Miyawaki forests (invented by Japanese botanist Akira Miyawaki) are tiny forests that can be squeezed into small open spaces (medians, backyards, schoolyards, etc) in otherwise developed areas.
The technique of planting saplings of many different native species (ideally 30 or more) very closely together allows Miyawaki forests to grow 10x faster, be 30x denser, and 100x more biodiverse than conventionally planted forests.
In addition to storing more carbon than monoculture forests, these forests can also provide habitat corridors and food for wildlife. When planted alongside roads they can help reduce noise and filter pollution.
One of the great benefits of these forests is that any community with access to a small patch of open land can get involved and reap direct benefits from their work.
Audible has just released a strictly faithful, ten-hour audio adaptation of the first three volumes of Neil Gaiman’s classic The Sandman, with an all-star cast including James McAvoy as the Lord of Dreams.
“It sounds great, and it’s a faithful adaptation,” says our own Glen Weldon. “The bad news: It’s … a doggedly faithful adaptation. Rigorously, assiduously, exactingly faithful. No attempt has been made to widen the story’s appeal by sanding down some of its rougher, more dated edges.“
Check out his review – and a deep dive into the history of the comic – here.
On this day, 15 July 1954, the right-wing dictatorship of general Francisco Franco amended the 1933 vagrancy law to criminalise homosexuality. The amendment also authorised the detention of all those convicted under the law in labour and concentration camps (content note: sexual violence).
Over the next 25 years, around 5,000 LGBT+ people would be imprisoned – mostly gay and bisexual men and trans women. They were housed in specialist prisons in Huelva and Badajoz, and in a camp in Fuerteventura, Canary Islands, and many were subjected to brutal sexual violence, and medical abuse like electric shock treatment.
Most of those prosecuted for breaching the law were working class, and historian Pablo Fuentes told the Guardian that it was “not uncommon to hear homosexuals from the upper classes and the aristocracy speak about the Franco period as a great time.”
After Franco’s death in 1975 and the subsequent fall of the dictatorship, political prisoners were released, but LGBT+ prisoners were not.
The homophobic law was eventually overturned in 1979, although those imprisoned because of it were not recognised as victims of Francoism and awarded compensation until 2009.
We are currently working on a podcast episode about lives of LGBT+ people under Franco. To learn more about how Franco came to power, check out our latest podcast on the civil war: https://workingclasshistory.com/2020/06/17/e39-the-spanish-civil-war-an-introduction/
Pictured: Silvia Reyes, a trans woman who was imprisoned over 50 times. Image from lacuna.org.uk https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1475631362622009/?type=3
Ladies and Gentlemen, remember this advice, for it will be the most important information to know and remember: Punch a nazi, you won’t regret it cuz you’re punching a fascist scumbag
This may be a bit off my usual stuff, but yeah, fuck Nazis
The reason they’re so okay with the Nazis coming back is because their grandparents were okay with the Nazis before the war started.
The US - general public opinion - were pretty pro-nazi because they saw them as a way to beat back Communism and socialism in Germany (the two leading parties before the Nazis took power were the Communist KDP and Democratic Socialist SDP) and keep it from spreading from Eastern/Central Europe to the West.
Almost 40% of Americans polled in 1939 wanted to restrict Jewish-owned businesses and “Jewish business methods.” 53% said they thought Jews were too different from them and didn’t want them to “mingle in the wrong places”. 10% wanted to deport all Jews immediately, while 68% said Jews should be barred from immigrating to the US.
These are your grandparents. History may not repeat, but it does rhyme.
This blog is mostly so I can vent my feelings and share my interests. Other than that, I am nothing special.
If you don't like Left Wing political thought and philosophy, all things related to horror, the supernatural, the grotesque, guns or the strange, then get the fuck out. I just warned you.
