““The Great Pacific Garbage Patch can now be cleaned,” announced Dutch entrepreneur Boyan Slat, the wonderkid inventor who’s spent a decade inventing systems for waterborne litter collection.

Recent tests on his Ocean Cleanup rig called System 002, invented to tackle the 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic pollution, were a success, leading Slat to predict that most of the oceanic garbage patches could be removed by 2040.

Intersections of ocean currents have created the massive floating islands of plastic trash—five slow-moving whirlpools that pull litter from thousands of miles away into a single radius.

The largest one sits between California and Hawaii, and 27-year-old Slat has been designing and testing his systems out there, launching from San Francisco since 2013.

GNN has reported on his original design for the floating device, but his engineering team improved upon it. System 002, nicknamed “Jenny,” successfully netted 9,000 kilograms, or around 20,000 pounds in its first trial.

It’s carbon-neutral, able to capture microplastics as small as 1 millimeter in diameter, and was designed to pose absolutely no threat to wildlife thanks to its wide capture area, slow motion, alerts, and camera monitors that allow operators to spy any overly-curious marine life…

Slat estimates ten Jennies could clean half the garbage patch in five years, and if 10 Jennies were deployed to the five major ocean gyres, then 90% of all floating plastic could be removed by 2040.” -via Good News Network, 10/19/21

How much you wanna bet the State of California will “prohibit” use of this system, because “reasons.”

If it’s in international waters they can’t do anything about it. And I’m pretty sure the federal government decides what can and can’t go on off our coasts too, not local or state.

Slat has been working on this since he was literally a child. I remember the first posts, articles, and I think there was even a fundraising campaign at one point.

I am so, so proud of him holy shit.

^^^ me too!! I remember the first news yeaaars ago that some kid had thought up a brilliantly simple method of cleaning up the oceans, and even that first prototype was amazingly efficient in solving a problem that the grownup world seemed to have given up on. It was so simple I couldn’t believe no scientist or engineer had thought of it before.

And he’s just been refining it and making it better and better? Amazing news!

Well done, sir, well done and thank you <3

My big memory of this is that every time he sent out a prototype, people would overwhelmingly go “AH HA! See? It didn’t work as advertised because a storm broke it/it didn’t filter as much as he predicted/etc.”

And every time, Boyan would analyse what went wrong, tinker with it, and send a stronger version back out.

There are still issues with it, like, but this guy isn’t some shitty billionaire - he’s a normal man walking the walk to clean up an international problem that everyone else is just wringing their hands over. I have no clue why everyone is desperately waiting for him to fail. He’s picked his hill, and he plods along, and if the latest design hasn’t met expectations, he creates a new one.

Their website is here, btw, in case anyone wants to have a look; they still accept donations

Lol whoops THIS is the website

It was like Doomsday’s origin, but for a trash collector on the ocean!

The problem with Zelda is that literally every fan artist and fanfic writer is doing more interesting things with its characters and world than the games are. Because the writers have absolutely no interest in exploring narrative dynamics other than "male hero saves helpless female." And this becomes extremely apparent when the games innovate on everything else, every aspect but the story. The series' game mechanics will update in revolutionary ways, but the plot and characters are always mediocre and stagnant. Link might get a cool interesting sidekick like Midna or Fi, Zelda might even have half a moment where it seems like she might have agency, but the forces of convention will always pull these characters back into their roles. Because that's what the series' writers think is the most interesting and satisfying, that's what they think is meant to happen. A by-the-numbers, patriarchal "save the princess" story with nothing new to say. Let these characters breathe, man.

I haven't seen this version anywhere so I made one!

This flag is pissing off TERFs of course but i am seeing so much colorful JOY from trans lesbians and other lesbians in the notes like I've never seen a set of tags so happy before omg

drow women >>> you

(COMMISSION ME)

Adriana and Mia, scifi versions. I really like how both of them came out, but Adri especially.

We are not going to let that fuckwad DeSantis gain a foothold in the 2024 election.

You are going to fucking vote for Joe Biden, and you are going to give us a fucking chance to save our country from fascism, and you aren't going to fucking complain about it, because there is literally no other choice.

We will not let another election be a close call. Are you listening?

Vote for Biden. Vote for whatever Democrat is most popular in your local elections. Our system sucks, but this is what we're working with. Just fucking vote.

"But he's --"

It doesn't matter. It does. not. matter.

Not every battle is about progress. Sometimes it's just holding the line until we get reinforcements. And they are coming. The Gen Z vote was monumental in stopping the red wave, and there are increasing numbers as more and more come of age.

Hold the line.

I want to push back on the battle “not being about progress.” Because /Biden has accomplished a lot, actually, especially given a Republican-controlled House. One could argue that he hasn’t gone far enough, but that’s not the same as having accomplished nothing. So here’s some things Biden has done:

1) Raised taxes on the wealthy and corporations.

2) Highest appointment of federal judges since Reagan. Reagan started a trend of Republicans packing federal courts with uber-conservative judges, and blocking Democrat appointments, which is how we ended up with our current Supreme Court. Biden is doing his absolute best to turn the scales back the other direction by appointing as many liberal and left-wing judges as he can, as fast as he can.

3) $1.2 trillion dollar infrastructure package that will pour federal money into things like public transit, high-speed internet in places that don’t have it (which are overwhelmingly poor, and cut off from the rest of the world), and a whole lot of other basic things that make life easier for ordinary people.

4) Halted Federal executions. This doesn’t affect state-level convictions, but it does affect federal-level executions; those are completely off the table for as long as he (or any other) Democrat is President. (13 people were executed under Trump)

5) Rejoining the Paris Climate Accords and pushing for other environmental care legislation,

6) Pushed through the “Inflation Reduction Act” (named that to get Republicans to be willing to allow it through). It’s actually the largest climate bill in U.S. history and allows Medicare to negotiate the prices of certain prescription drugs for the first time. It includes 369 billion for a climate initiative to reduce greenhouse emissions and promote lean energy technologies. $300 billion in new revenue through a corporate tax increase. $80 billion for the Internal Revenue Service to hire new agents, modernize its technology, audit the wealthy and more. A $2,000 annual cap for out-of-pocket prescription drug costs for those insured by Medicare.

6) Overturned Trump’s ban on transgender people serving in the military.

7) Re-authorized the Violence Against Women Act

8) Pardoned marijuana

9) Forgave student loan debt (this one the Republicans in congress managed to partially stymie, but that’s not Biden’s fault--it’s the Republicans).

10) Managed to get a modest gun-safety bill through the gauntlet of Republican opposition. (The first one anyone’s managed to get passed in decades.) It’s far from perfect, or enough, but it did expand background checks on gun purchases and made it easier to prosecute illegal gun trafficking. And the reason it was as weak as it was, is because the Republicans have a majority in the House and they blocked anything stronger, it’s the Republicans’ fault. Not Biden’s. If we want sensible nationwide gun control, we have GOT to get the House a Democrat majority.

11) Passed a long-stalled Post Office reform bill.

There’s a lot there! And the things that he promised but didn’t manage to achieve, he put them before Congress and the Republicans in the House stopped them. If Democrats controlled the House as well as the Senate, most of them would have passed and now be the law of the land! The problem is not Biden.

Biden may not be very exciting, and he may not be as far left as we want. But he’s still got a lot done in the last three years.

Perfect is the enemy of good

And Biden's pretty good

I also dunno if we’ve ever really established how dangerous Ron DeSantis is. He is viciously cruel when crossed, utterly unconcerned with norms and limitations of power and, unlike Trump, has a military background, specifically having tortured prisoners in Guantanamo Bay. He’s also completely determined to persecute queer people in general, strip trans people of their ability to transition, destroy access to abortion and attack voting rights and freedom of the press at every step.

4 years of Trump might make most Republican politicians seem normal, but 1, the Republican party is now the party of attacking trans rights, they have basically no other platform but also 2, DeSantis might be more dangerous than Trump in his own way.

Listen, I know that voting for the lesser of two evils fucking sucks, and trust me, I’m well versed in how fucking frustrating it is to watch the Democrats sit on their hands while shit gets worse. But the states where it is, legally at least, safe to be trans are like that because the Republicans aren’t in charge, and given where the party is now (and how willing the Supreme Court is to go along with anything they say) we are one bad Presidential election away from forced detransition becoming the norm, if not worse. That we’re in this situation at all fucking sucks, but I can’t lie and say that we’re not where we are, and we have to take that seriously.

Well, you can’t just leave him like that. Look at the poor bloke. Oh, fine.