quasinonymous

[quasinonymous]

i love living in western washington. i can literally just get on the ferry

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兵庫 出石 // Izushi, Hyogo // Tomoko.M

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キャプションの注意書き必読

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キャプションの注意書き必読

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Did this for a … thing

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Tiberius Ciucinciu.

"Foraging Wild Edibles" 2023.

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Railway Station by Jean Giraud (Moebius), 1984

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hello! I've noticed that you say that there's foreshadowing for Hong lu's distortion in one of the interludes and I just wanted to ask what that is?

In Hell's Chicken, the first Intervallo, there's a scene where Faust explains the process by which a Distortion can form. The following exchange occurs:

Faust continues to infodump about Distortions for a few more lines after this.

It would already be suspicious for Faust to off-handedly use Hong Lu as an example of how a Distortion can occur. It's extra suspicious for Hong Lu to not only respond to the fact he was used as an example, but confirm this as a real possibility and then proceed to completely avoid explaining what he meant by that.

[quasinonymous]

Joel Slotte (Finnish, 1987) - Iridescent Wings and the Crackle of Bottle Money (2024)

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Through

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Out of Touch

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An unnamed creek

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Tag urself: wet 'n' wild wetland edition! (source)

[quasinonymous]

Note - there are heirlooms with incredible flavors out there, so I don't entirely agree with the premise of this article, but they're talking about apples grown at megascale, not interesting unique things you might grow yourself or find at a nearby orchard.

"We are living in a golden age of apples, a time of delicious, diverse, mouth-watering abundance that we could barely have imagined at the turn of the millennium. How did we get to a time when most of us, most of the year, can eat our choice of fragrant, juicy, sweet, crisp (oh so crisp) apples?

We can thank a mix of science, innovations, investment in long-term research, the multi-multi-multi-generational transmission of knowledge, communal action and people who joyfully dedicate their lives to a cause."

...

"I spoke with several apple researchers while working on this story, and do you know who loves their jobs? Apple researchers. And that’s not just because they get to taste new varieties all the time and spend workdays in an orchard. All of them, as well as the other orchardists and hobbyists I know, are proud of the progress they’ve made in the past few decades and optimistic about the future.

One of the biggest challenges to developing new varieties is that the ones we have now are so good. “The bar has risen so much,” Bedford says. Any new apple variety must be better than what already exists to justify developing it and bringing it to market. “We are some of our biggest competition,” he says. But every year a few of those 600 apples a day he bites into have a different combination of qualities that make them worth developing, something never tasted before.

Apple researchers are busy. Brown, Bedford and Gottschalk spend about as much time in the lab as they do in their test orchards. They’re looking for more genes associated with favorable (or unfavorable) traits. They’re working on apples that are well suited to selling as slices. They’re making crosses that have the right qualities for hard cider. And some breeders are developing new varieties of small apples that a child can easily hold and eat. Isn’t that adorable?

The technology for storing apples is improving quickly, and new varieties are being bred to stay firm for longer. Packing houses are experimenting with ways to control temperature, balance oxygen and carbon dioxide levels and scrub out ethylene gas that promotes ripening and rotting. Brown once tasted an apple that had been stored for three years, and she says she never would have guessed it was that old. Researchers are hoping to make apples last a full year in storage, expanding when and where they can be sold. (Some apple varieties available now can last for months in a home refrigerator, so stock up on Pink Ladies and Evercrisps when the apple season starts to wind down.)

A lot of apple advancements have been made possible by long-term investment in research at the USDA and universities, as well as collaborations and communication among labs and growers and buyers. Gottschalk’s team at the USDA, for instance, specializes in creating parent trees with lots of favorable traits that breeders at universities or commercial growers can use to cross with other parents and experiment with new varieties. Apples aren’t a hugely profitable industry, and it takes a long time to determine whether a new variety will be a success, so funding this sort of research makes it all possible.

“The work that my predecessors and academics have done has laid the groundwork to rapidly accelerate innovation in apples,” Gottschalk says. “In the next 15 to 20 years, we’re going to see apples that address consumer traits, have fruits that are more resilient to disease and stress and are more efficient and sustainable and profitable.” And they will be even more delicious (truly delicious, not Red Delicious).

What a great time to be alive. What a great time to be snacking. Isn’t it a joy to hold a pinnacle of human achievement in your hand … and take a bite?"

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