the2030promise

[the2030promise]

i think in quite a few ways the modern "homesteading" movement is uh. unfortunate, to put it mildly, in terms of both ideology and how that ideology is put into practice (and/or romanticized)

but i do think to some extent that lefty people are throwing the baby out with the bathwater, particularly when it comes to the small-scale production of food

the global production and transport of fruits, vegetables, etc. has a significant climate impact, and the industries responsible for them are often dependent on mistreating marginalized human workers

and when it comes to animal agriculture, i think we have a bimodal distribution of hardcore ARA vegans and people who have just shrugged off all moral concerns about animal products by chirping that there's "no ethical consumption under capitalism!"

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If you take the bus, wave to the driver and thank them as you're getting off the bus.

Being a bus driver is an underappreciated and difficult job but still very vital to society. They still have to do customer service and deal with rude and even aggressive passengers, and on top of that have to deal with traffic and other drivers all day (and let's face it, there's a lot of bad drivers out there who aren't considerate about sharing the road). All while providing an invaluable service of getting us where we need to go. Showing them some appreciation can go a long ways for someone doing such an important job that usually gets little to no recognition or thanks.

[the2030promise]

call me a dirty communist radical but I think everyone should know if they live near toxic waste

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Sooooo few people are actually willing to defend the basic human rights of people who have committed crimes. Like I know it's not fun but if you genuinely believe in human rights as a concept you can't be okay with the state violating them in prisons I'm sorrrrry. Having moral principles is not always a fun time.

[the2030promise]

"Scientists in Singapore have broken a long-standing limitation on the ability to generate electricity from flowing water, suggesting that another elemental force of nature could be leveraged for renewable electricity: rain.

With the simplest and smallest scale test setup, the team could power around 12 LED lightbulbs with simulated rain droplets flowing through a tube, but at scale, their method could generate meaningful amounts that could rival rooftop solar arrays.

Singapore experiences significant rainfall throughout the year, averaging 101 inches (2581 millimeters) of precipitation annually. The idea of generating electricity from such falling water is attractive, but the method has long been constrained by a principle called the Debye Length.

Nevertheless, the concept is possible because of a simple physical principle that charged entities on the surface of materials get nudged when they rub together—as true for water droplets as it is for a balloon rubbed against the hair on one’s head.

While this is true, the power values thus generated have been negligible, and electricity from flowing water has been limited to the driving of turbines in hydropower plants.

However, in a study published in the journal ACS Central Science, a team of physicists has found a way to break through the constraints of water’s Debye Length, and generate power from simulated rain.

“Water that falls through a vertical tube generates a substantial amount of electricity by using a specific pattern of water flow: plug flow,” says Siowling Soh, author of the study. “This plug flow pattern could allow rain energy to be harvested for generating clean and renewable electricity.”

The authors write in their study that in existing tests of the power production from water flows, pumps are always used to drive liquid through the small channels. But the pumps require so much energy to run that outputs are limited to miniscule amounts.

Instead, their setup to harness this plug flow pattern was scandalously simple. No moving parts or mechanisms of any kind were required. A simple plastic tube just 2 millimeters in diameter; a large plastic bottle; a small metallic needle. Water coming out of the bottle ran along the needle and bumped into the top section of the tube that had been cut in half, interrupting the water flow and allowing pockets of air to slide down the tube along with the water.

The air was the key to breaking through the limits set by the Debye Length, and key to the feasibility of electricity generation from water. Wires placed at the top of the tube and in the cup harvested the electricity.

The total generation rate of greater than 10% resulted in about 100 watts per square meter of tube. For context, a 100-watt solar panel can power an appliance as large as a blender or ceiling fan, charge a laptop, provide for several light bulbs, or even a Wi-Fi router.

Because the droplet speeds tested were much slower than rain, the researchers suggest that the real thing would provide even more than their tests, which were of course on a microscale."

-via Good News Network, April 30, 2025

[the2030promise]

Click through to see story links

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> read library book

> it's good

Thank you library

[the2030promise]

kind of obsessed with this comment from the aoteaora nz subreddit….

[the2030promise]

They're wanting to change the definition of water to see which water would qualify under the Clean Water Act...I wish I was making this up.

What this means, in layman's terms, is that not all water or wetlands would be under environmental protections, so some could legally be dumped in, scraped out of, or otherwise harmed.

The comment period for this is pretty short (just a few days left!) so please submit comments asking for ALL water to be protected.

[the2030promise]

hope is a skill

[the2030promise]

"Weep and howl, you rich, for the gold you have hoarded and stolen from the workers will eat your flesh like fire." -Bernie Sanders

(Just kidding that was the Apostle James)

To paraphrase the Gospel of Mark:

Even if you're rich you can't buy your way to being good. Rich doesn't mean good.

[the2030promise]

the solution to the systematic (and purposeful) destruction of the environment is not simply “no one ever touches nature again because humans are not a part of nature and should leave it alone” lmao. colonialism has destroyed the environment in ways which are targeted specifically toward indigenous people first, as well as impoverished communities who suffer the negative affects of environmental damage first. the response is not the self-deprecating and humanity-as-conglomerate attitude taken on by everyone from vegans to leftists to apolitical worriers… a solution is not to point and cry and say “think how much better animals would be without us!” because not only is human life as valuable and something you should be concerned over, not only should you think critically about the ways in which you define that “us” clause, you should also remember the human species is part of the ecosystem

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"you're really scraping the bottom of the barrel" girl i am living that balsamic life, that's the mommy down there at the bottom.

[the2030promise]

i do think we need to start treating spraying harmless "weeds" in your lawn as utterly absurd princess and the pea level of obsession with needing the world to revolve around your every whim, like.

Okay a flower grew out of the ground outside and you can't cope with it. Do you need to sleep on thirty feather beds as well

[the2030promise]

What I was taught growing up: Wild edible plants and animals were just so naturally abundant that the indigenous people of my area, namely western Washington state, didn't have to develop agriculture and could just easily forage/hunt for all their needs.

The first pebble in what would become a landslide: Native peoples practiced intentional fire, which kept the trees from growing over the camas praire.

The next: PNW native peoples intentionally planted and cultivated forest gardens, and we can still see the increase in biodiversity where these gardens were today.

The next: We have an oak prairie savanna ecosystem that was intentionally maintained via intentional fire (which they were banned from doing for like, 100 years and we're just now starting to do again), and this ecosystem is disappearing as Douglas firs spread, invasive species take over, and land is turned into European-style agricultural systems.

The Land Slide: Actually, the native peoples had a complex agricultural and food processing system that allowed them to meet all their needs throughout the year, including storing food for the long, wet, dark winter. They collected a wide variety of plant foods (along with the salmon, deer, and other animals they hunted), from seaweeds to roots to berries, and they also managed these food systems via not only burning, but pruning, weeding, planting, digging/tilling, selectively harvesting root crops so that smaller ones were left behind to grow and the biggest were left to reseed, and careful harvesting at particular times for each species that both ensured their perennial (!) crops would continue thriving and that harvest occurred at the best time for the best quality food. American settlers were willfully ignorant of the complex agricultural system, because being thus allowed them to claim the land wasn't being used. Native peoples were actively managing the ecosystem to produce their food, in a sustainable manner that increased biodiversity, thus benefiting not only themselves but other species as well.

So that's cool. If you want to read more, I suggest "Ancient Pathways, Ancestral Knowledge: Ethnobotany and Ecological Wisdom of Indigenous Peoples of Northwestern North America" by Nancy J. Turner

[the2030promise]

"well youve had it 6 years that's a good amount of time for that kind of thing to work"

"you should be grateful you got 3 years of use out of that thing, I'm lucky if mine last a year haha"

listen, in 1977 nasa launched the voyager spacecrafts to take advantage of a planetary alignment that takes place every 175 years. These 2 crafts were planned to flyby the outer planets of our solar system and gather data on them to send back to us. Voyager 2 launched first on the 20th of August despite its name because it was planned to reach our gas giants after its counterpart voyager 1, which launched a little later on the 5th of September.

The voyager mission was planned to end 12 years later in 1989. In that time, voyager 1 and 2 passed by Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. They discovered new moons, confirmed theories about Saturn's rings, found the first active volcanoes found outside the earth, and they take close-up images of planets only seen at that point from telescopes.

On the 25th of August 1989, voyager 2 encounters Neptune, the last planet in our solar system the voyagers will meet. And that was that. End of mission. Now obsolete.

~

Less than 1 year later on valentine's day in 1990 voyager 1 looked back on the planet that had built it and sent with it a world's worth of hopes and dreams and took a picture. We called it the solar system family portrait and in it, we see ourselves. The pale blue dot nestled in the darkness of space

And then commands were sent to shut down their cameras. Preserve fuel.

35 years after launch, in 2012 voyager 1 sent back to us data about interstellar space. The very first manmade object to enter it.

41 years after launch voyager 2 did the same. Still operational, still going. Still sending back to us invaluable data, teaching us about our own solar system and the suns influence in our local bubble of space.

They are expected to continue to operate until the year 2025 - almost 50 whole years after they were launched and 36 years after their mission was supposed to have ended.

48 years of harsh space travel, battered by solar winds, pulled by gravity but fast enough just to escape, pelted by who knows how much space dust and radiation.

And even after that, they still have a purpose. Each craft was given a golden record. A disc filled with human knowledge and knowledge of humans and the planet they live on. Greetings and well-wishes to any prospective extraterrestrial life that could potentially pick it up. Co-ordinates, an invite. Samples of our music, the things we love, sounds of the earth, a story of our world. The surf, the wind, birds and whales, images of a mother, our moon, a sunset. Long after the voyager spacecrafts go dark, probably long after we are gone, they will still be doing their job; educating a species about our very tiny corner of the galaxy.

They are nasa's longest-running operation.

And it was all done using 70s technology.

So excuse me if I want a phone that lasts more than 2 years or a vacuum cleaner that doesn't break down after 6, or god fucking forbid, a refrigerator that will keep my food cold my entire fucking lifetime.