It’s crazy that countries on the edge of the Sahara desert are reversing desertification by just digging half circles
The ground in these places is too compact for water to soak in during wet season which leads to flooding but digging these holes gives the water a place to stop and soak in. And they’re pushing back the desert with this. By just digging holes.
The new plants also help even more water soak into the ground which reduces flooding even more.
These places also give people places to grow food and graze animals like people are turning completely dry compact desert into a refuge for wildlife and plants and solving regional food insecurity just by digging holes.
The half-circles are called zaï! They’re a traditional farming practice in the Sahel desert, and their introduction + reintroduction can be largely credited to Yacouba Sawadogo, the man linked above! He reintroduced and innovated on the zaï on his own farm in the 1980s, and did extensive outreach (along with scientist Mathieu Ouédraogo) to encourage other farmers to adopt them as well.
He also promoted the use of cordons pierreux, which are basically just lines of rocks to reduce erosion, preserve sediments, and increase water absorption.
Immensely cool dude. He’s been a personal hero since I learned about him.
Ooooh, Mr. Sawadoga innovated the traditional zai method by adding manure and other biological matter to the holes! This put nutrients in the soil as well as helping even more with water retention and attracted termites whose tunnels helped loosen the compacted earth, all of which supported plant-growth like no zai before! Which increased water-retention even further! Oh excellent, excellent work!
Many people are aware that copyright originated as and remains a protection for publishers, not authors.
However, there are longstanding rights intended to protect authors. These are legally called ‘the moral rights of authors.’ Good naming.
These rights include:
The right to attribution. To have your name on your work. Don’t repost peoples work without attribution.
The right to use a pen name or to publish anonymously. Publishers should protect the privacy of authors. Service providers shouldn’t require posters to provide ID.
The right to integrity. Editors should not cut up your work to make it say something you do not endorse.
So let’s review:
❌ AI harms authors because it violates copyright.
✅ AI harms authors because it violates their rights to attribution and integrity.
i cant with google search results for wasp theres all these articles titled like PEST creature why we HATE and FEAR this thing. and then the wasp in the photo is like
Very soon on the 10th of January, Mohammed Ayesh, @moayesh2 is going to get married to. You may know him as one of the most trustworthy vetters on @gaza-evacuation-funds, and that he has done so much to help others. As such, it should be our turn to support him.
Please do congratulate him on this very happy occasion in the midst of all the horrors he has experienced. Now is also the perfect time to also contribute to his campaign here:
Makes me feel a little insane when I have a “oh I want this thing but I don’t have enough money” moment and then I look at the news and see “racist women fired from her job for harassing black people gets $100kusd in donations”
Like oh we live in evil world
I’m sitting here going “is $6 too much for canned trout? But this is the brand that tastes the best” while every evil person on earth gets one wamillion dollars for being evil
What’s actually so fucked up is the reminder that Black and Native ppl have been saying for decades that we are killed unceremoniously by the state all the time and not only do the masses not rly care, but it doesn’t clue them in to the fact that they live under a fascist dictatorship.
now that they’re killing yt women and kids n shit everyones pulling their hair like ‘oMG we are at the stage where they are just killing citizens!’
and then wondering why that’s not inciting outrage
pfft. bc y'all have been subconsciously groomed for centuries to be deeply okay with the violence of your oppressors due to allegiance by race.
Gaza is drowning in rain and misery. Thousands live in tattered tents that offer no protection from the cold or the wind. Winter here is not a passing season, but a true nightmare that threatens the lives of children, women, and the elderly.
The tents in Gaza are flooded, the ground is muddy, the bedding is soaked, and the rain doesn’t stop. Many families sleep on the bare ground without blankets, in unbearable conditions. My family and I are among them. We live in a dilapidated tent, leaking water from every side, and all our belongings are soaked. Just yesterday, a large part of the tent was blown away by the strong winds, leaving us completely exposed to the cold and rain.
We are exhausted from constantly having to explain ourselves, which is why we now speak with very few words. But please know that behind these few words is a great deal of pain, suffering, and struggle that we live with every single day in Gaza. What we are going through is far beyond what can be explained or described.
Palestinians with Olive trees, which are native to the Palestinian land. Olives symbolise healing, cleansing, richness, healing and victory. Traces of the Olive tree date back 6 thousand years— read more about Olive trees of Palestine here, where you can also order authentic Palestinian olive oil!
I bet you need to know how to boil eggs when you’re homeless. Well, here’s how.
Hey I don’t know why you need to know this–maybe you are an investigative journalist reporting on homelessness in America. If so then right on! But also if you need this advice then let me say, take care of yourself, and good luck.
With that out of the way: congratulations! You’re homeless, and the food pantry gave you eggs! I can’t imagine any other scenario in which you need to boil eggs while homeless, because I certainly wouldn’t waste EBT/SNAP/food stamps on purchasing a dozen raw eggs in this economy. So yeah when the food pantry gave you eggs you were like, sure, fuck me up, I’ll try to find a way to make this work. We did this too! And this is how it worked for us. By the way, I currently work for tips on ko-fi and Patreon pledges, and your support on either is appreciated. Now let’s go!
Okay first of all you need to protect your eggs. We did this with this nice handy travel egg holder by a brand that was on a label that I threw away and will never be able to find again. It was at a Kroger store. I’m sure you can find one if you seek it out. Anyway we got the money for purchasing it by telling tumblr how much it sucks to cook food when you live in a car. It could be collecting cans, it could be busking. Use good judgment and be safe. Or just find a different, more cost-effective way to keep your eggs intact. Since tumblr in its infinite mercy and grace gave us this egg holder in which to secure our huevos, I just feel like I need to spend a paragraph reviewing the egg holder. Then I’ll start teaching you how we boiled the eggs, and you can evaluate whether our method works for your current lifestyle and/or will go into your tell-all expose on homelessness. And after that, I will promote my ko-fi link in the hopes that one of you wants me to have more coffee shop time to write more of these infotainments. Ready? Let’s go!
This is the paragraph where I review the egg holder. Hey, I really put it through its paces actually, because we got a big ol box of food from the food pantry the same day as we got the egg holder. And we needed to put that box of food underneath a bunch of big heavy things because you have to move all the objects in a car in one place if you want to sleep in parts of it. I could have put the egg crate in our ice chest and it would have been fine. But I wanted to know. How much protection did it really offer eggs? How much could we depend on it? Anyway under a mountain of stuff this thing kept all the raw eggs uncracked. (By the way I would not have done this unless I was confident that it would not cause a bad mess. Placement was in my favor to contain any egg goo.) The carry handle is okay, I think it could be bigger. I’m not sure if I trust the tiny clasp to stay in place when being jostled about, so try to put this thing in a secure area where it can’t wiggle around. I would prefer an actual clasp that clamps over the top but that probably would have meant it costing more. Overall I would say this is excellent to keep your eggs in for travel purposes, and it has a very low space profile so it doesn’t take up much space when you’re not using it. Highly recommended.
Now let’s cook some eggs! We did this with an electric kettle. This is something you can secure for yourself if you want to–otherwise you’re gonna need another way of boiling water. Try to get something that’s low profile and survives getting bumped around. You want to avoid glass or easily-crackable plastic. Mine’s all metal.
There’s a few places that we can find that we can plug in a kettle without anyone coming up to stop us from doing that. Public parks with grills and rentable party spaces often have an electric outlet somewhere, and if you show up when the space isn’t reserved, you can just use that. A public pool center we found provides lockable shower/changing rooms that have a sink and electric outlet in the room for hair dryers, etc. We go on off days when we won’t be keeping anyone out of a changing room, then run the kettle while also using the facilities for hygiene.
So how do you do this? Put the eggs in the kettle and then pour water to the max fill line. (I do six eggs at a time so there’s enough water in the kettle to boil them all, so a dozen eggs takes two rounds of this.) Turn on the kettle and wait for the kettle to be done boiling the water. (It’s good to time your kettle so you know how long this usually takes.) Once it’s done, set a timer for the eggs to stay in the hot water. We’re sticking with fifteen minutes for now–what works will vary with your kettle and how well-insulated it is, and also how hard you want your eggs.
Once the timer goes off, pour your eggs out, trying to take care not to crack any. We had one get dented in this batch on the way out. Just eat those first!
If you run cold water into the kettle and rinse it around after the first batch, you can cool the sides of the inside of the kettle and it’ll be easier to put the eggs in for the second batch without burning your hand. When you are done you can put them in a little egg holder if you have one!
After this it just depends on what you’re doing with the eggs and how you like them. You don’t have to do this in the same facilities we’ve done, either–it’s really just about getting creative and thinking about what resources are available to you in different spaces you can access. I find the big thing is being discreet and not getting in anyone’s way, because if no one knows you’re secretly cooking eggs at the gym, no one cares and no one gets hurt. But when people find out you’re doing this stuff they can get pretty weird and ask you to stop that and go away, so stay aware of who is observing you when you’re doing stuff like this.
If you enjoyed this article and you are not actually in a survival situation where you need to use it, then please support me on ko-fi! I am also on Patreon. Your support means we can try out more things. For instance, we’d like to see if we can use a hot water bottle to transport the hot water from the kettle and use it for warming up already-cooked food. For this we will need a hot water bottle and your support could help us toward that goal! Updates to follow once we reach this new milestone. Everyone stay safe and stay fed! 🥚
Hello!
I prefer gender neutral pronouns.
I try to tag obvious triggers I know of, but please let me know if there's something I should tag. (20 as of 2017)
