• 7bicycles [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Man we lucked out with the potato. It genuinely sounds bio-engineered. Here's this hardy plant that grows nigh anywhere, keeps forever and covers like most of your nutritional needs. Also it tastes pretty good.

    • Commander_Data [she/her]
      ·
      2 years ago

      The potato, and everything else we eat that isn't wild game, is bio-engineered. Have you ever seen a wild cucumber? They're like a cm long.

      • 7bicycles [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        well yeah but I meant in the modern laboratory sense and not in the historic agriculture sense

        • Commander_Data [she/her]
          ·
          2 years ago

          The modern, laboratory sense is just a more efficient way of doing exactly what farmers were doing 5,000 years ago. Like all technology, genetic modification isn't inherently good or evil, it's how the people who control the technology use it that matters. Monsanto et al are bad because they're controlled by capital.

          • 7bicycles [he/him]
            ·
            2 years ago

            you're correct but please let me have my alluding to futuristic gene splicing vegetable/starch thats actually been around forever take here

            • Commander_Data [she/her]
              ·
              edit-2
              2 years ago

              Oh, aliens definitely used quantum entanglement to send the potato back in time.

              • 7bicycles [he/him]
                ·
                2 years ago

                not quite what I was going for but thank you none the less

          • jkfjfhkdfgdfb [she/her]
            ·
            2 years ago

            ok well some of the shit where you use genes from something else entirely

            that wasn't gonna happen in any reasonable timescale the old way

            AND IT'S SUPER COOL

      • jabrd [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        Shout out to my brassica gang. All my homies love brassicas

    • Circra [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Yeah not to mention you can lop the eyes off which u dont eat anyway, chuck em in almost any soil and you get more potato

    • RION [she/her]
      ·
      2 years ago

      It's funny given the resistance it first had in Europe. It's part of the nightshade family and was largely used as animal feed until the 18th century when it was popularized in large part due to a Frenchman named Parmentier. One story claims he hired guards for his potato fields to create the impression of value, but dismissed then at dusk so peasants could steal them and get hooked on the starchy goodness

      • 7bicycles [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        I heard the exact same story about the german kaiser lmao

        • RION [she/her]
          ·
          2 years ago

          Yeah there's a couple people it gets attributed to, Wikipedia mentions Frederick the Great for example