This year, I’ll be growing Sarpo Mira potatoes

The backstory is a real “necessity is the mother of invention” thing: bred in communist Hungary for use on collective farms that often lacked fungicides, herbicides, refrigeration, or anti-sprouting treatments 🧵

Sarpo Mira is perhaps the most naturally blight resistant potato in existence. It also produces an unusually large amount of foliage, shading out weeds in the process. And the yields are massive in part b/c it is “indeterminate”: it’ll keep growing until it’s killed by frost

Just learned about the trompe: a simple device w/ no moving parts that turns the movement of water into compressed air

Every stream on Earth can yield an unlimited supply of free compressed air & we’ve known how to do this since the 17th Century

Legit makes me feel insane Compressed air has many uses, but the most notable is that it’s a battery in gas form. When you release it, it can drive a turbine, which can either yield mechanical or electrical energy

We could easily enjoy many of the benefits of industrialism w/o killing our ecosystem

Does #degrowth mean austerity? No, it means communal luxury. Here’s why:

Let’s use the example of a tool library. Currently, 55% of Americans own 5-10 power tools, while only 23% own 10+

Meanwhile, @TheToolLibrary has 3,000 tools, all free to check-out like a library book

https://twitter.com/thelastfarm/status/1622226480037072897

If tools became more expensive— reflecting the negative externalities created by their production—it would reduce people’s ability to amass them

But paired w/ tool libraries, access to tools would dramatically increase, not decrease. This would make us richer, not poorer

It’s almost impossible to talk about food & climate change w/o wading into the morass of culture war bullshit

But at the end of the day, the only sane take is this: we should eat whatever mix of foods allows us to survive on this planet indefinitely nature.com/articles/s4155… Under current conditions, that means a lot less meat. Like everything else in our civilization, animal agriculture is propped up by artificially cheap energy, which is killing us. The moral abomination of factory farming is essentially the process of turning gasoline into protein

Lotsa new followers, so I’ll take the opportunity to reintroduce myself

This is what I do 👇

https://twitter.com/thelastfarm/status/1606106323875115008

Some thoughts on post-capitalist art

https://twitter.com/TheLastFarm/status/1607364792829853696

The normal operation of nuclear power plants is extremely harmful to human life & the environment

Thermal discharge destroys aquatic life & creates vast dead zones. Radioactive discharge damages the DNA of animals & humans. Childhood cancer rates soar around nuclear plants That’s for “normal operations,” but accidents are themselves part of the normal operation of any human system. We should not pretend nuclear accidents can be prevented

And nuclear power plant accidents are horrific beyond words. They represent a totally unacceptable risk to life

An infrastructure agenda for municipal eco-socialism, Pt. 3!

1) Tool libraries & workshops

Every town gov’t should operate a tool library where residents can check-out tools as needed. This would make tool access free & universal while dramatically reducing resource consumption Tool libraries should be housed in municipal workshops, where residents can use communal work tables, utilities, large tools, & safety equipment. As an added bonus, the workshops should host repair clinics, where handy locals can help their neighbors fix broken items

How would we package things in a post-fossil fuel world? How could we live w/o single use plastics?

Japan’s deep history of natural packaging shows the way

Straw, leaves, & bamboo make exceptional packaging materials: pliable & soft, they turn to compost when you’re done For larger items, paper & cloth can do the job

Paper needn’t be bleached & glued together w/ all kinds of toxic garbage. It can be made in small mills from locally grown material & naturally dyed

Cloth wrapping is a gift unto itself, endlessly reusable & remarkably beautiful

Variations on this argument make the rounds regularly. But it’s completely ahistorical & anti-materialist

This excellent short essay by @BrankoMilan explains a bit about why. The historical record shows just how hard it is to get people to leave farms branko2f7.substack.com/p/the-plight-o…

https://twitter.com/notabigjerk/status/1602739149140029440

“All contemporary evidence points to the fact that peasants were not at all keen to move to cities…Who would prefer to switch from being one’s own boss and dependent perhaps only on the elements to become a hired hand, working six days a week all year round, in ‘satanic mills’?”

Started reading “A People’s Green New Deal” by @maxajl, gonna post the parts I find most interesting

I suspect this section would have broad support among my followers. Whether all are ready to acknowledge that this vision is incompatible w/ capitalism is an open question Certainly agree w/ all this & I appreciate the reference to what’s known as “proletarianization”: the process of violently separating people from the means of subsistence so they are forced to commodify their labor. Capitalism impossible w/o it

From the Cochabamba Agreement

Warm rain followed by a very sudden frost transformed the land into a living sculpture garden Each formation stranger & more surreal than the last

You often hear that the end of capitalism would mean more time to make art

But what would that art be like? I’d like to propose some directions for art after petro-capitalism, under ecosocialism

Principles: maximalism, organic materials, communally integrated

1) High fashion Festive/ceremonial costume design can be the jumping off point for much new exploration in fashion

It’s a transhistorical feature of communal celebrations, new versions of which will emerge as our economy shifts to post-industrial, democratic forms of production, esp agriculture

Merry Christmas!!!

A great day to read about Christianity & liberation

“For me, men are divided not into believers & atheists, but between oppressors & oppressed, btw those who want to keep this unjust society & those who want to struggle for justice.”

jacobin.com/2018/12/church… “If Jesus crosses the border…they will not allow him to enter. They would accuse him, the man-God…of being an agitator, of being a Jewish foreigner, who confuses the people with exotic & foreign ideas…Brothers, they would undoubtedly crucify him again.” jacobin.com/2017/05/el-sal…

It’s been an incredibly eventful year in my life. Here are some things I did:

—bought a piece of raw, densely forested land & decided to live on it w/ my girlfriend

—hand built a dry stone foundation & put a 16’ diameter tent on it, which we’ve lived in ever since





—planted 17 bare root fruit trees: apples, pears, cherries, persimmons, peaches, nectarines, & more

—felled, bucked, & cleared about a quarter of an acre of largish trees, a mix of pine & hardwoods, mostly by hand

—collected a literal truckload of waste wool for mulch

Most contemporary architecture =“petro-capitalist modernism”: it values only profit maximization & is entirely reliant on artificially cheap energy for its design & construction

There are exceptions though. One of the best is contemporary Southeast Asian bamboo architecture Made from one of the most dynamic & sustainable materials on Earth, it inspires the kind of awe you might expect from an old world cathedral combined w/ the marvelous whimsy of surrealism

A post-carbon, post-capitalist future can look like this if we want it to #ecosocialism

Liberalism is the ideological expression of the material interests of the middle class

Liberal identity politics are a tool for the middle class to advance their material interests

This does not mean privilege & oppression aren’t real

It does mean liberalism can’t fix them

https://twitter.com/samhaselby/status/1601184896181227520

Trying to end oppression—like racism or sexism—in the context of capitalism is like trying to build an igloo inside a sauna: all of the conditions are working against it

And even if you were to get the thing built through enormous effort, it would immediately start to melt

An infrastructure agenda for municipal eco-socialism, PT 2!

1) MUNICIPAL GOAT HERDS

Goats are some of the most efficient animals on Earth: weeds go in & meat, dairy, fiber, manure, & more come out. A town herd can provide a short, secure supply chain while mowing down weeds 4H is a USDA program that trains young people to raise animals; a muni flock could be managed collectively by the local chapter on public land for the benefit of town residents. Adds a meat/dairy/wool share to the local food UBI, plus manure for the town food forest!

Consumer capitalism is a disgusting perversion of our sacred relationship to material culture

That said, here’s my HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE!!!

1) A 2-PERSON CROSSCUT SAW

The best way to fell a tree, it’ll also tell you if you should be in couples therapy

amazon.com/dp/B00H2AF4GQ?… 2) *HOW TO BE AN ANTICAPITALIST IN THE 21st CENTURY*

There are so many wrong ways to answer the question posed by this book’s title, making it all the more important to read it right now

Extremely accessible, strategically sound, deeply thoughtful

versobooks.com/books/3763-how…

What does “luxurious subsistence” mean?

It means instead of gorging on Black Friday trash, you gorge on perfectly ripe nectarines before your 2 hr lunch nap

It means living a truly thriving life, instead of one spent drowning in physical & spiritual trash “Luxurious subsistence” means that you forgo a life of pointless productivity & empty consumption for a life rich in meaning, utility, & connection

It means you spend autumn nights around a campfire chatting w/ your friends & neighbors instead of sitting alone in front of the TV

The celebrate @LulaOficial’s victory over the absolute world historical dipshit Bolsonaro, here are some of my favorite & most celebratory Brazilian tracks. It’s party in the streets time

1) Like a swimming pool full of undiluted joy open.spotify.com/track/1SNkVZP1… 2) Impossible not to smile while listening to this one open.spotify.com/track/4877bJ14…

An infrastructure agenda for municipal eco-socialism:

1) Town/county food forests. Local gov’ts own tons of unused land; some should be planted w/ perennial food crops, laying the groundwork for a local food UBI. Put the food forests under the jurisdiction of the school system…





And have students ‘adopt’ sections of the forest, overseen by a professional educator/farmer. The result would be free food for residents & every student would graduate w/ vital agricultural skills, a hands-on understanding of biology & ecosystems, & joyful experiences in nature