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Crime Pays but Botany Doesn't

crimepaysbutbotanydoesnt.com

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Re: Crime Pays but Botany Doesn't

#171

Post by gooob »

olivierlacan wrote: post #168

Odd to see one of the best native plant communicators referenced on HN but I'll use to opportunity to mention a side project I'd been delaying diving in for years and finally committed to recently if there are folks here who want to not only learn to identify crucial native flora (and fauna) but contribute to restoring local native plants that are critical to ecosystems. So, mini show HN: https://indigene.app is a br…

hell yeah, glad to see it, keep at it! this is the type of thing that i always figured software people would naturally tend to support, because it's just systems thinking. what better thing to do than to heal the ecosystems on which we depend?

Re: Crime Pays but Botany Doesn't

#173

Post by exolymph »

olivierlacan wrote: post #168

Odd to see one of the best native plant communicators referenced on HN but I'll use to opportunity to mention a side project I'd been delaying diving in for years and finally committed to recently if there are folks here who want to not only learn to identify crucial native flora (and fauna) but contribute to restoring local native plants that are critical to ecosystems. So, mini show HN: https://indigene.app is a br…

Aw man, since you're sharing this on HN, you gotta cover California!

Re: Crime Pays but Botany Doesn't

#175

Post by jhbadger »

kriro wrote: post #13
franciscop wrote: post #3

> "at the time, he was probably mostly thinking of “white European cultures”, and while we can acknowledge how backwards and fucking goofy this is now, we can still admit that Linnaeus’ ideology was simply flawed like his time and NOT throw out the baby with the proverbial bath water" In the 18th century someone living in Europe making science books would definitely be using Latin, maybe French if you were a modernis…

Agreed. The author in question (Linnaeus) was from Sweden and professor at a Swedish university (Uppsala). Latin was used across the board in "traditional" sciences in northern Europe at that time and in fact the distinction of disciplines was not as clear as it is today. Linnaeus was a professor of medicine formally but focused on botany. He traveled a lot and had many international "contacts", especially in the Net…

Even speakers of more common languages like English used Latin for science. Newton wrote the Principia in Latin and William Harvey wrote De Motu Cordis (the book that showed that the heart was a pump that circulated blood) in Latin, for example.

Re: Crime Pays but Botany Doesn't

#176

Post by anon84873628 »

horsawlarway wrote: post #162
nsvd2 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How terrifying that a bit of nature may be near a person! Better cover it with roundup so they don't have to suffer the horror of seeing a spider

I mean, I get it - I somewhat agree with your take, but this is somewhat of a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" case. I think you undermine your argument when you don't understand the complaint. Because I'd also like to see a lot more native plants, and less manicured, mono-culture yards with poison sprayed all over them. But at least in my area, the problem isn't "oh look a spider"... it's "oh shit, that house…

The complaint is not well founded and doesn't explain how native landscapes make the problem any worse.

A healthy ecosystem with owls, snakes, and coyotes will keep rodents in check. But well before that point, the ubiquitous feral domestic cats usually wreak havoc on pests and songbirds alike. Not to mention that most of the problem starts with bad food storage and waste management in the first place, not tall grasses or a few fruit trees (hence the flocks of pigeons and seagulls around parking lot dumpsters).

Plus, no one is trying to stop you from tenting houses for termites, which are meditated by landscape practices like mulch and irrigation rather than the types of plants themselves.

Re: Crime Pays but Botany Doesn't

#177

Post by legel »

olivierlacan wrote: post #168

Odd to see one of the best native plant communicators referenced on HN but I'll use to opportunity to mention a side project I'd been delaying diving in for years and finally committed to recently if there are folks here who want to not only learn to identify crucial native flora (and fauna) but contribute to restoring local native plants that are critical to ecosystems. So, mini show HN: https://indigene.app is a br…

I'm a Visiting Scientist at UC Berkeley focusing on AI for ecology.

Always great to see fellow technologists in this space!

For the past few years I've maintained a free open source project called Ecodash (https://ecodash.ai) covering the world's native plants, with trait filters.

Code here: https://github.com/legel/ecodash

While I'm also an entrepreneur and *do* believe there is a lot of financial opportunity in this space, I also really just want to see ecosystems thrive.

Keep up the great work!

Re: Crime Pays but Botany Doesn't

#178

Post by otherayden »

iammjm wrote: post #7

I can strongly recommend the mobile app Flora Incognita for quickly identifying plants. It’s made by one of the German universities so it’s free, don’t have ads, and don’t collect your personal data. I even showed it to my mum and she loves it

Thank you for the rec, I used it to identify a mystery house plant I was gifted :)

Re: Crime Pays but Botany Doesn't

#179

Post by nja »

olivierlacan wrote: post #168

Odd to see one of the best native plant communicators referenced on HN but I'll use to opportunity to mention a side project I'd been delaying diving in for years and finally committed to recently if there are folks here who want to not only learn to identify crucial native flora (and fauna) but contribute to restoring local native plants that are critical to ecosystems. So, mini show HN: https://indigene.app is a br…

Wow, this is a lovely tool, and it's clearly built with a lot of your own knowledge! I'm in New England and this has some great recs for my land.

One slight piece of feedback: it's pretty clear a lot of the text was output of AI. IME (and just _my_ E, of course), this detracts somewhat from the authority of the page, as it makes it seem more like it just came from a conversation with Claude, rather than from your knowledge filtered through building an app. Might be worth doing a couple of passes to tighten up and human-ize it a bit :). (since it's open source, I suppose I could always PR myself if you'd be open to it)

Re: Crime Pays but Botany Doesn't

#180

Post by dyauspitr »

iammjm wrote: post #7

I can strongly recommend the mobile app Flora Incognita for quickly identifying plants. It’s made by one of the German universities so it’s free, don’t have ads, and don’t collect your personal data. I even showed it to my mum and she loves it

PictureThis is an old favorite and still works quickly and quite accurately. I believe it’s a Chinese app though so do with that information what you will.
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