yeah ive found that a combo mix of rosemary oil and cinnamon oil works great as a gnat spray
95% Alcohol(any kind, ethanol, isopropyl, methanol) is a cheap, highly effective, contact killer. Spray any bug with it and it will die. Either the alcohol kills it from the toxicity or from dehydration because the alcohol cleaned off its protective wax surface.
What’s the bottom imagine from?
Veep
Still my favorite “WTF” line delivery in any film or show.
Thank you! Watching episode 1 now!
Strap yourself in.
Rhubarb: most of me is poison. The rest of me is kind of bitter.
Humans: Hold my pie crust.
Rhubarb crumble is legitimately delicious though.
Don’t get me wrong, I love rhubarb. But whoever first figured out it was edible must have been desperate.
Strawberry rhubarb :)
Polk salet, anybody?
Tbf, this has proven to be extremely effective: Just think of how many tobacco or chili plants are grown today! Domestication really is a two-way-street
Are we farming the plants or are the plants farming us.
I do would like to be an alien’s pet.
Basically humans will have sex with you, eat you, or make you a pet.
Sometimes more than one.
Don’t forget we wear them also…
Nicotine, THC, and cocaine are also insecticides. And psilocybin might be an insect repellent.
Thanks poison!
Drugs - natures mosquito repellant
Mosquitoes are such squares!
So that’s the reason I’m not stung as badly as my friends!
Capsaicin is a fungicide, which is extremely useful in the environments where spicy peppers grow.
Funnily enough we try to cultivate everything we like, so in a roundabout way they were successful.
I think the book Sapiens makes the point that wheat has trained us into cultivating it for selfish needs.
(Except that it’s wheat, and that we annihilated 99% of its brethren to pick out the one that we liked so we could effectively clone it. But yes, we are the slaves…)
Sapiens and Homo Deus are both such good books. Lots of little anecdotes like that we’re just so fascinating.
I think that’s basically what The Botany of Desire is about, right?
I guess… If you consider factory farmed chickens to be “successful.”
Aliens would extract our bile and earwax.
My precious bodily fluids!!
Rain water and grain alcohol for me
Goddamn I need to watch it again.
I evolutionary terms being edible to humans is quite useful.
Doubtful. Look what will happen with our bred plants and animals, if humans aren’t around anymore.
Because humans feel encouraged to further protect that plant against pests.
As well as spreading and planting seeds, clearing competing plants, and providing water and nutrients.
It worked for chickens…
Chickens are the most numerous bird on the planet, wheat covers more land area than any other plant.
Chickens are the most numerous bird on the planet
And live their lives in fucking misery and suffering, at least most of em.
But they keep reproducing, which is really all that it takes to make a successful species. It’s really not about suffering when it comes to evolution. Alleles don’t care whether or not suffering is involved.
I’m not advocating chicken farming, I’m just saying that in evolutionary terms, chickens are one of the most successful species on the planet.
I disagree.
Evolution is not so much a numbers game. Otherwise Bacteria, Ants, Viruses and the like would have to be crowned winners. So the point op brings up is
mutemoot.The point you add, that they keep reproducing, is also not relevant in evelotionary terms. The short amount of time that we have domesticated chickens, let a side the very resent industalisation of animal farming (it started in the 1950s ish), is just not relevante in evelotionary terms.
I’d say what makes a successfull species is resilience. 99 % of all species have gone extinct. The “winners” of evelotion are, in my opinion, those species that have lasted the longest. And in that regard, chicken ain’t looking to good. They are highly dependent upon humans. Most industrial chickens are genetic aborninatons, bred for beeing fat, fast growing, egg laying machines to the point where their own bones brake because they lack calcium. I’d argue that chickens in their current form would not last long in “the wild”. Hence once humans are gone their is a high chance chickens will follow.
Otherwise Bacteria, Ants, Viruses and the like would have to be crowned winners.
They are. And you mean ‘moot.’
Also, you don’t know what evolution is. It’s a change in allele frequency over time. All that is needed for that is continued reproduction.
Hot peppers anyone?
TBF, life’s objective is to reproduce and keep its genetic materials continuing on. Even if humans propagate and consume said plant because they find it desirable, that is still a success for the plant. So even if it has toxic caffeine or fiery capsaicin to deter some pests and humans find it enjoyable, the plant wins.
Especially since many of the plants die after 1 year anyway so it’s not even like we shorten their lives anyway.
I love this thread.
HFY vibes
Completely unrelated but JLD is so freakin’ gorgeous in this pic.
Caffeine is poisonous to us too, so I think it’s more accurate to say that humans enjoy the side effects of that particular neurotoxin. It’s generally not possible for someone healthy to drink enough coffee to die, but they sell pure caffeine (for research) and even seemingly small amounts of that will kill a person.
You can buy 200mg pure anhydrous caffeine pills at Walmart for like $5. It’s abundant and as safe as coffee if you don’t go nuts. The max daily recommended dose is 400mg, anything past that could cause harm
What I had in mind is more like this 25kg bucket. That’s enough to kill about 2,000 people, which is actually a lot fewer people than I would have guessed before I looked up the LD50.
I’ve never actually seen caffeine in a bucket myself, but I worked in a lab once that had a big plastic jar of it.
Isn’t the LD 50 just over a gram?
What I read was that it’s about 200mg per kg, so for a 70kg human that works out to 14 grams. That actually sounds remarkably high (14 grams is a lot). Did I mess up somewhere?
I didn’t bother to look it up, that was just my random vague understanding. I’d trust your numbers over mine.
