Also what do you see?

  • The_v@lemmy.world
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    6 hours ago

    There is two things going on there.

    First if you look closely you can see holes in the spud. This is insect damage, likely caused by a wireworm (larval form of a clickbeetle species.)

    Second is a physiological damage in storage/shipping causing the black color. This is not blight or another fungus, but the tubers reaction to suboptimal storage condition (not enough O2).

    https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdf/10.1086/333609

    • Fafa@lemmy.worldOP
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      4 hours ago

      Oh that makes sense. I wanted to bake them in the oven but most of them had this kind of pattern. They weren’t smelly or anything and had a normal consistency.

    • hector@lemmy.today
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      8 hours ago

      Is this blight? I know the famine the harvest looked good until a day or so after they are harvested they would turn black, and then rotten. Potatoes really get rotten fast too if they are frozen and thawed or something. But I thought the blight was more the entire potato going bad.

        • hector@lemmy.today
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          6 hours ago

          Ah interesting thanks my understanding is actually limited to my recollection of https://www.historyplace.com/worldhistory/famine/begins.htm

          '… of The Famine began quite mysteriously in September 1845 as leaves on potato plants suddenly turned black and curled, then rotted, seemingly the result of a fog that had wafted across the fields of Ireland. The cause was actually an airborne fungus (phytophthora infestans) originally transported in the holds of ships traveling from North America to England.

          Winds from southern England carried the fungus to the countryside around Dublin. The blight spread throughout the fields as fungal spores settled on the leaves of healthy potato plants, multiplied and were carried in the millions by cool breezes to surrounding plants. Under ideal moist conditions, a single infected potato plant could infect thousands more in just a few days.

          The attacked plants fermented while providing the nourishment the fungus needed to live, emitting a nauseous stench as they blackened and withered in front of the disbelieving eyes of Irish peasants. There had been crop failures in the past due to weather and other diseases, but this strange new failure was unlike anything ever seen.** Potatoes dug out of the ground at first looked edible, but shriveled and rotted within days. The potatoes had been attacked by the same fungus that had destroyed the plant leaves above ground.**

          By October 1845, news of the blight had reached London. British Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel, quickly established a Scientific Commission to examine the problem. After briefly studying the situation, the Commission issued a gloomy report that over half of Ireland’s potato crop might perish due to ‘wet rot.’ …’

    • mech@feddit.org
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      9 hours ago

      This may be the only genocide in history where it’s socially accepted to make fun of the victims.

  • WagnasT@piefed.world
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    11 hours ago

    It looks like you may have thought the potato was locked in there with you but actually you might be locked in there with the potato.

  • Komodo Rodeo@lemmy.world
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    13 hours ago

    German psychiatrist voice

    “It appears to be threatened by self actualization and fixated on its dysfunctional relationship with its Father.”

    • hitmyspot@aussie.zone
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      10 hours ago

      My favourite great hunger joke:

      How many potatoes does it take to kill an Irishman?

      None.

      • The Octonaut@mander.xyz
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        8 hours ago

        No potatoes doesn’t kill an Irishman, but Queen Victoria endorsing Charles Trevelyan’s laisse-faire policies of “continuing food exports and limiting aid to fellow subjects because depopulating Ireland was God’s will” did.

        • hector@lemmy.today
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          8 hours ago

          Well they will never learn anything if you give them handouts after their crop failures, what not with us shipping all their other food they grow elsewhere. /s

          It’s amazing the language used, is exactly like the heartless politicians now taking away food stamps and medicaid and the like.

    • ameancow@lemmy.world
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      7 hours ago

      The actual blight/parasite that caused the potato famine from what I’ve seen looked a lot different, it was more like the whole thing would be rotted out and slimey on the inside due to worms chewing around in there.

      Although I may be mixing up several different potato famines.

    • hector@lemmy.today
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      8 hours ago

      No I don’t think so, that turns the entire potato black, and it gets rotten along with it, this looks like it’s still got it’s integrity other than some black shit colonizing it. Potato blight they harvested all right then a couple of days later would turn black. So you do all the work, think you are finally set, then fucked.