The first victim could not have been recorded, for there was no written language to record it. They were someone’s daughter, or son, and someone’s friend, and they were loved by those around them. And they were in pain, covered in rashes, confused, scared, not knowing why this was happening to them or what they could do about it – victim of a mad, inhuman god. There was nothing to be done – humanity was not strong enough, not aware enough, not knowledgeable enough, to fight back against a monster that could not be seen.
It was in Ancient Egypt, where it attacked slave and pharaoh alike. In Rome, it effortlessly decimated armies. It killed in Syria. It killed in Moscow. In India, five million dead. It killed a thousand Europeans every day in the 18th century. It killed more than fifty million Native Americans. From the Peloponnesian War to the Civil War, it slew more soldiers and civilians than any weapon, any soldier, any army (Not that this stopped the most foolish and empty souls from attempting to harness the demon as a weapon against their enemies).
Cultures grew and faltered, and it remained. Empires rose and fell, and it thrived. Ideologies waxed and waned, but it did not care. Kill. Maim. Spread. An ancient, mad god, hidden from view, that could not be fought, could not be confronted, could not even be comprehended. Not the only one of its kind, but the most devastating.
For a long time, there was no hope – only the bitter, hollow endurance of survivors.
In China, in the 10th century, humanity began to fight back.
It was observed that survivors of the mad god’s curse would never be touched again: they had taken a portion of that power into themselves, and were so protected from it. Not only that, but this power could be shared by consuming a remnant of the wounds. There was a price, for you could not take the god’s power without first defeating it – but a smaller battle, on humanity’s terms. By the 16th century, the technique spread, to India, across Asia, the Ottoman Empire and, in the 18th century, Europe. In 1796, a more powerful technique was discovered by Edward Jenner.
An idea began to take hold: Perhaps the ancient god could be killed.
A whisper became a voice; a voice became a call; a call became a battle cry, sweeping across villages, cities, nations. Humanity began to cooperate, spreading the protective power across the globe, dispatching masters of the craft to protect whole populations. People who had once been sworn enemies joined in common cause for this one battle. Governments mandated that all citizens protect themselves, for giving the ancient enemy a single life would put millions in danger.
And, inch by inch, humanity drove its enemy back. Fewer friends wept; Fewer neighbors were crippled; Fewer parents had to bury their children.
At the dawn of the 20th century, for the first time, humanity banished the enemy from entire regions of the world. Humanity faltered many times in its efforts, but there individuals who never gave up, who fought for the dream of a world where no child or loved one would ever fear the demon ever again. Viktor Zhdanov, who called for humanity to unite in a final push against the demon; The great tactician Karel Raška, who conceived of a strategy to annihilate the enemy; Donald Henderson, who led the efforts of those final days.
The enemy grew weaker. Millions became thousands, thousands became dozens. And then, when the enemy did strike, scores of humans came forth to defy it, protecting all those whom it might endanger.
The enemy’s last attack in the wild was on Ali Maow Maalin, in 1977. For months afterwards, dedicated humans swept the surrounding area, seeking out any last, desperate hiding place where the enemy might yet remain.
They found none.
35 years ago, on December 9th, 1979, humanity declared victory.
This one evil, the horror from beyond memory, the monster that took 500 million people from this world – was destroyed.
You are a member of the species that did that. Never forget what we are capable of, when we band together and declare battle on what is broken in the world.
Happy Smallpox Eradication Day.
Tags:
#Tumblr traditions #anniversaries #illness tw #history #proud citizen of the Future
Concept: saying grace, but instead of thanking God, you thank industrial agriculture (or the millions of people who contributed to its development and maintenance, or perhaps the first person to take each step, the first planter, the first plower, etc)
Saying thanks to Fritz Haber and caveating “This would be much more enthusiastic if you hadn’t been enthusiastically responsible for war crimes but you’ve so far still probably been a net good”
Hey, we’ve already got it started in Florida, just come join me we’re almost Λορεμ ιπσθμ δολορ σιτ αμετ, ηασ ει vιδισσε δισπθτανδο cομπλεcτιτθρ, σιντ λαορεετ ιντερπρεταρισ εαμ ιδ.
#I love the meta-level here that this post is actually totally comprehensible thanks to machine translation #proud citizen of the Future #this probably deserves some warning tag but I am not sure what #amnesia cw?
they’re one of the fruits where the supermarket variety is the supermarket variety because it survives the trip, not because they’re good
meanwhile tomato plants are really low effort. if you have favorable conditions you can do literally nothing
—
Where are you *finding* conditions that aren’t full of weeds and wildlife-competing-with-you-for-the-food and the occasional blight? A greenhouse?
(…actually, that might not be a bad idea. I *have* heard of people building little personal greenhouses in their backyards, and nothing keeps squirrels from taking one bite out of your mom’s tomato and walking away like a fucking *door*, right?)
Re: surviving the trip, home-grown zucchinis taste about the same but we’ve noticed the shelf life is *vastly* longer. Store-bought zucchinis start to shrivel up and go soft within a few days of bringing them home; home-grown zucchinis can sit in the fridge for several *weeks*. Makes it a lot easier to plan your meals.
Honestly, probably a good part of my problem with gardening is that, because *Mom* loves home-grown tomatoes for some fucking reason, they end up the focal point of the garden and a great deal of my gardening-related labour is thoroughly alienated: I never see the fruits *or* the vegetables of my labour.
A garden optimised for what *I* thought was most worth growing would have zero tomatoes and more garlic and zucchini, with perhaps just enough potatoes to keep in practice so that I can put potatoes in the victory garden. And probably more perennials like mulberries. And possibly mushrooms. And I would want to do a bunch of research and expert-consultation regarding which weeds are secretly edible, since anything *that* easy to grow sounds like something I should take advantage of.
(I’ve been meaning to do some more digging into how to eat dandelions. I’ve heard you can put the new greens in salads and the petals in pancake batter, but I don’t normally eat salads *or* pancakes. Can you just, like, munch on a raw dandelion flower straight-up? Can I fulfil my childhood dream of eating a pretty flower I found in the backyard?)
Yeah, you can just munch any part of dandelion – I often do that when I’m reading in the garden. Older leaves get bitter and shouldn’t be eaten in big amounts, and roots need cooking. Flower is just fine though.
—
Hell yeah!
—
This is another area where I like a lot of the things the communing-with-nature people are putting out but for completely different reasons. I want to know more about the natural world around me *so that I can exploit it better*. Which wildflowers can I eat? What’s the name of that one plant where when you run through a field of them it sounds like popcorn popping? Can I eat those too?!
(I never stopped wanting to stick interesting plants in my mouth: I just learned to resist it, to assume everything was poisonous until proven otherwise. And for the most part, nobody ever taught me which interesting plants I didn’t have to resist.)
I never stopped wanting to stick interesting plants in my mouth: I just learned to resist it
i never learned this and im still alive. i like to think it’s made me stronger
as for tomatos I don’t think you have to do that much? if your soil and weather conditions are good you can just put the seeds in the ground and come back later to find that you have a giant cherry tomato bush which is overrunning the rest of your garden and that produces way to many tomatos for any ten people to eat
if you don’t have this you might need to water them? I remember watering tomatos. most of the weeds around here don’t get tall enough to fuck with tomatos much. if it’s a major issue you can put them in pots I guess. we never had trouble with squirrels, altho we did have to stop growing tomatos in the backyard because one of the dogs ate them all. I don’t grow many tomatos because I don’t like tomatos, but fresh ones really are better.
idk about potatos specifically but I think durable transportable stuff like potatos and onions is the relative advantage of actual farmers. relative to growing fragile vegetables that kind of thing is probably only worth doing to the extent you’re having fun with it
My mom has tried to grow tomatoes pretty much every year for the past 10+ years and we have had very few home-grown tomatoes to eat
It might be where we live– people not from here think you can grow anything in Georgia but the summer heat really is too much for a lot of plants to handle. The state was also plagued by droughts for a lot of my childhood.
We also had a lot of Critters come sample the garden. Deer, squirrels, rabbits, tomato hornworms, etc etc etc. It always made my mom SO dismayed to come outside one morning to find that a deer had chomped off the entire top half of her biggest tomato plant, but you’d think she would have learned to expect it after about the fourth time
We DID sometimes get to eat the tomatoes if we picked them while still green and then used them for fried green tomatoes. Fried green tomatoes are really delicious. It’s just not what we had wanted to have when we planted tomatoes!
I’ll admit I don’t know anything about Georgia. I think it’s where depressing movies about plantations take place. it produces SCAD students. there’s a big airport I’ve never connected thru.
I asked my mother about tomatos and her opinion is that they’re easy to grow but you have to water them very regularly or else they’ll be sad and also blighted. this is maybe extra true if it’s very hot and sunny, which I’ve been told is the case in georgia. conversely farther north you may have trouble getting enough sun? that could make tomatos slower, maybe
idk about deer. the three places I’ve grown tomatos were:
suburb, but not near the forest so no deer. plenty of squirrels and rabbits but they were never a problem
fire escape. only cats and pigeons, neither of which are much trouble for tomatos
middle of nowhere. shitloads of deer but in the summer they just eat stuff in the forest. huge problem for slow growing perennials but not so much for tomatos
The previous post [link] reminded me to post an update on this:
>>What’s the name of that one plant where when you run through a field of them it sounds like popcorn popping? Can I eat those too?!
I took a picture of a popcorn flower and searched by similar images, and it’s a Plantago lanceolata (sometimes called a ribwort plantain). And apparently you *can* kind of eat them [link], though it’s more of a medicinal thing than a food thing.
Tags:
#oh look an update #food #gardening #reply via reblog #flowers #the more you know #poison cw? #proud citizen of the Future
I’m still weirded out that Google Lens can do animal and plant identification reliably these days. I remember using the first few versions of Google Lens and you’d be lucky if it could even identify a flower as a flower. It was basically only useful for architecture and OCR.
although I suppose this xkcd did come out in 2014, it’s been more than five years and Google has some pretty sizeable research teams.
Me, trying to watch a video without having to expend effort on digging out headphones and processing auditory input: “oh, it’s only got auto-captions, those things are practically useless, maybe I should just come back lat–holy shit, Youtube auto-captions actually *work* now! when did *that* happen?!”
Tags:
#and how long will it be until I can download a 2020-Google-level auto-transcriber from a Canonical repository #and start running my own stuff through it without having to offer everything up to the Cloud #reply via reblog #proud citizen of the Future
Someone I know not well enough to voice my opinion on the subject said something like why didn’t God make potatoes a low-calorie food so I am here to say: God made them like that because their nutrition density IS what makes them healthy. By God I mean Andean agricultural technicians. Potato is healthy BECAUSE potato holds calories and vitamins. Do not malign potato
For all evolutionary history, life has struggled against calorie deficit… So much energy goes into finding food that there is no time for anything else. Our ancestors selectively bred root vegetables to create the potato, so that we might be the first species whose daily existence doesn’t consist of trying to find the nutrients necessary for survival. One potato can rival the calorie count of many hours of foraging… Eat a potato, and you free up so much time to create and build and connect with your fellow man. Without potato where would you be?? Do not stand on the shoulders of giants and think thyself tall!!
Tags:
#I ate potatoes today and I approve this message #give or take some hyperbole‚ anyway #(it is deeply twisted that ”this food contains less sustenance” is a thing sellers charge *extra* for) #(if I want less food I will *eat* less food) #((besides‚ my appetite is quite good at adjusting for calorie density and is not fooled by your hollowed-out shit)) #food #disordered eating #proud citizen of The Future
God shit like this makes me absolutely rabid for modernity. It used to take year-round work, eight hours a day, to keep even a smallish household in two suits of decent clothes. Fuck nostalgia for the distant past. Fuck nostalgia for, like, three decades ago. Technology is awesome, and industrialization rules.
Tags:
#history #yes this #proud citizen of The Future #around the time I first read the linked post I went to a grocery store #and bought two kilograms of salt for eleven minutes’ wages #and I took a moment to appreciate how wondrous that is #(it was even iodised!)
Brinens and Things 