Old Fucking Punk @lwriemen@librem.one

(Sorry guys, these Farm Facts are gonna be a little different than the usual fun little factoids. Because our farm sector is doing its best to light itself on fire right now.)

Anyway, here's what this all means.

US soybean farmers have two options.

Grow something else, or get welfare checks forever.

There is no third option.

A helpful primer on how major soybean buyers like China are viewing the US's new penchant for trade wars.

Really appreciate the writers' commitment to breaking it down so a 5-year-old can understand it

https://asiatimes.com/2025/09/brazil-will-remain-chinas-preferred-soybean-supplier-not-the-us/

This is how the New York Times pretends to do journalism -- treating the Trump/Hegseth fascist military event as just routine partisan politics.

The Times will go down in history as a quisling operation, and its bosses will be remembered for their cowardice.

Our "mainstream" media are consistently botching their jobs, directly -- and IMO willfully -- assisting the fascists who are destroying our nation.

Occasional pieces of real journalism do not begin to fix Big Journalism's malpractice. Mike Masnick has more:

https://www.techdirt.com/2025/09/30/the-mainstream-media-is-catastrophically-failing-to-meet-the-moment/

Attempting to farm Midwest-style on sand has led a lot of people to describe Southern soils as "bad."

This is false. Slanderous, even.

Sand is great!

Root crops love it! It's soft! Long skinny roots like carrots can push downward without hitting rocks or clay pans & turning into this

Ope this is going off

Ok folks! My Congressman is a MAGA clown who's on multiple ag committees.

As a farmer, I need ag policymakers with a spine who tell Trump no.

So for every donation to Kim Hardy, who's running against my
Congressman, I will post one (1) ag fact.

https://secure.actblue.com/donate/nc07social

can't wait to read Elon's new bio on Grokipedia

If you know anyone in the U.S. military at any level, please make sure they see The Orders Project, "a non-partisan program created by the National Institute for Military Justice to assist military personnel in understanding their options when faced with orders they believe may not be legal."

https://www.nimj.org/top.html#/

This is why it's so important that US agriculture quit its "positive vibes only!" strategy and actually learn from its own mistakes.

So we can stop repeating them already.

Anyway, here's the next Egyptian cotton: Argentine & Brazilian soybeans.

https://mishtalk.com/economics/us-soybean-exports-to-china-drop-to-zero-argentina-and-brazil-win/

By the time the US Civil War was over, so was the US cotton industry.

Egypt had ramped up to growing so much cotton, nobody really needed any from the US South anymore.

Without Southern cotton, the British textile industry would be brought to its knees.

And that would force the British Empire- with the world's most powerful navy- to help the US South in its fight for "freedom."

At least, that's what cotton plantation owners THOUGHT would happen.

"Worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses, with staff working better and smarter and production organised more efficiently. "https://www.uk.coop/resources/what-do-we-really-know-about-worker-co-operatives
Where to start? Here:
https://www.uk.coop/sites/default/files/2024-02/Retrofit%20report%20%28final%20draft%29.pdf ...the net zero retrofit for UK housing
#netzero #coop #economics

US farmers are saying they "just need temporary help, until things get better."

Here's the thing. US farm exports- which are mostly soy- CANNOT get better.

Other countries expanded their soy industries to fill China's demand.

We've walled ourselves out of the global market, folks. This is it.

From the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker:

Three journalists were assaulted by federal officers while reporting outside the immigration court at NYC’s Federal Plaza this morning.

One of the journalists, L. Vural Elibol of Anadolu Agency, struck his head and has been hospitalized.

https://pressfreedomtracker.us/all-incidents/turkish-journalist-hospitalized-after-assault-at-nyc-immigration-court/

Discover the story of Poison Girls, radical punk visionaries who created something extraordinary. Support the new book and seven CD box set celebrating their music, art, and politics. Back the Kickstarter here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ww3/poisongirls

Ed Zitron with a very good explanation for why so many CEOs think they can replace their workers with chatbots.#LLM #AI

https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-case-against-generative-ai/

Britain's policing minister punts facial recog nationwide - https://www.theregister.com/2025/09/30/britains_policing_minister_talks_up/ if only the police could access a db of all UK faces - like the one the #DigitalID card will create...

Despite being n the Daily Mail, this is a pretty on-point finance article - my only quibble is that gov-debt-to-GDP ratios don't matter for currency issuing countries - it's household and business debt levels rising that is the real red flag.

In fifty years as a City writer, I've never felt so worried a terrible financial crash is coming. The warning signs are EVERYWHERE, writes ALEX BRUMMER
https://archive.is/PCyp9
(this link was not accessible from a South African VPN proxy 4 reasons unknown)

I put together a few facts.

NVIDIA GB200 is $70,000 each. Enough to employ one intern or new college grad for a year.

AI companies need 100s of billions of dollars in investment unlike regular software startups that need a handful of millions.

AI companies are eating up all the venture capital. We could've had a 1000 startups funded instead, but it's all used up by NVIDIA chips, their data centers and operating costs.

---

Yes, AI took our software jobs, but not by replacing programmers.