the whole "how to fix the USAmerican food system" thing has become a major interest of mine, and much of why I find this topic engaging is that no one seems to discuss or propose any solutions that are very good
I can't do a more deep opinion on this orca thing because yeah one can say "go orcas!", it feels good, doesn't it?...
but in fact those must be very scattered cases that won't change the fact that the current situation is that ocean transport is noisy, it's everywhere, and it must be driving these very, very sensitive animals crazy. Before motors, a whale could listen to what was happening in South Africa from the Argentine coast. Now their range of communication must have dropped to only a few kilometers: moreover, all the noise must be insane. There have been studies saying that even things like lawnmowers can make permanent ear damage to small rodents, and birds have had to adapt to city noises (their songs changed to a more "natural" pattern during the pandemic lockdowns) So I can't imagine what such things must be doing to the minds of orcas, one of the animals with the most complex and intelligent behavior registered outside of primates, and extremely sensitive to sound. Can we even understand what they're going through right now.
And this is not to mention the widespread whale (baleen whales, not orcas) hunting that decimated their populations to an absurd degree. All the world is currently going through a beyond worrying trend of defaunation, but whales were particulary hurt. There were 250.000 (estimated) blue whales before whaling, and they were decimated to less than 2000. Even today, with strict conservation measures, there's around 10-25k blue whales, and that's one species. Let that sink in.
Is there a solution to this, besides returning to the age of sail and banning ocean explotation? I don't know, there might be. I hope there is.
When I read about orcas, about their behavior, about their pods with their own almost cultural quirks and even dialects, so much we don't know about them, I only remember Arthur C. Clarke, when he spoke about blue whales: “We do not know the true nature of the entities we are destroying”
Throw back to when I posted this on twitter with a comment about how completely stupid it is that if your boobs are a specific shape they're deemed inappropriate or inherently sexual and I had people telling me how much the message resonated with them and how misogyny sucks, followed by " I couldn't hit like and I'm dming you about it because i have minors following me"
Like, my friend I don't think we're on the same page actually.
Matoro Mahri
A team of Rhode Island School of Design students and researchers have created tesselated, floating planting beds made of a mycelium biomaterial to cleanse waterways of pollutants and restore wetland habitat.
The floating Biopods act to introduce native plants back to degraded wetland systems while cleansing the water through bioremediation, or the re-introduction of microorganisms that naturally decontaminate their environment.
"Because of the urbanization of the Providence River itself, a lot of the wetland that acts to actively remediate pollution had been removed. So the project is really about reintroducing this new biology to kick start these ecosystems again so that the river might repair itself."
"It's interesting, the relationships that we have to biomaterials and the way that we are connected to systems that have the potential to remediate in a way that isn't electricity intensive or chemically intensive," said Banerjee.
i think I’ve said this before but i really like the idea of the nuva adaptive armour morphing to fit social environments as well as physical ones. Like, it morphs to slightly resemble Glatorian armour when they go to spherus magna, or perhaps even starts to resemble other types of clothing when they’re among civilian villagers.
What, this? Oh, it’s just my Krana. Yeah, I always wear it while I clean the house, it gets me in the zone.
Real talk why does social interaction feel like you’re trying to get a good grade in being a person
"Original" Sin is what i've titled this piece. by me. sorry if you don't have "collapse long posts" enabled. I have many thoughts.
Transcript - References
So many people do not understand the relationship between climate change and cold weather.