Reading archive 2025-07-29

The Belated Voices Against The U.S.-Israeli Genocide of The Palestinians: Why did the onset of famine, and not any of the previous 21 months of collective slaughter, not compel them to speak out? [ed. note: this is a joke. The Democratic Party has no power to stop anything that is happening anywhere, never mind Gaza. What has happened in the past six months is proof of the effort the Biden administration put into keeping Bibi under control.]

5 common tomato problems and how to solve them: Expert advice on keeping summer tomato drama to a minimum

Does your city have too much of one kind of tree? That can be a problem.

The U.S. military is investing in this Pacific island. So is China.: New U.S. radar sites are designed to keep China in check. But Chinese developments, some with questionable connections, could create vulnerabilities. - "Analysts say it’s unclear what approach the Trump administration will take to the Pacific. The U.S. DOGE Service canceled the final months of a contract for some U.S. security assistance in Palau."

The guerrilla campaign to save a Texas prairie from ‘silent extinction’: “This is a war between us and the developers, and nobody’s calling uncle or throwing up white flags.”

The Fescue Fighters: A toxic grass that threatens a quarter of U.S. cows is spreading. Can it be stopped? - "Between the cells in fescue grows an endophyte, a fungus living symbiotically inside the grass. The endophyte is what makes the fescue robust against drought and overgrazing, but it’s also what makes it toxic. When scientists engineered a version of fescue without the fungal endophyte, in 1982, its hardiness disappeared and ranchers saw it die out among their winter pastures. Farmers learned to live with the health impacts of the toxic version, and today it remains the primary pasture grass across 37 million acres of farmland.

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"And Patrick D. Keyser, the center’s director, says native grasses significantly outperform fescue in climate resiliency. Fescue, he says, wants it to be 73 degrees and rainy every other day. 'Think Oregon or Scotland,' he said. Native warm-season grasses in the fescue belt, on the other hand, can go weeks with blistering heat and drought without a problem. 'To them, the worst climate projections that we’re getting really aren’t a big deal. From a resiliency standpoint, they absolutely win.'

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"Saving money matters in the fescue belt. According to U.S. Department of Agriculture data, 60 percent of farms in Texas County, Missouri, run a deficit, and every state in the fescue belt loses money on agriculture, except for Illinois, which is largely a crop state."