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Cake day: September 30th, 2025

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  • I mean, everything in life requires cooperation, but that’s not the point. Rice took twice as many labor hours as wheat and required more irrigation. According to Shenshi Nongshu, “if one is short of labor, it is best to grow wheat”. Also studies have shown that in China people in historically rice farming areas behave more collectively than those in wheat regions. Not all grasses behave the same way and need the same things, especially with how much we’ve bred them to our needs.


  • There’s an interesting hypothesis called the Rice Hypothesis that theorizes that the different styles of farming rice vs wheat shaped our societies in ways that are still prevalent today. Farming rice led to strong collectivism in society, while farming wheat led to strong individualism in society. Perhaps this is what has led to our differences in ideologies and governing systems.



  • For some more info on it, the purple you see is from pigments called anthocyanins (the same stuff that makes blueberries blue!). They’ve shown to have antioxidant properties in vitro. In plants they can act similar to melanin, acting as a solar protectant as you can see in OPs photo, basically it’s the plant “tanning”. Pretty cool stuff! Theres tons more to learn about anthocyanins but I’ll leave that up to you to discover.





  • I believe that is what helped lead them to take down their government; that there was more homeless and poor. There are a lot of people (maybe a majority) in this country that haven’t seen the effects enough in their own lives for them to give a shit. Enough people still have jobs, food, and a home so aren’t feeling enough pressure to act. Contentment, complacency, and apathy for others are counteractive to revolution, and we still have much of those in the US.