Overlooking the Tiber, on the Trastevere side of the river, is a beautiful villa and garden that perfectly unite the artist and the agricultural biodiversity nut. And so it was, last Saturday, that The Main Squeeze and I found ourselves at the Villa Farnesina,¹ gazing in wonder at the frescoes that decorate the rooms. Of course we had both been there before, often. This time was different because of an exhibit -- I Colori della Prosperità: Frutti del Vecchio e Nuovo Mondo -- rendered in English as Colours of Prosperity Fruits from the Old and New World.

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My compadre Luigi linked, with scarcely a comment, to a plant breeding paper by Kevin Folta, scourge of biotech deniers everywhere.

Stripped down, what Folta and his co-author, Harry J Klee, propose is that plant breeders "can now turn to the consumer for guidance in defining critical desires,...

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One of the best aspects of subscribing to things is that it doesn't matter if they go dormant. Someone takes a break from feeding their website/newsletter/podcast? No problem. When they return, your subscription springs back to life.¹ So it was a special treat to see a new episode of Anxious Machine pop up in my podcast feed.

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Over at his personal blog, Jason has this to say:

What could possibly make 10C better than WordPress with a myriad of plugins? Despite what people might want from the 10C platform, it is a silo. Even in v5, which involves a globally distributed system of servers operated by anybody who might wan...

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Because I'm a snarky know-it-all, I complained to the nice people at Sugru about their misuse of a plant's scientific name. Well, someone has to maintain standards. And because Suguru is a class act, I got the nicest reply:

Thanks a lot for taking the time to get in touch and point out the g...

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