#Agricultural Risk Management

[farmerstrend]

How Big Should Your Farm Be to Make a Profit?

Many new agripreneurs believe that the size of their farm will determine how profitable they’ll be. However, you can be profitable whether you’re farming 1 hectare or 100 hectares; it all depends on how you farm. When it comes to land, the most important thing to consider is not the number of hectares at your disposal, but rather the commodity that you farm and how you manage and control costs.…

[ggacworldwide]

Financial Resilience: NPowerFarmers Guide to Strategic Financial Management in Agriculture

Greetings, NPowerFarmers! As we delve deeper into the NPowerFarmers Guide, we arrive at a critical aspect of farming success: financial management. Navigating the financial landscape with strategic planning is key to ensuring the sustainability and prosperity of your agricultural venture. Let’s explore essential considerations for achieving financial resilience in agriculture. Budgeting for…

[reasonsforhope]

The World's Forests Are Doing Much Better Than We Think

You might be surprised to discover... that many of the world’s woodlands are in a surprisingly good condition. The destruction of tropical forests gets so much (justified) attention that we’re at risk of missing how much progress we’re making in cooler climates.

That’s a mistake. The slow recovery of temperate and polar forests won’t be enough to offset global warming, without radical reductions in carbon emissions. Even so, it’s evidence that we’re capable of reversing the damage from the oldest form of human-induced climate change — and can do the same again.

Take England. Forest coverage now is greater than at any time since the Black Death nearly 700 years ago, with some 1.33 million hectares of the country covered in woodlands. The UK as a whole has nearly three times as much forest as it did at the start of the 20th century.

That’s not by a long way the most impressive performance. China’s forests have increased by about 607,000 square kilometers since 1992, a region the size of Ukraine. The European Union has added an area equivalent to Cambodia to its woodlands, while the US and India have together planted forests that would cover Bangladesh in an unbroken canopy of leaves.

Logging in the tropics means that the world as a whole is still losing trees. Brazil alone removed enough woodland since 1992 to counteract all the growth in China, the EU and US put together. Even so, the planet’s forests as a whole may no longer be contributing to the warming of the planet. On net, they probably sucked about 200 million metric tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year between 2011 and 2020, according to a 2021 study. The CO2 taken up by trees narrowly exceeded the amount released by deforestation. That’s a drop in the ocean next to the 53.8 billion tons of greenhouse gases emitted in 2022 — but it’s a sign that not every climate indicator is pointing toward doom...

More than a quarter of Japan is covered with planted forests that in many cases are so old they’re barely recognized as such. Forest cover reached its lowest extent during World War II, when trees were felled by the million to provide fuel for a resource-poor nation’s war machine. Akita prefecture in the north of Honshu island was so denuded in the early 19th century that it needed to import firewood. These days, its lush woodlands are a major draw for tourists.

It’s a similar picture in Scandinavia and Central Europe, where the spread of forests onto unproductive agricultural land, combined with the decline of wood-based industries and better management of remaining stands, has resulted in extensive regrowth since the mid-20th century. Forests cover about 15% of Denmark, compared to 2% to 3% at the start of the 19th century.

Even tropical deforestation has slowed drastically since the 1990s, possibly because the rise of plantation timber is cutting the need to clear primary forests. Still, political incentives to turn a blind eye to logging, combined with historically high prices for products grown and mined on cleared tropical woodlands such as soybeans, palm oil and nickel, mean that recent gains are fragile.

There’s no cause for complacency in any of this. The carbon benefits from forests aren’t sufficient to offset more than a sliver of our greenhouse pollution. The idea that they’ll be sufficient to cancel out gross emissions and get the world to net zero by the middle of this century depends on extraordinarily optimistic assumptions on both sides of the equation.

Still, we should celebrate our success in slowing a pattern of human deforestation that’s been going on for nearly 100,000 years. Nothing about the damage we do to our planet is inevitable. With effort, it may even be reversible.

-via Bloomburg, January 28, 2024

[leadsconnectagritech]

Top 5 Central Government Scheme For Farmers

Farming is an important sector in India, and the Central Government has introduced several schemes to support farmers and improve their livelihood. These schemes aim to provide financial assistance, agricultural inputs, and other resources to farmers to boost their production and income. In this article, we will discuss the top 5 Central Government schemes for farmers in India.

Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana:

The Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) is a crop insurance scheme launched by the Government of India to provide financial support to farmers in case of crop failure due to natural calamities, pests, or diseases. This scheme was launched in 2016 and has since then benefited millions of farmers across the country. Under this scheme, farmers are required to pay a nominal premium, and the rest of the cost is borne by the government. The scheme covers all crops and is available to all farmers who have taken a crop loan or not. PMFBY aims to provide risk management in agriculture and help farmers manage their agricultural risks.

Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchai Yojana:

The Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchai Yojana (PMKSY) is an irrigation scheme launched by the Government of India in 2015 to provide water to every agricultural field and improve farm productivity. The scheme aims to achieve convergence of investments in irrigation at the field level, expand cultivable area under assured irrigation, and improve on-farm water use efficiency. The scheme also aims to promote sustainable water conservation practices among farmers. PMKSY focuses on creating new irrigation infrastructure and maintaining the existing ones.

National Agriculture Market:

The National Agriculture Market (eNAM) is an online trading platform launched by the Government of India to connect farmers with traders and buyers across the country. eNAM aims to create a unified national market for agricultural commodities by integrating existing Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC) markets. This platform provides transparent price discovery and better price realization to farmers. eNAM also helps farmers in selling their products at a competitive price without intermediaries.

Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi Yojana:

The Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi Yojana (PM-Kisan) is a scheme launched by the Government of India in 2019 to provide direct income support to farmers. Under this scheme, small and marginal farmers with less than two hectares of land are eligible to receive income support of Rs 6,000 per year. The scheme aims to provide financial assistance to farmers for meeting their various needs such as purchasing seeds, fertilizers, and other inputs. The scheme is entirely funded by the Central Government and is credited directly into the bank accounts of the beneficiaries.

Paramparagat Krishi Vikas Yojana:

The Paramparagat Krishi Vikas Yojana (PKVY) is a scheme launched by the Government of India in 2015 to promote organic farming in the country. The scheme aims to encourage farmers to adopt eco-friendly and sustainable practices for improving soil health and increasing farm productivity. Under this scheme, farmers are encouraged to form groups and take up organic farming. The government provides financial assistance to these groups for inputs such as bio-fertilizers, bio-pesticides, vermicompost, and other organic inputs. PKVY also provides support for terrace farming and other innovative farming practices.

The government of India has launched various schemes for the welfare of farmers, and these schemes have played a crucial role in the growth and development of the agriculture sector. The schemes mentioned above aim to promote farming activities, enhance crop productivity, and protect the income of farmers from agricultural risks. The schemes also offer several benefits to farmers such as providing financial assistance, promoting the use of modern technologies, and enhancing farming analytics.

It is important to note that these schemes are designed to help farmers, and it is the responsibility of the government to ensure that the benefits reach the targeted audience. It is also essential for farmers to be aware of these schemes and take advantage of them to improve their livelihoods.

Overall, these central government schemes for farmers have been successful in supporting the growth and development of the agriculture sector in India, and they continue to play a significant role in promoting the welfare of farmers in the country.

[astroscientia]

🌸Astrology Observations: Family/Home Edition🌸

The 4th house tells us about our environments, family life, domestic life, our subconscious desires, and our ability to manifest in some cases!

Uranus-Moon aspects or Aquarius Moon or Uranus in the 4th house placements usually have an erratic home life where they never feel settled. The mother might possess jittery energy which makes sitting in the home almost unbearable. If you live alone, this could manifest as feeling restless when at home and having the need to get out of the house or move frequently.

Moon in the 3rd house natives also feel the need to move a lot.

Though this is unrelated to family life, I see that Saturn in the 4th house does not always indicate a harsh family life, sometimes it delegates our sense of responsibility from the household and family to "care work" or working in fields such as nursing, medicine, caring for the young or the elderly, etc. This is because Saturn, a lot of the time, tells us about our careers.

Libra Moons usually despise environments that aren't harmonious or tidy. They need their home to be aesthetically pleasing and ordered.

Having the ruler of the 4th house in the 7th house makes you fantasize about building a home with your future partner.

Saturn in the 4th house with an aspect to Mercury indicates having very controlling parents and siblings. It also means being the scapegoat in the family.

Additionally, Saturn in the 4th house can indicate generational wealth and a hefty inheritance.

Neptune in the 4th house can indicate issues with water in the house. Leaks, floods, issues with pipes, rust in your water, etc. It can also mean losing the home or being susceptible to theft or break-ins. Positively, it might just mean that you have a water fountain or a body of water near the home.

Mars in the 4th house puts the person at risk of fires in the home especially when cooking if Taurus is involved. A common astrological remedy for this is to have a fireplace in the house to manifest this energy in a safe way.

Sun in the 4th house could indicate that your father's wealth comes from property management and real estate. Natives with this placement also vividly resemble one of their parents -usually the mother.

Moon-Mercury placements or mercury in the 4th house indicate having a lot of books and stationery at home.

From my experience, some people with Pluto in the 4th house / Pluto-Moon placements grew up in a cult or with one of their parents being part of a cult or a religious zealot. Pluto in the 4th can also mean experiencing a deep sense of grief from losing an old family member that was close to you in your upbringing.

Venus in the 4th house indicates having a beautiful home, a mother that is either a Taurus or Libra or owns her own business in the food, agricultural, or beauty industries, to name a few. Other industries include property management, interior design, interior architecture, florist, wedding planning, event management, a ceramics business, and selling home appliances, kitchenware, and tableware.

Uranus in the 3rd house feels like you were brought up as an "other" or stranger within your immediate environment. Uranus in the 4th is a stranger in their own home.

Thank you for reading!

[skaruresonic]

I was going to make a broader overarching point about how IDW's version of the characters seem more interested in virtue-signalling than in proving their goodness through their deeds, but I got a bit tuckered out. Anyway. Tl;dr for the wall of text ahead: the games still win in this regard. By a landslide.

In Unleashed, Sonic can accept a sidequest from a little Mazuri girl named Yaya. Normally, Yaya is shy, perhaps even nonverbal, and will flee if you attempt to talk to her. It's rare to see her during the day, so when you spot her out in the open, cowering but attempting to communicate to the best of her ability, it's a clue that she wants something badly enough to risk her fears. After several false starts, Yaya manages to ask Sonic to get her a chocolate sundae. She doesn't explain why, nor do you immediately receive a reward when you give it to her. It's only later, after Yaya's mother recovers, that you learn the reason for her odd request. Mom was sick, and Yaya wanted to give her a sundae to help make her feel better. Despite avoiding you until now, she managed to swallow her fears for the sake of her mother.

It's sweet, as well as a humanizing moment for Yaya, her mother, and Sonic. As a good deed, it's nothing grand. Giving someone food when they're sick isn't nearly as lofty as air-dropping food to a nation in need, certainly, but in Unleashed, you at least see the tangible effect you've had on the people you helped. You just brightened the day of a mother and her daughter.

Through sidequests like these, Unleashed shows us that no act of kindness, however small or inconsequential seeming, is wasted.

Conversely, one of the... myriad reasons this panel rubs me the wrong way is that it achieves almost the opposite effect. The people of Mazuri are instead objectified. They're a monolith, a statistic, to help polish the Restoration's reputation to a sterling sheen. In this regard, they might as well be props.

We hear about this aid nearly secondhand, as it's something Silver, Blaze, and Jewel intend to do but haven't yet. All the scene is intended to do is make the Restoration look good, as though by mere dint of being called the Restoration, we couldn't put 2 and 2 together and figure it out.

The one time we're informed of their humanitarian aid, we're not shown it. So really, what was the point of bringing it up, if not to stroke the heroes' self-righteous boner?

Inaccuracies to the games aside (which is par for the course for the book), there's all sorts of... unsavory implications at play here. Blaze "was touring" Sonic's world when she happened upon Mazuri's plight. Because we're not given much detail other than "poor crops this season," we have to assume Blaze took some initiative to ease the situation.

Take a moment to think about this. Blaze hails from a water world. How would she know what constitutes sufficient crop failure to warrant shipping aid to a completely different clime than the one she's most familiar with? How does she know what "poor crop season" looks like in Mazuri? How does she know she doesn't have any biases about the way people in Mazuri should approach their agriculture? Does she understand they eat more than just crops, and sell fruit and broiled ibanga as well as confections? If this is her first time touring Sonic's world, how does she approach the government of its denizens? Did she do this respectfully? Did she confer with Mazuri's Elders? Did the people seek her help? Did they say Out Loud With Their Mouths that they'd accept her help, or did she presume their needs? We don't receive answers to any of those questions. She "was touring" the area when she saw a problem worth correcting. The thought starts and ends there. The people of Mazuri do not merit a voice or agency in the matter, because all that really matters here is that you know how virtuous Blaze, Jewel, and Silver are for helping the less fortunate in their time of need. (Which is really ironic, considering Surge calls Sonic out for speaking over her and Kit when they're standing right in front of him in the exact same issue.)

Add the connotations that Flynn frequently describes Blaze as "the imperial princess of the Sol Empire" instead of "duchess" or "guardian of the Sol Emeralds"... Marry them with the implication that she's butting into the business of a foreign nation when we don't know the specifics of their plight, they're just Objects to show us how virtuous our heroes are, and this whole onion of suckage starts to reek.

[cognitivejustice]

A 2,000-year-old Sri Lankan hydraulic system uses natural features to help harvest and store rainwater. In a rapidly warming world, it is providing a lifeline for rural communities.

Each April, in the village of Maeliya in northwest Sri Lanka, Pinchal Weldurelage Siriwardene gathers his community under the shade of a large banyan tree. The tree overlooks a human-made body of water called a wewa – meaning reservoir or "tank" in Sinhala. The wewa stretches out besides the village's rice paddies for 175-acres (708,200 sq m) and is filled with the rainwater of preceding months. 

 Tank cascades are receiving new attention as climate change is projected to increase both Sri Lanka's drought and flood risk (Credit: Zinara Rathnayake) 

Siriwardene, the 76-year-old secretary of the village's agrarian committee, has a tightly-guarded ritual to perform. By boiling coconut milk on an open hearth beside the tank, he will seek blessings for a prosperous harvest from the deities residing in the tree. "It's only after that we open the sluice gate to water the rice fields," he told me when I visited on a scorching mid-April afternoon.

By releasing water into irrigation canals below, the tank supports the rice crop during the dry months before the rains arrive. For nearly two millennia, lake-like water bodies such as this have helped generations of farmers cultivate their fields. An old Sinhala phrase, "wewai dagabai gamai pansalai", even reflects the technology's centrality to village life; meaning "tank, pagoda, village and temple".

But the village's tank does not work alone. It is part of an ancient hydraulic network called an ellangawa, or "tank cascade system". As such, the artificial lake at Maeliya links up with smaller, man-made reservoirs upstream in the watershed. Together with their carefully managed natural surroundings, these interconnecting storage structures allow rainwater to be harvested, shared and re-used across the local area.

Constructed from the 4th Century BC up to the 1200s, these cascade systems have long helped Sri Lankan communities cope with prolonged periods of dry weather. "As most of the country is made up of crystalline hard rock with poor permeability, it induces runoff, " says Christina Shanthi De Silva, senior professor in agricultural and plantation engineering at The Open University of Sri Lanka. "Our forefathers built tank cascades to capture this surface runoff," she explains, preventing it from being washed away into rivers and, ultimately, the sea.

Such knowledge has since been passed down the generations. In a laminated box file, Siriwardene carefully safeguards a map his father, the village head, drew of Maeliya's cascade. There are nine tanks in this particular cascade, his father writes. A copy of another handwritten booklet documents the tanks' history and the folk poems that villagers sang in gratitude for its continuous water resource.

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Brazil’s Flood of Austerity and Climate Catastrophe: The Twenty-Second Newsletter (2024)

From 28 April, heavy rains, strong winds, and widespread flooding have lashed the southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul, killing over 160 people and impacting 2.3 million. The waters rose and rose again, rushing through houses and fields, erasing not only homes and the memories built there but also many crops in the country’s largest rice-producing state and agricultural powerhouse, the impacts of which are likely to reverberate across the nation.

Meteorological agencies and officials predicted the events with eerie precision. A week into the flood, experts pointed to the extraordinary rainfall as the primary cause. Estael Sias, managing director of the weather forecaster MetSul, wrote that this was not ‘just an episode of extreme rain’, but ‘a meteorological event whose adjectives are all superlative, from extraordinary to exceptional’. The seemingly unending rain, she wrote, ‘is absurdly and bizarrely different from what is normal’. It will take a very long time for this region of Brazil to recover from the flood.

Last year, after a much less serious flood impacted Porto Alegre (the capital of Rio Grande do Sul), the Brazilian architect Mima Feltrin, drawing from the work of hydrology professor Carlos Tucci, warned that the state faced an imminent risk of flooding equal to or worse than the historic floods of 1941 and 1967. The analyses of scholars such as Tucci and Feltrin have repeatedly warned about the impact and looming threats of carbon emissions-driven climate change across the world as well as the deficiencies of policies put in place by reckless climate change denialist politicians.

As floodwaters rose in Rio Grande do Sul in 2023, so too did they inundate Derna (Libya), central Greece, southern China, southern Nevada (United States), and northeastern Turkey. The immediate explanation for these floods is that they are caused by carbon emissions-driven climate change, intensified by the refusal of Global North governments to contain their outsized carbon emissions. But the broader explanation is that the climate catastrophe is largely the product of reckless capitalist development, particularly in cities located within areas that are predictably dangerous to inhabit (such as lowland coastal settlements built next to savaged mangrove forests and badly managed river flow or beside forests that face long periods of dry weather). This reckless development is exacerbated by the rampant underfunding of environmental regulatory agencies and the deliberate slashing of budgets that maintain and revitalise infrastructure that is crucial to protect people from adverse climate events. With the flood in Libya, for instance, the state – already destroyed by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s harsh bombardment in 2011 and pickled in confusion and corruption – neglected the crumbling dams of Derna. Much the same kind of attitude has been on display in southern Brazil for the past several decades.

Continue reading.

[kp777]

By Jonathan Watts, Environmental Editor

The Guardian

June 22, 2023

Ecological collapse is likely to start sooner than previously believed, according to a new study that models how tipping points can amplify and accelerate one another. Based on these findings, the authors warn that more than a fifth of ecosystems worldwide, including the Amazon rainforest, are at risk of a catastrophic breakdown within a human lifetime. “It could happen very soon,” said Prof Simon Willcock of Rothamsted Research, who co-led the study. “We could realistically be the last generation to see the Amazon.” The research, which was published on Thursday in Nature Sustainability,is likely to generate a heated debate. Compared with the long-established and conclusively proven link between fossil fuels and global heating, the science of tipping points and their interactions is relatively undeveloped. The United Nations’ top science advisory body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has been more cautious. In its latest report, it said there was a chance of a tipping point in the Amazon by the year 2100. However, several prominent Brazil-based scientists, including Carlos Nobre, have warned that this may come much sooner. The new study underlines that alarming prospect. It observes that most studies until now have focused on one driver of destruction, such as climate change or deforestation. But when you combine this with other threats, such as water stress, degradation and river pollution from mining, the breakdown comes much quicker. Lake Erhai in China collapsed sooner than most observers expected. According to Willcock, this was because projections had been based on one factor – agricultural runoff that was loading the water system with excess nutrients – but other stresses compounded and accelerated this degradation. When climate variation, water management and other forms of pollution were added into the mix, the lake system quickly lost its resilience. Overall, the team, comprised of scientists fromSouthampton, Sheffield and Bangor universities, as well as Rothamsted Research,looked at two lake ecosystems and two forests, using computer models with 70,000 adjustments of variables. They found that up to 15% of collapses occurred as a result of new stresses or extreme events, even while the primary stress was maintained at a constant level. The lesson they learned was that even if one part of an ecosystem is managed sustainably, new stresses such as global warming and extreme weather events could tip the balance towards a collapse. While the scope of the study was limited, the authors said the results showed the need for policymakers to act with more urgency. “Previous studies of ecological tipping points suggest significant social and economic costs from the second half of the 21st century onwards. Our findings suggest the potential for these costs to occur much sooner,” the co-author Prof John Dearing noted. Willcock said the findings were “devastating”, but said this approach – of analysis through system dynamics – also had a positive potential because it showed that small changes in a system could have big impacts. Although the study focused on the negative aspect of straws breaking the back of ecosystems, he said the opposite could also be true. Lake Erhai, for example, has shown signs of recovery. “The same logic can work in reverse. Potentially if you apply positive pressure, you can see rapid recovery,” he said, though he emphasized time was running out faster than most people realized.

[wolfalder]

What would you consider to be an ethically sourced tail? Where might somebody purchase an ethically sourced tail?

Thank you so much for asking!!! 🐾

Personally I believe It should either: Be sourced as a by-product of the food industry, Transform a waste product to give it value, such as the reclaiming fur from animals culled for environmental management, Minimise waste by re-manufacturing vintage pieces or using surplus manufacturing material, instead of only using new material. There are other options such as taxidermy from ranched animals which were stillborn or died from illness or other natural causes. Byproducts of roadkill, pest management, and wildlife population control which are done in a sustainable manner that keeps the natural population at a healthy and maintainable level. Also if there is no unnecessary pain or cruelty that’s inflicted and killing of said animal involves minimal waste and has a purpose other than simply their fur.

And I know there is the argument that we don’t need to kill animals to make clothing because of course there are other materials to keep us warm, but the best of them (wool, down, leather) also come from animals. Meanwhile, most synthetic fibers (including fake or “faux” fur) are derived from petroleum, a non-renewable resource, the extraction and transformation of which entails serious environmental risks.

In many regions, wildlife populations must be culled annually to maintain healthy and stable populations, to preserve habitat, to protect endangered species (e.g., by culling predators that attack ground-nesting birds or sea turtle eggs), and to safe-guard human health, livestock and property. If furbearer populations must be culled, surely it is more ethical to use these animals than to discard them?

Farmed minks manure, soiled straw bedding and carcasses are composted to produce organic fertilizers, to enrich the soil and produce more food, completing the agricultural nutrient cycle. Biofuels made from mink remains now power buses in Aarhus, Denmark, the world’s largest producer of farmed mink. Similar projects are being tested in North America.

Now after all that here are some options for furs/tails. Though please do your own research into each small business or company you buy from.

https://www.etsy.com/shop/SterlingFoxTaxidermy

https://www.etsy.com/shop/ChimeraTaxidermyAU

[darsynia]

Repeat After Me | Oneshot

(Tony Stark/Reader, Soulmate AU Canon Divergence 'Mob AU')

Summary: You're thriving in Loki's Empire as the most respected smuggler out there. You earned that reputation by remaining neutral, traveling between the city-states run by powerful Magnates like Loki's thrall Tony Stark in NYC or the relocated Wilson Fisk in Miami. It's lucrative business, but the real reason you have to stay moving is written on your arm.

Length | Rating: 3,635 | T (for language)

Notes: Set ten years after Loki successfully mind controlled Tony Stark and took over the world in 2012. My tongue-in-cheek take on a mobster-style AU, series potential if folks are interested.

Written for @caplanbuckybarnes's Three Words Challenge, using 'Don't look back.'

Tags: @ronearoundblindly @chickensarentcheap @themaradaniels @starksbf @tiny-anne @starryeyes2000 @my-soulmate-is-mycroft

Repeat After Me

You might be the only person who has both soulmate Words written on your body.

Repeat after me: don’t look back.

At first, you’d found them comforting. After all, they’re predictable in a way almost no one else’s Words are: if you’re right about them, it means you can choose whether to speak those fateful Words aloud. Then Loki came with his Chitauri army, and everything changed.

It’s been ten years since Lord Loki became the ruler of the world; ten years of societal restructure and bleak acquiescence. It turns out that humans are well adapted to be ruled, just as he’d said-- but perhaps not quite in the way he’d intended. Everyone has figured out their own way to survive, whether it’s in one of the densely populated city-states, the agricultural backwaters, or the uneasy suburban sprawl that straddles both extremes.

You’re one of the few who can travel easily through all three, and you pride yourself on that. Pre-Empire, you’d been a top exec at a shipping company, and your talent for managing large egos, ability to memorize maps, and knowledge of machinery was easily translated to a life as a smuggler. Your top rule? You do not take sides. Ever. It’s what made you successful, what kept you alive.

And no one knows the real reason.

“Zephyr, how long before you head out?”

You’re half-in, half-out of your truck, the open door heavy on your ass thanks to all the armor plating. “Weather looks like it’s gonna hold for another hour and a half, I was thinking forty-five minutes?” you guess, squinting up through the tint on the upper part of the windshield.

“Got time to meet with a potential?” Karl laughs at your obvious groan, adding, “Fancy suit says D.C., maybe New York. Probably shouldn’t risk skipping.” You trust your second in command, even if you don’t want to take his advice. Karl Mordo is pragmatic, honest, and a baronic pain in your ass sometimes.

“Fuck. Okay. But I’m going right now, before I de-grease for the trip.” You hop down and hold up your dirty hands, wiggling your fingers.

“What if they’re from Stark?”

You clench your jaw. “His people should know better, even after two years. We just did Fisk a favor, maybe he’ll remind Loki’s strongman that there’s a reason he relocated to Miami.” 

Karl nods and heads back to the house, and as soon as he’s gone, you hold still and count to ten to calm your breathing. Tony Stark rules the northeast with a literal iron fist, and no one’s sure whether the mind control has turned him cruel or he’d been released years ago and just likes it. Only people Stark trusts have been close enough to know for sure. 

Despite your reputation for neutrality, a few years back he’d sent his clever and ruthless ex-turned-CFO Pepper Potts to ask you to spy on some of the biggest players on the Eastern Seaboard.

It had been the first time you’d gotten close enough to see the electric blue of Loki’s mind control first-hand. Her threats had been articulate and terrifying, but your response ended up having a lasting effect on the way Lord Loki does his business. Word is that the emperor includes additional spells and enchantments to prevent a simple blow to the head from releasing a thrall and undoing years of work. 

You still get messages from Potts, filtered heavily by word of mouth, through the Resistance.

When you get up onto the porch, you note with approval that someone’s already gotten the burly, suited visitor some sweet tea. He turns around, and your heart sinks as you recognize him from news articles. Tony Stark’s sweet-faced associate, Happy Hogan. 

“Zephyr, is it?” he says warmly, reaching out a hand to shake. You offer him your left hand, and he immediately grins. You wear a binding on your right forearm, and it’s basically an open secret that your Words are there. Words you’ve made very clear you intend to remain a secret, on pain of death. “We have a job for you.”

“That’s truly unfortunate,” you say with a smile. “Your boss burned that bridge years ago. All I have is my integrity, I’m sure you understand.” Leaning up against one of the porch pillars, you send all of your anxiety to your legs, to hold you up and maintain the illusion that you’re not distressed. “Since you’ve come all this way, I can offer to connect you to one of the reputable smaller orgs.”

“Interesting you mention integrity. Did you know your right hand man is a known member of the Resistance?” Hogan’s tone is light, almost teasing.

You do your very best not to react, but on its face, you doubt the accusation. Karl had come to you deeply disillusioned by the Resistance, after working with them openly for a year, spending double that in prison, and being released with an interdict that prevented any employment but fieldwork. By the time you brought him in, he was full of quiet fury and determination to survive. The money you spent to clear his interdict was some of the easiest you’ve ever spent.

“I assume you have newer information than 2013?”

Hogan pulls an envelope from his lapel pocket and hands it over. Inside is a set of pictures showing Mordo speaking with and shaking the hand of Steve Rogers, the most wanted man on the continent. Karl’s hair has only been in that particular style for a few months.

You hand them back, keeping your hand steady. “If you can point and shoot pictures, why not point and shoot that particular problem?” The question is important to your public front, but you also want to know what kind of answer you get, whether it’ll be something you want to pass along.

“One step at a time,” Hogan says, walking over to you. He stops only inches away, a physical power play that masks the psychological threat.

“Which step are you on?”

“The one where you come with me to speak to Stark in person, or we reveal how thin your claims of neutrality really are.”

You nod as though you’re considering it, then say, “What if I dismantled everything and moved to Arizona? Started over.” It’ll sound like a joke, but you’ve considered it. You want nothing to do with Stark.

“You’re welcome to make that decision after the meeting.” The guy’s so confident he slides his hands into his pockets, fully relaxed except for the way his pulse is jumping in his neck. There’s zero chance that Hogan’s anxious because of you, so that means it’s important to his future that you leave with him today. If you have to, you’ll use that.

“You act like meeting with Stark won’t destroy my reputation just as much as your false accusations would,” you point out. 

Happy Hogan shrugs. “Stark is prepared to offer you one alternative. Meet with him or give us a credible way to contact Pepper Potts.”

You want to swear under your breath, but instead, you channel all your frustration into a single act of defiance. Lifting your grease-stained right hand, you press it right in the center of his chest, fingers spread so you get his white button-down and both lapels.

Then you shove, letting your hand slip against the resistance he immediately puts up to avoid moving backwards and show weakness. You would have expected anger, maybe even to be thrown to the ground, but Hogan just chuckles. It’s dismissive, diminishing, and does nothing to lower your level of fury. Especially not since he’s got you over a barrel.

You push past him toward the house. “I’m sending Mordo with my load. Your guys fuck with him and I’ll tear down every fucking thing you’ve built or die trying.” Given the clout you’ve accumulated in the last decade, which one depends on whether the emperor is in town to shield his pet Avenger or not.

You hadn’t told Hogan you’re coming with. You both know you have to.

The flight to New York City is stressful, but most of that is because you know how much effort and care it takes to maintain a fleet of airplanes. Now that flights are nearly all restricted to just the Magnates, you doubt the due diligence of their maintenance teams. This is reinforced when you land and walk down a presidential-style rolling staircase instead of into the abandoned airport. It’s hard not to think of what air travel could do for your business. One flight would take so much food from one place to another-- but the safety margins are horrifying.

“What’s with the face?” Happy Hogan asks, after the two of you get into the waiting limo.

“Just imagining how much work it would be to get an orange to Maine nowadays.”

“You don’t have to live in Georgia, you know. The offer’s always open.”

“Fuck your offer, and fuck you,” you say coolly, crossing your arms and looking out the window. There’s a non-zero chance he’ll kill you, but you’ve got a trick up your sleeve that might just carry the kind of irony that would make even a man as powerful as Tony Stark cry. It’s the reason why Hogan wants Potts back, the reason she won’t go, not while he’s in Loki’s thrall.

Midgard hadn’t been interesting enough for the trickster god. No, he’d grown bored by the way most of his new subjects had responded to his rule. Too many of you had accepted that you weren’t strong enough to resist him, and so, with the power granted to him by the staff he always carried, Lord Loki had bestowed each soulmate pair on the planet a random power set.

Pepper Potts and Happy Hogan’s version had been the ability to detect lies.

Tony Stark’s inability to find his soulmate had been newsworthy before the attack on New York, but now that he’s the de facto ruler of the place, his search has become an obsession.

It’s the reason you live in Georgia, the reason you wear the distinctive binding around your right forearm, the reason you’d balanced yourself on the knife-edge of neutrality instead of choosing a side that’s not Stark’s and then leaving yourself vulnerable to being discovered.

Stark’s Words are well known: ‘Don’t look back.’

Ironically, you don’t think he has connected your well-known quirk about protecting your forearm with his soulmate search. He wants you because Lord Loki wants Pepper Potts’ lie detecting powers, and Steve Rogers and Natasha Romanoff’s soulmate bond is keeping her hidden. Karl Mordo has forsworn his connection to the Mystic Arts, but a man will do many things to prevent his own death, including oathbreaking, so instead of putting pressure on him, they’ll put pressure on you.

And somehow, you’re going to have to resist without speaking a word.

The car is underground when it stops. You nod at Hogan in thanks for his hand as you exit the vehicle, and he cocks his head to the side and looks at you.

“Passive resistance, eh? Good luck.” He leads you through a warren of hallways, stairwells, and locked doors. This display of strength is clearly designed to intimidate and/or give you time to think and fear what comes next, but you wonder whether it’s annoying to Hogan. Undoubtedly he’d be taking the short way if it weren’t for this task, and that kind of time-wasting adds up.

Sure enough, the last leg of the trip is an elevator ride. The doors open out into the wide expanse of the penthouse, a rich space with wall-to-wall windows looking out over the city. A man in a well-fitting white suit walks out from behind a bar area, and you recognize him to be Tony Stark himself. Instead of a tie, the signature blue of his arc reactor glows against the buttons of his shirt, and as he approaches you, you see that it’s matched by the blue tint of mind control in his eyes.

That knowledge is dangerous; already, this man’s leverage over you has doubled. You wonder what you’ll have to promise to get out of here alive. 

Tony Stark stops a foot away and looks you over. His brown-blue eyes linger on your right arm, and as you’d planned during your pseudo perp-walk, you shift into a challenging pose, popping your hip out and lifting your chin. Stark’s lips curve into an appreciative smile. It’s attractive, he’s attractive, and you’re annoyed that you’ve even noticed. Everything about him exudes the confidence of a man who is never challenged, and that’s always been your catnip, your kryptonite. You love to bust egos, it could even be said that you live for popping that bubble. This man might be the first one you’ve ever met whose arrogance is well-deserved, though, and that could be a problem.

He gestures, and behind you, Hogan answers.“No weapons that we found, multiple scans.”

Ah, so the many doorways and long hallways had more than one purpose, you think to yourself. Well played. You stay still and expressionless as Stark looks you up and down, eyes lingering on your chest and your arm. He lifts his glass in an appreciative salute before finishing off his drink. Something about the way his throat works makes you feel the burn of the alcohol in your own chest.

“What’s under the armguard?” he asks Hogan.

“According to sources, a nasty burn. Sunlight makes it worse.” It’s the truth-- you’d tried to burn off the words as soon as you’d heard about Tony Stark’s search for his soulmate. The magic of the mark protects it, so all you’d managed to do was destroy the skin around it, causing a wound that never fully healed. The vambrace you wear is for concealment, yes, but it’s also there to keep the damaged skin protected and dry.

You turn your head and direct a grumpy look at Hogan. “This whole meeting could have been an email. What is it that you two want?”

Before you can stop him, Stark steps forward and slides his hand into the hair at the nape of your neck, forcing you to meet his eyes.  With a fierce, determined expression, he says, “Repeat after me: don’t look back.”

You can feel the strength in every single aspect of the man, voice, personality, grip, but that just fuels your need to fight back. With all your might, you manage to shake your head just enough to convey your refusal.

Tony Stark’s expression lights up. You realize your mistake immediately: if it didn’t mean something, if the words weren't important, you would have had no trouble repeating them. A million impossible escape routes spill out like marbles in your mind, scattering every other thought.

“Go on, Hap. Keep this to yourself for now,” Stark says. The triumph in his voice is as frightening as it is sexy. 

“You got it, boss.”

You fight back a strong feeling of desperate inevitability. Really, your only hope now is to wrench free and follow your contingency plan: to say the words and play them off, avoiding the physical contact that reinforces the bond. If you can convince this man that you planned to trick him into thinking you’re his soulmate, you might still get out of here with your free will intact.

That’ll be easier to do without Hogan there, so you force yourself to remain still. Stark sweeps a broad, warm caress along your neck with his thumb, and god, it’s been so, so long since anyone’s touched you like that. There’s something insidious about it, like some part of you is already lost to him if you enjoy it even a little bit. All you can do is close your eyes, clench your fists, and wait.

The elevator doors close, and Stark starts pulling his hand away, stroking your neck possessively on the way. You do your very best not to like it. In truth, Tony Stark the billionaire, Tony Stark the Avenger was absolutely your type. You imagine that after ten years of mind control and cruelty, there’s probably little of that man left. 

“You might as well say it,” he tells you with a smug little quirk in his voice. You open your eyes to see that Stark’s headed back to the bar. “Got a favorite drink?” You shake your head. “You strike me as a Tequila Sunrise type. Fun to look at, goes down easy.”

You cross your arms and glare at him, but it was a cute line for such a tense situation. Wrong, but cute.

Stark gestures to you with the Tequila bottle. “So, what, did you think you’d just stay quiet and run back home to Georgia? Happy says it didn’t take much persuading.”

You smile at him, but not warmly. One thing you hadn’t considered was that Stark might be pleased, might be looking forward to the other… perks of having a soulmate. That might make him more inclined to be kind to you, at least until you try to bluff him. You can use that.

“Don’t think I can’t see how furious you are, little one,” Stark purrs. “I’m still figuring you out, but I’ve had a file on you for years. You want to know what people say about you?” 

He rests a large hand on a folder you hadn’t noticed before, pushes it across the bar in invitation. You shrug and turn your head to look out the window, the picture of indifference. You hope it pisses him the fuck off.

“Yeah, you’re right. It’s all trash now anyway, now that you’ve met with me.” Stark holds it up. “They’ll never trust you again.” He tosses it behind him. When it strikes the wall, the many single pages that made up the bulk of the file fly out around him like some kind of monstrous confetti, to the accompaniment of breaking glass. You wonder how many bottles he just wasted, whether they’re even replaceable in this brave new world you’re all trapped in.

You nod, feeling the weight of the coming moment. Mentally you gird yourself, but physically you try to adopt an attitude of casual discourtesy. You want Stark to hate his soulmark, to hate you, enough to send you away or destroy you.

Anything, anything but touch you again.

Letting out a sigh, you spread your hands in a ‘what can you do?’ gesture and say, “Don’t look back.”

The words strike him, so much so that he chuckles ruefully on an indrawn breath. A bitter disappointment sweeps across his face before it hardens into anger. You're grateful; you'd expected something-- a thunderclap, a rush of adrenaline, a gust of magical wind, but there’s nothing to indicate that you’ve both said the Words. Maybe, maybe, you can get out of this, if you’re careful. If you’re just the right level of heinous bitch.

“Did you practice that?” Stark finally says. He walks out from around the bar, and you take the opportunity to make your way over to the window, the picture of unconcerned, unattached, unbothered.

“What do you want, Mr. Stark?” Shit, your voice is shaking.

“I want a challenge,” he snaps, his voice closer than you expected. He’s just a foot away, and you can’t hide your shock fast enough. “You think that file was just for show? I read the whole thing.”

“Then you know I don’t want to be here. I have a business to run, a business you’ve fucked over with--” you back away in the guise of making a dismissive, furious gesture; “--whatever this is. What do you want, so I can get the fuck out of here?”

“What’s wrong, pet? Foot caught in a trap?” he asks, tone suddenly gentle, soothing. You scoff, turning on your heel to stalk away from him--but Stark reaches out swiftly and catches your hand in his.

A jolt of pleasure-fueled electricity floods you with an almost overwhelming need for closeness, companionship-- to be known. It's as if until this exact moment, you’d been empty, and you gasp, screaming against the sudden, insidious desires that have cropped up in your mind.

Oh god, no, this is too much, this is--

What you don’t expect is for Stark to answer.

Oh FUCK yes, telepathy. My second favorite superpower, right after flight.

You snatch your hand away and fall back onto the window, eyes wide. Stark shakes his head almost imperceptibly, then throws both hands in the air as if in disgust.

“You really had me, but there’s just… nothing. I should toss you off of the roof, you know that, right? Faking soulmark words? Ballsy.” He twitches his lips as though he can’t decide whether to be angry or not, and steps closer. “Hold out your hand?”

There’s vulnerability in his expression, something you hadn’t at all expected to see, but you are still reeling from what had passed between the two of you. Tony Stark is one of the smartest men on the planet, and certainly one of the most ruthless. He’ll stop at nothing to get what he wants-- and it’s well known that every inch of his penthouse is under surveillance, not to mention whatever Lord Loki has monitoring his most powerful thrall.

Just like the words written on both of you, neither of you can look back.

Sullenly, you lift your hand, and immediately, Stark engulfs it in an angry grip.

Okay here’s how this is going to go: Do as I say, and we can keep this our little secret. Resist me and I’ll tell Loki I’ve finally found my soulmate. Believe me, you do not want anything to do with what he has in store for us.

Possibly TBC if there's interest...

[reasonsforhope]

"In an unprecedented step to preserve and maintain the most carbon-rich elements of U.S. forests in an era of climate change, President Joe Biden’s administration last week proposed to end commercially driven logging of old-growth trees in National Forests.

Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, who oversees the U.S. Forest Service, issued a Notice of Intent to amend the land management plans of all 128 National Forests to prioritize old-growth conservation and recognize the oldest trees’ unique role in carbon storage. 

It would be the first nationwide amendment to forest plans in the 118-year history of the Forest Service, where local rangers typically have the final word on how to balance forests’ role in watershed, wildlife and recreation with the agency’s mandate to maintain a “sustained yield” of timber.

“Old-growth forests are a vital part of our ecosystems and a special cultural resource,” Vilsack said in a statement accompanying the notice. “This clear direction will help our old-growth forests thrive across our shared landscape.”

But initial responses from both environmentalists and the logging industry suggest that the plan does not resolve the conflict between the Forest Service’s traditional role of administering the “products and services” of public lands—especially timber—and the challenges the agency now faces due to climate change. National Forests hold most of the nation’s mature and old-growth trees, and therefore, its greatest stores of forest carbon, but that resource is under growing pressure from wildfire, insects, disease and other impacts of warming.

Views could not be more polarized on how the National Forests should be managed in light of the growing risks.

National and local environmental advocates have been urging the Biden administration to adopt a new policy emphasizing preservation in National Forests, treating them as a strategic reserve of carbon. Although they praised the old-growth proposal as an “historic” step, they want to see protection extended to “mature” forests, those dominated by trees roughly 80 to 150 years old, which are a far larger portion of the National Forests. As old-growth trees are lost, which can happen rapidly due to megafires and other assaults, they argue that the Forest Service should be ensuring there are fully developed trees on the landscape to take their place...

The Biden administration’s new proposal seeks to take a middle ground, establishing protection for the oldest trees under its stewardship while allowing exceptions to reduce fuel hazards, protect public health and safety and other purposes. And the Forest Service is seeking public comment through Feb. 2 (Note: That's the official page for the proposed rule, but for some reason you can only submit comments through the forest service website - so do that here!) on the proposal as well as other steps needed to manage its lands to retain mature and old-growth forests over time, particularly in light of climate change.

If the Forest Service were to put in place nationwide protections for both mature and old-growth forests, it would close off most of the National Forests to logging. In an inventory concluded earlier this year in response to a Biden executive order, the Forest Service found that 24.7 million acres, or 17 percent, of its 144.3 million acres of forest are old-growth, while 68.1 million acres, or 47 percent, are mature."

-via Inside Climate News, December 20, 2023

-

Note: This proposed rule is current up for public comment! If you're in the US, you can go here to file an official comment telling the Biden administration how much you support this proposal - and that you think it should be extended to mature forests!

Official public comments really DO matter. You can leave a comment on this proposal here until February 2nd.

[aci25]

How Spain is Turning it's Deserts into a Farmland Oasis - GREENING THE DESERT PROJECT

Spain is home to The Tabernas Desert, known as mainland Europe's only desert. Shockingly scientific research suggests that Spain is set to become completely desertified in the next 80 years, right now 31.5% of Spain is already affected by desertification and 18% is at high risk of becoming irreversibly desert. This is due to the increase in temperatures, droughts, and less precipitation has made southern Europe vulnerable to problems such as “lower food production, soil infertility, decreases in the land’s natural resilience, and reduced water quality” as the European Court of Auditors (ECA) has pointed out in its report "Combating desertification in the EU."

The Iberian peninsular was once covered in ancient oak forests, and over the last centuries was completely deforested for timber use and overgrazing livestock. Currently 16 million hectares of land is used for Intensive industrial agriculture which is rapidly eroding the soil further.

However Spain has been making some remarkable restoration developments turning large areas suffering from desertification into fertile land. This transformation is a major accomplishment considering Spain’s semi arid regions only receive 11 inches of rainfall per year.

We are going to tell you how and why Spain is turning its deserts into bio-diverse ecosystems and fertile farmlands

In this episode of our Greening the Desert Series we will be exploring one of Spain’s many remarkable restoration projects to re-green the desert and turn it back into fertile land.

We will start of by visiting one of the most drastically effected areas in the north eastern coastal region of Spain called Catalonia. Where Coastal forests and farmlands are affected by saltwater intrusion and soil salinization due to sea levels rising, storms, tides, droughts, and water resources management. Salinization of soil negatively impacts plant development and induces land degradation, turning these already semi arid regions into deserts. The increased amount of soil salination is exasperated by the loss of the dune habitat which acts as a natural barrier between the land and the sea.

The sand dunes of coastal Spain having been declining since the 1970s and accelerated in recent decades due to over tourism. Local wildlife has suffered, sea turtles and birds have declined with many species of plants endangered or have disappeared all together.

In 2003 the government started a restoration of the dunes project near Barcelona airport and by 2019 it has expanded its initiative countrywide by using a very simple and cost effective technique.

A report on the Assessment of the Restoration of the Dunes was published by Antoni Calafatlast last year, which have shown a considerable improved in recent years and I have seen first hand how it has helped to restore coastal forests and farmlands since.

[pnwnativeplants]

Corruption in PNW Conservation: Holly Farmer on Weed Control Board Prevents Board From Protecting Forests from Invasive Holly

Original article by Becky Chaney, WNPS Conservation Committee Chair (Full original article can be read here)

In November, the Washington State Noxious Weed Control Board (hereafter referred to as the Board) considered the Whatcom County Noxious Weed Board proposal to list English holly (Ilex aquifolium) as a Class C noxious weed, as requested by Thomas and Tricia Morrel, owners of a designated Stewardship Forest in Whatcom County. The effects of holly on western Washington public and private lands, documented by numerous studies and mapping from multiple agencies and scientists, was presented to the Board during the November 1 public hearing. The information included statements regarding the negative impacts of holly, including its detrimental crowding out of under-story vegetation and the increased forest fire risk resulting from this relatively recent addition of a non-native ladder fuel. The information presented was quantitative and backed by scientific research from numerous studies. Eleven speakers, included botanists and land managers from a wide variety of agencies and environmental groups, spoke in favor of the state listing. Two speakers, owner of Holly Hill Orchards and his son, spoke in opposition. Expressing concern that the listing would destroy their family business, a holly farm purchased in 2011. They are convinced the habitat risks are over-stated and find the dollars spent on control ($90,000 from 2007-2009 at just a SINGLE Seattle site) inconceivable.

The Board considered the potential impacts to the holly farms and the floral industry. To ensure no harm to these small family businesses, a concurrent addition, developed with input from Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson, was proposed and approved before taking a vote on listing holly. A new definition—feral—was added to Washington’s noxious weed laws. The definition reads: “Feral means where a plant species has escaped a managed landscape or is growing without human management or design. ‘Feral’ does not include any plants grown for agricultural or commercial purposes” (WAC 16-750-003). The proposed Class C listing of feral holly only applies to escaped holly—holly existing outside of gardens and cultivated lands such as holly farms. It would allow wildland managers to fund control of invasive holly where it is negatively impacting forestland and for educational programs addressing why and where feral holly is a problem. Nothing in the listing would restrict farming holly, or selling it, either live or cut, within or outside of the state. A class C listing as feral holly would not require its removal from ornamental gardens or farms, or restrict its commercial uses. This consideration wasn’t enough to ease the concerns of the Washington holly growers. The holly farmers argued that the image of holly would be tarnished, and that holly farming would no longer be economically feasible. No economic data was provided to back up their claim. Board Education Specialist Anne Schuster did provide information noting that Pacific Northwest holly growers supply 90% of English holly sold in the United States, export it to countries such as Japan, and that it has grown here for over 90 years.

Sadly (from my perspective), the listing of English holly as a Washington State class C noxious weed received only a 3-3 vote from the Board members present; passage of the listing needed a majority. There are nine voting positions on the Board, but the Northeast Tier is currently vacant. Two members, Randy Johnson and Brad White, did not attend the meeting, so only six members voted. The listing was supported by board members William (Bill) Agosta, Janet Spingath, and Allen Evanston. In opposition were members Jerry Hendrickson, Carey Caruso, and Ken Bajema. Bajema, in addition to being on the Board, is owner of Columbia Gorge Holly Farms, a multi-generational family farm growing holly since 1959. He is a long- term, vocal opponent of listing holly as a state noxious weed. Again, from my perspective, I can’t help wondering how conflict of interest (a thorny issue) may have affected the vote. At least one respondent to a 2022 survey provided to the Board ahead of the hearing expressed concern that the Board had a conflict-of-interest problem. As far as I know, this was not publicly addressed by the Board or staff ahead of the vote. After the vote, the question over conflict of interest was raised during public comment. The Chair responded “Obviously, there is a conflict of interest if you are talking about...a member of the Board being a holly grower, but there’s no law against that...he is a member of the Board and he is a holly grower and that’s perfectly legitimate. Yes, that creates at least one person with a conflict of interest but I’m afraid... there’s no law against that. We have no rules about recusal and so there’s no basis for requiring a person with a conflict of interest to recuse himself in this circumstance.” Staff indicated that it was important to have Board members who feel the impacts of these decisions and expressed the opinion that it is “rightfully so that Ken has a vote.” I agree that the boards are supposed to include representation from various affected interest groups and are mandated to consider and mitigate impacts on business. However, I believe elevating special interests above the Board’s legal mission is wrong. A Capital Press article written in 2010, then updated in 2018, states that “Dee and Ken Bajema scoff at claims that English holly is invasive.” It states that the Bajemas (say) it’s difficult to remain positive about the fate of the requested “noxious” listing. Ken Bajema says nothing to correct this public record. He does not acknowledge that holly is invasive, is environmentally detrimental, or that it is a multi-county problem. Survey comments verify that holly is a concern in at least ten Washington counties. More than half of the survey respondents who note that holly impacts their county also stated that holly’s unlisted status (negatively) impacts their ability to control it.

[decorworks]

The Power of Plant-Based: A Guide to Veganism

Veganism has gained significant traction in recent years, and for good reason. It's not just a passing trend; it's a movement that aligns with our desire for a healthier, more sustainable planet. By adopting a plant-based lifestyle, individuals contribute to their own well-being while making a positive impact on the world around them. The power of plant-based living is becoming increasingly evident as veganism is not just a dietary choice, it's a lifestyle that encompasses compassion, health, and environmental consciousness. Discover the principles of veganism, the health benefits of a plant-based diet, its environmental impact, ethical considerations, tips for transitioning to a vegan lifestyle, and addressing common concerns. 

What is Veganism? At its core, veganism is a philosophy that seeks to exclude all forms of animal exploitation and cruelty, whether in diet, clothing, or any other aspect of life. It's an ethical stance that promotes compassion towards all sentient beings and recognizes the interconnectedness of humans, animals, and the environment. Health Benefits of a Plant-Based Diet Embracing a plant-based diet can have profound effects on our well-being, and there are significant health benefits: Nutritional Advantages: Plant-based diets are rich in vitamins, minerals, and fiber, providing essential nutrients for optimal health. Disease Prevention: Studies have shown that plant-based diets can reduce the risk of chronic diseases such as heart disease, diabetes, and certain types of cancer. Weight Management: A plant-based diet, when balanced and varied, can support healthy weight loss and weight management.

Environmental Impact of Veganism The environmental consequences of animal agriculture are staggering. By adopting a vegan lifestyle, we can significantly reduce our ecological footprint.  Reduction of Greenhouse Gas Emissions: Animal agriculture is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. By eliminating animal products from our diet, we can reduce our carbon footprint. Conservation of Resources: Animal agriculture requires vast amounts of land, water, and feed. Shifting to plant-based alternatives allows for more efficient use of resources. Preservation of Wildlife: Animal agriculture is a leading cause of deforestation and habitat destruction. Choosing plant-based options helps protect biodiversity and wildlife habitats. Ethical Considerations Ethics is at the core of veganism. By adopting a vegan lifestyle, we actively express our compassion for animals and advocate for their rights. Veganism encourages the use of cruelty-free alternatives and challenges societal norms regarding the treatment of animals. Tips for Transitioning to a Vegan Lifestyle Transitioning to a vegan lifestyle can be a gradual process. Here are some tips to help you navigate the journey: Gradual Changes and Substitutions: Start by incorporating more plant-based foods into your diet and gradually eliminate animal products. Meal Planning and Grocery Shopping: Plan your meals in advance and explore the abundance of vegan options available. Stock your pantry with wholesome plant-based ingredients. Seek Support and Community: Connect with like-minded individuals, join vegan groups, and seek support from friends and family who understand and respect your choices. Addressing Common Concerns Transitioning to a vegan lifestyle often comes with questions and concerns. Let's address some common ones: Protein Intake: Plant-based diets can provide ample protein through sources such as legumes, tofu, tempeh, and quinoa. Nutrient Deficiencies: With proper planning and a varied diet, vegans can meet their nutritional needs. Pay attention to sources of vitamins B12, iron, and omega-3 fatty acids. Social Challenges: Dining out or attending social events as a vegan may require some adjustments. Communicate your dietary preferences in advance, and be prepared with vegan-friendly alternatives.

Vegan Recipe Suggestions Here are a few easy to prepare and delicious vegan recipe suggestions to try: Vegan Buddha Bowl: A colorful and nourishing bowl packed with a variety of vegetables, whole grains, and plant proteins. Black Bean Tacos: Flavorful and satisfying, these tacos showcase how classic dishes can be made vegan without sacrificing taste. Overnight Oats: A simple and nutritious breakfast option that can be customized with your favorite toppings and flavors. Lentil Bolognese: A hearty and comforting meal that highlights the protein potential in vegan foods. Additional Resources For further exploration of veganism and its benefits, here are some recommended resources: "How Not to Die" by Dr. Michael Greger: A comprehensive book that extensively covers the health benefits of a plant-based diet. "Forks Over Knives" documentary: A compelling film that explores the correlation between diet and disease, highlighting the power of plant-based nutrition. The Vegan Society website: A comprehensive online resource for anyone interested in veganism. It offers a range of information from basic principles to practical advice, recipes, and more. "Earthlings" documentary: A thought-provoking film that sheds light on the ethics of animal use in various industries, encouraging viewers to reevaluate their choices. Transitioning to a vegan lifestyle is not just a personal choice but it should be a conscious decision to make a positive impact on your health, the environment, and to do your part in protecting animal welfare. Start living a plant-based lifestyle and contribute to a more sustainable and compassionate world today. Every step you take on this journey matters. Embrace the power of plants, explore new flavors, and savor the incredible benefits that veganism brings to your life. Read the full article

[savestave]

Another Road – Expedition Overview

This is a general look at the direction and structure of the Atlantis expedition in my AU "Another Road" — I thought I might as well share my own ideas and concepts for a slightly different SGA setting here!

The team embarks on their journey about a year later, August 2005, after a 16 month period of training and preparation, following the discovery of Atlantis.

With an initial count of 200 volunteers, the expedition is comprised of several researchers previously stationed at the antarctic outpost, as well as additional candidates and military personnel approved by the IOA and HWC.

Expectations

Given what they have thus far learned about the Ancients and the experiences gained in the Stargate program, there are a number of potential points of interest and expected risks to consider, before stepping foot into another galaxy.

As an international scientific project, the primary focus of the expedition is the gathering of information pertaining to the Ancients and research of their technological advancements. However, due to the unknown nature of the Pegasus galaxy, the research of any extraterrestrial life and technology is a general goal.

Peaceful, undisruptive exploration may be the ideal direction of such an undertaking, but the International Committee and Homeworld Command have come to agree, that a military component would be necessary as a precaution. Should they find it unwarranted, the selected personnel could simply aid in emergencies and the overall operations of the group.

The 16 month buffer serves to prepare for anything the team might find on the other side of the event horizon — be that a thriving society, or another abandoned outpost left to sleep in a wasteland. All members would've been required to learn the Ancient language (Alteran) and the basics of Gate travel, if they weren't familiar already.

Since the Ancients are genetic cousins, originating from Earth in this setting and have left a grand network of habitable locations throughout the Milky Way, it gives our team the hope of establishing a reliable base, even if they don't find anything alive.

The possibility of no return is a risk they are well aware of.

Composition

Each and every volunteer has been selected and vetted by the agencies involved, either with Weir's recommendation or approval.

Key factors are an extensive understanding of relevant fields (particularly regarding the Stargate and Ancients) and/or the possession of the ATA gene. There is much overlap of expertise among expedition members, the idea being to employ a wide array of knowledge and skills in as few people as possible.

Senior staff manages the overall decisions and is comprised of the representative leader of their given division, with Dr. Weir as head of the expedition as a whole.

The team features seven divisions, color-coded for convenience and each with departments as subsections, covering specific fields.

Cultural Division (red)

Head: Elizabeth Weir

Departments / Fields

Anthropology

Archaeology

Philosophy

Politics

Linguistics

-> Initial numbers: 15

Technical Division (purple)

Head: Peter Grodin

Departments / Fields

Technology & Engineering

Stargate Operations

Computer Science

Robotics

Electronics

-> Initial numbers: 31

Physical Science Division (blue)

Head: Rodney McKay

Departments / Fields

Astrophysics

Quantum Physics

Wormhole Physics

Astronomy

Chemistry

Thermodynamics

-> Initial numbers: 20

Life Science Division (green)

Head: Veronica Weaver*

Departments / Fields

Astrobiology

Microbiology

Biochemistry

Botany & Agriculture

Zoology

Ecology

Genetics

-> Initial numbers: 24

Environmental Division (yellow)

Head: Mercedes Torres*

Departments / Fields

Geology

Hydrology

Geography

Oceanography

Atmospheric Science

-> Initial numbers: 12

Medical Division (white)

CMO: Carson Beckett

Handle primary medical treatment and care, ensuring the overall well-being of all expedition members in the following points:

Medicine

Surgery

Physical Therapy

Anesthesiology

Dentistry

Pathology

Psychiatry

-> Initial numbers: 14

Military Division (black)

CO: Marshall Sumner / John Sheppard (later)

Offer assistance to the other divisions and the expedition as a whole, cover following responsibilities:

Security

Logistics

Emergency Management

Emergency Medical Treatment

Decontamination

Military Operations

-> Initial numbers: 84

*unoffical characters added to fill these positions.

Management

The team is provided with enough supplies to cover each division's general needs, both work-related and personal, for about a year. If necessary, their use of equipment and gear can easily be extended, but water and food production would depend on the environment and resources they're met with.

Complete, long-term self-sufficiency should be possible, with access to the needed materials, but is not the intended goal of this expedition.

An emergency transmitter would've been used to send a signal to Earth, in case they cannot dial back and have found themselves trapped, with no means to support themselves beyond what they brought along. It would've taken a while to be received, but by then the Daedalus should've been fully operational and able to retrieve them, before their supplies run out.

If they are not heard from in any way within their first year (taking communications delay into account, given their distance) Earth would've presumed them dead and the mission a failure. However, if the mission was at least partially a success and they have access to safe food and water, but still no way to return, a number of satellites would've been launched to act as relay stations between the galaxies.

Sending a ship to and fro would be off the table, unless it was really worth the cost of such a long trip — say, if it was to rescue the group, or to transport artifacts and materials of significant value. The IOA would be reluctant to send off one of Earth's limited number of interstellar vessels, while they have more pressing uses among our own stars.

Either way, unless they found more convenient alternatives, the expedition would've expected to rely mostly on themselves.