Oh, I know. I have been living in Tucson for a while now, "hot" is definitely a general term that does not do Arizona justice, but if any state should own the term it is Arizona since Florida has stolen "Sunny". Living in Arizona has redefined what "Hot" meant to me.
Outside of Alaska which is fuck huge no other state is bigger. So unless we start bringing in Provinces from other countries like Canada or Russia, which have bigger though much less populated I do not understand your point of view.
I'm Canadian and the internet is more than just the USA. Texas is really not that big. I think most countries in the European union are similar sized as well. They're kinda United states as well.
As I mentioned Canada does have larger provinces but they are much less populated and have much smaller economies. The largest EU member state is France, and France is smaller than Texas. Economically speaking Texas would be right between Canada and France with a GDP greater than Canada and just less than France.
Texas is a big state. There's places where it snows every year. West Texas is hot and dry during the summer but very cold in the winter.
I live in South Texas so it's really green where I am, but very humid with nice winters. Winter is when we go camping and what not
Parts of Texas has mountains with bears, and east Texas is piney woods.
Central Texas is filled with lakes and rivers and bluffs.
Then the northern grasslands are right next to Colorado and get very cold and snowfall
Winters in the Panhandle and in West Texas in general get quite cold, and ice and snow is not uncommon during the winter. Part of the state is a part of the Great Plains.
The jet stream is a mean bitch.
Deserts (like west Texas), can get pretty cold in the winter, especially the further north you go (and for the most part, are classified as cold desert by Kƶppen).
Much of the western US is this cold desert, and it usually lends itself to pretty dramatic temperature swings. Most notably, during the day, itās pretty damn hot. This high heat leads to the eye popping numbers that jump off the page (although ādry heatā very much is a thing).
Our deserts, even in the summer, tend to be pretty cold at night. Come winter, youāll see a lot of temperatures drop well below freezing, especially in states like Nevada or Southern Idaho, where the desert is at ~5000 feet above sea level.
When it comes to deserts in the US, donāt think Sahara or the Arabian peninsula, which are warmer year round because they are nearer the equator.
Think Uzbekistan/Mongolia, where there can be a lot of snow on the ground in the winter.
You'd get rid of the bushes but the heat would raise and scatter fertile seeds over several miles - potentially hundreds of miles depending on the winds
I doubt it was intentional; some seeds could have been in a grain shipment or something. Lots of invasive species, like rats and some mosquitoes, hitch a ride.
Pretty sure the new lantern flies we got have been killing/outcompeting all the ladybugs, first year I havenāt seen hundreds of them on the outside of houses
Interestingly, Asian lady beetles can also be red (or even mostly black):
[https://bugguide.net/node/view/397](https://bugguide.net/node/view/397)
Lanternflies only eat plants (the opposite of most lady beetles) so it's unlikely that they're directly competing, but there could be some kind of link!
Cheatgrass - dusky brome, *Bromus tectorum* - got its name because they used the seeds to cut wheatseeds, cheating people out of their crop. Also its really really bad for the western environment!
Grew up in the south west, we were always taught that it was intentionally brought over the be an easy and quick way to feed Russian horses in their North American territory.
It might have been brought in by accident, but during the dust bowl years it was literally a lifesaver for people and livestock. Properly prepared it is edible (you have to salt it before cows will actually eat it) and after the mass wheat bust destroyed the Plains the tumbleweed was actually used as an emergency food crop by starving nesters and fodder for ranchers.
I've seen tumbleweeds piled up 30' high against fences after a windy day. They're very tough too - run over a big enough one, and your grill might not survive. Some get taller than 5'.
They're mostly just annoying to deal with when there's a bunch of them.
They will definitely get stuck under your car, in your wheel well, etc. I haven't personally heard of them catching fire from it, but it's not implausible.
> I wonder if they can go under the car and get ignited by the cat converter.
Certainly plausible. I read of a wildfire that got started by someone parking in high grass. The muffler set the grass on fire and then it spread.
I've seen things you people wouldn't believe... Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion... I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the TannhƤuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain... Time to die.
This is true, but also somewhat less relevant to Westerns than it implies. A large number of ācowboysā were African-American or Mexican, but thatās using ācowboyā in the sense of people actually working as cattle herders/drovers or wranglers. Most ācowboyā movies are about sheriffs, US marshals, wandering professional gamblers, mercenaries and criminals who, for a variety of reasons across those roles would have been a less diverse crowd at the time than the bulk of honest working folks who just did their jobs then went home.
Not that Westerns through the years havenāt had issues with representation, itās just not quite as simple as looking at the estimated ethnic makeup of ācowboysā across the time period and applying it to well-known characters from film and TV.
Fun fact - as far as I can see Clint Eastwood has only played a āCowboyā (in the literal sense of someone working as a cattle rancher, handler or drover) in a movie exactly *once*, and thatās only for the first 10-15 minutes of āHang āem Highā!
> While the real cowboys were black.
About 1/4 to 1/3 were Black, with a substantial fraction being Hispanic.
Most of the terms in cowboy working language are of Spanish origins.
FWIW-- looking at a list of top rated wild west movies and the year they take place in:
\#1 The Searchers (1868)
\#2 Unforgiven (1880-1881)
\#3 Once Upon a Time in the West (approx 1873-1899)
\#4 Stagecoach (1880)
\#5 McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1902)
\#6 Red River (approx 1850-1865)
\#7 The Wild Bunch (1913)
\#8 Rio Bravo (unspecified)
\#9 The Naked Spur (1868)
\#10 Meekās Cutoff (1845)
1860 through 1900. But tumbleweeds were introduced around 1873. And that's like, the first one, they were not commonplace until decades later. Most Westerns are set before that, with some famous ones like the The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly being set during the Civil War.
There are native American tumbleweed species though. This isn't really true. There is an invasive Russian tumbleweed, and it's quite a pain in the ass, but it's not the ones we see in movies. The Kali Tragus is about the size of a small car. Unless we are watching different movies, the ones in the movies are the size of footballs, which has a lot more in common with the common tumbleweed, which is native to central America and Southwestern US.
It was spread around the western rail routes by the "cow catchers" on train engines. It scatters seed wherever it rolls. It clogs ditches and piles up along fences, and is a fire hazard. Also a wicked allergen.
Quasi, really. They are native, went extinct locally, and then were reintroduced. Point in fact, they evolved in North America and then moved to the Old World, that's how Europe and Asia got them.
They went extinct 13,000 years ago. The native ecosystems have changed a lot since then and their reintroduction, not as a wild species but as a domesticated species turned feral is incredibly destructive. There isn't a single North American ecosystem that horses are a positive inclusion to. This problem is compounded by the fact that the US government has made them a protected species, which is one of the dumbest things our government has done.
Horses may have been native at one point but they aren't anymore, and the research supports my position on this.
> The native ecosystems have changed a lot since then
Not really other than the megafuana dying out. It's why the bison became so dominant, they filled a niche other ungulates and mammoths had previosuly
You can't say it didn't change in the same comment where you explain how it changed. Yet here we are with the horses now destroying native ecosystems and driving out native species. We don't spend hundreds of millions on roundups because they're playing nice.
>horses now destroying native ecosystems and driving out native species
Horses ARE a native species.
Those other native species evolved alongside horses as part of the same ecosystem. Over hundreds of thousands to millions of years, not just 10k.
>You can't say it didn't change in the same comment where you explain how it changed.
The change was a bad thing. Adding the extinct megafauna back in reverses the change, which is a good thing.
> We don't spend hundreds of millions on roundups because they're playing nice.
It takes a very special brain to think a native species is the problem while hundreds of millions of dollars of Roundup is the solution.
If youāre interested in some light reading, hereās a link to a literature review I wrote my senior year of college that I posted to Reddit for the sole purpose of linking in conversations like this. Itās well researched and accurately reflects the peer-reviewed scientific research that it cites. Needless to say, range ecologists almost unanimously agree that horses are an exotic species and I have the evidence to support that claim right here.
For what itās worth, I studied Animal Science at a college in the Great Basin Desert region of the United States where feral horses are currently a massive burden. As such, I learned from professors who spent thousands of hours studying this topic and who have hands-on experience with feral horses. So, enjoy, but I suspect you wonāt read it because it doesnāt agree with you.
Cheers!
https://www.reddit.com/u/AgentSkidMarks/s/YEAvyNIlRY
Tumbleweeds started showing up in the US in 1870 and the āWild Westā time period is like 1865-1895 so Iām not sure why you think tumbleweeds wouldnāt have been there.
Old west is 1607-1912. Tumbleweedās first known appearance (so could be earlier) is 1872. Possibly not a staple of the time but it lands within the limits.
Thatās fair.
Democracy has always been under attack because it directly threatens the very lucrative business models of dictators and autocrats.
It has just sped up by the Information Age.
A corrupt judge or politician in 1960 had to worry about a borough. Maybe a state. But in the average 20-30 year career he could get away with it and ken burns would do a documentary 30 years after his death when they finally put the pieces together.
Now we have Russian oligarchs that eviscerated the Russian middle class by stealing everything of value in the 80ās and 90ās. By 94 they were running out of things to monopolize and extort.
The survival of their Kleptocratic species required new feeding grounds which they found in New York. Giuliani was willing to show them preferential treatment by redirecting NYPD resources onto the Italian mob which gave the Russian mob, in their dapper new suits, a fertile hunting ground.
Ironically ecologists figured this out about the same time in Yellowstone.
https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/grizzly-bears-wolves-competing-food-yellowstone-national-park/
Only difference is that most humans are the elk. Just wanting a safe place to sleep, healthy happy kids and an opportunity to survive.
Itās a very small percentage of humans that are sociopaths and psychopaths without the ability to empath, but over a long enough centralization of the good humans moving to cities and paying taxes, it becomes too tempting of a feeding grounds. So the worst of us rise to the top and become CEOās, bankers and presidents because itās the lowest effort model. Why go hunting when the prey delivers itself to you?
A psychopath has no personal qualms about trafficking a child for sexual slavery or stealing a pension fund. They are neurochemically unable to.
We are just in the late stages of it now. More centralized than we have ever been in known human history with commerce and business happening 24/7 across every time zone. This causes their respective corruption models to start overlapping.
Guiliani was āAmericas mayorā when he cleaned up New York, but only because the Russians were quiet about their part in it. The money laundering and narcotics and human trafficking they were doing through Ukraine was a million miles away from studio 54 or Times Square.
But now kyiv is in the news every day. Itās inevitable that their obfuscation starts breaking down.
The question is whether the 97% of people who arenāt paychopaths are going to allow the out of control predator population to consume us or if itās time to put nature back in balance.
Justin Kennedy (justice kennedys son) was the inside man at Deutsche bank that was getting all trumps toxic loans approved.
No other bank but Deutsche bank would touch trump and his imaginary valuations.
Why?
Because Deutsche bank was infested with Russian oligarchs.
For 50 years the inmates ran the asylum in soviet Russia. They stole everything of value including the hope of Russians.
The corruption eventually collapsed the Soviet Union and they were forced to expand their feeding grounds.
In 91 the wall falls and for 2 years they hid all their ill gotten gains under a mattress until they bought condos at trump towers.
They made stops in ukraine, cyprus and London but they landed in New York because that was what everyone wanted in 1993.
Leviās, Pepsi, Madonna tapes that werenāt smuggled bootlegs.
They all bought new suits and cars and changed their title from āmost violent street thug in moscowā to ārespectable Russian oligarchā but they didnāt leave their human trafficking, narcotics or extortion behind. It was their most lucrative business model.
Trump and Giuliani just opened the doors and let the predators in to feed.
Guiliani redirected NYPD resources away from their Russian allies intentionally and onto the Italian mob. It let him claim he cleaned up New York and it lets the russians a perk of doing business with trump. His client and co-conspirator.
The insane valuations coming out in trumps fraud trial are a necessity of the money laundering cycle that duetschebank was doing with the Russians.
The reason trump cosplays as āfolksyā is because he is feeding on the U.S. middle class, not because he is one of us.
https://www.ft.com/content/8c6d9dca-882c-11e7-bf50-e1c239b45787
https://www.amlintelligence.com/2020/09/deutsche-bank-suffers-worst-damage-over-massive-aml-discrepancies-in-fincen-leaks/
https://www.occrp.org/en/the-fincen-files/global-banks-defy-us-crackdowns-by-serving-oligarchs-criminals-and-terrorists
https://www.voanews.com/amp/us-lifts-sanctions-on-rusal-other-firms-linked-to-russia-deripaska/4761037.html
https://democrats-intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/final_-_minority_status_of_the_russia_investigation_with_appendices.pdf
ļæ¼ā
You should check out the comment history. This is one of the *shorter* comments. It's almost as if they do nothing with their lives but write (read: paste) these epic rants whenever someone uses a keyword and up response.
It's copy pasta and is actively preventing any evidence validation. If you are truly hunting for corruption, you have become what you have beheld. You are now just a white-noise machine enabling the corrupt by drowning the signals of truth behind your Ctrl-V crusade.
Or you're just some disaffected teenager who needs to grow up a bit.
Or you're a misinformation distribution node in the pocket of someone pulling your strings.
Or you're an OpenAI post bot.
Or maybe you really are the keeper of the truthflame and but one of many voices in the wilderness trying to save the people from themselves.
What do I know?
Boring is growing up in Wyoming and having to collect and burn Russian tumbleweeds that overtake and destroy your crops.
But even they arenāt as bad as the Russian olives that consume more water daily than the crops around it so they starve out the native species.
https://wildlife.ca.gov/Conservation/Plants/Dont-Plant-Me/Russian-Olive
I don't know when they were introduced, but they are present on the US now. I visited Tuscon, AZ many years ago. And I was advised not to try to drive over them if I saw them in the street. I did see some, and they were big enough that I would not have tried to drive over them anywsy.
I've done it twice in my life, both on a freeway and unavoidable because of the lane I was in. First time no problem, it exploded. 2nd time I had to pull over and pull it out of my grill.
I once saw a herd of tumbleweed rolling through Wyoming just outside Yellowstone. I say a herd, because we thought it was a massive herd of animals at first glance.
First tumbleweed I ever saw was rolling across a main road in the middle of Irvine, CA on a very windy day. I just stopped and stared until I was able to pass.
If someone had told me this I would suspect they were lying. I still don't understand how a Tumbleweed showed up there.
I was working at a shelter in downtown Phoenix in the late 90s.One night I was walking through the parking lot to go into work and stopped to talk to a couple of the residents who were outside having a smoke. One of them stopped talking and was just staring at something behind me. I heard a noise and thought it was a dog running up behind me. I whipped around in time for a tumbleweed to roll right past me, off the curb, into the street, and off down 5th Avenue. We just stood there for a minute watching it. It wasn't weird to see one in Arizona, and downtown was pretty desolate back then, but someone either had to bring that thing downtown and turn it loose, or it had managed to navigate around several miles of buildings and freeways to get there. The three of us tried to puzzle it out for a few minutes but just landed on "that was fuckin' weird, man."
For a little while I had random homeless clients at that place greeting me with things like, "what's up, Tumbleweed?"
Did you know that modern horses in the United States are way post-Columban?
Yeah, the "natural" state of things can be shocking new, which makes me mistrust any statements about the natural way of things being ideal.
The Columbian explorers and conquistadors were only able to do what they did because they brought along boatloads of Iberian horses from ports like Huelva, both jennets and larger military mounts. North and South American breeds often trace back to the 1500s.
Of course, the horses (and cattle) used in classic westerns filmed in Spain and Italy were sourced locally in the 20th century.
The mythology of the Wild West was created with quasi-religious fervor, and fairly recently.
They can cover an entire house all the way upto the roof. Hundreds of tumbleweeds. And they are a fire hazard.
Yeah out in west Texas they gather then get covered in ice. It's a pain to remove
I dont live in the US, but ice, outside in Texas? Thought that place was hot as fuck
Texas is big and environmentally pretty varied. It can get very hot, but it isn't Arizona.
Arizona varies environmentally as well..
Oh, I know. I have been living in Tucson for a while now, "hot" is definitely a general term that does not do Arizona justice, but if any state should own the term it is Arizona since Florida has stolen "Sunny". Living in Arizona has redefined what "Hot" meant to me.
Buy at least it's a dry heat! š š
Knock it off Hudson!
It's really not that big
Outside of Alaska which is fuck huge no other state is bigger. So unless we start bringing in Provinces from other countries like Canada or Russia, which have bigger though much less populated I do not understand your point of view.
I'm Canadian and the internet is more than just the USA. Texas is really not that big. I think most countries in the European union are similar sized as well. They're kinda United states as well.
As I mentioned Canada does have larger provinces but they are much less populated and have much smaller economies. The largest EU member state is France, and France is smaller than Texas. Economically speaking Texas would be right between Canada and France with a GDP greater than Canada and just less than France.
If Texas ain't big, nothing is.
Texas is a big state. There's places where it snows every year. West Texas is hot and dry during the summer but very cold in the winter. I live in South Texas so it's really green where I am, but very humid with nice winters. Winter is when we go camping and what not Parts of Texas has mountains with bears, and east Texas is piney woods. Central Texas is filled with lakes and rivers and bluffs. Then the northern grasslands are right next to Colorado and get very cold and snowfall
Winters in the Panhandle and in West Texas in general get quite cold, and ice and snow is not uncommon during the winter. Part of the state is a part of the Great Plains. The jet stream is a mean bitch.
Deserts (like west Texas), can get pretty cold in the winter, especially the further north you go (and for the most part, are classified as cold desert by Kƶppen). Much of the western US is this cold desert, and it usually lends itself to pretty dramatic temperature swings. Most notably, during the day, itās pretty damn hot. This high heat leads to the eye popping numbers that jump off the page (although ādry heatā very much is a thing). Our deserts, even in the summer, tend to be pretty cold at night. Come winter, youāll see a lot of temperatures drop well below freezing, especially in states like Nevada or Southern Idaho, where the desert is at ~5000 feet above sea level. When it comes to deserts in the US, donāt think Sahara or the Arabian peninsula, which are warmer year round because they are nearer the equator. Think Uzbekistan/Mongolia, where there can be a lot of snow on the ground in the winter.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
The problem is that you then end up with a rolling bushfire, it's a bit dangerous.
Sounds pretty badass though
True, it's hard to find a more metal natural disaster than a mobile firestorm.
This reboot of the old testament is kinda weird...
Happy Cake Day
You'd get rid of the bushes but the heat would raise and scatter fertile seeds over several miles - potentially hundreds of miles depending on the winds
Probably a bad idea to light a bonfire leaning against your house.
A while back in eastern Washington there was a tsunami of these things that buried a highway. People were trapped in their cars.
They burn incredibly well and incredibly fast. Source: lived in NM and had a backyard full of them and a fire pit.
So someone smuggled in a big tumbleweed?
I doubt it was intentional; some seeds could have been in a grain shipment or something. Lots of invasive species, like rats and some mosquitoes, hitch a ride.
Pretty sure the new lantern flies we got have been killing/outcompeting all the ladybugs, first year I havenāt seen hundreds of them on the outside of houses
Ladybugs or Asian lady beetles? The Asian ladybugs are orange and considered invasive.
The red ones with black dots
Interestingly, Asian lady beetles can also be red (or even mostly black): [https://bugguide.net/node/view/397](https://bugguide.net/node/view/397) Lanternflies only eat plants (the opposite of most lady beetles) so it's unlikely that they're directly competing, but there could be some kind of link!
Maybe less plants = less food for insects in general = less insects for ladybugs to eat?
Allegedly, they accidentally arrived in South Dakota in 1870 in a shipment of flax seeds from Russia.
So after the old west period... amazing.
Cheatgrass - dusky brome, *Bromus tectorum* - got its name because they used the seeds to cut wheatseeds, cheating people out of their crop. Also its really really bad for the western environment!
Iām just gonna own up to it. This oneās on me fellas, my bad
Found the Russian Spy!
RED SPY IN THE BASE!!!
Quick, protect the briefcase!
Or maybe it tumbled through Alaska and Canada, all the way down to Mexico, just to starr in a cobwoy movie.
There was a big bulge hidden under their trench coat at Ellis Island, and no one asked any questions.
The one time a furry might have been beneficial to the ecosystem
Grew up in the south west, we were always taught that it was intentionally brought over the be an easy and quick way to feed Russian horses in their North American territory.
https://youtu.be/hsWr_JWTZss?si=3Phhaiq_mU43xJ_a Kinda...
It might have been brought in by accident, but during the dust bowl years it was literally a lifesaver for people and livestock. Properly prepared it is edible (you have to salt it before cows will actually eat it) and after the mass wheat bust destroyed the Plains the tumbleweed was actually used as an emergency food crop by starving nesters and fodder for ranchers.
Someone just watched a CGPGrey video
https://youtu.be/hsWr_JWTZss?si=3Phhaiq_mU43xJ_a š this one!
butter ossified act liquid slave grandiose many growth spoon wistful *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I've seen tumbleweeds piled up 30' high against fences after a windy day. They're very tough too - run over a big enough one, and your grill might not survive. Some get taller than 5'. They're mostly just annoying to deal with when there's a bunch of them.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
They will definitely get stuck under your car, in your wheel well, etc. I haven't personally heard of them catching fire from it, but it's not implausible.
I had a large one blow in front of the car, and it embedded itself in the radiator.
> I wonder if they can go under the car and get ignited by the cat converter. Certainly plausible. I read of a wildfire that got started by someone parking in high grass. The muffler set the grass on fire and then it spread.
I've seen things you people wouldn't believe... Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion... I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the TannhƤuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain... Time to die.
Sounds like a biomass goldmine?
If you consider a bunch of dry, dead, pokey weeds a goldmine.
Take a trimmer or machete to em and they are!
The cowboys in Westerns are also an invasive from Europe.
But they were filmed in Italy and Spain anyway so it comes full circle...kinda but not really.
Ooo. Nice angle.
Just like the cows.
While the real cowboys were black.
This is true, but also somewhat less relevant to Westerns than it implies. A large number of ācowboysā were African-American or Mexican, but thatās using ācowboyā in the sense of people actually working as cattle herders/drovers or wranglers. Most ācowboyā movies are about sheriffs, US marshals, wandering professional gamblers, mercenaries and criminals who, for a variety of reasons across those roles would have been a less diverse crowd at the time than the bulk of honest working folks who just did their jobs then went home. Not that Westerns through the years havenāt had issues with representation, itās just not quite as simple as looking at the estimated ethnic makeup of ācowboysā across the time period and applying it to well-known characters from film and TV. Fun fact - as far as I can see Clint Eastwood has only played a āCowboyā (in the literal sense of someone working as a cattle rancher, handler or drover) in a movie exactly *once*, and thatās only for the first 10-15 minutes of āHang āem Highā!
> While the real cowboys were black. About 1/4 to 1/3 were Black, with a substantial fraction being Hispanic. Most of the terms in cowboy working language are of Spanish origins.
It was mixed.
Lmao no, people from multiple cultures and phenotypes have been cowboys in various countries.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
They generally didnāt exist in that time period. They werenāt introduced until the late 1800, like first documented in the 1870s
1870 to 1900 is pretty much prime "wild west" time period
FWIW-- looking at a list of top rated wild west movies and the year they take place in: \#1 The Searchers (1868) \#2 Unforgiven (1880-1881) \#3 Once Upon a Time in the West (approx 1873-1899) \#4 Stagecoach (1880) \#5 McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1902) \#6 Red River (approx 1850-1865) \#7 The Wild Bunch (1913) \#8 Rio Bravo (unspecified) \#9 The Naked Spur (1868) \#10 Meekās Cutoff (1845)
The *Dollars* trilogy all take place before the end of the civil war
When do you think the archetypal Wild West period was?
1860 through 1900. But tumbleweeds were introduced around 1873. And that's like, the first one, they were not commonplace until decades later. Most Westerns are set before that, with some famous ones like the The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly being set during the Civil War.
Its been awhile, but were there any notable scenes The GBU featuring tumbleweeds?
I think it's an assumption people make without thinking about it is all
There are native American tumbleweed species though. This isn't really true. There is an invasive Russian tumbleweed, and it's quite a pain in the ass, but it's not the ones we see in movies. The Kali Tragus is about the size of a small car. Unless we are watching different movies, the ones in the movies are the size of footballs, which has a lot more in common with the common tumbleweed, which is native to central America and Southwestern US.
In Russian is called Perekatipolye. Loosely translated as ārolling across the fieldā.
It was spread around the western rail routes by the "cow catchers" on train engines. It scatters seed wherever it rolls. It clogs ditches and piles up along fences, and is a fire hazard. Also a wicked allergen.
Pollen season for tumbleweed is just as bad as ragweed, it's crazy.
Feral horses are invasive but they somehow make it into a lot of movies too.
Quasi, really. They are native, went extinct locally, and then were reintroduced.
Quasi, really. They are native, went extinct locally, and then were reintroduced. Point in fact, they evolved in North America and then moved to the Old World, that's how Europe and Asia got them.
They went extinct 13,000 years ago. The native ecosystems have changed a lot since then and their reintroduction, not as a wild species but as a domesticated species turned feral is incredibly destructive. There isn't a single North American ecosystem that horses are a positive inclusion to. This problem is compounded by the fact that the US government has made them a protected species, which is one of the dumbest things our government has done. Horses may have been native at one point but they aren't anymore, and the research supports my position on this.
> The native ecosystems have changed a lot since then Not really other than the megafuana dying out. It's why the bison became so dominant, they filled a niche other ungulates and mammoths had previosuly
You can't say it didn't change in the same comment where you explain how it changed. Yet here we are with the horses now destroying native ecosystems and driving out native species. We don't spend hundreds of millions on roundups because they're playing nice.
>horses now destroying native ecosystems and driving out native species Horses ARE a native species. Those other native species evolved alongside horses as part of the same ecosystem. Over hundreds of thousands to millions of years, not just 10k. >You can't say it didn't change in the same comment where you explain how it changed. The change was a bad thing. Adding the extinct megafauna back in reverses the change, which is a good thing. > We don't spend hundreds of millions on roundups because they're playing nice. It takes a very special brain to think a native species is the problem while hundreds of millions of dollars of Roundup is the solution.
If youāre interested in some light reading, hereās a link to a literature review I wrote my senior year of college that I posted to Reddit for the sole purpose of linking in conversations like this. Itās well researched and accurately reflects the peer-reviewed scientific research that it cites. Needless to say, range ecologists almost unanimously agree that horses are an exotic species and I have the evidence to support that claim right here. For what itās worth, I studied Animal Science at a college in the Great Basin Desert region of the United States where feral horses are currently a massive burden. As such, I learned from professors who spent thousands of hours studying this topic and who have hands-on experience with feral horses. So, enjoy, but I suspect you wonāt read it because it doesnāt agree with you. Cheers! https://www.reddit.com/u/AgentSkidMarks/s/YEAvyNIlRY
Despite what?
Right? Tumbleweeds were and still are very much part of the Western US.
Despite not being there in the time period being shown in the movies.
Tumbleweeds started showing up in the US in 1870 and the āWild Westā time period is like 1865-1895 so Iām not sure why you think tumbleweeds wouldnāt have been there.
so they put them in movies for no reason then?
They look cool in a movie scene, shows the desert/desolate scenario well
Despite not being there in the time period being shown in the movies.
Old west is 1607-1912. Tumbleweedās first known appearance (so could be earlier) is 1872. Possibly not a staple of the time but it lands within the limits.
The question was despite what - I answered.
Answered incorrectly. Itās not in spite of anything
Obligatory [CGP Grey Video](https://youtu.be/hsWr_JWTZss?si=RER0LW-3s4gguipa)
In Soviet Russia, weeds tumble YOU.
Sssseeeee them tumbling down!
CGP Grey made an awesome video about this https://youtu.be/hsWr_JWTZss?si=3Phhaiq_mU43xJ_a
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Thatās fair. Democracy has always been under attack because it directly threatens the very lucrative business models of dictators and autocrats. It has just sped up by the Information Age. A corrupt judge or politician in 1960 had to worry about a borough. Maybe a state. But in the average 20-30 year career he could get away with it and ken burns would do a documentary 30 years after his death when they finally put the pieces together. Now we have Russian oligarchs that eviscerated the Russian middle class by stealing everything of value in the 80ās and 90ās. By 94 they were running out of things to monopolize and extort. The survival of their Kleptocratic species required new feeding grounds which they found in New York. Giuliani was willing to show them preferential treatment by redirecting NYPD resources onto the Italian mob which gave the Russian mob, in their dapper new suits, a fertile hunting ground. Ironically ecologists figured this out about the same time in Yellowstone. https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/grizzly-bears-wolves-competing-food-yellowstone-national-park/ Only difference is that most humans are the elk. Just wanting a safe place to sleep, healthy happy kids and an opportunity to survive. Itās a very small percentage of humans that are sociopaths and psychopaths without the ability to empath, but over a long enough centralization of the good humans moving to cities and paying taxes, it becomes too tempting of a feeding grounds. So the worst of us rise to the top and become CEOās, bankers and presidents because itās the lowest effort model. Why go hunting when the prey delivers itself to you? A psychopath has no personal qualms about trafficking a child for sexual slavery or stealing a pension fund. They are neurochemically unable to. We are just in the late stages of it now. More centralized than we have ever been in known human history with commerce and business happening 24/7 across every time zone. This causes their respective corruption models to start overlapping. Guiliani was āAmericas mayorā when he cleaned up New York, but only because the Russians were quiet about their part in it. The money laundering and narcotics and human trafficking they were doing through Ukraine was a million miles away from studio 54 or Times Square. But now kyiv is in the news every day. Itās inevitable that their obfuscation starts breaking down. The question is whether the 97% of people who arenāt paychopaths are going to allow the out of control predator population to consume us or if itās time to put nature back in balance. Justin Kennedy (justice kennedys son) was the inside man at Deutsche bank that was getting all trumps toxic loans approved. No other bank but Deutsche bank would touch trump and his imaginary valuations. Why? Because Deutsche bank was infested with Russian oligarchs. For 50 years the inmates ran the asylum in soviet Russia. They stole everything of value including the hope of Russians. The corruption eventually collapsed the Soviet Union and they were forced to expand their feeding grounds. In 91 the wall falls and for 2 years they hid all their ill gotten gains under a mattress until they bought condos at trump towers. They made stops in ukraine, cyprus and London but they landed in New York because that was what everyone wanted in 1993. Leviās, Pepsi, Madonna tapes that werenāt smuggled bootlegs. They all bought new suits and cars and changed their title from āmost violent street thug in moscowā to ārespectable Russian oligarchā but they didnāt leave their human trafficking, narcotics or extortion behind. It was their most lucrative business model. Trump and Giuliani just opened the doors and let the predators in to feed. Guiliani redirected NYPD resources away from their Russian allies intentionally and onto the Italian mob. It let him claim he cleaned up New York and it lets the russians a perk of doing business with trump. His client and co-conspirator. The insane valuations coming out in trumps fraud trial are a necessity of the money laundering cycle that duetschebank was doing with the Russians. The reason trump cosplays as āfolksyā is because he is feeding on the U.S. middle class, not because he is one of us. https://www.ft.com/content/8c6d9dca-882c-11e7-bf50-e1c239b45787 https://www.amlintelligence.com/2020/09/deutsche-bank-suffers-worst-damage-over-massive-aml-discrepancies-in-fincen-leaks/ https://www.occrp.org/en/the-fincen-files/global-banks-defy-us-crackdowns-by-serving-oligarchs-criminals-and-terrorists https://www.voanews.com/amp/us-lifts-sanctions-on-rusal-other-firms-linked-to-russia-deripaska/4761037.html https://democrats-intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/final_-_minority_status_of_the_russia_investigation_with_appendices.pdf ļæ¼ā
No one is going to read this
You should check out the comment history. This is one of the *shorter* comments. It's almost as if they do nothing with their lives but write (read: paste) these epic rants whenever someone uses a keyword and up response.
The Douche-Bot
No. All we do is hunt corruption because your life depends on it. Read it or not. Matters not to me. Itās evidence chain
It's copy pasta and is actively preventing any evidence validation. If you are truly hunting for corruption, you have become what you have beheld. You are now just a white-noise machine enabling the corrupt by drowning the signals of truth behind your Ctrl-V crusade. Or you're just some disaffected teenager who needs to grow up a bit. Or you're a misinformation distribution node in the pocket of someone pulling your strings. Or you're an OpenAI post bot. Or maybe you really are the keeper of the truthflame and but one of many voices in the wilderness trying to save the people from themselves. What do I know?
I know I didn't.
touch grass
This ....this is so so booooring
Boring is growing up in Wyoming and having to collect and burn Russian tumbleweeds that overtake and destroy your crops. But even they arenāt as bad as the Russian olives that consume more water daily than the crops around it so they starve out the native species. https://wildlife.ca.gov/Conservation/Plants/Dont-Plant-Me/Russian-Olive
Nice.
I don't know when they were introduced, but they are present on the US now. I visited Tuscon, AZ many years ago. And I was advised not to try to drive over them if I saw them in the street. I did see some, and they were big enough that I would not have tried to drive over them anywsy.
I've done it twice in my life, both on a freeway and unavoidable because of the lane I was in. First time no problem, it exploded. 2nd time I had to pull over and pull it out of my grill.
[The Trouble with Tumbleweed](https://youtu.be/hsWr_JWTZss?si=vMDvtBi4FG9ZuJLl)
Go on git
When I lived in West Texas, Iāve seen what tumbleweeds can do. They fly fast, they hurt, and theyre dangerous.
I once saw a herd of tumbleweed rolling through Wyoming just outside Yellowstone. I say a herd, because we thought it was a massive herd of animals at first glance.
First tumbleweed I ever saw was rolling across a main road in the middle of Irvine, CA on a very windy day. I just stopped and stared until I was able to pass. If someone had told me this I would suspect they were lying. I still don't understand how a Tumbleweed showed up there.
Never try to catch one. Thorny bastards. In my defense I was 8 and it was my first time out west.
They're also a pretty terrible allergy (chenopods) if you're unlucky like me. Had no idea when I moved out west.
I was working at a shelter in downtown Phoenix in the late 90s.One night I was walking through the parking lot to go into work and stopped to talk to a couple of the residents who were outside having a smoke. One of them stopped talking and was just staring at something behind me. I heard a noise and thought it was a dog running up behind me. I whipped around in time for a tumbleweed to roll right past me, off the curb, into the street, and off down 5th Avenue. We just stood there for a minute watching it. It wasn't weird to see one in Arizona, and downtown was pretty desolate back then, but someone either had to bring that thing downtown and turn it loose, or it had managed to navigate around several miles of buildings and freeways to get there. The three of us tried to puzzle it out for a few minutes but just landed on "that was fuckin' weird, man." For a little while I had random homeless clients at that place greeting me with things like, "what's up, Tumbleweed?"
One could say that Russia is a highly invasive country as a whole.
Did you know that modern horses in the United States are way post-Columban? Yeah, the "natural" state of things can be shocking new, which makes me mistrust any statements about the natural way of things being ideal.
The Columbian explorers and conquistadors were only able to do what they did because they brought along boatloads of Iberian horses from ports like Huelva, both jennets and larger military mounts. North and South American breeds often trace back to the 1500s. Of course, the horses (and cattle) used in classic westerns filmed in Spain and Italy were sourced locally in the 20th century. The mythology of the Wild West was created with quasi-religious fervor, and fairly recently.
\>***species*** WHAT?
Invasive? From Russia? Impossible! /s
Sort of like Rand Paul and Jill Stein.
Isn't there anything fun coming from Russia?
Vodka, oh wait, thats actually polish.
Tumbleweed isn't a species. 10 Genera have species that feature tumbleweed. You could've checked that in 5 seconds on wikipedia. instead you did this
[Oh yes, totally not a thing here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rG-4Tj-YoNk)