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tkingfisher:

I have returned safely from the Emerald Isle, and holy crap, I don’t
even know what to say, but being me, I will now expend a pile of words
to say it.

First, there’s the color.

To call Ireland green
is to commit glaring sins of omission. It is the sort of green reserved
for gods and Pantone swatches. Kelly green, acid green, the greens you
see in jars of pure mineral pigment, greens that blow out your photos
the way that red roses or blue skies do. Green as primary color.

When I lived in Oregon, I thought it was green, and then I moved to
North Carolina and realized that it had been grey-green. North Carolina,
I thought, was green. Then I went to Ireland. Now I see how yellow the
undertones here are, and how desaturated the greens are by comparison.
Fortunately, I am told that the only color that compares to Ireland is
in the depths of the rainforest, so it will stay green in my head for a
long time.

Also, as with so much of Europe, things are
relentlessly old. I stood on the battlements of a ruined castle built at
the same time as Blarney Castle and I could see three other
ruins from the top. “Oh,” said my friend Carlota, “that’s the NEW ruin,
over there…” Eventually it became a running joke–“Oh, that’s the NEW
standing stone…”  It became exciting when the new building wasn’t older than my country. Occasionally they predated Europeans in North America at all.

Yes, I’m including the Vikings.

But
possibly the most intense thing was simply that it was relentlessly,
savagely picturesque. You could point your camera in any direction and
come away with a postcard. It was beautiful, and it kept being
beautiful, and eventually it got to the point where you would look over
the view and start swearing, because it was being beautiful again. Probably with cows.

After awhile, you stopped going “How lovely!” and started going “How do people stand this?”

(I asked Twitter. Residents uttered some variation on “Whiskey” and “You get used to it, but whiskey helps.”)

You
just have to figure that sooner or later, living in that kind of beauty
would weigh down on you, and you’d either become hard as diamond or
break and become a poet. It’s just…intense. I think of people
who left there–my ancestors, some of ‘em–to come to America because of
poverty or starvation or hope or whatever, and I can get just the
smallest glimpse of what that must have been like–enough to know what I
can’t really imagine what it was really like. America is
beautiful, don’t get me wrong! (I believe there’s a song about it.) But
it’s a completely different sort of beauty, a sort that doesn’t much
care about the people on it. If we all died tomorrow, I doubt America
would even notice much, but Ireland would be sad that the people were
gone. It’s the difference between the Rockies and a green field with a
black horse grazing surrounded by rooks, under a hill covered in mist.
They’re both beautiful, it’s just…scale.

I don’t know. Maybe
I’m raving. I am only a tourist and don’t pretend to know anything about
what life is really like there. It was just…so visually intense.

fenrislorsrai:

magickandmoss:

temporarilypermanenturl:

benwinstagram:

kanyolo:

nuggetfucker98:

legalizeact:

#SaveTheTrees

I feel like an important message is trying to be communicated to me but I have no idea what it is

Our forests are being cut down 3x faster than they can grow! One acre of hemp produces as much cellulose fiber pulp as 4.1 acres of trees!!! This is super useful for so many things, especially paper production! In addition, hemp takes in carbon dioxide 4x as fast as trees do, which makes it especially valuable in the act of reducing CO2 emissions/greenhouse gases! ???????????? source 

#the scope of the anti-hemp conspiracy in the united states is terrifying once you start doing research tbh#like it was initially smeared/banned bc lumber lobbyists pushed for it to be…#and a major smear tactic was to associate it with black people#who now a hundred years later are the ones primarily being imprisoned for it#and the plant itself has now been inextricably linked to the drug so people won’t even allow for it to be grown for commercial purposes#like paper making (via literallyfuckeveryone)

Important reminder that industrial hemp can’t be used as a recreational drug, so if anyone tries to pull that card you can just stop them then and there. There are no real arguments against using industrial hemp, even if you’re rigidly against the legalization of any recreational drugs.

AYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY I never see pro-hemp on my dash, woo!

Usually the argument on why you can’t have hemp is because then people will hide marijuana in it.

yeah, sure…. if they want shitty, shitty marijuana.

It would be like growing sweet corn and dent corn together.  Yeah, they look similar at a distance and they’re closely related, but you don’t want them next to each other as they’ll cross pollinate and you’ll end up with bad versions of both.

Same deal here.  a patch of marijuana grown in an open field of hemp IS going to get contaminated and it’ll lower quality of BOTH crops.  Your hemp farmer doesn’t want that and if likely going rip out any patches trespassers try to add for same reason. 

and the big issue is not even the THC content.  Because most quality marijuana is intended to be grown indoors or greenhouses, its a dwarf variety. Short.  Fiber hemp is bred for height so as to maximize fiber production.  super tall. It’s going to be really obvious, really fast if you’ve got both in the same field even before you get to the point of pollination. what’s this runty bullshit doing in my field?

They also have different growing needs with regards to spacing, harvest time, etc. so the argument that you can hide marijuana in industrial hemp fields are basically bullshit.

anyway… aside from paper, hemp fiber can also be used to make earthquake resistant concrete that’s actually LIGHTER than conventional concrete while being stronger. It’s better at resisting flexing or warping, so ideal for stuff like bridges and highway supports as it’ll better resist large temperature swings and vibration. (”hempcrete” is slightly different, but makes great fire resistant insulation)

You can also use the waste after fiber harvest for animal fodder, including silage. Comparable to corn. and remember, that’s the waste after you’ve harvested for fiber!

Tried the @workhousecafe suggested fruit mix for my first ever home made smoothie. Sooooo good.

And our new $8 blender did just fine. Not as classy as the ones I’ve been trying to find, but the heat today mean that I really, really wanted a smoothie.