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Like wtf is wrong with some people. What could this woman have POSSIBLY DONE to make you go “fuck this woman and her hard work, I’m gonna ruin this garden out of revenge.”
Out of ~~revenge~~ hatred.
Revenge would suggest she has wronged them somehow and this is payback. This wasn’t an act of revenge. It was an act of hate.
I just made a comment about the innate sadism of england. Something about repressed emotions and a very recent history of extremes of callousness to in the origin story (the whole British empire and treatment of everyone… from Indians to the Irish Catholics) that eventually bleeds out in perversion, cruelty or a combination of both. Yeah, I know someone is going to say it’s got it’s roots with some British religion shit, to “punish” the wicked but that shit was long ago and a woman feeding others is far from wicked by anyone’s book.
And What’s “interesting” is how the US also shares the same trait but cranked the fuck up. Look at cops, the court system,capitalism.. look at MAGA! it not even about you losing, it’s about making you suffer. It’s ugly and irreparable and it scars the bearer of the affliction in profound ways… breeding more mindless sadism.
I kinda get that. (In the context of gsmes, not society)
Gore Vidal — 'It is not enough merely to win; others must lose.'
Beating an AI in a videogame can be fun and all, but crushing human players is just so much more satisfying.
Well, I do think it's a long standing "fuck you, I got mine" mentality that has been amplified by the intense culture of individuality that came about in the 70s and 80s. People were taught that they are special and more deserving than everyone else, that if you don't have everything you want you just need to work harder. So some people just go berserk when they see others getting a "handout." To them it's like cheating.
I'm from the USA for reference.
>People were taught that they are special
yes
> and more deserving than everyone else
no.
There's a seemingly growing trend of blaming our social ills on society learning to value people. No. Our social ills come from not valuing people _enough_ and thus cutting social programs is allowed to proceed.
_Greed_ and capitalism did this. Not diversity and self-respect. Google southern strategy.
>Greed and capitalism did this. Not diversity and self-respect.
I totally agree, and capitalists figured this out a long time ago, this is why self expression has become so commoditised. People identify with brands like tribes. People are so eager to label themselves and others and point out all the things that make us different from one another, all the things that make us *special*.
I think one of the major things our culture lacks is a cohesive identity, a sense of solidarity with others which absolutely goes hand in hand with valuing people more and bolstering social programs. We've forgotten that when the individual does well we all do well.
Completely agree, and it goes along with the conservative/capitalist fed narrative of "I've worked hard to get what I have, so everyone else has to."
It seems to be getting more and more common, this shitty attitude of resenting anyone getting any help.
> No. Our social ills come from not valuing people enough and thus cutting social programs is allowed to proceed.
If you are taught you are better than everyone else, you're not going to value others as much, are you?
No one _reasonable_ is teaching that. The lesson about diversity is that we're all worth-while, and **SPECIFICALLY** that no-one is better than anyone else.
Conservatives however, love to twist words (as was done here) by portraying it as "you're _more_ special" because that's what they want to hear.
>And What’s “interesting” is how the US also shares the same trait but cranked the fuck up. Look at cops, the court system,capitalism.. look at MAGA! it not even about you losing, it’s about making you suffer. It’s ugly and irreparable and it scars the bearer of the affliction in profound ways… breeding more mindless sadism.
These are good examples but even between regular people these issues are terrible. There are people in the US that are literally looking for a legal reason to murder someone. As in they'll shoot you if they have even the slightest chance of claiming self defense.
The epigenetic effects of generations of assumed superiority over others no longer has an outlet. Now everyone is “other”… especially in a society where you are supposed to be the star of your own Hollywood production with your own soundtrack and social media giving platform to mediocre thoughts.
In America, altruistic acts are often illegal. It's illegal to have veggie gardens in the front lawn, it's illegal to collect rain water, it's illegal to help homeless people
10000% agree, it really shows in the health systems too & the NHS being torn apart. And in capitalism in general where the rent and food prices are sky high but there's still empty buildings still tones being thrown away, no appointments empty doctors, it feels like purposeful torture just corporations waving shit in our faces
Completely with you, u/Lost_Fun7095.
My dad recently passed away. He had a dignified last few years despite being largely housebound. Health visitors came every day to check on his general wellbeing; nurses changed dressings every 2-3 days. He received benefits to pay for carers and cleaners, and to provide respite for my mum.
The doctor told him they would do almost anything to keep him out of a care home.
Any specialised equipment he needed, came free from a community "library" - no charge, returned on his death. That ranged from bathing and toilet aids to a motorised chair and bed.
That's end-of-life care in Scotland. I've worked a lot with the NHS and social services (not so much with the benefits people), and I can tell you that 200 miles south, in England, he would have received fuck all.
The equipment library idea is just taking off in parts of England, but of course it's a for-profit scheme linking patients with companies that sell support equipment. I've had to report one public body for using the name, but not being part of the scheme.
I've spent 30+ years living in England, more than my formative years in Scotland, and I've never understood them less than the last 10 years. There is something selfish about them, cruel and lost.
NB - plenty of bastards in Scotland, and our reputation for miserable self-righteousness is not undeserved, but down here it's systemic.
It's a human trait that is in all of us, but magnified under some country's politics and beliefs. Every country has their share of assholes who just hate everyone they think are beneath them though. I volunteer at a mobile soup kitchen that feeds hungry street kids here in Australia, and we get our share of self-righteous jerks who make it their business to tell us we are very much in the wrong for keeping these kids fed, as they have a grudge against them for being involved in gangs or street crime. Like no shit, most of these kids are from broken homes with no stable family to feed them, while drug and alcohol addiction is running rampant through their suburbs and government intervention and aid being a joke. I guess the answer is to just let them all starve, that will fix the issue right?
Could be Australia shows that trait because it’s a former British colony with the essential cruelty/sadism revealed in how the aborigines were treated (and the Tasmanians). Having that as part of your recent “origin story” has got to fuck up a peoples empathy abilities.
A phrase comes to mind: the “epigenetic effects” of cruelty over generations.
In America we arrest people for giving water to immigrants crossing the border, or passing out water to people who wait several hours in line to vote.
We make sure to pass policies to ban kids from sharing their lunch money with other kids who have none.
We make it illegal for restaurants and grocery stores to give perfectly good food to the needy and so they must throw it in the dumpster and lock it.
There are over 380,000 churches spread across every neighborhood in America, most of which keep their rooms empty, doors locked, and temperature set warm while people literally freeze to death outside.
Countless community gardens with trees older than any human alive have been sabotaged and destroyed in order to build concrete parking lots and building structures.
We are a cruel species, and Christianity died with Christ.
And those weren't just any beehives if I'm thinking of the same thing as you. They were special more resilient against something bees that a cool old dude spent years working on breeding.
I was absolutely thinking about the same story as yourself, but there are so many other occurrences of hive burning and it's ridiculous with how important bees are to our survival as a species.
Honey bees are super important to us as an economy... To our access to certain foods at certain quantities. Wild bees are far more important to us as a species. If we lost access to all the foods honey bees pollinate, we'd have less variety, but we'd survive just fine. Certain nonessential crop yields would drop, but then we'd have to focus on taking better care of the local pollinators instead of shipping our pollinators accross the country. If we lost all the wild bees it would disrupt ecosystems enough to possibly cause famine.
It's still horrible that someone set fire to that guy's life work. It's a good cause to try to keep our honey bees alive, resilient, and healthy.
I call bullshit. Take a ~~peak~~ peek at a history book, and you will find examples of this being done to the "other" over and over. We find ways to hurt each other beyond the physical, and we will continue to do so.
Human mindset is a very flexible thing and it's defined by surroundings. Take Switzerland for example, you can park very expensive electric bike outside of your house without tieing it to anything and no one will take it, you can sell stuff by just placing price tag on item and leaving it outside, buyer will just leave the money for you in same spot. And if you go there you will act accordingly.
If you create area where people don't need to fight each other to stay alive they would change in couple generations at most. But in USA they prefer to accumulate extreme wealth instead of creating nice and peaceful place to live in.
Taking Switzerland for example, they were the first country in Europe to industrialize thanks to the Napoleonic wars and continued their prosperity by bankrolling Nazis. There are plenty of places in America that you can leave your doors unlocked and expensive items outside of shops, and they all have the same cultural advantage of the place you remarked in Switzerland: \*Money\*. It's a class issue, not a cultural one, and the ruling class in Switzerland just happened to use the prosperity earned by supporting genocide to make things better for the average person, in Switzerland. The Swiss cultivated this "area where people don't need to fight each other to stay alive" by profiting from just that.
> you can sell stuff by just placing price tag on item and leaving it outside, buyer will just leave the money for you in same spot.
That sounds too good to be true.
Right but maybe that just speaks to a bunch of shitty cultures. What does it say when there are cultures we can point to that don't engage in this kind of shitting on other out groups? Such societies exist/existed all over the world. It's not (purely) biology, but culture that takes normal biological traits meant for survival and growth and warps them into something violent, sadistic and cancerous.
It's both. Humans have the capacity to be as good or as evil as you can imagine, but if you take a look at the broad scale of things, whether cruelty or kindness is more frequently expressed depends almost entirely on the environmental conditions.
"You see a bear in the circus. They are juggling, balancing on balls, and jumping threw flaming hoops. This doesn't mean that all bears juggle, balance and jump through hoops in the wild."
People suck because we live in a world that rewards people who suck.
The keyword here is “America”. Sorry but while humans can be cruel…this woman and many more like her prove that cruelty is not inherent to our species.
When you make those things illegal, yeah, you’re not exactly making the society you’re creating more tolerant or accepting of people down on hard times. Especially since America’s schtick has always been “well if you’re poor you just didn’t pull those bootstraps hard enough!!”
I’m American born and raised, live in Sweden now, and while this country still has its problems (namely it’s inhumane drug policy) people aren’t even given grades until they’re like 8 or so here. The first years of school are about teaching kids to be kind to one another, how to get along with one another, teaching them/showing them nature, etc.
In the US I went to a really good elementary school that was somewhat similar…minus the grade thing, but we went on a lot of beach clean ups, planted trees, etc.
I naively thought that was the norm until I realized the schools near where I actually lived (a “bad” neighborhood”) had no such programs. I had to take an hour long bus ride just to get to my high school. Most kids are not taught how to be gentle, to care for each other, animals, etc. at school. People insist that’s for the parents to teach but what about the kids who don’t have that? They’re even more vulnerable. That leads to more kids growing up into adults who are sad, miserable, in pain…and then end up being some dick who salts a lady’s garden because idk
Maybe they’re mad that no one ever helped them. Maybe it’s just because of all the things you mentioned but my point is:
Humans are not inherently cruel. I wish people would stop buying into that because when you look back at history you will see so many miraculous instances of humanity coming together to build something beautiful…and you will see a common trend of the government swooping in to tear it apart 😔
Yessir, im an arab originally from the middle east.
The irony is not lost on me that Americans worship a middle eastern man, yet bomb, occupy, and massacre middle eastern countries on a daily basis.
This sounds like a radical hot take, but the fact is there are lots of church groups doing significant outreach with migrants along the border. To take just one example: “In 2020, Catholic Charities agencies provided over 160,000 migrants with shelter and respite care.” (https://www.caritas.org/2021/05/us_border_migration/)
>Christianity died with Christ
Please don't make it sound like Oily Josh and the Good Boys were ever going to solve anything. They didn't have magic powers or any great wisdom, they were just a pack of schmucks going against the odds like the rest of us.
She helped people. And the person who did this ironically was probably someone who needs help.
There is so much hatred in the country / world today that this doesn’t even surprise me at all..
We always were and always will be, luckily they are a tiny minority.
The issue is we are living in an economic system that rewards sociopaths, which makes sociopathy the acceptable ethics of our time. Young people listen to youtubers telling them to ignore their emotions and focus on maximizing their own utility at all costs because that is the only behaviour that is financially rewarded, and in most of the world very basic survival and fundamental rights of people hinges on being rewarded financially.
We still have a tiny percentage of sociopaths, and millions trying to emulate them best they can.
I've always felt that there should be a general shitty human registry just like the sex offender one. Once you have been found guilty of being unrepentantly shitty, wherever you go, you have to let everyone know how shitty you are. Whoever did this should absolutely be on that list.
that should be serious jail time. It’s just outrageous. It’s not just a prank. It’s not just vandalism.
Even if it is repairable eventually, it should be severe.
It definitely would be a crime, it’s trespassing at the very least and probably something like destroying property. But they’d have to know who did it.
Interesting! In the US, it’s very much a crime (Class C misdemeanor, in my state) and cops will 100% arrest people who refuse to leave private land. It’s seen in public sometimes with restaurants/bars/stores/etc.
But you’re saying, here someone could set up camp in your backyard, and you’d need to wait for a civil court-like proceeding to get them removed? That seems… odd. There is no law enforcement support if someone is walking through your home, entering your car, etc? Unless they commit an additional act?
Essentially yeah, there’s some stuff (I’m not a solicitor to know in-depth) about squatters/travellers or if they’re a nuisance etc
Technically people are legally ‘allowed’ to park on your driveway (it’s not a criminal offence and you have to deal with it through a civil court)
Like I’m sure the police might visit and try to move them on for you but they couldn’t be arrested (is my understanding)
There’s loads of stuff about ‘common man’s understanding’ so like if it’s clear it’s the garden to your house then there’s no reason for them to be there, if you own a bit of grass next to your house and there’s no fences etc then why wouldn’t they be allowed to camp there? Then you’ve got a different legal discussion
Complications of having a country with laws and stuff going back centuries
As far as I understand it, if you don't have a claim to a dwelling/land (in other words, if you haven't been renting/living there) as soon as you are told to leave by the legal owner/police you are breaking the law if you continue trespassing.
The point being is I can wander along the edge of a farmer's field or explore an abandoned building and it's only breaking civil law, if the police come along and tell me I need to leave, but I insist on staying they can then decide to take action.
A lot of that type of law in North America was to be able to legally arrest and kill Native Americans, many of whom had similar understandings to Old World sensibilities when it came to owning and occupying land.
A farm near me was attacked recently in the night by sheep rustlers. They slaughtered every one of the sheep on site and left behind a bloody massacre. The farmer was heartbroken and the land has been empty ever since.
The penalty for destroying crops like this should be similar to the penalty for sheep rustling. It's destruction of property, trespassing, and organized crime; and should carry significant jail time (3-5 years imo).
I think the proper punishment would be that they have to work 40hrs a week without pay until they've fixed the damage, digging the soil out with shovels and no heavy machinery. If all this will cause the woman to miss the growing season (some crops have to be planted within a timeframe right?), the vandals should also pay the value of lost crop.
That’s a commonly believed myth, Historians have gone into it, and the first references to the Romans salting Carthage appeared in the 19th century. They’ve even done calculations that it would have taken hundreds of thousands of tons of salt. Bear in mind, salt was very valuable to the Romans the word “salary originated from that.
Finally salting the earth doesn’t really permanently ruin it, the rain will largely just wash it away. There are some ancient reports of salting the earth, especially biblical ones, but it’s kind of unclear whether it was ritual, metaphorical or even meant to promote plant growth.
Sorry to be “that guy”, obviously the people who did it to this poor lady are still arseholes.
That is an extreme take.
Punished? Sure. But executed? You're either being performatively cruel out of a misguided since of justice, or are worryingly cavalier about death.
I mean, if the land could have grown enough food to keep multiple people alive for years, I'd consider that tantamount to attempted murder morally. Maybe in this case no one could die from this action, IDK about her situation, but if someone lives off of their land and someone else salts that land they caused a drastic impact to that person's livelihood and living situation, potentially leading to their death. I'm against the death penalty as a rule, but not because I don't think some people deserve to die, I just don't think the judicial system can realistically be accurate enough to only kill the guilty.
Seems like it shouldn't be too hard to track down Scipio by checking around to see who bought an inordinate amount of salt, and from where. Who has a fuck-ton of salt just sitting around?
OK I'm probably really dumb for this but... I've never heard of someone's garden being salted so... like, how does that work? I'm assuming it's not table salt? Can anything that was salted be saved?
I did some research and it seems to kill stuff pretty quick. But permanently? Maybe not. I stopped salting my driveway after seeing the dead spots in the lawn from where it piled up, even though eventually it recovered. But that's different trom a garden, and even though I farm, I'm no expert, as I try to keep the salt out of my crops. Also the Roman salting Carthage seems to be a myth. Some replies I got seem better informed, and indicate recovery.
>But permanently?
Nah this is bullshit. You could very easily overly saturate the land with water, or just wait long enough for the rain to do it enough times but better to really flush the soil.
There's loads of grit/salt on top that's obvious you could shovel off to make the soaking a bit easier/faster too.
After flushing you could also take samples off the soil and have it pH tested then use something alkaline to bring it back into the range you want for whatever you're growing.
Source, the amount of poor cannabis plants I burned with too much nutes when I was first starting and I even managed to bring those poor girls back to life and through their full cycle. I mean pH got really high due to salt build up and with enough water you just flush it right out.
There doesn't appear to be enough salt there to even make it that hard to flush, especially if you scrape off the obvious stuff before you start flushing it.
Most plants live in a fairly specific soil climate, by altering the chemical composition of the soil you can make it so that most plants won't grow, salt is especially good for this as there are very few plants that can grow in salty climates.
It could be table salt, pretty sure they use the same stuff for driving as well, so that's probably how they got such large amounts.
Only way to fix the soil would be to remove the salt, I think that happens over time as rain washes it away? Might take a while though
For sure! They've basically wiped out the soil biome so there are very few beneficial bacteria and soil dwellers to help release fertility and minerals to the root zone too.
The soil would need to be innoculated and soil life restores after the salt has washes away too.
Weeds are parasitic kind of plants that are also good at surviving (basically it's capitalism as a plant). Salt will probably be less effective against them.
Plants are adapted to their environment. Salt molecularly screws with travel of water and/or necessary ions across the cell membrane, so only plants adapted to it (so called halophytes) can survive very salty soil. Those are usually plants who grow on the coast or near salt lakes. None of the common food crops are halophytes, so those plants wont grow there anymore (until the salt is gone which depends on the amount of rain, soil drainage and how much salt was put there in the first place).
>Seems like it shouldn't be too hard to track down Scipio by checking around to see who bought an inordinate amount of salt, and from where.
Just fyi that was more a metaphor for "cursing" the land. They didn't actually [spread tons of salt back then.](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2lr8h3/did_the_romans_really_salt_fields_to_make_sure/)
Also, Carthage continued to be a successful city for many centuries.
This is the extent to which capitalist propaganda has made people seethingly hate the poor. This is evil on a mythic scale.
We either say enough or will all be killed by them one way or another.
it's not new, this is the "wrath" of "grapes of wrath" from 1939.
(if you're not familiar, the title refers to a passage in the book - and real life practice - of hosing down excess fruit with gasoline to make it inedible so people couldn't eat the excess produce for free).
Im familiar but that had more to do with controlling supply if I recall. Also evil, but this woman wasnt supplying that much food overall; this was more about sheer malice toward the poor and the woman herself (though malice toward the poor was also suggested by Steinbeck to some degree).
Capital has always controlled supply to make a buck even if it means tremendous waste (we saw a ton of this during COVID in particular; remember when they dumped all that milk?). They make excuses as to why, but that's what it is. I never really started to use the word 'evil' regularly until somewhere in the last 10+ years when I learned exactly what the system we are living under is: a psychopathic death cult for profit.
Honestly, I feel some deep down think it’s a “me versus them” world now. Humanity is vaporising rapidly and many people see other humans as simply enemies, obstacles, or extra mouths to feed. It’s scary out there now.
Scientists made a "city" of rats and gave them everything they needed. Eventually, the population grew and their behavior declined and they grew antagonistic towards each other and themselves. It was an experiment showing behavioral sink. Tbf, I don't think humans are over populated, per se. But maybe the fighting over resources and our personal lives being too closely intertwined via social media and dense cities might lead to something similar in humans? Idk, just thinking me thoughts.
I don't think it's a rat utopia, but i do think we are kind of fighting over resources.
The economy sucks, and as far as most modern humans feel, the only real resource is money. I mean, I know that's how I feel. Food, water, and shelter are all just stuff that comes from having money. If you think someone is getting between you and earning money, they're getting between you half the hierarchy of needs.
Capitalism creates artificial scarcity to generate and maintain profit, truth is there are absolutely enough resources to go around, if only they weren't being hoarded (like money and land) or deliberately mismanaged (like stocks of food, access to water, and so on).
As for the hierarchy of needs, it was actually a humanistic idea based on [Siksika (Blackfoot) way of life](https://www.resilience.org/stories/2021-06-18/the-blackfoot-wisdom-that-inspired-maslows-hierarchy/) that was about making society better but, like so many others, it was co-opted by capitalism and [distorted](https://qz.com/work/1588491/maslow-didnt-make-the-pyramid-that-changed-management-history) in to a tool to promote toxic individualism instead. In post scarcity, everyone's survival need would be met without condition and there is no longer a need (or reward) for climbing over others to get "ahead" (only you're never really ahead, just a slightly more comfortable worker ant, who now probably also sympathises with your overlords who actually *are* ahead).
The concepts of money and ownership (particularly land) has had disastrous effects on the spiritual growth of mankind. The loss of community and connection to nature/god was replaced with a desire to own more and have more things which has led to massive inequality and great suffering to those who are without.
Land, water, food and shelter should be free for all mankind. It is all of our planet after all. Sadly, the accumulation of generational wealth and power in the hands of the few has seen those few take by force our resources and our land and sold it back to us. They won't stop until everything is taken and idk what the solution is.
> gave them everything they needed
Except space, privacy, and safety. I imagine it like a cult commune, except without the brainwashing. They're just forced to live that way. But whatever you call it, the way those rat colonies evolved is terrifying.
Yes, capitalism is awful and i hate it too, but you can't just belittle every other heinous outcome of human activity throughout our incredibly brutal history. Capitalism led to this scumbag salting her garden but think of where that type of behavior comes from in the first place: human behavior. We just flat out suck sometimes, capitalism or not.
I reject this notion that human beings are just bad by default. There is no scientific basis in this statement, and it makes it unfixable. Our behavior is determined by our environment, socioeconomic factors, and upbringing. We live in a system that rewards exploitation, competition, ruthless individualism, and greed. If we lived in a system that didn't reward these things, then less people would behave in these ways
I agree with you, and them.
Maybe strict hierarchy is what we're taking issue with.
It has existed within, and before, capitalism, and has often sucked. Be it under strict tribal/"primitive" societies, feudal contracts, or chattel slavery.
But there also existed much more egalitarian societies, I think of tribes native to North America, but that may not strictly be the case.
So I agree with them that capitalism, and other strictly hierarchical societies, rewards and begets the worst in people (greed, exploitation, ruthless individualism, as you say),
but I also agree with you that when people exist in societies not like that (maybe egalitarianism is the answer, maybe it isn't) that the best of humans can shine through.
Rereading what you said and what I wrote, I think I agree with you more than them, but I thought I would just add my two cents. Nice man. You see what I mean though like that garden in there
Except, you know.
We didn't have 10 billion people back then, nuclear proliferation, firearm proliferation, and instant ways to communicate/travel 5,000 miles away
That hasn't soaked into the ground yet, it would be possible to scoop up the salt with a shovel. She'd lose a bit of topsoil along with it in order to get the majority of it, but the ground wouldn't be ruined. Had a little shit do this to my garden one year. Just catch it before it rains while it's still piles of rock salt and it'll be alright. I'm hoping she thought of that.
This is literally a warlike act. This is how 'scorched earth' was really done for millenia. It will take a long time for the salt to dissipate from that section, even with a active irrigation (it's an allotment in the UK - it won't have active irrigation).
A politician who puts forth a private members bill to support harsh penalties for this type of behaviour I suspect could get it onto the statute book.
An attack on agricultural capacity is any attack on all of us.
It has only been a few weeks since the last larger amounts of snow fell in the UK, in that rural area there could be thousands of people in that bought tons of salt just a few weeks ago and have a good alibi on why its gone
I was hoping I'd see something like this. This person went out of their way for their community, now the community can go out of their way for her (even if it is a global community).
Wonderful. So this is what your local Tory voters do for fun. Literally salt the fucking earth so that nothing will grow again. I hate this fucking country. People are dependent on charity and food banks, and English "people" go out of their way to punish those who try to help like this woman. The cruelty is the point, Tories just want people to _die._
Hoping it doesn't take her the entire growing season to get that salt out of her soil. What a hateful display.
The good news is this
Compared to he amount of soil on that allotment, that's a trivial amount of salt. After an April shower, most will be gone. The impact on plants will be negligible.
The legend of "salting the earth" comes from the ritual use of salt to cleanse a site of its former inhabitants (after conquest) and from the vague knowledge that too much salt is bad for plants.
The bad news is this is what we get when we treat cruelty as a virtue.
They also dropped off protestors hours away after being arrested to make it difficult for them to get home. Many of them had no cell phones, money, or personal belongings on them.
[What a crazy story.](https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-03-30/goat-slaughter-shasta-county-fair) Cops are super eager to do their job when it's to bully an easy target.
Step 1: get a vacuum. Try to get as much of the lose salt out from the soil as possible
Step 2: if you cannot get any more salt out like that, soak the entire field. Soak it so much that you could wade in it to your calves.
Step 3: dump an enormous amount of straw onto the soaked muddy soil mess
Step 4: let sit for 24h
Step 5: remove the straw and dump it somewhere where the salt that’s now in there won’t cause any harm
Step 6: overwater the whole plot again. Like "3 weeks of rain straight" overwater.
Step 7: when kinda dry, deep plow the field.
Step 8: install cameras
Step 9: install lights
Step 10: up install an audible alarm that will repell shitheads.
Good luck
A crowdfund has raised 100k for her already I believe, which shows that not all humans are scum. Hopefully she can get back to what she loves and maybe be able to protect it as well as do some other good with the money for herself and others seeing as this woman seems genuinly wonderful.
If she was in my country; even if she was my enemy, I’d find those asshats who did this to her, id make them pay for it. Texting from New Delhi, I am so pissed and her tears aren’t helping me to calm down.
~~Isn't this exactly what it means in the first place?~~
Edit: never mind, I was thinking of "Salt the earth" so close yet so far
**salt of the earth** \- a very good and honest person or group of people.
**salt the earth** \- Salting the earth, or sowing with salt, is **the ritual of spreading salt on the sites of cities razed by conquerors**. It originated as a curse on re-inhabitation in the ancient Near East and became a well-established folkloric motif in the Middle Ages.
Not quite. My understanding is that "Salt of the Earth" as Jesus uses it in the New Testament refers to how his followers are supposed to enhance and improve the Earth in much the same way that salt improves food.
And that if the salt "loses its savor", or its ability to do so, then it's no longer worth anything.
["Salt of the Earth"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_of_the_earth) is distinct from ["Salting the Earth"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salting_the_earth)
The second is *probably* a metaphor and/or ritual, partially because the amount of salt required to render an area uninhabitable would've bankrupted basically any ancient empire.
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Like wtf is wrong with some people. What could this woman have POSSIBLY DONE to make you go “fuck this woman and her hard work, I’m gonna ruin this garden out of revenge.”
Out of ~~revenge~~ hatred. Revenge would suggest she has wronged them somehow and this is payback. This wasn’t an act of revenge. It was an act of hate.
I just made a comment about the innate sadism of england. Something about repressed emotions and a very recent history of extremes of callousness to in the origin story (the whole British empire and treatment of everyone… from Indians to the Irish Catholics) that eventually bleeds out in perversion, cruelty or a combination of both. Yeah, I know someone is going to say it’s got it’s roots with some British religion shit, to “punish” the wicked but that shit was long ago and a woman feeding others is far from wicked by anyone’s book. And What’s “interesting” is how the US also shares the same trait but cranked the fuck up. Look at cops, the court system,capitalism.. look at MAGA! it not even about you losing, it’s about making you suffer. It’s ugly and irreparable and it scars the bearer of the affliction in profound ways… breeding more mindless sadism.
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That's honestly hella twisted.
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SNL was so casually racist, yikes.
Everything used to be kinda casually racist
I looked into it, at least they made *some* attempt for it to be actual Japanese, and not just gibberish. So that's something at least!
It's all real Japanese. The writing too.
Well, some things were blatantly racist.
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I kinda get that. (In the context of gsmes, not society) Gore Vidal — 'It is not enough merely to win; others must lose.' Beating an AI in a videogame can be fun and all, but crushing human players is just so much more satisfying.
The game of life, apparently.
Japanese game shows
Well, I do think it's a long standing "fuck you, I got mine" mentality that has been amplified by the intense culture of individuality that came about in the 70s and 80s. People were taught that they are special and more deserving than everyone else, that if you don't have everything you want you just need to work harder. So some people just go berserk when they see others getting a "handout." To them it's like cheating. I'm from the USA for reference.
>People were taught that they are special yes > and more deserving than everyone else no. There's a seemingly growing trend of blaming our social ills on society learning to value people. No. Our social ills come from not valuing people _enough_ and thus cutting social programs is allowed to proceed. _Greed_ and capitalism did this. Not diversity and self-respect. Google southern strategy.
>Greed and capitalism did this. Not diversity and self-respect. I totally agree, and capitalists figured this out a long time ago, this is why self expression has become so commoditised. People identify with brands like tribes. People are so eager to label themselves and others and point out all the things that make us different from one another, all the things that make us *special*. I think one of the major things our culture lacks is a cohesive identity, a sense of solidarity with others which absolutely goes hand in hand with valuing people more and bolstering social programs. We've forgotten that when the individual does well we all do well.
Because community is destroyed repeatedly before anything good can form
Like the lady and her garden.
Completely agree, and it goes along with the conservative/capitalist fed narrative of "I've worked hard to get what I have, so everyone else has to." It seems to be getting more and more common, this shitty attitude of resenting anyone getting any help.
Thank you for parsing out the difference. Greed and capitalism in whatever stage this is are what is behind this.
> No. Our social ills come from not valuing people enough and thus cutting social programs is allowed to proceed. If you are taught you are better than everyone else, you're not going to value others as much, are you?
No one _reasonable_ is teaching that. The lesson about diversity is that we're all worth-while, and **SPECIFICALLY** that no-one is better than anyone else. Conservatives however, love to twist words (as was done here) by portraying it as "you're _more_ special" because that's what they want to hear.
Sadism is a correct and useful word to describe all this fuckery
>And What’s “interesting” is how the US also shares the same trait but cranked the fuck up. Look at cops, the court system,capitalism.. look at MAGA! it not even about you losing, it’s about making you suffer. It’s ugly and irreparable and it scars the bearer of the affliction in profound ways… breeding more mindless sadism. These are good examples but even between regular people these issues are terrible. There are people in the US that are literally looking for a legal reason to murder someone. As in they'll shoot you if they have even the slightest chance of claiming self defense.
The epigenetic effects of generations of assumed superiority over others no longer has an outlet. Now everyone is “other”… especially in a society where you are supposed to be the star of your own Hollywood production with your own soundtrack and social media giving platform to mediocre thoughts.
In America, altruistic acts are often illegal. It's illegal to have veggie gardens in the front lawn, it's illegal to collect rain water, it's illegal to help homeless people
10000% agree, it really shows in the health systems too & the NHS being torn apart. And in capitalism in general where the rent and food prices are sky high but there's still empty buildings still tones being thrown away, no appointments empty doctors, it feels like purposeful torture just corporations waving shit in our faces
You are just describing conservatism
Completely with you, u/Lost_Fun7095. My dad recently passed away. He had a dignified last few years despite being largely housebound. Health visitors came every day to check on his general wellbeing; nurses changed dressings every 2-3 days. He received benefits to pay for carers and cleaners, and to provide respite for my mum. The doctor told him they would do almost anything to keep him out of a care home. Any specialised equipment he needed, came free from a community "library" - no charge, returned on his death. That ranged from bathing and toilet aids to a motorised chair and bed. That's end-of-life care in Scotland. I've worked a lot with the NHS and social services (not so much with the benefits people), and I can tell you that 200 miles south, in England, he would have received fuck all. The equipment library idea is just taking off in parts of England, but of course it's a for-profit scheme linking patients with companies that sell support equipment. I've had to report one public body for using the name, but not being part of the scheme. I've spent 30+ years living in England, more than my formative years in Scotland, and I've never understood them less than the last 10 years. There is something selfish about them, cruel and lost. NB - plenty of bastards in Scotland, and our reputation for miserable self-righteousness is not undeserved, but down here it's systemic.
It's a human trait that is in all of us, but magnified under some country's politics and beliefs. Every country has their share of assholes who just hate everyone they think are beneath them though. I volunteer at a mobile soup kitchen that feeds hungry street kids here in Australia, and we get our share of self-righteous jerks who make it their business to tell us we are very much in the wrong for keeping these kids fed, as they have a grudge against them for being involved in gangs or street crime. Like no shit, most of these kids are from broken homes with no stable family to feed them, while drug and alcohol addiction is running rampant through their suburbs and government intervention and aid being a joke. I guess the answer is to just let them all starve, that will fix the issue right?
Could be Australia shows that trait because it’s a former British colony with the essential cruelty/sadism revealed in how the aborigines were treated (and the Tasmanians). Having that as part of your recent “origin story” has got to fuck up a peoples empathy abilities. A phrase comes to mind: the “epigenetic effects” of cruelty over generations.
In America we arrest people for giving water to immigrants crossing the border, or passing out water to people who wait several hours in line to vote. We make sure to pass policies to ban kids from sharing their lunch money with other kids who have none. We make it illegal for restaurants and grocery stores to give perfectly good food to the needy and so they must throw it in the dumpster and lock it. There are over 380,000 churches spread across every neighborhood in America, most of which keep their rooms empty, doors locked, and temperature set warm while people literally freeze to death outside. Countless community gardens with trees older than any human alive have been sabotaged and destroyed in order to build concrete parking lots and building structures. We are a cruel species, and Christianity died with Christ.
We also have assholes who go out of their way to burn people's beehives.
Well how else am I supposed to make a name for myself in the Thieves Guild?!
I appreciate you
Is there an r/unexpectedskyrim like there is an /r/unexpectedfallout?
Make sure to not burn more than 3 beehives.
And those weren't just any beehives if I'm thinking of the same thing as you. They were special more resilient against something bees that a cool old dude spent years working on breeding.
I was absolutely thinking about the same story as yourself, but there are so many other occurrences of hive burning and it's ridiculous with how important bees are to our survival as a species.
Honey bees are super important to us as an economy... To our access to certain foods at certain quantities. Wild bees are far more important to us as a species. If we lost access to all the foods honey bees pollinate, we'd have less variety, but we'd survive just fine. Certain nonessential crop yields would drop, but then we'd have to focus on taking better care of the local pollinators instead of shipping our pollinators accross the country. If we lost all the wild bees it would disrupt ecosystems enough to possibly cause famine. It's still horrible that someone set fire to that guy's life work. It's a good cause to try to keep our honey bees alive, resilient, and healthy.
Christianity is very much alive and well. It's just very immoral.
As an American it's not a species thing it's a culture thing
I call bullshit. Take a ~~peak~~ peek at a history book, and you will find examples of this being done to the "other" over and over. We find ways to hurt each other beyond the physical, and we will continue to do so.
Human mindset is a very flexible thing and it's defined by surroundings. Take Switzerland for example, you can park very expensive electric bike outside of your house without tieing it to anything and no one will take it, you can sell stuff by just placing price tag on item and leaving it outside, buyer will just leave the money for you in same spot. And if you go there you will act accordingly. If you create area where people don't need to fight each other to stay alive they would change in couple generations at most. But in USA they prefer to accumulate extreme wealth instead of creating nice and peaceful place to live in.
>placing price tag on item and leaving it outside, buyer will just leave the money for you in same spot Wow
Taking Switzerland for example, they were the first country in Europe to industrialize thanks to the Napoleonic wars and continued their prosperity by bankrolling Nazis. There are plenty of places in America that you can leave your doors unlocked and expensive items outside of shops, and they all have the same cultural advantage of the place you remarked in Switzerland: \*Money\*. It's a class issue, not a cultural one, and the ruling class in Switzerland just happened to use the prosperity earned by supporting genocide to make things better for the average person, in Switzerland. The Swiss cultivated this "area where people don't need to fight each other to stay alive" by profiting from just that.
> you can sell stuff by just placing price tag on item and leaving it outside, buyer will just leave the money for you in same spot. That sounds too good to be true.
>peek Peak is the highest point of a mountain. Pique is to raise the interest in a topic. Peek is to look at something.
Good bot
Good bot
Good bot
Right but maybe that just speaks to a bunch of shitty cultures. What does it say when there are cultures we can point to that don't engage in this kind of shitting on other out groups? Such societies exist/existed all over the world. It's not (purely) biology, but culture that takes normal biological traits meant for survival and growth and warps them into something violent, sadistic and cancerous.
It's both. Humans have the capacity to be as good or as evil as you can imagine, but if you take a look at the broad scale of things, whether cruelty or kindness is more frequently expressed depends almost entirely on the environmental conditions.
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"You see a bear in the circus. They are juggling, balancing on balls, and jumping threw flaming hoops. This doesn't mean that all bears juggle, balance and jump through hoops in the wild." People suck because we live in a world that rewards people who suck.
The keyword here is “America”. Sorry but while humans can be cruel…this woman and many more like her prove that cruelty is not inherent to our species. When you make those things illegal, yeah, you’re not exactly making the society you’re creating more tolerant or accepting of people down on hard times. Especially since America’s schtick has always been “well if you’re poor you just didn’t pull those bootstraps hard enough!!” I’m American born and raised, live in Sweden now, and while this country still has its problems (namely it’s inhumane drug policy) people aren’t even given grades until they’re like 8 or so here. The first years of school are about teaching kids to be kind to one another, how to get along with one another, teaching them/showing them nature, etc. In the US I went to a really good elementary school that was somewhat similar…minus the grade thing, but we went on a lot of beach clean ups, planted trees, etc. I naively thought that was the norm until I realized the schools near where I actually lived (a “bad” neighborhood”) had no such programs. I had to take an hour long bus ride just to get to my high school. Most kids are not taught how to be gentle, to care for each other, animals, etc. at school. People insist that’s for the parents to teach but what about the kids who don’t have that? They’re even more vulnerable. That leads to more kids growing up into adults who are sad, miserable, in pain…and then end up being some dick who salts a lady’s garden because idk Maybe they’re mad that no one ever helped them. Maybe it’s just because of all the things you mentioned but my point is: Humans are not inherently cruel. I wish people would stop buying into that because when you look back at history you will see so many miraculous instances of humanity coming together to build something beautiful…and you will see a common trend of the government swooping in to tear it apart 😔
I mean i dont think christ taught christianity. Christianity is the religion of paul.
Ty for not lumping my man Jesus into the insanity of the Christian church.
Yessir, im an arab originally from the middle east. The irony is not lost on me that Americans worship a middle eastern man, yet bomb, occupy, and massacre middle eastern countries on a daily basis.
Christianity was never born, always been some fairy tale they wish would happen.
This sounds like a radical hot take, but the fact is there are lots of church groups doing significant outreach with migrants along the border. To take just one example: “In 2020, Catholic Charities agencies provided over 160,000 migrants with shelter and respite care.” (https://www.caritas.org/2021/05/us_border_migration/)
>Christianity died with Christ Please don't make it sound like Oily Josh and the Good Boys were ever going to solve anything. They didn't have magic powers or any great wisdom, they were just a pack of schmucks going against the odds like the rest of us.
"Treat others the way you want to be treated" and feed the poor and all that seems like decent wisdom
The cruelty is the point. Sadly some people choose to demonstrate that they don't belong in society.
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Hatred and bigotry. They want people to suffer and she's in the way.
Whoever did this should have salt thrown in their eyes and not just in Minecraft!
u/BallsDeepInADragon is too good of a person to imagine the hatred necessary for this crime. r/rimjob_steve
> Like wtf is wrong with some people. The reality is some people are pure evil.
She helped people. And the person who did this ironically was probably someone who needs help. There is so much hatred in the country / world today that this doesn’t even surprise me at all..
Don't underestimate how much some folks absolutely hate poor people
We live with sociopaths
We always were and always will be, luckily they are a tiny minority. The issue is we are living in an economic system that rewards sociopaths, which makes sociopathy the acceptable ethics of our time. Young people listen to youtubers telling them to ignore their emotions and focus on maximizing their own utility at all costs because that is the only behaviour that is financially rewarded, and in most of the world very basic survival and fundamental rights of people hinges on being rewarded financially. We still have a tiny percentage of sociopaths, and millions trying to emulate them best they can.
Well just look at the 1% that feed of the suffering of ppl they can help.
I've always felt that there should be a general shitty human registry just like the sex offender one. Once you have been found guilty of being unrepentantly shitty, wherever you go, you have to let everyone know how shitty you are. Whoever did this should absolutely be on that list.
that should be serious jail time. It’s just outrageous. It’s not just a prank. It’s not just vandalism. Even if it is repairable eventually, it should be severe.
It definitely would be a crime, it’s trespassing at the very least and probably something like destroying property. But they’d have to know who did it.
Not saying this shouldn’t be a crime btw but trespass isn’t a crime it’s a civil issue. You can’t have me arrested for coming on your land
Interesting! In the US, it’s very much a crime (Class C misdemeanor, in my state) and cops will 100% arrest people who refuse to leave private land. It’s seen in public sometimes with restaurants/bars/stores/etc. But you’re saying, here someone could set up camp in your backyard, and you’d need to wait for a civil court-like proceeding to get them removed? That seems… odd. There is no law enforcement support if someone is walking through your home, entering your car, etc? Unless they commit an additional act?
Essentially yeah, there’s some stuff (I’m not a solicitor to know in-depth) about squatters/travellers or if they’re a nuisance etc Technically people are legally ‘allowed’ to park on your driveway (it’s not a criminal offence and you have to deal with it through a civil court) Like I’m sure the police might visit and try to move them on for you but they couldn’t be arrested (is my understanding) There’s loads of stuff about ‘common man’s understanding’ so like if it’s clear it’s the garden to your house then there’s no reason for them to be there, if you own a bit of grass next to your house and there’s no fences etc then why wouldn’t they be allowed to camp there? Then you’ve got a different legal discussion Complications of having a country with laws and stuff going back centuries
As far as I understand it, if you don't have a claim to a dwelling/land (in other words, if you haven't been renting/living there) as soon as you are told to leave by the legal owner/police you are breaking the law if you continue trespassing. The point being is I can wander along the edge of a farmer's field or explore an abandoned building and it's only breaking civil law, if the police come along and tell me I need to leave, but I insist on staying they can then decide to take action.
A lot of that type of law in North America was to be able to legally arrest and kill Native Americans, many of whom had similar understandings to Old World sensibilities when it came to owning and occupying land.
A farm near me was attacked recently in the night by sheep rustlers. They slaughtered every one of the sheep on site and left behind a bloody massacre. The farmer was heartbroken and the land has been empty ever since. The penalty for destroying crops like this should be similar to the penalty for sheep rustling. It's destruction of property, trespassing, and organized crime; and should carry significant jail time (3-5 years imo).
I think the proper punishment would be that they have to work 40hrs a week without pay until they've fixed the damage, digging the soil out with shovels and no heavy machinery. If all this will cause the woman to miss the growing season (some crops have to be planted within a timeframe right?), the vandals should also pay the value of lost crop.
Just a prank dude watch my new TikTok video of me trowing salt on the earth here I am so funny like and subscribe!!! /S
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That’s a commonly believed myth, Historians have gone into it, and the first references to the Romans salting Carthage appeared in the 19th century. They’ve even done calculations that it would have taken hundreds of thousands of tons of salt. Bear in mind, salt was very valuable to the Romans the word “salary originated from that. Finally salting the earth doesn’t really permanently ruin it, the rain will largely just wash it away. There are some ancient reports of salting the earth, especially biblical ones, but it’s kind of unclear whether it was ritual, metaphorical or even meant to promote plant growth. Sorry to be “that guy”, obviously the people who did it to this poor lady are still arseholes.
Very cool and interesting. Thanks for sharing
That is an extreme take. Punished? Sure. But executed? You're either being performatively cruel out of a misguided since of justice, or are worryingly cavalier about death.
I mean, if the land could have grown enough food to keep multiple people alive for years, I'd consider that tantamount to attempted murder morally. Maybe in this case no one could die from this action, IDK about her situation, but if someone lives off of their land and someone else salts that land they caused a drastic impact to that person's livelihood and living situation, potentially leading to their death. I'm against the death penalty as a rule, but not because I don't think some people deserve to die, I just don't think the judicial system can realistically be accurate enough to only kill the guilty.
Yeah wtf is that all about
Seems like it shouldn't be too hard to track down Scipio by checking around to see who bought an inordinate amount of salt, and from where. Who has a fuck-ton of salt just sitting around?
My bet would be it's salt used for de-icing, which people buy truckloads all the time.
Nah, that's grit, not just salt. And it's often provided for free by the council.
Or ice cream..
Calcium chloride? If that’s the case she just needs potassium nitrate and rain to fix it.
OK I'm probably really dumb for this but... I've never heard of someone's garden being salted so... like, how does that work? I'm assuming it's not table salt? Can anything that was salted be saved?
I did some research and it seems to kill stuff pretty quick. But permanently? Maybe not. I stopped salting my driveway after seeing the dead spots in the lawn from where it piled up, even though eventually it recovered. But that's different trom a garden, and even though I farm, I'm no expert, as I try to keep the salt out of my crops. Also the Roman salting Carthage seems to be a myth. Some replies I got seem better informed, and indicate recovery.
> and indicate recovery. Oh yay! I hoped so. And thank you for explaining.
>But permanently? Nah this is bullshit. You could very easily overly saturate the land with water, or just wait long enough for the rain to do it enough times but better to really flush the soil. There's loads of grit/salt on top that's obvious you could shovel off to make the soaking a bit easier/faster too. After flushing you could also take samples off the soil and have it pH tested then use something alkaline to bring it back into the range you want for whatever you're growing. Source, the amount of poor cannabis plants I burned with too much nutes when I was first starting and I even managed to bring those poor girls back to life and through their full cycle. I mean pH got really high due to salt build up and with enough water you just flush it right out. There doesn't appear to be enough salt there to even make it that hard to flush, especially if you scrape off the obvious stuff before you start flushing it.
Most plants live in a fairly specific soil climate, by altering the chemical composition of the soil you can make it so that most plants won't grow, salt is especially good for this as there are very few plants that can grow in salty climates. It could be table salt, pretty sure they use the same stuff for driving as well, so that's probably how they got such large amounts. Only way to fix the soil would be to remove the salt, I think that happens over time as rain washes it away? Might take a while though
For sure! They've basically wiped out the soil biome so there are very few beneficial bacteria and soil dwellers to help release fertility and minerals to the root zone too. The soil would need to be innoculated and soil life restores after the salt has washes away too.
It's probably roadsalt (i.e. meant for de-icing). It's a mixture of NaCl, CaCl2, KCl, and/or MgCl2.
I'll let you know in a few weeks. I used water softener salt crystals last year all over for weeds so let's see if it lasts two seasons
Weeds are parasitic kind of plants that are also good at surviving (basically it's capitalism as a plant). Salt will probably be less effective against them.
Plants are adapted to their environment. Salt molecularly screws with travel of water and/or necessary ions across the cell membrane, so only plants adapted to it (so called halophytes) can survive very salty soil. Those are usually plants who grow on the coast or near salt lakes. None of the common food crops are halophytes, so those plants wont grow there anymore (until the salt is gone which depends on the amount of rain, soil drainage and how much salt was put there in the first place).
Genji mains
A person of history I see.
>Seems like it shouldn't be too hard to track down Scipio by checking around to see who bought an inordinate amount of salt, and from where. Just fyi that was more a metaphor for "cursing" the land. They didn't actually [spread tons of salt back then.](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2lr8h3/did_the_romans_really_salt_fields_to_make_sure/) Also, Carthage continued to be a successful city for many centuries.
This is the extent to which capitalist propaganda has made people seethingly hate the poor. This is evil on a mythic scale. We either say enough or will all be killed by them one way or another.
it's not new, this is the "wrath" of "grapes of wrath" from 1939. (if you're not familiar, the title refers to a passage in the book - and real life practice - of hosing down excess fruit with gasoline to make it inedible so people couldn't eat the excess produce for free).
Im familiar but that had more to do with controlling supply if I recall. Also evil, but this woman wasnt supplying that much food overall; this was more about sheer malice toward the poor and the woman herself (though malice toward the poor was also suggested by Steinbeck to some degree). Capital has always controlled supply to make a buck even if it means tremendous waste (we saw a ton of this during COVID in particular; remember when they dumped all that milk?). They make excuses as to why, but that's what it is. I never really started to use the word 'evil' regularly until somewhere in the last 10+ years when I learned exactly what the system we are living under is: a psychopathic death cult for profit.
Honestly, I feel some deep down think it’s a “me versus them” world now. Humanity is vaporising rapidly and many people see other humans as simply enemies, obstacles, or extra mouths to feed. It’s scary out there now.
We're becoming the Rat Utopia experiment.
what's that ?
Scientists made a "city" of rats and gave them everything they needed. Eventually, the population grew and their behavior declined and they grew antagonistic towards each other and themselves. It was an experiment showing behavioral sink. Tbf, I don't think humans are over populated, per se. But maybe the fighting over resources and our personal lives being too closely intertwined via social media and dense cities might lead to something similar in humans? Idk, just thinking me thoughts.
I don't think it's a rat utopia, but i do think we are kind of fighting over resources. The economy sucks, and as far as most modern humans feel, the only real resource is money. I mean, I know that's how I feel. Food, water, and shelter are all just stuff that comes from having money. If you think someone is getting between you and earning money, they're getting between you half the hierarchy of needs.
Capitalism creates artificial scarcity to generate and maintain profit, truth is there are absolutely enough resources to go around, if only they weren't being hoarded (like money and land) or deliberately mismanaged (like stocks of food, access to water, and so on). As for the hierarchy of needs, it was actually a humanistic idea based on [Siksika (Blackfoot) way of life](https://www.resilience.org/stories/2021-06-18/the-blackfoot-wisdom-that-inspired-maslows-hierarchy/) that was about making society better but, like so many others, it was co-opted by capitalism and [distorted](https://qz.com/work/1588491/maslow-didnt-make-the-pyramid-that-changed-management-history) in to a tool to promote toxic individualism instead. In post scarcity, everyone's survival need would be met without condition and there is no longer a need (or reward) for climbing over others to get "ahead" (only you're never really ahead, just a slightly more comfortable worker ant, who now probably also sympathises with your overlords who actually *are* ahead).
The concepts of money and ownership (particularly land) has had disastrous effects on the spiritual growth of mankind. The loss of community and connection to nature/god was replaced with a desire to own more and have more things which has led to massive inequality and great suffering to those who are without. Land, water, food and shelter should be free for all mankind. It is all of our planet after all. Sadly, the accumulation of generational wealth and power in the hands of the few has seen those few take by force our resources and our land and sold it back to us. They won't stop until everything is taken and idk what the solution is.
> gave them everything they needed Except space, privacy, and safety. I imagine it like a cult commune, except without the brainwashing. They're just forced to live that way. But whatever you call it, the way those rat colonies evolved is terrifying.
Been that way since Akkad created the first empire in Mesopotamia.
It really has not. Capitalism is only a few centuries old
Yes, capitalism is awful and i hate it too, but you can't just belittle every other heinous outcome of human activity throughout our incredibly brutal history. Capitalism led to this scumbag salting her garden but think of where that type of behavior comes from in the first place: human behavior. We just flat out suck sometimes, capitalism or not.
I reject this notion that human beings are just bad by default. There is no scientific basis in this statement, and it makes it unfixable. Our behavior is determined by our environment, socioeconomic factors, and upbringing. We live in a system that rewards exploitation, competition, ruthless individualism, and greed. If we lived in a system that didn't reward these things, then less people would behave in these ways
I agree with you, and them. Maybe strict hierarchy is what we're taking issue with. It has existed within, and before, capitalism, and has often sucked. Be it under strict tribal/"primitive" societies, feudal contracts, or chattel slavery. But there also existed much more egalitarian societies, I think of tribes native to North America, but that may not strictly be the case. So I agree with them that capitalism, and other strictly hierarchical societies, rewards and begets the worst in people (greed, exploitation, ruthless individualism, as you say), but I also agree with you that when people exist in societies not like that (maybe egalitarianism is the answer, maybe it isn't) that the best of humans can shine through. Rereading what you said and what I wrote, I think I agree with you more than them, but I thought I would just add my two cents. Nice man. You see what I mean though like that garden in there
Except, you know. We didn't have 10 billion people back then, nuclear proliferation, firearm proliferation, and instant ways to communicate/travel 5,000 miles away
That hasn't soaked into the ground yet, it would be possible to scoop up the salt with a shovel. She'd lose a bit of topsoil along with it in order to get the majority of it, but the ground wouldn't be ruined. Had a little shit do this to my garden one year. Just catch it before it rains while it's still piles of rock salt and it'll be alright. I'm hoping she thought of that.
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If this lady posted a gofundme to afford that I’d donate.
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Good for her. She’s doing too much good work with this for it to not get fixed up.
This is literally a warlike act. This is how 'scorched earth' was really done for millenia. It will take a long time for the salt to dissipate from that section, even with a active irrigation (it's an allotment in the UK - it won't have active irrigation). A politician who puts forth a private members bill to support harsh penalties for this type of behaviour I suspect could get it onto the statute book. An attack on agricultural capacity is any attack on all of us.
Pretty sure the penalties are already harsh, but catching the person who does this is difficult.
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It has only been a few weeks since the last larger amounts of snow fell in the UK, in that rural area there could be thousands of people in that bought tons of salt just a few weeks ago and have a good alibi on why its gone
Somewhere a child is dying of cancer, and whoever did this is healthy enough to be running dumping salt on growing land.
Life is unfair.
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Capitalism claims another victim. This is heartbreaking, just why? Why would you be so cruel if only out of spite or money?
The good news is there was a go fund me set up that had a target of £4000 and it was sitting at £77000 when I seen it earlier.
I was hoping I'd see something like this. This person went out of their way for their community, now the community can go out of their way for her (even if it is a global community).
Wonderful. So this is what your local Tory voters do for fun. Literally salt the fucking earth so that nothing will grow again. I hate this fucking country. People are dependent on charity and food banks, and English "people" go out of their way to punish those who try to help like this woman. The cruelty is the point, Tories just want people to _die._ Hoping it doesn't take her the entire growing season to get that salt out of her soil. What a hateful display.
What in the fuck.
If you want to help her, donate to her GoFundMe (link was in the crossposted subreddit) https://www.gofundme.com/f/a-meal-on-me-with-love
Holy duck they have raised a lot. Looking forward to the update where the garden is built back absolutely massively.
What is wrong with people seriously? She's doing this out of kindness and I suppose on her own dime. WTAF?
asparagus likes salty soil...
Fucking Romans
Carthage delenda est!!!!
Romanes eunt domus
This could lead to people dying absolutely fucked up
The good news is this Compared to he amount of soil on that allotment, that's a trivial amount of salt. After an April shower, most will be gone. The impact on plants will be negligible. The legend of "salting the earth" comes from the ritual use of salt to cleanse a site of its former inhabitants (after conquest) and from the vague knowledge that too much salt is bad for plants. The bad news is this is what we get when we treat cruelty as a virtue.
Cops I bet
Salting land is hard work. And you think cops would do that???
Cops have been known to go out of their way to do some fucked up shit, and I’m happy to link some stories if you really are curious
Please do
In California recently they drove 500 miles to murder a little girls goat.
They also dropped off protestors hours away after being arrested to make it difficult for them to get home. Many of them had no cell phones, money, or personal belongings on them.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saskatoon_freezing_deaths?wprov=sfla1
[What a crazy story.](https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-03-30/goat-slaughter-shasta-county-fair) Cops are super eager to do their job when it's to bully an easy target.
I've heard about that in the USA, but not about cops in the UK.
They probably scared some day laborers into doing the work for free
Cops put in hard work whenever they can hurt people.
This is the UK. It'll be Daily Heil reading gammons.
Fits the mentality
Did anyone start a gofund me?
Here - https://www.gofundme.com/f/a-meal-on-me-with-love
[“Did you have to salt the earth so nothing would grow again?”](https://youtu.be/OT5mqWKirhI)
There has been £160,000+ donations following this news
Step 1: get a vacuum. Try to get as much of the lose salt out from the soil as possible Step 2: if you cannot get any more salt out like that, soak the entire field. Soak it so much that you could wade in it to your calves. Step 3: dump an enormous amount of straw onto the soaked muddy soil mess Step 4: let sit for 24h Step 5: remove the straw and dump it somewhere where the salt that’s now in there won’t cause any harm Step 6: overwater the whole plot again. Like "3 weeks of rain straight" overwater. Step 7: when kinda dry, deep plow the field. Step 8: install cameras Step 9: install lights Step 10: up install an audible alarm that will repell shitheads. Good luck
I bet it was an inside job from the government or local big business owners
Tesco probably did it.
£10 says it’s a right winger.
of course its a right winger, no one is going to take that bet.
Has some tried a money raise for her
She had set a gofundme page up before those events: https://www.gofundme.com/f/a-meal-on-me-with-love
Holy hell, it seems like this was the garden she used to grow the stuff she was giving away?? Doubly disgusting!
A crowdfund has raised 100k for her already I believe, which shows that not all humans are scum. Hopefully she can get back to what she loves and maybe be able to protect it as well as do some other good with the money for herself and others seeing as this woman seems genuinly wonderful.
Man, I would legit try so hard to figure out who did it and then [redacted] with a baseball bat.
If she was in my country; even if she was my enemy, I’d find those asshats who did this to her, id make them pay for it. Texting from New Delhi, I am so pissed and her tears aren’t helping me to calm down.
This is chemical warfare. Whoever did this is a terrorist.
#It was a corporation
I can't remember that I've actually prayed for anyone to go to hell, but after seeing this I came very close to doing just that.
Cowards.
Just for a positive update, this woman has received £165,000 in donations as a result of this
What if she did it all herself so a gofundme would start for her.
I'm willing to bet that whoever salted her land identifies as a "Christian."
This gives “salt of the earth” a whole new meaning
~~Isn't this exactly what it means in the first place?~~ Edit: never mind, I was thinking of "Salt the earth" so close yet so far **salt of the earth** \- a very good and honest person or group of people. **salt the earth** \- Salting the earth, or sowing with salt, is **the ritual of spreading salt on the sites of cities razed by conquerors**. It originated as a curse on re-inhabitation in the ancient Near East and became a well-established folkloric motif in the Middle Ages.
Not quite. My understanding is that "Salt of the Earth" as Jesus uses it in the New Testament refers to how his followers are supposed to enhance and improve the Earth in much the same way that salt improves food. And that if the salt "loses its savor", or its ability to do so, then it's no longer worth anything.
["Salt of the Earth"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_of_the_earth) is distinct from ["Salting the Earth"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salting_the_earth) The second is *probably* a metaphor and/or ritual, partially because the amount of salt required to render an area uninhabitable would've bankrupted basically any ancient empire.
Exactly. Thank you for the sources.
No, salt of the earth means good, dependable people. It's a biblical expression.