Apparently, Sjömantorp, the house where we live nowadays, has an age-old right to retrieve seaweed from the beach. Only a few houses along the meadow here have this agreement in place with a click of local villagers (a group of vigilant farmers with a monopoly on most of the seaweed here).

So in an effort to add an injection of powerful nutrients to the property’s many new, young plants, mainly elephant grass, and bamboo, I took our old rustbucket of a wheelbarrow down to the shoreline yesterday and picked me a nice big batch of dried seaweed. On my way up from the sea, I also piled up a couple of dried cow chips on top of the natural manure.

I was going to use some of the seaweed for my small vegetable garden but read somewhere that because of how polluted most of the country’s coastal waters are these days, it could potentially contain dangerous amounts of Cadmium and other heavy metals.

I don’t know if this pertains to seaweed on our beaches, but it feels better not to take a chance and risk poisoning my homegrown ruccola and spinach. There’s enough scientific evidence out there for me to just assume that even the sea here Skälderviken and beaches that surround Bjäre, unfortunately, contain a fair share of toxicities.

I am fascinated by conspiracy theories. It’s not what is claimed that I find intriguing but rather how they develop from fringe ideas to mainstream opinions. There are a ton of conspiracy theories bouncing around the Internet on any given day of the week. Some gain a surprisingly disproportionate amount of followers and become popularized among millions of people.

There can’t have been a more fruitful time throughout all of human history for spreading irrational explanations about all kinds of stuff. And Trump has done his share by spreading some really crazy theories to his most gullible supporters. The more intelligent followers are just as opportunistic as Trump is and while they hopefully don’t really believe in the crap his many tweetstorms and rally speeches contain, they’re savvy enough/conditioned enough to know when to just shut up, nod and continue wagging their tales.

When trying to decipher what some of the later years’ conspiracy theories represent and how they get traction, I think it’s important to understand that the vast majority of people that subscribe to them do so more for the value of participation than because they care or, at least have seen even a speck of solid evidence that provides a particular theory’s validity. Such is the case with the outlandish, right-wing Qanon theorists explained here. Ignorance is bliss.