we should be planting to include them in our agriculture.
Congrats, you all discovered how google AI image generation got so good so quickly,
everyone using a drive, every TB of family photos kept in a cloud for safekeeping, so long promised to be private, is scanned, used and abused by google.
Never believe in anything they say.
DeSantis & the Republican Party celebrated Alligator Alcatraz. They sold merchandise & fundraised off of it. Took selfies in front of it. They stole almost $700M to build it and gave the money to their donors. Lied about being reimbursed.
One of the biggest cons in Fl history.
Congratulations America! We are now ranked #47 in the World of Math and Science. We're stupid! But don't you worry, there's room for redemption. When we remove Florida, Arkansas, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Louisiana from the data, we rise to #15.
Gaming in your 40s is hilarious.
Sometimes you don’t game for a week. Some days you get 8-10 hours to game your heart out.
Other days you pass out with the controller in your hand.
And on a day off you’re up at 6 am ready to get your game on.
Good times 😂