Great question (and we are reaching the outside edge of my knowledge here). Something like 3-5% of carbon in plants is taken up from the soil by plant roots. I don’t fully understand the mechanism, but the organic carbon percentage is an important competent in the calculation of how much artificial nitrogen a crop is going to need, so I guess it’s probably some biochemical process for making the nitrogen available.

The organic carbon percentage is closely watched by farmers and is something of an indication of soil health. ie if your crop rotation is reducing the OC% over time then you probably need to reconsider it. It’s one of the reasons burning crop stubbles is a much rarer practice now.

Hay is cut from any sort of cereal plant early in it’s lifecycle, specifically before the plant starts concentrating it’s energy into the seeds. At this stage the plant stalk is sweeter (even to a human - give it a bite). After flowering, the plant is concentrating it’s energy into the seeds. By the time it’s fully done this (which takes a number of weeks), there is very little protein in the stalk, and it’s far less palatable (or nutritious) to animals. The plant stalk is now essentially ‘straw’.

Commercial hay can be mowed from a meadow (in Australia usually ryegrass) in which case it will have all sorts mixed in, or from crops intended for making good hay (in Australia usually oats or wheat). Commercial straw (which has a tiny market) is cut after the grain has been harvested from the top of the plant. In commercial broadacre cropping in poor soil areas (the bulk of Australia’s grain areas) it’s usually better economics to keep your crop residue including straw since the cost to replace the carbon would be higher that what you’d get for the straw after the cost of harvesting it.

Source: I play a lot of Minecraft

• Climate change contributing to
• Climate refugees contributing to
• Breakdown in social cohesion contributing to
• Populism, oligarchs, and authoritarianism contributing to
• Breakdown of international cooperation contributing to
• Inter-nation conflict contributing to
• GOTO 10

#2 back and sides, finger length on top

Yes, in a shallow tourist mine in Australia. Apparently coal starts to flake easily once it’s been exposed to air for a bit, so they kept a big chunk in a large jar of water that you could take out and handle. It felt like a light wet rock.

The sample, and the coal at the workface of the mine was stereotypicaly black. We wore hats with lights on, and when we emerged back out to the daylight I had an overwhelming urge to speak in a Monty Python type Yorkshire accent and go home and have my back scrubbed clean of the coal dust by my swarthy tired looking wife while I sat in a tub in front of the fire in the kitchen and our urchins played in the street.

I don’t want to give the impression I’m a big fossil fuel tourist, but I’ve also seen blobs of crude oil on beaches near Mediterranean sea oil terminals.

Sadly, I didn’t try to set fire to them on either of these occasions, which I now regret.

If you didn’t have to deal with a cumbersome spacesuit, I imagine you could run, but you’d lean over much more towards the horizontal - like maybe 45° or lower, so each ‘step’ would be a push backwards in line with your longitudinal axis. Don’t waste energy by bounding up.

Source: wild speculation.

Built my own quad-copter and flew it around. Had to flash plane ESC’s with custom firmware, wire it all up manually to a controller and muck around with the values to tune it, then you could hand fly it (very carefully). It was amazing! - an RC plane that could hover.

Nowadays, if I go somewhere and some normie’s “flying” a DJ, I’m annoyed with them. It’s really breathtaking how good these got so quickly.

Would be handy for attaching your name badge, or if you need to put those little hard drive screws somewhere so you don’t lose them.