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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 13th, 2023

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  • I stumbled across this and I found it particularly interesting that 93 years ago the GOP was being called out for their use of this myth. It is one the GOP has continued to rely heavily on, especially in modern times. It is also interesting that this myth almost never benefited the real frontierspeople, but rather the rich industrialists from the East and Europe. I was hooked after the first paragraph,

    There is no more persistent myth in American history than the myth that rugged individualism is or has been the way of American life. Many influences have entered into the creation of this myth, but the man who is chiefly responsible for its general acceptance is Frederick Jackson Turner, who, in 1893, when the western states were loud in their demands for national regulation of industry, said in his now famous Chicago address that the American frontier had promoted democracy—a democracy “‘strong in selfishness and individualism, intolerant of experience and education, and pressing individual liberty beyond its proper bounds.” Its tendency, he said, was anti-social. “It produced antipathy to control, and particularly to any direct control.” It permitted “lax business honor, inflated paper currency and wildcat banking.”*

    Sure sounds like not much has changed other than the scale of the belief in this myth.














  • Yeah, this article really feels so damn one sided, like the only thing that matters are the genes. Some of it is the genetics, but some of it is environmental. The same plant can produce different tasting beans if there are significant environmental changes year over year. Hell, if I take a plant from Colombia, transplant it to Ethiopia, it will produce different tasting beans from its identical fellow identical plants in Colombia. That it would not taste the same as the plants already present in Ethiopia is where the genetic differences come in.

    It honestly feels like it’s trying to make me excited for some really esoteric things. Don’t get me wrong, this research should absolutely continue, but it isn’t something the lay person is going to ooh and aah over. Even moreso for me because I do homesteading, I’ve done craploads of research on plants. I’ve grown different breeds/strains of the same plant to get different sized, shaped, colored, and flavored vegetables and fruit.

    I’m also less impressed because this sort of research is what usually precedes GMO shenanigans. Given the money in coffee growing, etc, it was a no brainer that this research is going to be used to do some Monsanto level bullshit. I have nothing against GMO, but what has happened so far with it has not been good.