Spyke
Hoboreply
lemmy.world

Do you have a source other then your backside for that? Cause I'm pretty sure lawns started out as communal grazing and recreational areas.

3
lemmy.ca

So. If I'm every in a position where I can be an unethically constrained mad scientist type who really wants to make a difference...

I would engineer a virus, maybe delivered by mosquitoes, that inserts the ability to produce the enzyme cellulase into the human gut. This would allow us to eat grass in a pinch, likely solving world hunger. Of course, it would suck to eat grass, so most people wouldn't -- just like most avoid eating dandelions today. But it would be a cool fallback position in a global crisis.

9
lemmy.world

There's a guy on youtube (The Thought Emporium) that did something similar so he could defeat lactose intolerance, however temporarily. For a while, until his gut shed its lining, he could synthesize lactase again. So doing the same with cellulase isn't that far fetched. What I would really be worried about is the prodigious amount of gas you would generate, as our guts aren't really mechanically built for that degree of rear-gut fermentation. I think you'd have to start with an elimination diet of some kind (keto?) and work forward to small amounts of vegetation to test what your body can handle. It's all doable, but risky.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3FcbFqSoQY

3

This is very cool -- without the evil scientist element :)

2

I started growing a wildflower garden on huge sections of my stupid lawn and growing big ol' lilies around the perimeter for two reasons:

  1. I didn't want to mow it
  2. People kept walking across it waaaay too close to my front door
  3. Keeping people away

Now I have the most lovely spite garden in the neighborhood, plus lots of clover and the greenest and most colorful yard compared to everyone else.

7

Well they can eat us when we croak so fair enough. If we don’t feed our cat sharply at 5 am makes us think she just might take a nibble.

1

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