[–] 0 points 9 months ago (4 children)

I live and grew up in an extremely popular biking area, not once have a seen a cyclist obey traffic lights or stop signs, literally not a single time in my 35 years. I’ve seen a cyclist slam directly into a woman and her dog though because he didn’t stop at a stop sign.

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  • [–] 7 points 10 months ago

    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.

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  • [–] 25 points 10 months ago (6 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 6 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    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.

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