I think the article's theory on why people plow is wrong: it is not to let the soil hold more water, but to get rid of weeds. I know someone who did no-till for a while, and he found that you have to spray with glyphosate to keep the weeds down. Eventually the weeds that had evolved to be glyphosate-resistent spread to his area, and he had to go back to regular plowing. He said that the no-till really improved the soil, though.
I spent a while learning English change ringing, on specially mounted church bells. It is basically an exercise in combinatorics: the "change" is applying the pattern so that the bells ring through all possible sequences that the pattern can do. At first it sounds like noise, but after a couple of years, you do start to notice a certain musicality to it. As I understand Schoenberg, one of his ideas was that you cannot re-use a note until all the others have been used, which is essentially the same requirement that change ringing has. (The bells are heavy and are swinging through their full arc, so you cannot change their order very quickly.) After realizing this, I listened to some Schoenberg and found it much more listenable than I did in college.
As a customer, though, I don't really care about the theater's pricing structure. If I'm paying for a pricey ticket, I don't expect to be advertised to. If the theater experience is lousy, I won't go to the theater.
So a bunch of leftists say things like "knowledges" are just things that people in power use to keep themselves in power. They make everything about power. And then they are surprised when the right decides it's about power and enables a Trump.
Both sides are appalling. But I have no sympathy for the people wringing their hands over Trump. They asked for it. Unfortunately, those of us who didn't ask for it have to deal with it.
I wish they'd sell old varieties of apples. The new ones all insist of having Red Delicious (so called) as part of the genetic makeup. It does not impart a good flavor. There are all these nice old ones, like Cortland and Winesap, but you can't get them anywhere.
In Sweden and I think Europe, there seems to be quite much product development in apples. I think one of the reasons is that storage seems to have been more or less perfected so that the produce can be sold over almost a whole year.
Using only traditional methods there are several "new" Swedish varieties, Aroma, Frida and Saga that are very nice - and especially Saga is absolutely fantastic - On par or better that international varieties Jazz, Pink Lady and Honeycrisp.
Some of the more traditional varieties are also sold more and for a longer period because of the improved storage, even though that I think they have a shorter storage window.
Another reason I think is that not all of these varieties thrive as small trees, and most factory farmed trees are kept small because it makes picking them easier.
Honeycrisp is still a grandchild of golden delicious, though as it turns out not the one the university intended. They claimed it was Macoun and Honeygold but it was a different one of their test experiments after genetic testing.
The implication was that red delicious are kind of garbage and definitely pedestrian and it’s the same company that introduced both to the world. So I’m lumping them into the same boat on general principle. As an adult I won’t touch red delicious but I will once in a while eat a golden.
But the thing is that apples the size for eating are all tetraploid mutants, but meiosis does not guarantee that the pollinated flower receives 2 full sets of genes from both parents. So you get a lot of giant grab apples which are okay for cider or a pectin source for making jam but that’s about it. Most of the modern crosses are coming from one or two ag universities running giant breeding programs.
They say that you need about a thousand (or was it 10,000?) saplings to yield one interesting specimen. Mark Shepard has a sort of yolo mentality here does wild crosse and grows what he can, which is only in the hundreds, and culls any trees that struggle, because he doesn’t want to throw good time after bad. And sells his surplus for root stock. His thought is that if enough farmers do it then one of them will win the lottery. He likes to diversify and hedge his bets.
There's an apple orchard that sells at the farmers market in my city with >40 seasonal varieties, most of which you'd never see at a supermarket. Apples grow well in a lot of the US, its worth looking for local options
I always feel personally attacked when people bad-mouth (ha) the Red Delicious. It's true that many are this mealy disaster -- but I think that's a product of crappy long cellar times and trying to get money for 'old' apples. If you get a good fresh one, it should be the right level of tart, sweet, crisp, and juicy. And when they are good, they are probably my favorite. It's just so damn hard to get the good ones and no great ways to tell if they're good before biting in.
That makes sense, they were by far the prettiest apples at the orchard near me. Of course that just makes it all the more disappointing when you go to eat one.
Depends on where you are maybe? Cortland is still readily available here (Quebec). Hope it stays that way, I'm feeling slightly worried. Seems like the trend of trademarked new apple varieties has not quite caught up here yet as orchards are not interested in replacing tried and true stocks.
Yeah, I think my neighbor has a few Cortland trees in New England. Lots of Mcintoshes which aren't great for cooking but generally good for eating. Apples are probably about the last thing I'd say you couldn't get varieties of.
There appear to be zero "C++" jobs within 100 miles of SF, Austin, Chicago, and one at a finance company in Boston. None of those locations had any "React" jobs. So either the job market is abysmal, or those jobs are still hidden.
If LLMs just output the most likely next word, then there must exist enough documents out on the Internet with people in similar situations to make the responses Gemini generated highly probably. Which is a pretty dark probability.
I can totally see why Europe doesn't want to touch this! I'm assuming that Europe doesn't mind the results, but also finds the means legitimately concerning. But they aren't in a position to do anything about the latter, so issue statements of concern about unilateral action, and quietly be relieved that somebody else gets stuck with the stigma.
> Almost anything that China does is based on long-term consequences.
I'm not sure that's the case with Xi. Well, I wouldn't be surprised if he tries, but as far as I can tell from a distance, his value system produces unwise decisions long-term. 10+ years of Xi have slowed economic growth, produced antagonism diplomatically, I'm not sure that the Belt and Road is currently seen favorably. He hasn't figured out a way for local governments to be solvent without selling property, nor has he resolved the shadow debt. I think his policy of shutting down Shanghai and other zero-Covid polices destroyed the people's confidence in the CCP as steward of economic growth, as it became obvious that the government can just arbitrarily kill your business and imprison you in your own home or Covid center. I think that removing your top military leaders--who are the only ones with any actual combat experience--is helpful for a successful occupation of Taiwan. Certainly what Xi did with Hong Kong made peaceful re-unification with Taiwan very unlikely.
The policies you're naming are still enacted for their expected long-term consequences. That doesn't mean all of them are successful in achieving their goals, sometimes their expectations turn out to be wrong. This can happen with any policy, regardless of whether the goal was short-term of long-term.
If you're talking about the power shift part: Many if not most (including me) believe that slowing of economic growth was inevitable, it simply wasn't a level that could be sustained in the long run. There are plenty of issues in China and plenty of policies that may turn out to have failed - much of it remains to be seen, as again, the goals are long term and we may consider them successful a decade or two from now. But the scientific gap with the rest of the world is widening every day, China is crushing it in that area and the fruits will be reaped. Robotics, every kind of energy, every kind of engineering.
> Certainly what Xi did with Hong Kong made peaceful re-unification with Taiwan very unlikely.
It didn't have an impact. By 2019 the chance was already zero barring black swan events. The chance is still zero barring black swan events.
reply