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(I also have the rest)

Credit to COCO (L0VE_EXE

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it’s cold so ofc that means: soup

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do you have any book recommendations about geography/ecology?

hello. hmm, sure. thanks for trusting me enough to ask; don’t trust me too much, though. i'm always learning and criticizing my past/previous perspectives, but there are still some "classic" books that i'd recommend. something i say often, though: i actually spend much more time reading essays and journal articles, rather than full-length books (especially since so much of the best decolonial viewpoints, Indigenous and non-Western perspectives, and newer/fresher geographical thought and "critical geography" takes are being actively revised/discussed in these newer forums without having to appease popular or profit-oriented press/publishing companies).

the subjects that i read about: human relationships with other-than-human creatures; extinction; environmental history of empires, imperialism, colonization; traditional ecological knowledge; resistance, fugitivity, and carceral geography; eerie, weird, and uncanny ecology; regional geography, specific microhabitats, endemic species; Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene; ruins, ruination, haunting, trauma, and emotional geography; reptiles/amphibians; temperate rainforest and deserts; Pleistocene fauna and Paleolithic/ancient anthropogenic environmental change; islands, the sea, Oceanic worldviews, archipelagic thinking, solidarity across islands/regions; frontiers, borderlands, hinterlands, sacrifice zones, wastelanding, social abandonment, and extraction zones; Indigenous geography/ontology; decolonization

generally, i don't distinguish much of a difference between the subjects of geography/ecology -- or human and other-than-human environments -- since lifeforms and places and (cosmo)politics are all so entangled. anyway, here are some books involving a bit more geography and human ecology (the last time i was asked for recommendations, i focused a bit more on ecology and other-than-human environments, which i'll also re-post below these newer recs):

and then, i'll say again that essays and journal articles are often a great source for some of my favorite authors (though of course none of them are perfect; they can be problematique in their own ways): Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert; Elizabeth DeLoughrey; Paulo Tavares; Anna Boswell; Achille Mbembe; Hugo Reinert; Tim Edensor; Anna Tsing; Frantz Fanon; Robin Wall Kimmerer; Kyle Whyte; Kathryn Yusoff; Iyko Day; Audra Simpson; Ann Laura Stoler; Pedro Neves Marques

so here are the books i've previously recommended:

hope some of these are interesting.

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One thing in Lord of the Rings I’ve found extremely relatable lately is how the hobbits react to apocalyptic horrors by focusing on the mundane details of their day.

“Looks like we’re on a hopeless journey into Hell in the middle of a world-ending event where everything we know and love will be destroyed. What are we going to have for breakfast today, Mr Frodo? :D”

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went to trader joe’s today and my cashier handed me my 2.55 in change and pointed at the clock which read 2:55 and said “look at that. that’s liquid time… serendipity… have a nice ride”

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i am not joking we need to force teach cooking in schools. like. it is an essential thing for survival. do you know how easy it is to make things if you know even the bare bones shit about how cooking works. we need to teach teenagers how far you can take an onion and some other veggies it’’s sad that people grow up not knowing how to prepare literally anything. and i’m not talking about oh this home ed class taught me how to make chicken nuggets at home i’m talking about learning the balancing of sweetness and acidity and saltiness and bitterness and shit like that and techniques and oil temperatures and how meats cook. it needs to be taught because it’s literally not even that difficult and it matters so much

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just some cute babes ♡

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I think I’m going to stop reblogging those ‘half the world’s wealth is owned by like 7 people’ posts. Not because they’re not vaguely accurate, but because they’re too often mis-interpreted as describing a problem (7 evil dudes) instead of describing a symptom of the actual problem (capitalism).

Truth is, 7 people are not our problem and we can’t solve our problems by killing 7 people. Gloriously entertaining as that might be.

If we could kill the 7 richest people of the world, capitalism would survive. If we could kill them and appropriate all their wealth and somehow distribute that equally across the workers of the world, we’d have a very chaotic period of hyperinflation and shifting balances of power but capitalism would probably survive that too.

And if the richest 7 people of the world would be visited by the ghost of Christmas and suddenly became the 7 most charitable people on earth, capitalism would survive that too. Because most of the wealth of these rich bastards is not in their bank accounts as disposable income, it’s in the imagined value of their companies. And the moment they’d stop prioritizing profit, that imagined wealth would vanish as investors flocked to the stocks of different bastards and the imagined wealth of those different companies would rise. In the face of the systems of capitalism, these people are not actually as powerful as they imagine themselves to me. If they’d stop serving profit, they’d lose most of their power.

So yeah, we need system change.

And like… one of the reasons I think it is important to talk about this is because ‘A few evil people secretly hold all the power and if we just killed them all the world’s problems would be solved’ is at the core of most conspiracy theories, from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion all the way to QAnon. It’s the same story over and over and whenever these kinds of theories spread, minorities pay the price.

And when ‘A few evil people secretly hold all the power and if we just killed them all the world’s problems would be solved’ sounds vaguely intuitively true to people who have heard something similar on a leftist blog… those people are a little more receptive to those conspiracy theories. So maybe it’s not something we should be implying?

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From "Onions", by William Matthews

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your man doesn’t have the mental strength to caramelize onions 

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For the rest of the year, we’re featuring a recipe from each of our four different Herb Garden baskets. Today’s recipe? Salted capers.

Capparis spinosa (the caper plant), is native to the Mediterranean and grows best in dry, rocky soil. In the spring, the shrubby plant begins producing beautiful purple and white blooms; and the buds can taste more flowery or peppery depending on the location and soil. We’ll be using our very own capers from the Herb Garden.

First step to making salted capers? Harvest the caper buds. Known as buds or berries, capers are essentially an unopened flower. Even after capers are brined or dried, you can open them up and still see remnants of the flower within. The tiny buds (called nonpareil) are the most flavorful, and therefore used most often in recipes.

After you’ve gathered your caper buds, bury all of them under a mound of sea salt. Then forget about it. It will take about a week for the capers to age and dry.

When you are done, package in a sealed jar and use for whatever your heart desires: the caper buds will add a salty tang to everything from sauces to cocktails.

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“frugal” eating recipes be like

oh its SO EASY, just buy this fifty dollar item for forty-nine dollars off with a coupon that you can’t find and don’t have time to cut out at a store that doesn’t have outlets in rural areas and then you can fill in the rest with odds and ends that are SURELY already taking up space in your kitchen that you totally somehow forgot about! [photo of a table full of perfectly arranged meats and fresh vegetables] this little family secret is SO easy and delicious just looking at it will make you gain ten pounds ;) so make sure pace yourself! this right here should be enough to stock your fridge for the next ten months at LEAST so you don’t have to worry about the hassle of mealtime again for awhile!

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confusing vintage pin haul

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