Tired of winning

 

The strangest Trump-related saga continues. You can´t beat the feeling?

Coca Cola to sell cane sugar Coke after Trump said "It´s just better" 

Mad honey

 

Some more speculations about the elusive "soma" of the Vedic scriptures. The idea that soma was really the lotus is intriguing, to be sure. I think ephedra was the most official proposal 20 years ago (when I studied comparative religion at university level). What it is today, who knows.

It´s fascinating that while the original Veda Samhitas have been preserved for 3000 years, the knowledge of soma (necessary for many of the rituals) has been lost...perhaps forever. 

So strictly speaking the Vedic rituals are no longer efficacious. They are LARP-s. The gods want their mad honey!

Corn syrup and immigration

Credit: Ton Rulkens

So I asked the robot to comment this week´s strangest news item. Yes, that would be Trump´s proud announcement that the Coca Cola Company (at the God-Emperor´s prodding, mind you) will stop sweeten Coke Classic with corn syrup, instead using real sugar from sugarcane. Eh? 

Sugarcane is grown in the southern states, where many people support Trump. But...what about immigrant labor at the sugarcane plantations? And what´s up with the corn syrup situation anyway? My guess is that RFK Jr and his "MAHA" movement may be behind this, since I assume they oppose said syrup. 

However, more sugarcane production will presumably also make it necessary to import more cheap labor from Mexico and Central America. Unless the MAHA-ites want to lift and then volunteer their working class muscle down at the latifundia... 

Do sugar cane plantations in the South use labor from Mexico?

Yes, many sugarcane farms in the U.S. South—especially in states like Florida and Louisiana—do use labor from Mexico, but the situation is more nuanced and varies by region and employer.

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🇺🇸 U.S. Sugarcane Labor Overview

1. Mexican Migrant Labor

• A significant portion of seasonal sugarcane workers in the South are Mexican nationals.

• Many are brought to the U.S. through the H-2A visa program, which allows agricultural employers to hire foreign workers temporarily when there are not enough local laborers.

• These workers typically perform manual cutting, planting, weeding, and harvesting, especially in Louisiana, which still relies partly on hand-harvested cane.

2. Florida (Heavily Mechanized)

• In Florida, sugarcane harvesting is now largely mechanized—machines cut most of the cane.

• However, Mexican and Central American workers are still employed in:

  • Planting

  • Field preparation

  • Maintenance

  • Milling operations

• They often work under contracts with large companies (e.g., U.S. Sugar, Florida Crystals).

3. Louisiana (Still Some Manual Cutting)

• Louisiana relies more heavily on manual labor for certain stages of harvesting and field prep.

• Mexican H-2A workers are widely used during the harvest season.

• Labor shortages have made growers more dependent on foreign guest workers.

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🧾 Labor Rights & Controversies

There have been ongoing debates around:

• Pay levels and working conditions for H-2A workers.

• Access to healthcare and housing during seasonal work.

• Exploitation or legal gray areas with subcontractors or recruiters.

Several reports and labor watchdogs have raised concerns, particularly regarding wage disputes and unsafe working environments.

---

✅ Summary

Region	Labor Source	Mechanization	Use of Mexican Workers
Florida	Local + H-2A migrants	High (mechanized)	Yes, mostly for planting & prep
Louisiana	Local + H-2A (mostly Mexican)	Mixed (some hand harvest)	Yes, widely used
Texas	Less significant production	Mixed	Some use of migrant labor

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Would you like information on how the H-2A visa program works or data on the number of Mexican workers in agriculture more broadly?

Is there a criticism against using corn syrup from consumer rights groups and such?

Yes, there is significant criticism of high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) from a range of consumer rights groups, health organizations, and nutrition advocates. The criticism centers on health concerns, labeling transparency, and industrial agricultural practices. Here's a breakdown:

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⚠️ 1. Health-Related Criticisms

a. Obesity & Metabolic Issues

• HFCS has been linked—controversially—to the rise in obesity and type 2 diabetes in the U.S.

• Groups like the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) and Public Health Advocacy Institute argue that HFCS contributes to overconsumption of sugar in processed foods and beverages.

b. Fructose Metabolism

• Unlike glucose, fructose is metabolized primarily in the liver, which can lead to fat buildup and insulin resistance.

• Some studies have associated high fructose intake with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and elevated triglycerides.

c. "Empty Calories"

• Consumer health advocates argue HFCS provides no nutritional value beyond calories, and encourages the consumption of sugary, processed foods over whole foods.

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🧾 2. Labeling and Transparency Concerns

• HFCS often appears under different names like “corn sugar”, which can confuse consumers.

• In 2012, the FDA rejected a petition by the corn industry to rename HFCS as “corn sugar,” citing misleading labeling.

• Critics claim food labeling lacks clear distinctions between cane/beet sugar and corn syrup, which undermines informed consumer choice.

---

🌽 3. Industrial Agriculture & Environmental Impact

• HFCS depends on large-scale corn monoculture, which requires:

  • Heavy fertilizer and pesticide use

  • Government subsidies (taxpayer-funded support of corn)

• Environmental groups (like the Environmental Working Group) criticize this model for contributing to:

  • Soil degradation

  • Water pollution (from nitrogen runoff)

  • Reduced biodiversity

---

🏷️ 4. Market & Consumer Pushback

• Starting in the late 2000s, there was a consumer backlash against HFCS.

• Many companies (e.g., Snapple, Heinz ketchup, Gatorade) began marketing products with labels like “no high-fructose corn syrup.”

• Some health-conscious consumers see HFCS as a marker of “ultra-processed” or low-quality food.

---

📊 Scientific Consensus?

• Major health organizations like the American Medical Association (AMA) and FDA have stated that HFCS and table sugar (sucrose) are nutritionally similar when consumed in moderation.

• However, they also acknowledge excessive sugar intake of any kind is unhealthy.

🟨 So while HFCS may not be uniquely toxic, critics argue that it encourages overconsumption due to its low cost and prevalence in processed foods.

---

✅ Summary of Criticisms

Area	Concern
Health	Links to obesity, diabetes, liver problems
Labeling	Lack of transparency, misleading names
Environment	Industrial corn farming harms ecosystems
Consumer rights	Reduced choice, hard-to-avoid in processed foods
Economics	Subsidized production distorts food markets

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Let me know if you’d like citations, major health studies, or a comparison between HFCS and cane sugar in how the body processes them.

Make Cuba great again?

 

Strangest tweet from Donald Trump so far? Maybe this can be used as an argument for lifting the blockade on Cuba, I don´t know... 

Feralization

 

If you know, you know. Muh-hah-hah-hah! 

How long does it take for a domesticated species of plant to turn wild again? Does this have any bearing on the question of when agriculture began?

Excellent and deep question — let’s tackle it in two parts:

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🌱 1. How long does it take for a domesticated plant species to “turn wild” again?

This process is called feralization — when a domesticated species reverts to a wild or semi-wild state after escaping cultivation or human management.

⏳ How fast can it happen?

• In some cases, feralization can begin within a few generations (e.g., 5–50 years), especially in annual plants that reproduce quickly.

• Traits that are lost or reduced during domestication — like seed shattering, seed dormancy, or thorn production — can re-evolve under natural selection if beneficial in the wild.

• Full reversion to a wild-type genome is rare, but feral plants often show:

  • Increased seed dispersal

  • Decreased yield

  • Resumption of natural defenses (e.g., toxins or spines)

📌 Example: Weedy rice (Oryza sativa f. spontanea), which evolved from domesticated rice and re-developed wild traits in only a few centuries (possibly faster in some regions).

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📜 2. Does this affect how we date the beginning of agriculture?

Yes — feralization complicates the archaeological record of agriculture in important ways:

🧭 Here's how:

• Early farming was likely intermittent, small-scale, and low-intensity.

• If agriculture was abandoned for even a few decades or centuries, domesticated crops could go feral and vanish from the landscape and archaeological visibility.

• This means that early domestication events could have occurred thousands of years before the earliest definitive archaeological evidence.

🔄 Agriculture as a long process:

• Modern archaeology sees domestication as a gradual, multi-generational process, not a single moment.

• Some species show pre-domestication cultivation — early humans planted them before the genetic signs of full domestication appear.

• If early farming societies collapsed or moved, their plants may have reverted — making it seem like agriculture started “later” than it actually did.

🧬 Genetic evidence shows that domestication traits (like non-shattering ears in wheat or barley) accumulated slowly, and can be lost under feral conditions.

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🧾 Summary

✅ Domesticated plants can revert toward wild forms surprisingly quickly (within decades to centuries), depending on the species and environment.

🧠 This means that early, failed, or abandoned attempts at agriculture may have left no clear trace in the archaeological record.

📆 As a result, the true origins of agriculture may be older and more complex than previously thought, with cycles of cultivation, abandonment, and re-domestication.

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Would you like examples of specific plants (like wheat, barley, or maize) and how quickly they can feralize or re-domesticate?

Yes, all three. Also rice!

Great — let’s explore how wheat, barley, maize, and rice behave when feralized (i.e., revert from domestication) or re-domesticated, and what that tells us about the timing and complexity of agriculture’s origins.

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🌾 1. Wheat (Triticum spp.)

🧬 Domesticated Traits:

• Non-shattering spikelets (seeds stay on the stalk, making harvesting easier)

• Larger grains

• Softer seed coats

🔄 Feralization/Reversion:

• Under wild conditions, non-shattering becomes a disadvantage (seeds don’t disperse).

• Studies show that feral wheat lines can evolve partial shattering again within ~20–50 generations (500–1,000 years).

• However, wheat is less weedy and does not easily naturalize without human help.

🧠 Implication:

Wheat domestication was slow, taking 1,000–2,000+ years, and could reverse partially if early agriculture was abandoned.

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🌾 2. Barley (Hordeum vulgare)

🧬 Domesticated Traits:

• Like wheat: non-shattering spikes, larger grains

• Shorter dormancy, more uniform germination

🔄 Feralization:

• Weedy barley populations (H. vulgare f. spontaneum) are common near fields.

• Barley can hybridize with wild relatives, rapidly reintroducing wild traits like:

  • Seed dormancy

  • Rough awns (barbs)

  • Shattering

📌 Some barley reverts to near-wild form within <500 years when left uncultivated.

🧠 Implication:

Barley is more plastic than wheat, showing frequent gene flow with wild forms. This makes archaeological dating of “fully domesticated” barley complicated.

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🌽 3. Maize (Zea mays)

🧬 Domesticated Traits:

• Derived from teosinte (wild grass from Mexico)

• Maize has:

  • Larger cobs

  • Multiple rows of kernels

  • Non-shattering seeds (fully dependent on humans to spread)

🔄 Feralization:

• Maize is highly domesticated and does not easily revert.

• However, teosinte-maize hybrids can arise spontaneously if maize is grown near wild relatives.

• Some “wild maize” types in Mexico are likely re-wilded hybrids, but they don’t fully return to teosinte.

🧠 Implication:

Maize is an outlier — it’s so altered that it can’t survive as-is in the wild. But gene flow with teosinte can blur the archaeological record.

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🌾 4. Rice (Oryza sativa)

🧬 Domesticated Traits:

• Shorter seed dormancy

• Non-shattering grains

• Compact panicles (grain heads)

• Reduced awns

🔄 Feralization:

• Rice rapidly feralizes — a major modern problem known as weedy rice or red rice.

• This happens through:

  • Escape from fields

  • Hybridization with wild rice (O. rufipogon)

• Traits like seed shattering, dormancy, and red pericarps reappear in <10 generations.

📌 Weedy rice is genetically part-domesticated but behaves wild — showing how quickly selection pressure can undo human cultivation traits.

🧠 Implication:

Rice demonstrates how fast domesticated traits can be lost in just decades. This has serious implications for interpreting early rice domestication in East and Southeast Asia.

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🧾 Overall Takeaways

Plant	Speed of Feralization	Key Points
Wheat	Slow–moderate (centuries)	Stable once fully domesticated; partial reversions
Barley	Fast–moderate (decades–centuries)	Hybridizes easily; common weedy forms
Maize	Rare, via hybridization only	Cannot survive without human aid, but gene flow with teosinte confuses the picture
Rice	Fast (within decades)	Weedy forms arise quickly; feral rice is a major modern issue

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🌱 Final Thought

These examples show that:

• Domestication is reversible, especially in early stages.

• Many early agricultural episodes could disappear from the archaeological record within centuries, due to feralization.

• Therefore, true beginnings of agriculture may predate the first archaeobotanical evidence by millennia.

Would you like a diagram or timeline showing how these crops evolved across time and geography? 

How to convert the Republican Party to climate change affirmationism

The article linked below is from The National Interest, one of the more interesting foreign policy establishment publications. For being "up there", even spouting Henry Kissinger as their editor emeritus, they publish surprisingly heterodox articles. Here is another example. If you want to turn the GOP from climate change denialism to, shall we say, greener geopolitical pastures, you apparently have to pitch them like this... 

Will Russia weaponize its wheat?

Things we did on grass

Finally a modern field guide with color plates and species presentations on facing pages! The range maps are still tucked away at the very end, though. But then, perhaps we really are spoiled with good books here on Amazon?

Grasses, sedges and rushes usually get short-shrifted in field guides to flowering plants. As for ferns, they aren't flowering plants to begin with. To remedy this unfortunate gap in our standard floras, Richard Fitter and friends brings us "The grasses, sedges, rushes and ferns of Britain and Northern Europe". In good old insular fashion, the British definition of Northern Europe is somewhat strained. We're really talking Northwestern Europe: the British Isles, Iceland, Scandinavia, West Germany, Benelux and northern France.

25 families have been included: Gramineae, Poaceae, Cyperaceae, Juncaceae...and the rest are ferns.

You might not get a thrill out of this "grass", but I still think it's worth, shall we say, four stars?

What does the L stand for?

"Bromus L. of North America" is Leon Pavlick's magnum opus, illustrated by the indefatigable Elizabeth J. Stephen with some back-up from Peggy Frank and the fabulous J.R. Janish.

According to the back matter, which I assume is not exaggerating in the slightest, this taxonomic work is the first comprehensive treatment of North American bromegrasses since 1900. Anyone concerned with grasslands in North America (or grasses in general) should find this book useful and informative.

Indeed, "Bromus L" is a kind of field guide or at least identification guide, with keys, range maps, black-and-white line drawings, even vernacular names (thanks!). These include Field Chess, Rattlesnake Chess and Rescue Grass. No thanks?

In bromegrass-interested circles, the term "North America" apparently only refers to Canada and the United States, i.e. North America north of the Rio Grande.

So what *does* the L stand for, then? Here's a guess. "Leon" as in Leon Pavlick?