Christopher Weeks

We've been rewatching through Star Trek the Next Generation anyway and made sure to fire an episode up last night after dinner.

randal cranor wrote:And I, "have been at White Castle, the one on Big Bend..." oh so many years ago

Man, if that's the one at Big Bend and Manchester, I virtually grew up there. Nothing goes with Mad Dog like WC cheese-fries.

I've also been thinking about this. In a long-past life, I used to breed tropical fish and grow high-light plant tanks. In the early '90s, the paludarium hobby entered my conciousness and I've never pursued it, but it seemed like a neat ecological balance hobby to get into. More recently I've wondered about very small-scale aquaculture like you're talking about. I run a couple of Aerogardens for winter-time herbs and chiles but I don't love the synthetic nutes. So I've wondered about cycling aquarium waste or vermicompost or *something* more wholesome through the hydroponic modules instead of using the stuff they're designed for.

William Bronson wrote:I clearly need a better strain of sunchokes!
What strains get that big?

He's out right now, but you might check out the "cluster" variety from Edgewood: https://edgewood-nursery.com/shop/nadhodka-sunchoketerrasol-helianthus-tuberosus-tubers

With the map above, I wonder how different it would be if they counted by weight instead of by head.

That's a neat use of technology, for sure! But it seems more actionable for governments than homesteaders. Will this change your behavior or just make you happy that what you're doing is already good? The closest thing seems like the contrast between the narratives in Africa and North America. If we could just change up our cropping systems, we might begin refilling the aquafers. But again, it doesn't affect my work on my property. I'll keep planting food-bearing trees and bushes, and I'll be glad that I'm not contributing to the problem, but I was going to do that anyway.

I guess one thing, we could vote with our dollars in the grocery store. Maybe buy millet instead of corn and soy -- or maybe there's a more appropriate local replacement.

Anyway, happy high-five!

Eino Kenttä wrote:Does anyone know if sunroots store any starch at all, or is it exclusively inulin?

One of the sources I read yesterday said something like the tubers contain no starch, but and AI just cited a paper demonstrating that one variety's tuber is 0.02% starch. :)

Sounds like a rough breeding program.

I think the crux of her argument is this bit:

We don't want data centers. We don't want unregulated AI. We don't want surveillance technology. We don't want our data being stolen and used against us. We don't want our resources exhausted, our environment polluted, our bills raised, and our privacy violated for nothing. Absolutely zero community benefit.

The problem is that this thing is happening because local leaders are being rewarded for violating the will of the people. The people worried that they aren't able to get what they want.

I was reading the wikipedia article on boro (Japanese piece-mending fabric, adjacent to sashiko stitchery) and found at the bottom a paragraph about sakiori woven fabric: Boro_(textile)#Saki-ori

Saki-ori was historically woven from old kimono cut into strips roughly 1 centimetre (0.39 in), with one obi requiring roughly three old kimono to make. Historically, garments, such as vests, might be made from saki-ori. Traditionally an article of thrift, sakiori obi are now quite expensive informal garments.

So I went looking for more info. these were interesting:
- https://www.odamaki-sakiori.com/sakiori/index.html
- https://westernsakiori.com/what-is-western-sakiori-part-1/

It's presented as if strip-weaving used kimono silk with cotton warp is the historical practice and still happens today. But other sources imply at least that cotton rag-stock was woven into new fabric the same way.

So I wondered if Permies had anything to say about it. There's a little -- seems like Raven is or was at least enchanted by it, and mentions it several times with a few other people doing the same. They're mostly passing references, but this thread was worth sharing:
https://permies.com/t/33929/japanese-textiles#442846

But there was no thread dedicated to that technique, so now there is!

Has anyone done this?

I wonder how using non-kimono as the stock would work. If I was using old denim, would I need it cut it much smaller than 1cm? Maybe that's more a matter of the loom. What is the crudest loom I could work with? What about using a big, bulky pin-loom and not having cotton cord as the warp -- just using the fabric for both warp and weft? I think there are pin(ish) looms scaled for rag-rugs, so that's along the same lines.

If you don't already know all about it, what does this make you wonder?

From one of the above sources:

This is very cool information to be presenting. It's hard for me to imagine how you monetize it. Who do you envision paying for it? It seems more likely to be a valuable draw of traffic to a site with several additional elements of interest for breeders, but I'm not sure I know enough about the market to even judge.