Screw smartphones and social media, I want to see a medieval peasant react to a combine harvester
Screw smartphones and social media, I want to see a medieval peasant react to a combine harvester
"so now that this has been automated I probably only have to work one or two hours per day right?"
[T]he power of each [Roman water mill's] wheel did not exceed that of a 250 cc motorcycle. This mordant observation highlights how technologically uncivilized we ourselves are, in destroying the environment by wasting on a few motorcycles enough energy to produce food for a whole town. But after all is said and done, our current system, based on the exploitation of nonrenewable energy sources, will last but a moment on a historical scale.
-Lucio Russo, The Forgotten Revolution
I think this is a fascinating point. You can map out the explosion in growth in the production of commodities under capitalism against the exploitation of non-renewable resources, and those two lines will move in lockstep. Essentially, all the amazing growth and human development due to capitalism was “purchased” by mortgaging the future. There isn’t anything “magical” about capitalism, it’s secret is that it just utilizes the ability to exploit resources that at best are never replenishing and at worst will kill the planet. I suppose a counter would be that those resources need to be exploited in order to develop technologies that allow humanity to have an advanced, developed future that can provide for everyone while being in harmony with nature. And I think that’s true, except that socialism is the only way to get there.
"what do you mean you work more than an english peasant? We already think that they work too much"
I think the thing they'd be more surprised of in this picture is the crop itself. A perfectly uniform monoculture with massive heads of grain, free from any weeds but with no signs of any humans moving through the crop.
Immediately reminded of a 1965 interview with a 107-year-old Irish farmer (allegedly, but certainly born in the 1800s at least) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daIMIv8perM
fie! a greate beaste doth devour thy fields! we must haste to slay it before its devilish task is done
beanis
beanís
béanis
beañis
i commented this in the wrong post
fuck it im leaving it
It's bothering me more than it should that the operator missed a tiny bit there between them and the truck.
They didn't, but it's a bit of an optical illusion, because the reel doesn't extend quite to the end of the combine header. You can see the point of the header around the grain cart, there's no strip missing behind them, and it's being steered by GPS.
GPS drift does cause little single row strips sometimes and they do look awful, because they usually get left until the next growing season.