going “ohohohoh! but vietnam had panicbuying shortages two months ago too!” comes off as pretty weak in light of the fact that vietnam hasn’t had any new covid-19 cases in 4 days while in the US is ramping up to 2000 deaths a day. like yeah maybe vietnam had some issues too but look at the big picture here.
having a low mortality rate among the infected for a disease you’ve completely failed to contain the spread of is a pretty weak accomplishment.
regarding per capita death in relation to the whole population, the US is indeed currently trailing behind spain, italy, france, and various other european imperialist shit nations, but i’m not sure how that Le Epically Owns the commies. maybe if one of the countries which was doing worse in per capita deaths was communist? but alas, they’re not, so it seems your point is stupid and you’re an idiot.
Isnt that what you praise china on? Who actually managed to fail to stop the spread so badly that it spread to most of the world?
Is this how you react when you get anything wrong?
Remind me what is your source that China has mo new cases? Is it the Chinese government? Does that not invalidate your own rules on bias in a legit source?
? my praise has mostly been for vietnam, and if you’re going to go off the logic of “every country where an epidemic originated holds personal responsibility logic” i’d love to hear you call for the heads of the leadership of the country where spanish flu originated (not actually spain, interestingly). also, i seem to remember american tourists in china demanding they break quarantine and go home, but i’m sure they have no culpability here.
also, again, we’re talking about vietnam, not china. what source are you using to argue that vietnam has more deaths per capita in comparison to overall population than the united states does?
No one actually really knows where spainish flu started, theories range from China, US, and the trenches of ww1.
But they atleast have more responsibility and ability to stop the spread than say a nation who it spread to. And a nation whose censorship and misinformation helped the virus spread, does in fact hold personal responsiblity.
Also my reasoning is more rational than empirical, in that most of the news in Vietnam being subject to a great degree government control. Will do as it as it has in the past and will atleast flavor the the results to be more favorable.
But they atleast have more responsibility and ability to stop the spread than say a nation who it spread to.
on what fucking basis? this is obviously invented on the spot to absolve the united states of the basic responsibility to keep their citizens safe. and a nation in spreads to would have fore-warning and be able to prepare in advance, which obviously the country where it originated would have no way to do.
like even if, hypothetically, as soon as the first case had been recorded China prevented anyone from leaving the country, that still wouldn’t have stopped an asymptomatic infected person from having left before any cases were detected and before the lockdown started.
you obviously don’t apply this logic consistently/
also the source of the statistics being reported in the media are the government’s of the respective countries in question regardless of the level of “government control.” like you know that journalists aren’t personally counting the dead and they’re getting the number from the CDC right.
“my reasoning is more rational than empirical” you know i always found this use of the term “rational”- as an opposite to “empirical”- really funny and in-apt, since of course ignoring the empirical evidence is extremely irrational.
The US is a major destination for trade and travel in and out of the nation, once the infection started it was going to
Rational, pretaining to logic and reasoning. Which you have to use along side emperical data to both gather and make sense of it.
Mine takes the empirical fact of censorship, and uses that to reason that Vietnam is lying about its numbers (which btw has been my case all along).
ah, and therefore we should trust the numbers you pulled out of your ass without evidence. or actually, the numbers you refuse to pull out of your ass because you haven’t given any estimate, your logic is entirely “well they’re probably lying and therefore it must be a worse death toll worse than in the united states.”
even if we assume that vietnam is lying, why does that immediately mean there must be more cases? maybe the vietnamese exaggerated the number of cases, like some right-wingers have been claiming the US is doing to justify continued social distancing. can you prove they’re not?
also it’s really funny seeing you retreat to claiming you have some empirical basis when you already admitted you really don’t. also nice of you to pretend you’re completely unfamiliar with the concept of rationalism as contra to empiricism, which you were clearly referencing, rather than the more colloquial definition “pertaining to logic and reason”
I havent made such a claim nor have I ever sought to.
It doesnt. The only point I sought out to make is that Vietnam lies and thus we cant actually trust the data one way or another.
Now will you address what I said rather than some point I havent?
wow sure is convenient that All Data on covid-19 became Utterly Unknowable the exact instant that evidence shows a planned economy outperforming a free market economy. makes u think.
Prairies are some of the most endangered ecosystems in the world, with the tallgrass prairie being the most endangered. Only 1-4% of tallgrass prairie still exists.
Prairies are critically important, not only for the unique biodiversity they possess, but for their effect on climate.
The ability to store carbon is a valuable ecological service in today’s changing climate. Carbon, which is emitted both naturally and by human activities such as burning coal to create electricity, is a greenhouse gas that is increasing in the Earth’s atmosphere. Reports from the International Panel on Climate Change, a group of more than 2,000 climate scientists from around the world, agree that increased greenhouse gases are causing climate change, which is leading to sea level rise, higher temperatures, and altered rain patterns. Most of the prairie’s carbon sequestration happens below ground, where prairie roots can dig into the soil to depths up to 15 feet and more. Prairies can store much more carbon below ground than a forest can store above ground. In fact, the prairie was once the largest carbon sink in the world-much bigger than the Amazon rainforest-and its destruction has had devastating effects.
I just have to add–that extensive root system? It’s not just how the plant eats, and how it keeps itself from getting pulled out of the ground during storms, or dying when its aboveground portion is eaten… it’s how it talks to its friends and family, how it shares food with its friends and family, and more than likely, how it thinks.That’s a whole plant brain we’ve domesticated away, leaving a helpless organism that has trouble figuring out when it’s under attack by pests, what to do about it, has very little in the way of chemical defense so it can do something about it, and can’t even warn its neighbors. Even apart from the ecological concerns, what we’ve done is honestly pretty cruel.
Whether or not you think this should qualify as a form of “intelligence” as we know it (which in itself as a pretty nebulous and poorly defined thing), plants exhibit complicated interactive behaviors that help them grow and thrive, and the way we harvest a lot of them for our produce just doesn’t even give them a chance to reach their maturity and begin trading nutrients the way they’re supposed to.
this is why I get so defensive about grass on Tumblr, and yes, I recognize how ridiculous that sentence is. The anti-lawn-culture movement - which is great in many ways! - is very anti-grass, because they think of grass as this plastic green stuff that American dads spray on everything, at the cost of Perfect Beautiful Nature. But grass is incredible. The reason that people commonly like to surround themselves with grass is because it is a fantastic plant. And yet it’s associated with the boring and mundane! People think of it as, like, background noise. They think of it as the floor. It’s like some kind of carpet to them, to be complained about occasionally because it isn’t a forest or vegetable garden. They don’t even care about it, and then they complain about it. But let me tell you: the Grass Fandom is extremely rewarding.
Obviously, it isn’t a good idea to terraform landscapes into lawns. Golf courses can fuck right off. Nobody needs to water lawns (if lawn grass turns yellow in the heat, it is almost always because it has simply gone dormant; it’ll turn green as soon as it gets some water. You don’t need to water it, it will resurrect itself.) But neither is it a universally good idea to rip up established lawns and yards and greens in order to replace them with vegetable gardens or whatever (unless you need to, or if the grass can only live there with extensive life support in place.) Grass is an excellent plant to have around the home or town; it allows pets, poultry and children to play and piss and shit and walk, and it kindly breaks all of it down; you can walk on it, and it forgives you; it prevents erosion, saving our vanishing topsoil with a ferocious stubbornness; it locks the moisture into the ground, produces a renewable harvest of grass clippings that can be composted for rich green manure, and respires nearly year-round in some areas.
I mean, grass resists being stomped on all day! It keeps high-traffic outdoor areas from becoming mudpits or dusty swathes! That’s seriously impressive in a plant. To replace that durability in public and private spaces, you’d often have to lay down gravel or chippings for people to walk on, which isn’t green and doesn’t grow and has to be acquired from somewhere. Isn’t grass impressive? Name another type of plant that will carry you like that.
Like, the OP mentions grasslands and climate change. You almost never hear about this, because the eco-public prefers the concept of trees as the Most Eco Plants Ever. Everyone loves trees sooooo much, that there is this constant background insistence that planting loads of trees will fix environmental damage forever, and that the world would be better if it all looked like some Eurocentric fantasy of a mossy fairy forest.
Now, trees are great! I am also in the tree fandom. But trees aren’t hugely efficient at fixing carbon - and across most geographical swathes of the planet, they only work part-time. They only grab carbon dioxide and produce oxygen during the stages of their life cycles when they are “awake” and actively growing - so not during winter, not in their old age, etc. And contrast with wild native grass, which apparently considers carbon capture and sequestration to be its favorite hobby. But you almost never hear people going on about “preserving grassland” or being “grass-huggers” - and that is incredibly important! Let’s talk more about grass!
And vast tracts of the world - magnificent biomes on every part of the planet - are not native forests, but native grassland. Steppes, tundras, prairies, savannahs and scrublands are places that trees don’t dominate, but they are bursting with important and diverse life - often centered around the rhythms of native grasses. Trees don’t live in Antarctica, but grasses do! Grasses are GREAT. They harbor life! They support life!
Grass forms the basis of the human food supply - we eat grains more than anything else. Grains are grasses, and we also use and eat the animals that eat grass. The great domesticated cereal grains of the world - maize, rice, millet, wheat - allowed for food storage, which allowed towns and civilizations to form. And the domesticated animals which have carried our societies on their backs for so long - cows, sheep, horses - all eat grass. Grass is so incredibly important to our daily lives. And it’s beautiful! And complicated! And clever! It’s so much more than a floor covering.
Resist the insistence that grass = lawn. (and in some climates and geographies, embrace that ‘lawns’ are a natural environment.) Encourage and celebrate the native grasses of your area! Whether they’re tallgrass or bamboo, they are very exciting and important. Perhaps you’d like to meet the nearest patch of grass - a lawn, a park, or a strip of green in a city. Is it delicate bentgrass? Tough and resilient ryegrass? Is it invasive? indigenous? Formerly invasive but now naturalized? What is it used for? Who loves it?
Just. Grass is so great! Join the Grass Fandom today!
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.
