After weeks of walking without signs of another living human you stumble upon an open Arby’s nestled in an oasis of luscious greeny.
I think the fact that it’s the renovated building but the old sign really makes it
Hol up, kudzu is edible?! How were we never taught this???
See I remember, EVERY DAMN YEAR, back when I was a kid where I used to live, it used to be me and my siblings’ job to clear the kudzu and creeper vines from the house’s brickwork because every year, without fail, it’d grow like eight damn feet up the wall by the end of spring. Awful work, especially in blistering summer humidity-- if I’d have known the shit was edible…
Even if every yank started eating kudzu by the kg, probably they would start cultivating it while forests infested by kudzu wouldn’t get cleared of it
See the Rubeus ulmifolius berry plague in Argentina and Chile
Capitalism only knows how to find the worse solution to fuck everything up
Meh it’s not capitalism ruining things here, it’s simply not the solution cuz:
If kudzu were hard to propagate and high in demand, people would go to the forests and forage it till it’s no longer a problem. But kudzu is really easy to prooagate, so if it easier to grow it like another crop, it’s not cost effective for most people to go to a fucking forest, so besides some artisanal harvesting by landless people, kudzu would remain a plague.
To actually solve this you need a Forestry Ministry or whatever launching a big campaign to save the forests, and part of that effort should be clear this invasive plant, which is a pain in the ass to do cuz you gotta go and kill it specifically in an area that is annoying to go and you gotta go there season after seadon, year after year,vuz the thing grows back easily.
Again with the R. ulmifolius example: it’s a (delicious) invasive thorny bush plaguing mountainous forests, but it’s also really easy to grow in any other terrain and we have non-thorny cultivars. So besides forest fires and pissed off hikers carrying a machete in their trips to clear trails, R. ulmifolius has no counter.
Hell, R ulmifolius probably benefits from forest fires.
I see Kudzu here were I am everywhere so I often think about what needs to be done about it. I appreciate your thoughts on this. I agree with state intervention and a forest ministry. It’s amazing what a state can do when if actually has the political will :O
To “save face” I’ll still relate it to capitalism through our bourgeoisie class having no ability or desire to do anything useful or good for the world except make line go up something something
I’ll take a look at R ulmifolius. I love plants and this sounds like a good rabbit hole for the next hour or so!
I actually remember when I was studying abroad Japan many years ago and I was doing some kind of presentation about our home ecologies and I brought up that kudzu was this big problem where I’m from and some Japanese students were just like, “But why don’t you just eat it?” and I was just like
I would rather starve than eat a plant. My forefathers (vikings) didn’t fight in world war 2 so I could eat something green.
My forefathers (vikings) didn’t fight in world war 2 so I could eat something green.
Considering that archeological studies discovered vikings very often had parasites and plethora of other digestive tract problems, they in fact must have eaten plenty of green things, but those that shouldn’t be green in the first place, like sausages.
I love how white people bring up being Vikings but they were considered a joke for the longest time. Mainly because they lost against the Mongols in the East. Its why the Ukrainian worshipping of their Viking roots is more modern and tied to white supremacy rather than some thing traditional and historical.
I mean of course Vikings are going to lose to fucking mongols, you’ve got, you’ve got one set of guys whose whole thing is fucking around on little boats doing hit and run raids, you’ve got another set of guys whose whole thing is massive armies of cavalry, unless the Vikings are tricking them into a naval battle or like guerrilla warring them in some swamp somewhere they’re fucked I’m sorry
You’re kinda wrong. The notion that the mongols came in and used only force is wrong. The reality is that the people who lived along the northern Silk Road knew of the benefits the mongols provided and willfully supported them in their overthrow of the Kievian Rus. The mongols also provided a pluralistic approach to many things. The Vikings weren’t even considered to be white until the 19th century when anglos made up the social construct of race.
The vikings also specialized in hitting areas with litteral no defensive fortifications. The english had placed their monasteries on the rocky eastern shores to prevent them from being overrun by the locals, as the local population would occasionally attack them, but since monks generally did not fight back, attacking them was sort of like attacking a university, whose students are armed with sticks, while the vikings had axes and swords. An axe typically beats a stick, particularly if the stick is wielded by a guy who mainly does yard-work for a living.
