I thought the same thing. The whole enterprise felt very cherry-picked, especially given human passages were mostly from 20th century authors and writing styles that are mismatched to modern tastes
@ndmonaghan
Agriculturalist π₯¦ Plant nerd π· Global citizen π€ | Mizzou Center for Agroforestry graduate | he/him | I write about landscapes, food, and related topics @ ndmonaghan.substack.com
I thought the same thing. The whole enterprise felt very cherry-picked, especially given human passages were mostly from 20th century authors and writing styles that are mismatched to modern tastes
When I say βhell yeah,β this is what Iβm referring to
What I don't get about MAHA is when was America ever a paragon of health? When infant mortality rates were in the double digits? When nutritional deficiencies abounded? When rotten meat graced the supermarket shelves? What tradition are we returning to?
Agroecology is simultaneously described as an academic discipline, a social movement, and a set of farming practices. In today's post, I explore the history leading to this unique situation
Dozens of seagulls taking off from a river sand bar against a line of bare trees
I was experimenting with taking pictures through my friends binocs at the same time this flock of seagulls decided to take off
Some interesting new evidence in the conversation about how domestication affects soil carbon accumulation under perennials
In breadfruit, it appears that SOC decreases in early stages of domestication, but eventually rebounds in later stages. Fascinating implications for tropical agroforestry.
Quite a day to have the last name Monaghan.
I have an ancestral right to those coffee makers!
the new upside down food pyramid:
An understudied effect of climate change is how it's pushing communities to the edges of their ecologies. Mountain herders are moving higher in search of grass; fire practitioners are taking on larger burns because there are fewer days when it's moist enough to burn.
Everyone remembers where they were when they first noticed the arrow in the FedEx logo
Though they're right about AI potentially accelerating garage biohacking and the associated risks of amateur genetic engineering
There's a certain tranche of commentators that myopically conflate progressive concerns about AI safety (cybersecurity, inequality implications, misinformation, privacy) with wackadoodle concerns (the singularity, Roko's Basilisk) and it's just so annoying
Bomb sniffing dogs but its you figuring out which writers are hacks
both iowans and chinese share a fondness for pork and soybeans
Woke up thinking about the brave new world of vibe science: Tell the latest version of sciClaude about burning questions in your field. Go get coffee, spend some time doomscrolling. Come back and find three groundbreaking papers based on other people's hard-won datasets.
Brazilβs Amazon deforestation continues to decline into early 2026, with AugustβJanuary clearing at its lowest for the period since 2014.
Annual detected loss also fell to a 2014 low, with the Cerrado seeing declines too. Officials credit stronger enforcement, but long-term risks remain.
I'm curious, what issues do you have with Wood?
Excited to host the public launch of this book at our upcoming Perennial Farm Gathering, #PFG2026!
www.savannainstitute.org/pfg2026/
We do not have to fall over ourselves saying that we love technological progress. The onus is on them to explain to us why we should be excited about new technology while there are microplastics in every mother's breast milk and our rivers are drying up
The Farm Bill is dead. Now is the time to envision new futures for food.
Olympic medal top 10 table ranking in order from most golds: Norway, Italy, Netherlands, USA, Sweden, Switzerland, France, Austria, Germany, Japan
The winter olympics really are DEI for Europe
Most genres have "separating the art from the artist" dramas but us country fans also have to deal with "separating the art from the audience" discourse
Spinach pasta with cherry tomatoes plated in front of a vase with a rose and green and white foliage
After 4 years I finally got the pasta machine out of its box
I also suspect books like this are more or less just laundering interpersonal beefs within fields, with interviewees using the language of suppression to describe a colleague they just don't care for or who decided to hire someone else for a job 20 years ago.
These kinds of books are so tedious. They frame a couple of lone scientists running counter to their fields' mainstream as bring conspiratorially suppressed, while never exploring why a new framework isn't just being immediately adopted. It takes time to multiple lines of robust evidence.
Since this book is old, I also know that the whole model was later integrated into the field. It wasn't a controversial idea back in the day, it just took time to refine it before including it in textbooks.
I'm tired of writers who insist on framing any scientific disagreement as conflict and subterfuge.
This book I'm reading insists on describing the fields mainstream as "balking" at a new model, when in reality they just wanted to further develop the idea before completely rewriting a core paradigm.
As the culture war stands, it seems like woke traded the anti-vaxxers for the NFL. 4d chess moves over here
Bad Bunny, Green Day, and now Brandi Carlisle?
Is the NFL the last bastion of woke in this country?