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'Forgotten' water harvesting system transforms 'barren wasteland' into thriving farmland
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this post was submitted on 13 May 2025
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These are always only pilot projects with limited funding. And who do you think is more likely to maintain this infrastructure and proudly tell their neighbours about them so that they can replicate it? Surely not the person that is annoyed that some rich guy from the capital with a digger came and did all the work and took all the money that they would have happily earned. These largely subsistence communities are cash starved and projects like that are a welcome opportunity to earn some money on the side.
The difference in efficiency is so high, you could run through with the backhoe and then give locals the money anyway.
Community buy-in is more important than efficiency in projects like this.
Sure, these projects could be done more efficiently by one construction company with heavy machinery, but that takes dollars these dirt poor areas don't have (and I think Trump's bullshit arbitrary defunding of USAID is an object lesson for developing countries not to rely on foreign charity for anything important, among many, many other reasons why foreign charity is bad for development). So local people need to know how to do it with local resources in order to expand the projects to new areas.
Just as important, local communities need to support and maintain these projects in the long run, and sweat equity is a great way to build commitment.
Something along the lines of "hiring heavy equipment, then buying a ticket to the gym, everytime you need this done because you never learned anything else". My neighbours tell me I need heavy equipment to fell my forest, absolutely not, I'll go on foot, respect and fell every single tree I plan to fell, leave no tracks, become stronger and wiser, all for free.
Heavy equipment is not cheap, too, especially if you need an operator with skill comparable with attention to small details that manual laborers have naturally. And it does not spread virally like skills. And it burns carbon and leaves tracks. It has its uses at scale, but not in pilots. Same thing everywhere: I have a pick-and-place robot to assemble my electronics, not even turning it on before I have at least 100-ish boards to assemble; it's not expensive, it's easier than manual labor - but you've got to know the system you build before giving it away to a machine, or you'll have a long and expensive debug session ahead of you, even if you are certain know everything about it, which is totally not the case here.
Oh no... tracks. In the barren wasteland. Where the whole point is creating divots for water.
You got a well-written, thoughtful and meaningful comment, and you mined it for one nitpick to sarcastically attack as if it was the whole point.
Pearls before swine.
It's dissembling nonsense on every level. The first sentence doesn't even parse. Half the comment is irrelevant self-congratulatory wank about trees and electronics. There's about fifteen contiguous words that matter, at all, and they're buried in the middle of three half-wrong sentences.
The scale of this "pilot" wasn't one fucking hole. It's acres of them. A single backhoe would still be busy for weeks.
I only picked one nit because it highlights the failure to recognize what matters, here. Tracks are not a negative. There's no grass being torn up, like the nimble woodsman here seems to be picturing. It's barren wasteland.
That picked nit, by the way, was a concise and impersonal rebuke of only that point. When I want to attack someone I am not fucking subtle. But thanks for dragging this all out, with your performative eye-rolling that contributes nothing but unpleasant disdain.
All three of the "sentences" in your reply don't fucking parse if you want to be goddamn garmmar nazi about it.
It's fragmentary delivery of one sentence which you plainly understood just fine.
Actual hypocrisy would be you mining a wide-ranging rebuke for that failed riposte.
It wasn't hypocrisy, I was demonstrating a lack of respect for anything you had to say, just like you did. Doesn't feel good, does it?
That's still hypocrisy, dipshit. And projection.
You don't get to condescend to me after getting the detail you barged in to sneer about, and then doing the exact thing you were sneering about.
Hypocrisy means a lack of self-reflection, and I am perfectly able to reflect on the fact that I was deliberately disrespecting you, and I think it was a fine thing to do actually.
You took a meaningful, thoughtful reply and dismissed it with a nitpick that, by the way, completely missed the point.
Your response to my critique was pure toxicity, just laden with contempt for me and the other commenter. The fact you started with a grammatical complaint shows how utterly shallow and vapid your replies are.
You're an asshole, and I have no trouble talking to you like an asshole. However, I won't let you waste any more of my time, so this is the last thing I'll say to you. Feel free to shock me by not being an asshole in your final reply.
Hypocrisy means double standards, you tone-policing projection addict.
You called me swine.
You called me swine for a polite jibe about dirt.
Fuck entirely off with your high-horse posturing, after barging in to deliver that baseless feigned offense. Which I met, by the way, with a blunt version of the detailed response you fucking wanted. A courtesy you seem incapable of meeting in kind. Because of course, you, the protagonist of reality, get to declare me persona non grata, but god forbid anyone else consider a comment rambling and irrelevant. It was so detailed! About trees, for some reason, and gyms, and electronics?
Oh no I'm sorry, that previous sentence wasn't rigidly diagram-friendly, which is what you think "parse" means. No. It means, I still have no idea why that guy mentioned his gym. That part, which I only touched on because you pushed me to address it, fuckface, was not even the nit initially picked.
I am treating you as an equal. I hold you to your own standards. You are found sorely lacking. Worst of all for the inevitable 'see I knew it' response, as if anything short of groveling apology wouldn't be dismissed as such.