Gaia's Conservancy

I made these! They are tiny dye solar cell paintings! And they produce electricity! I finally got to do some lab work, and it's been really exciting. I enjoyed crafting these, but was much more difficult than I thought — the glass is so slippery and the gloves and tweesers so clumsy. These were basically practice cells, and I messed up a few. Next I'll try my own dyes made from plants! This yellow is from lupinus polyphyllus leaves;

Coincidentally, I have taken on natural dyeing as a hobby! Below is a solar dyeing jar that's currently sitting on my windowsill. It uses the same plant, lupinus polyphyllus, but flowers instead of leaves. It should give a nice blue colour!

Do any of them do as humans and eat toxic substances for fun?

Other primates do indeed like spicy and sour food! In captivity, many have lemons and peppers as part of their diet, and like humans, different individuals will prefer certain flavours. Primates do consume toxic substances for fun, and I am so glad you brought that up as it means that I get to post my favourite video of exactly that happening! Behold: lemurs getting zoinked off toxic millipedes

Excerpt from this story from E&E News:

A growing number of Democrats are concerned they have little to offer voters on climate in November’s midterm elections. So they want President Joe Biden to meet the world’s rising temperatures with a little fire of his own — by declaring a national climate emergency.

“This is a clear shot to get something done, I don’t see a better way to harness the energy and the focus on climate than this,” said Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), who has been leading the effort in Congress to get the White House to act.

Democrats have been eager to score a major climate policy win, especially since many of them will have to explain to voters in the coming months why they haven’t delivered on Biden’s major climate pledges. Many of the party’s most ambitious climate policy ideas are stuck at a standstill in the Senate, where they have been blocked by Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and all of the Republicans.

While some climate hawks still hope to pass something through Congress, they recognize there are only a few months left to deliver.

There was briefly talk of trying to pass by Memorial Day weekend a reconciliation package that would offer hundreds of millions of dollars in clean energy tax credits, but that deadline is likely to come and go without action. Democrats still will have time to pass climate legislation this summer, but the odds of doing anything significant likely will plummet after Labor Day — as lawmakers will be in full campaign mode by then.

The declaration of a national climate emergency wouldn’t just be for show; it would give the Biden administration some executive authorities and funding to build out clean energy resources.

I straight up don't understand? The only reason nothing has been done about the climate emergency is because our two political parties hate each other so much they would rather burn to death then actually agree on something.

I don't want to be political on here, but for the love of all things holy can our government PLEASE just put all their weird hate for the "other side" up their ass and actually save humanity?

Old plastic from scrapped cars can be converted into graphene by grinding it to dust and zapping it with high-voltage electricity, a process that could save large amounts of plastic from landfill.

Graphene is a form of atom-thick carbon with a number of useful electrical and material properties. James Tour at Rice University in Texas and his colleagues have previously found that plastic could be converted into graphene via a process called flash joule heating, where material is heated to temperatures generally in excess of 2700°C by passing high voltages through it.

They have now worked with car manufacturer Ford to show that this graphene can be used to manufacture new parts for cars, and that those new parts can again be recycled into fresh graphene.

“You don’t have to bury this stuff anymore,” says Tour. “You just turn it into graphene, put it in your new composite, then, when you’re done with those composites after 50 years, flash it again, turn them into graphene and put it into composites again.”

Visible mending is a way to fix clothes with holes in a decorative way. Instead of trying to make the mend invisible as possible, it can be fun and creative to hi light the tears and holes with stitching that adds to the garment. I think this method is super cool to repair clothes you may really want to keep but also make more beautiful.

There are many techniques to mending clothes and here are some popular techniques that will help you save your clothes and also reduce your consumption of fast-fashon!

darning

The embroidery technique used to repair holes in fabric by using running stitches and thread woven in-between those stitches to repair a hole. If you’re interested in employing this stitch, check out this awesome darning tutorial by Evelyn Wood!

sashiko

This type of traditional Japanese mending practice is used to reinforce the strength of fabric as well as decorate. It is a great solution for mending holes with patches and well to reinforce thinning fabric! For learning the basics of Sashiko there is a wonderful beginners tutorial by Benzie Design.

patches

Patches are very versatile when used for repairing clothes. You can sew it over a hole in your fabric or you can also so the patch in the inside to have it peek out. There is a great tutorial for custom DIY patches by wastelesscrafts and Creating with misp has a tutorial on mending with a peek-through patch. 

URGENT HELP NEEDED! Over the weekend of May 21, a speeding vehicle drove onto our primate sanctuary property and into our largest monkey enclosure, home to 63 animals. Thankfully, no one was hurt, but there was extensive damage to the enclosure's fencing.

We must act quickly to protect the precious monkeys who call the enclosure home. We need to immediately raise at least $10,000 to protect the animals and make repairs.

Please rush an urgent donation to enable us to take immediate action to

— Reinforce and maintain the provisional barriers we have constructed to keep the monkeys in the enclosure and predators out.

— Move the monkeys to other enclosures on the property.

— Assess the full extent of the damage and develop plans for permanent repairs or to replace the fencing..

We do not have a moment to lose! Please donate to our fundraiser today to help us take emergency steps to address damages to the sanctuary's Main enclosure, home to 63 precious monkeys!

You can donate here:

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So, you know those spindly basil plants you can get in the supermarket that are all leggy and pale, and you put them on the window-ledge and pick a few leaves from them and then they die?

Here is the hack for

turning it into a healthy plant and

making an army of clones from it so that all your friends can have one too

You will need

one parent plant

scissors for cutting the stalks

enough pots for however many seedlings you want to make

compost

one or two empty bottles

Method

Have a look at your parent plant. You'll see that each bundle of leaves comes out from a knobbly bit in the stem. That knobbly bit is called a leaf node.

Gently take hold of the very top set of leaves and count the leaf nodes on that particular stalk, counting down from the top.

If there are more than three nodes, cut the stalk just below the second leaf node.

The bit that you have just cut off is called a cutting, and it will become a new plant. To do this, we have to get it to grow roots.

Take your cutting and remove all the leaves except the four at the very top.

Fill your bottle with water and insert the cutting into the top of the bottle, with the stem completely submerged in water, and the leaves outside in the air.

Now repeat until you've taken about six cuttings, or you've taken all the cuttings available. Put them all in water-filled bottles. (I use milk bottles which hold about four stems at once with enough space for their leaves to get the sunlight, but if you're using wine bottles it might be fewer.)

Put the cuttings/bottles onto a sunny window-ledge and wait. Within about a week you should see roots beginning to grow. Keep the water topped up to the top, and let the roots grow until they are two or three inches long.

When the roots are 2-3 inches long, fill your pots with compost and water them well. Shove your fingers in the wet compost to make a space for the cutting's new roots and gently insert the cutting into the hole. Put a little bit more compost on top and firm it down, move on to plant the next one.

Providing all your cuttings get over the shock of transfer (and they probably will) you will then have 8 little basil plants like the smallest ones in my picture.

Put them back on the sunny window-ledge to let them get established and begin to grow. Congrats, you now have 8 basil plants plus the parent plant.

The parent plant

When you're taking the cuttings, you must leave at least one leaf node on every stalk. The plant can't create leaves without the nodes, and if it has no leaves it's basically going to die.

You want the plant to create new leaves and thicken up. If a stalk doesn't have more than two nodes, don't make cuttings from that stalk at all. Leave that stalk to grow.

Taking your cuttings will stimulate the plant to grow, and lower nodes which may not have had leaves on them when you got the plant, will now begin to produce them. This will make the plant bushier and stronger, but it will need a bit of extra food to help it put the extra effort in. So give it a new layer of compost on the top, water it, and put it back on the sunny window-ledge as well.

First batch cuttings

Let your first generation of cuttings grow undisturbed for a few weeks. (Water only when the soil feels dry.)

When they start looking long and thin, you want to encourage them to create side-shoots and begin bushing out. You don't want a long thin plant. It will fall over in the wind.

Look at the very top of the plant where you will see two tiny baby leaves developing. If you let them develop, the plant will continue to grow long and thin, but if you take them out it will encourage the side shoots to grow. Pinch out the tiny baby leaves right at the top of the cuttings, and very soon you'll see they start to grow outwards instead of upwards.

Second batch cuttings

After a few weeks your cuttings will look like the larger plants in my picture, and your parent plant will have grown enough to have added extra nodes. Which means that you can now take another batch of cuttings and start the process all over again.

You can pretty much keep this going all summer if you want.

Known as the “sponge cities” architect, Yu creates urban landscapes in China that passively absorb rainwater, using permeable pavements, green roofs and terraced wetland parks that flood during monsoon. 

[… Other cities are] developing in a way that’s erasing the indigenous resilience in the landscape.”But you don’t have to erase to go forwards, she says. “You can leapfrog and embed local intelligence, using a nature-based traditional Chinese technology that’s climate resilient, ecologically resilient and culturally resilient. And we can make beautiful urban spaces with them as well.”

It is eminently possible to weave ancient knowledge of how to live symbiotically with nature into how we shape the cities of the future, before this wisdom is lost forever. We can rewild our urban landscapes, and apply low-tech ecological solutions to drainage, wastewater processing, flood survival, local agriculture and pollution that have worked for indigenous peoples for thousands of years, with no need for electronic sensors, computer servers or extra IT support. »

It reminds me of this quote: