I know some people do guerilla gardening and plant trees without permission, too. Sometimes nobody bothers to file the paperwork take them down.

Speaking as someone who grew up in a family that idolized homesteading, and who now has a very abundant garden, I do think we should be careful with promoting the ideal of food self-sufficiency - at least on an individual level. Gardening is a lot of work. Most people don’t even have enough space to produce any meaningful amount of food. Yes, you can try growing some beans on your balcony or something of that sort, but if you factor in the price of soil, potting materials, fertilizer, etc and time spent, it’s hard to justify compared to just buying the food in stores, and it certainly won’t be enough to feed yourself in a famine.

If you do have land, one thing you could try doing is looking into trees that produce food, because trees tend to be pretty low maintenance and abundant producers. I’m personally growing breadfruit, moringa, and ice cream bean, all of which are vigorous growers and should be abundant food sources once they’re big enough. (Though I live in Hawai’i, and many places will likely have too much frost for these to survive.) You can also go with edible weeds & invasives - every area has at least a few of those. Jerusalem Artichokes (/ sunchokes), for instance, are a plant in the sunflower family native to North America that produce an abundance of roots and are virtually impossible to remove once they get going. I’ve personally considered keeping some air potato starts on hand in case things ever get really desperate, since they’re highly invasive and produce an absurd amount of edible rhizomes.

It’s a good idea to look into plants native to your area that are edible (even some weeds you consider grasses can be edibles) and lesser known fruits / vegetables / leaf greens in general. The food grown at supermarkets is generally there because it does well on large scale farms with plenty of pesticide, and more importantly, stores well. But there are hundreds (if not thousands) of other edible plants that you will never see in a store, and in many cases they’ll produce food far more efficiently than seeds from a grocery store tomato. You also have to note that a lot of produce sold in stores are from hybrid varieties that won’t be true to seed; if you really want to be food self-sufficient, even if you do just want to grow green beans and tomatoes, you’re still going to want to look into heirloom seeds and seed saving. Finding varieties that grow well in your area is also something to consider, as again, grocery store produce is bred for mass production and won’t necessarily do well where you live. Plus, if you’re going to go through all that effort, you may as well grow something that brings you more joy than russet potatoes. E.g. I’m very fond of this heirloom Italian purple green bean variety which is more or less stringless when young and produces abundantly here.

I think there’s a good reason so many communities have moved towards specialization. It’s simply not efficient to have a few people (or even a large family) trying to do everything they need to do to survive. What we should be doing is establishing mutual aid networks for when things go bad that include farmers, people with building know-how, blacksmiths (and yes, those are still an actual thing, speaking from personal experience), etc. If you have free time and want to get your hands dirty, by all means, start a herb garden, plant some potatoes, or whatever else - but be aware that it’s a lot harder than it sounds, and realistically, the vast majority of people in the west do not have access to enough land to grow a significant amount of food.

Edit: Had to rush this post b/c I had to leave the house - want to clarify that this wasn’t meant as a rebuke of the OP so much as sharing my thoughts on gardening as a whole.

Also, one potential solution for the lack of space issue is finding members of the community who do have space but no time to make use of it themselves. At least where I live, this is a common situation, but I don’t live in a city, so it probably won’t be much help to those that do.

I think learning how to grow our own food is very important, but just as important is organizing locally and figuring out the logistics of doing so.

Tbh I’m the worst person to ask about that because I’ve never been really in touch with my body emotionally - I was just taking it for breast growth.

I used to take it before bed for that reason. But also, that only happened to me when I took it orally - something to do with the progesterone being metabolized into something else, IIRC. Could be worth looking at rectal administration or a cream.

Bold of you to assume that we should have cars.

I think Mamdani the idea is infinitely more valuable than Mamdani the man - no matter how good Mamdani the man turns out to be. The fact that Zionists across the aisle decided to make this a referendum on “”““anti-semitism””" (read: anti-Zionism) only to get utterly humiliated was not only hilarious, but serves as proof of the popularity of the pro-Palestine movement to all the holdover liberals who made excuses for Biden / Harris by saying, “but Palestine isn’t popular! They’d be committing political suicide!” - now it’s clear that it is political suicide not to support Palestine. Ditto for trans rights, and also just socialism in general - like, we’ve heard Democrats say they can’t support trans rights because they’ll lose votes over it, and then Mamdani has a blowout victory after going out promising to give 65 million to healthcare for trans kids.

So if nothing else, I feel like Mamdani is a good avenue through which to radicalize liberals against Democrats. You’ve got a bunch of people looking at Mamdani and realizing that better things are possible… and if Mamdani ends up getting ratfucked by the Democrats or just disappoints, it’ll be very easy to welcome them into the fold.

Also, all of the Islamophobic attacks on Mamdani by right wingers and fellow Democrats alike have got liberals I wouldn’t normally so much as acknowledge calling for the resignation of Hakeem Jeffries. If nothing else, the man is a golden opportunity for establishment Democrats to end their political careers.

I have gourd trauma from pickleworms. Seem to have finally managed to beat them back on my lemon cucumbers with BT and picking any fruit with signs of worm damage, but JFC. Only problem is that now I have all these cucumbers I need to figure out a use for.

Lentils are fantastic, IMO. I grew up vegan so they were a pretty common occurrence in my childhood meals.

Also, that makes sense re: Radish. We’ve got the moist soil, but not so much the cooler temperatures. Planting them earlier could help, though it really just oscillates between degrees of hot here. Honestly, the idea of having to plan crops based on time of year is so foreign to me - you can grow pretty much anything here, at any time. My egg donor even managed to grow apples here, although the lack of frost meant that it produced the absolute sourest apples I have ever tasted. Horrible little things.

What kinds of legumes do you favor? I have this Italian climbing purple green bean variety that I’m fond of which always produces an absurd amount of food - but granted I’m in Hawai’i and have a lot of space to plant things outdoors.

I’ve tried radishes a few times, but I can’t seem to get them started when I sow them straight into the ground and I’ve heard you don’t want to transplant root vegetables. I do have some chicken wire plant guards, though, so perhaps I could try sowing seed under them to see if it’s just the birds eating them before they can grow.

Guy’s name is Bob Vylan and he puts out some bangers.

“White folks love quoting Martin Luther / 'Cause he held hands and prayed while they bombed his building / Good for him but the times have changed / And don’t forget, white folks still killed him”

(Song is “Pretty Songs”)

Update: Lexi was unbanned. First thing she reposted was a video of Bob Vylan’s “death, death to the IDF” chant. Queen.

Idk if any of y’all know of Lexi Alexander, but she was banned on Bluesky two days ago. She’s a leftist, Palestinian-American filmmaker (she directed Punisher Warzone and some other, more niche movies) who’s been outspoken against the genocide in Palestine. Doubt anyone here has any illusions about Bluesky being any better than Twitter, since they’ve been banning Palestinians & leftists without warning & making space for TERFs and white supremacists for ages now, but…

Took me like two days to get verified. Matapacos.dog doesn’t federate with kolektiva.social, so you can’t interact with folk from there which is kind of annoying, but you could migrate there (sans followers from kolektiva.social) if you use a go between instance.

They seem to not like MLs too much, plus there was a thing with the feds raiding them a few years ago and getting their hands on all their users’ unsecured data.

Yeah, that plus them having been raided by the feds and handed over unsecured user data in the past makes me very wary.

Back before the election I kept seeing liberals on Reddit and elsewhere say shit like “everyone I know is better off than they’ve ever been before, Biden’s economy is great!”, meanwhile my friends are all either homeless or barely housed and dirt fucking poor.