kravietz 🦇 @kravietz@social.privacytools.io

@vtag

Хотел бы ошибаться, но если видос Навального про дворец набирает 80 млн просмотров, а грамотный видос Волкова про экономические санкции жалькие 6 тыс это показывает что всё опять сводиться в итоге в культу личности

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuZYRM_oTa0

Let's not forget about #Belarus Prosecution in Minsk just requested that journalists Katerina Andreeva and Darya Chulcova are jailed for two years for... live streaming of street protests from a 14-th floor flat.

https://www.currenttime.tv/a/belsat-journalists-2-years-prison-for-stream/31107333.html

@isagalaev @ScumbagDog

Same here. And we might also have the same shared experience historically of an *actual* "socialist" economy 😂

@ScumbagDog @isagalaev

What is happening in Texas is an excellent example of ideological dogmatism in action - everyone else is joining their grid to trade energy and increase resilience, Texas closed themselves and pretended they are self-sufficient. That's the very opposite of pragmatism, which is usually the strongest side of capitalist economies.

@ScumbagDog @isagalaev

"Capitalism" isn't a single closed political system (as opposed to Marxism for example). Sweden, USA, Russia and China are all capitalist, yet totally different.

https://write.as/arcadian/pragmatism-and-dogmatism-in-economy-capitalism-versus-socialism

The reason why I'm talking about it all the time is that if we can't get semantics right, then we can't diagnose problems, and then our solutions (aka "get rid of capitalism") will be ineffective.

@wolf480pl @cjd

Ok now this makes sense. I guess it's mostly because even if *we* don't personally care about the "C" genes, the plant does. So while we for example we want the A1 to give us more sweet taste, we still assume the plant will have stem, green leaves and all that stuff coded by these "C" genes. So we just want to change the A part but leave C largely untouched - which is not possible with mutation breeding but possible with CRISPR.

@wolf480pl @cjd

Yes, precisely - this is why selection breeding works at all, as in Mendel experiments. Trait is an observable characteristic resulting from expression of a specific gene - so I guess you could just as well say A1,A2 are the genes you're interested in and C* are all others. B could be genes that express in some alkaloid that gives the plant bitter taste (or worse).

@wolf480pl @cjd

What do you mean by "any permutation works equally well"?

@wolf480pl @cjd

So here comes the concept of permaculture - which is not about leaving your wheat to mix with weeds (because you no longer have wheat), but about mixing sections of various plants in a clever way that helps both plants, and the wildlife and pollinators etc. But nothing prevents you from growing GMO plants in permaculture either.

@wolf480pl @cjd

But why would you want them to become diverse - this could only lead to them *losing* the traits you want? Once you got a variety you want, you just stick to it and breed the hell of it.

Monoculture is a separate problem - it certainly bad for environment if you cut 100 km2 of forest and plant only soya or wheat there. But it's just as harmful if you plant organic, Bt or whatever else variety, as long as it's single plant.

@wolf480pl @cjd

Natural selection is probably the most stringent functional testing you can imagine for a copy of DNA build.

Generally genetics is extremely interesting and inspiring topic - on one hand you have very effective error recovery and redundance in DNA, at the same time you have purposeful DNA recombination of inherited genetic material to ensure resilience against *future* change of external conditions.

How this even works never stops amazing me...

@wolf480pl @cjd

They are just normal seeds that you can grow, collect news seeds, plant again and use selection breeding to modify them further.

There was a significant amount of shitstorm after Monsanto came up with an idea of making their plants infertile, and then Greenpeace simultaneously complained that Monsanto is preventing farmers from growing their seeds *and* that fertile plants will "contaminate nature".

All that is now in the past:

https://agfax.com/2014/12/03/arkansas-look-ma-no-tech-fees-round-up-ready-soybean-variety-released/

@wolf480pl @cjd

Basically, if we resorted to programming analogies which everyone understands here - you have a program with a bug and you try these approaches:

* you shuffle the program code randomly, compile and test millions of times until the bug is fixed - this is mutation breeding

* you sit back and wait for a random bit flip in the code to bring you closer to the bugfix - this is selection breeding

* you debug program, find the bug and fix it using vim - this is CRISPR

@wolf480pl @cjd

In CRISPR ("GMO") you know precisely which gene does what and you just modify those genes you need, for example to change color or sugar content or whatever. You don't touch other genes because you don't need to.

Also CRISPR is not the same thing as "cloning".

@wolf480pl @cjd

Both selection and mutation breeding are based on random mutations - some factor, like radiation, randomly breaks DNA in seed in hundreds of places, and one of them results in a mutation you like. You have no idea what the other changes did to the plan though.

This is how most modern varieties of cannabis are made by the way.