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Wrath Of Gnon

@wrathofgnon

13 Dec

A story of inappropriate technology: in the 1970s it was decided to modernize the rice farming of Sri Lanka, whose system that had not changed much for 3000 years. The goal was to replace the water buffalo with the modern tractor, but the attempt had disastrous consequences...

Buffalos create "wallows", pools of muddy water without which they cannot control their temperatures. Always filled with water, these wallows create many eco-services: in the dry season the become a haven for fish that then migrate back to the paddies when these fill with water.

The fish is a valuable source of proteins for landless laborers and greatly help control the population of malaria causing mosquitoes who breed in the rice paddies. The vegetation around the wallows are breeding and hunting grounds for snakes and water monitor lizards who prey...

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Wrath Of Gnon

@wrathofgnon

9 Dec

In a 2009 study Luis Balula asked about 800 residents of Évora, Portugal, “How appropriate is this image for the future of Évora?”, or in other words, what do people want? Each image was scored +10 to -10 (best to worst). The results were telling. Residential streets first.

Then commercial streets and buildings. Same patterns, lively, walkable, decorated, traditional, human scaled, distributed ownership over car oriented, faceless, chain stores.

The pattern is the same for office buildings and streets. Walkable, accessible, etc. No one wants the office park in the middle of nowhere only accessible by vehicle. But here people are less offended by modern buildings.

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Wrath Of Gnon

@wrathofgnon

2 Dec

The Greek city of Priene as it might have looked in 350 B.C. Planned so that all homes face south to make maximum use of solar heating in winter. Courtyards kept cold winds at bay. It is estimated even naked one could comfortably sunbathe indoors during coldest months Nov-Mar.

Housing 4000 at 0.37 km² (there again, the magic size for a human scaled city), twice as densely populated as modern London and only one or two story homes. Many streets were so steep they became stairs.

The city had free public baths, a theatre big enough to hold 6500, two free schools, several temples and a central agora/market located within a few minutes walk from anywhere in the city. All public buildings were charitably built by the richer citizens out of their own pockets.

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Wrath Of Gnon

@wrathofgnon

28 Nov

https://twitter.com/herandrews/status/1332395481721397250

Today's long must read.

https://twitter.com/herandrews/status/1332395481721397250

Some comments. This, is a great phrase, as good or better than anything Chesterton would have written:

«This, Fr. Albrich said, is the “paradox of cloistered orders.” Although they withdraw physically from the world, they remain present in prayer.»

Faith is fierce. We may think of faith as something dull and meek, but when you encounter it in person it strikes you like a hammer:

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Wrath Of Gnon

@wrathofgnon

27 Nov

Until the late 19th c. the majority of people in Japan grew, spun, wove, and made their own clothing and dyes. Old clothing was never discarded, it was stitched and mended and re-dyed for generations. Given the name "boro" (襤褸), very little remains today, and mostly in museums.

Imagine wearing a coat made by your great-great-great-great grandfather and hand stitched little by little by all of their descendants and all of your siblings. The ultimate in sustainable clothing heritage. And environmentally sane.

Since each family grew the material most suited to their own clothing, patching and mending was easy, not so much with modern materials. Dyeing was typically done at home with plants easily grown in the backyard. Unlike other dyes, indigo dye can be reused over and over again.

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Wrath Of Gnon

@wrathofgnon

24 Nov

Bamboos flower extremely rarely, some species only once every 120 years. According to folklore bamboo flowering is a serious harbinger for misfortune & trouble. Starting in 2018 until now many of these rare bloomers flowered all over Japan. We are bad at reading omens. #Hindsight

I was thinking about how many of these news reports of flowering bamboos I have seen over the last year or so, and on a family hike yesterday we walked past tens of thousands of dead or dying bamboos. More than I can ever recall seeing. 2020 indeed. news.nicovideo.jp/watch/nw7076187

@jayotibanerjee

After writing this @jayotibanerjee kindly offered an explanation of why the flowering (and following mass-die off) of bamboo was always considered a bad omen in Asia: when bamboo flowers, it releases highly nutritious seeds, which becomes abundant seed for rodents, leading to...

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