Nathan Rowe

School Psychologist. Dad. Reluctant Minnesota fan. Lover of board games.

[Merriam-Webster @MerriamWebster]

Why is it ‘cancelled’ in the U.K. but ‘canceled’ in the U.S.?

Because we gave them that L in 1776.

[Nathan Rowe @ndrowe6899]

@tlschwerz @StPaulSaints Proving...? That he is a great triple A player. Which is incredible! But...like...what do we do with him? He has proven, for a long time now, that he is not a major leaguer.

[Anish Moonka @anishmoonka]

Every Honeycrisp apple is a clone of a single tree planted at the University of Minnesota in 1962. Every one. Apple seeds are random. Plant a Honeycrisp seed and the new tree produces a small, sour apple that’s usually inedible.

So apple growers do something old and clever. They cut a small branch off the original Honeycrisp tree, slot it into a slit in a young apple sapling, wrap the joint, and wait. The branch fuses to its new host and starts producing Honeycrisps. About 20 million Honeycrisp trees exist worldwide, every one a piece of that 1962 tree on different roots.

Same goes for Gala, Fuji, Pink Lady, Granny Smith. Every Granny Smith on Earth traces back to a seedling found in 1868 by a woman named Maria Ann Smith in Australia. She’d thrown French crab apple cores onto her compost heap, one of them sprouted, and the apples it bore were unusually tart and good for cooking. That one tree is the ancestor of every Granny Smith in every grocery store on the planet.

Wine has the bigger story. In the 1860s, a tiny aphid called phylloxera caught a boat from America to France, hidden in some grapevine cuttings. It eats grape roots. French vines had no defense and started dying everywhere. Within 15 years, French wine production crashed from about 11 billion bottles a year to 3 billion. The blight then tore through Italy, Spain, and Germany, and European wine was on the edge of collapse.

The rescue came from Missouri and Texas. American grapevines had grown up with phylloxera and were immune to it. So growers chopped French grape varieties off at the trunk and joined them to American roots. Above the soil: still French grapes. Below the soil: aphid-proof American root. It worked. Today, almost every bottle of French, Italian, Spanish, Australian, and Californian wine you’ve ever drunk sits on top of an American root.

The technique is ancient. Chinese farmers were grafting trees by 1000 BCE. A Greek medical text from 424 BCE describes it casually, like it was already old news. It works because plants don’t have a rejection system the way animals do. Cut two branches. Match the green layers just under the bark. Wrap them tight. In a few weeks the plumbing has fused into a single plant.

A Syracuse University art professor named Sam Van Aken has spent 18 years building a single tree that grows 40 different fruits: peaches, plums, apricots, cherries, nectarines, almonds. In spring it blossoms in pink, white, and crimson all at once. He’s made more than a dozen. They sell for up to $30,000 each.

Without grafting, there would be no commercial apple industry, no global wine industry, and most of the heirloom fruits humans have bred over the centuries would have gone extinct. One clean cut, and you’ve kept entire species alive.

[Nathan Rowe @ndrowe6899]

@ontheprowl_MN @TwolvesBlog We have no shot. None.

[Nathan Rowe @ndrowe6899]

@Gaardsy Does it really matter, though? The spurs and thunder are LIGHTYEARS ahead of us. And wemby is LIGHTYEARS ahead of ant. Just have to hope we move to the east

[Nathan Rowe @ndrowe6899]

@REichten @canishoopus K. Well. That comes from you, ant...

[Nathan Rowe @ndrowe6899]

@ontheprowl_MN They have to play kyle over julius, right? I mean...he is literally doing nothing and kyle will play defense.

[Nathan Rowe @ndrowe6899]

@JonKrawczynski Ant didn't want to be the face of the league, he doesn't have to worry about that.

[Nathan Rowe @ndrowe6899]

@ButtaSports @InfraRen Great, and they will go by the wayside.

[Nathan Rowe @ndrowe6899]

@JakePaynting Jaden? 5-22 and a minus 15...

[Nathan Rowe @ndrowe6899]

@PDWolves Cool. Spurs are younger and better, thunder are thunder, and we better hope we move to the east. I'm so sad.

[Nathan Rowe @ndrowe6899]

@PDWolves But also...he deserves to get ripped. Missing 4 of our top 8 and still dominate. Yikes.

[Nathan Rowe @ndrowe6899]

@SheaSerrano Being a fan of the men's professional sports teams in MN might be the worst sports experience in human history.

[Nicholas Kristof @NickKristof]

Imagine if instead of spending $1.3 million/minute on war in Iran, we spent this on people. With 3 days of war, we could eliminate the worst form of global hunger, saving 1.5m kids' lives. With less than 3 weeks worth, we could offer national pre-K or college for all Americans.

[Nathan Rowe @ndrowe6899]

@TheDailyWolves Is edwards capable of not turning the ball over at an insane rate? Seems like he is not when a team plays good defense.

[Nathan Rowe @ndrowe6899]

@TradeNumberz @JonKrawczynski If you think he gives full effort on defense consistently then the conversation is probably over. Just a difference of opinion.

[ProPublica @propublica]

1/ ProPublica collected handwritten letters in mid-January from children held at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center, the same facility where 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos was taken.

Hundreds of kids are still detained. We’ll let the children’s words speak for themselves. 🧵

[Nathan Rowe @ndrowe6899]

@TradeNumberz @JonKrawczynski No, that's not what anyone wants to see. Did you, by chance, watch Rudy's interview? To me, that's what leadership looks like. Honestly, I don't really care about the interview, on court is what matters and he and Randle give very little effort on defense. It's frustrating.

[Nathan Rowe @ndrowe6899]

@DaneMooreNBA However, when they don't care at all it doesn't matter who is out there.