I grew up in Connecticut in the US (east coast, southern New England, adjacent to New York State). I remember Brach's displays in grocery stores, usually placed on an end cap. When I moved to Portland, Oregon (west coast) in 2006, Fred Meyer still had the Brach's candy-by-weight display. It survived until 2010 or so. I miss it. You could buy a piece of candy off the display by placing a quarter in the slot of the tiny attached lockbox. It was perhaps the last vestige of the honor system.
English ivy (hedera helix) can damage mortar, but grape vines don't have holdfast structures like hedera that can sink into mortar. Plus, hedera helix is so dense that rotting vegetation and sheltered animals can also cause problems. Grapevines have tendrils that grab onto and twine around something like wires or a trellis.
Commercial bananas grow from cuttings. I don’t know about the rest of the world, but in the US, plant patents protect against unauthorized propagation.
Learning about science is more rewarding to me as an amateur than hobby/indie computer programming. There are others like me, though perhaps a minority on this site. I'm sad to see this go. One of my favorite experiences as a child was visiting the Boston Science Museum.
You may have misophonia. It’s not uncommon with misophonia to react with rage to eating noises. My husband cannot tolerate certain sounds, for example a dog lapping water.
That was me, reading the original article as a youngster, working out generations on graph paper, etc. The difference is that I have been following the progress of researchers of Life through the years. It’s still astonishing!
I own a book that may be relevant: "Bypasses: A Simple Approach to Complexity" by Z. A. Melzak, (New York, Wiley, 1983) 0-471-86854-X, or maybe it's too theoretical.
This reminds me of how Nisus (the word processor program) styled text. The document, a Classic-Mac-OS file, contained plain text in the data fork and styling information in the resource fork. If I recall correctly!
You might enjoy Stephen Malin's YouTube channel where he animates the notes of a piece. He uses some of her Bach playing, and, tangentially, he has been releasing animations of the two- and three-part inventions and I quite like the interpretations.