a garden, and other ramblings

Federal agencies report that a significant majority of new power capacity being built in the US in 2026 will be clean energy. Solar alone makes up 51% of this progress--fossil gas is the only fossil fuel to make it on the chart at only 7% of new power capacity.

This will also be the most energy capacity of any kind that the US has ever added in a year.

Renewables can still be built in ways that don't care about the environment, and owned by those who want to extract rent. A lot of solar is being built in the desert by people who think the desert is "barren" and "a wasteland" without an ecosystem in it. A desert has an ecosystem as rich and delicate as a rainforest.

Apparently a solar thermal plant is where they use a lot of mirrors to focus light on one tower in order to heat it up, and use steam to turn a turbine. The U.S. hasn't built a solar thermal plant of this kind since 2016, so pretty safe to assume that they won't be building another now.

Solar thermal is very different from photovoltaic panels, and photovoltaic panels are way safer for birds. There are still concerns of course, but things have gotten better and people continue working to make them better. One cool thing is they used to think the usable life of solar panels would be about 25 years, but they've found they're still at 80% capacity after 30, and it's a slow drop after that.

Solar panels do not have to have a negative impact on the ecosystems they're placed in, apparently:

Ok, my previous attempt to share this list was kind of a formatting nightmare. I'm gonna try this again.

Here is a bunch of impartial news sources explaining what's going on in Minnesota right now, organized by persuasion tactic. The goal is to get as many people calling their Senators as possible, as fast as possible. Ideally, ahead of the vote Friday. But, even after that, we need people making noise about what's going on here.

Please wait till I get to the end to reblog. I'm constrained by the link limit.

In case they say “well there must be a reason for them to do this”

Oh boy are there. But they aren't good.

Here’s the Trump administration demanding we hand over control of our elections in order to stop the occupation (please see the “law and order” section below for takedowns of the lies included in the administration’s letter.) (sidebar but—state’s rights? Hello?)

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Here they are trying to override Minnesotans’ objections to mining our pristine boundary waters. (As an added note—the mining company isn’t even US-based. The money will be headed to Trump’s cronies outside our borders. I oppose it anyway because this endangers the wildlife and drinking water of…a huge number of people, but I guess some people care about that as well.)

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He's been doing this to states that voted against him. It's not subtle.

ICE threw a gas canister into a minivan with 6 children inside who were on the way home from soccer. A 6 month old infant was hospitalized for days as a result.

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Multiple children were kidnapped right off their school bus, including a 5 year old boy who was kidnapped right in front of family after being used as bait. He is a legal asylum seeker and pretty obviously not a violent criminal. He has since vanished across state lines

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ICE argues loud and proud that they are not responsible for sexual assaults occurring in their facilities- including those perpetuated by their own officers

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They have multiple facilities just for kidnapped children under age 5 who they took without their parents. These are our "dangerous criminals"?

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Multiple school districts have gone to all or partial virtual learning because ICE keeps sniffing around schools, presumably for more "bait" children.

- Firstly, some images of about 50,000 Minnesotans showing up in the middle of a negative 20-degree work day to protest ICE. We had the first general strike in 80 years. Look at these pictures. Minneapolis is a small city. We have never had this kind of cross-class, cross-generation, cross-race, cross-party lines unity before.

This is not fringe. This is because everybody here has stories of seeing ICE try to beat and abduct people. In the city, in our small towns, and in our suburbs.

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Even a bunch of local republicans are begging for this to stop

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For the Second Amendment fans:

NRA’s statement about the murder of a nurse who worked at the local Veterans’ hospital. He never pulled his gun; we have video proof from many angles. He had a gun he was legally allowed to carry, so they shot him many, many times while holding him down.

People seem to have forgotten that being undocumented is not actually a crime! That’s why it’s not handled by the criminal justice system. It is not illegal.

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Here is some documentation of ICE arresting thousands of citizens with no due process, no Miranda rights, and not even with anything they can be charged for. Often accompanied by violent beatings.

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ICE are grabbing people with no warrant, no probable cause, without even knowing their name. Being brown or black, having an accent, or filming them is enough for them.

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Here is ICE lying about it being legal to film them. Again, they believe this cause the administration told them it is true. It is not.

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Here is ICE harassing local police

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And while we're at it, ICE and the Trump admin have been lying about Minnesota crime rates.

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ICE is whining about being “assaulted” by people laughing at them, shouting at them, refusing them services (remember that republican law that says you can deny services due to your beliefs? We can use that, too!), or putting water outside their hotel room. They say they can shoot people and it’s fine, but people stopping them from kidnapping others with things like yelling, whistles, and singing is “assault” to them. They then used this to try to suspend our right to assembly.

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ICE insists that not only should they be allowed to do all this, but they also deserve anonymity. (Probably because they know state police are building legal cases against them)

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Here they are lying about deporting veterans, under oath, and getting caught.

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For “But-But- The Fraud!” nuts in your life:

The current round of “fraud” accusations was started by a YouTuber who showed up with a camera at a bunch of daycares and concluded, since nobody would just let the strange man come onto the private property with the children, that they were hiding something.

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The other fraud republicans are supposedly up in arms about was already prosecuted. Arrests were made.

ICE’s budget is bloated to the extreme, and they want to keep expanding it, and no they don't want to be asked what they're doing with it all.

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Meanwhile, immigrants have always been great for Minnesota's economy- which is stronger than most of the economies of states with less welcoming policies. Just saying.

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And that's it for now!

For those relying on SNAP it's worth reminding people that the shutdown will eventually end and snap will resume whether or not Democrats are able to secure millions of Americans access to medical care (that's what this shutdown is about), but at the end of 2026 the Big Beautiful Bill that passed this year will take effect and SNAP and medicaid benefits will be severely cut, permanently. Funding has been slashed for these programs and there will be more arbitrary paperwork required of recipients to remain on the program, which will mean more eligible recipients will lose their benefits completely.

apparently, cats' kidneys tend to be the thing that takes them down, something about their bodies being unable to self-clean their kidneys, and the vaccine is supposed revitalize the body's ability to do just that. It would be very VERY fucking cool to have cats suddenly reaching 30 years of age be the normal thing.

dude cracked the case about WHY kidneys fail, across the board as far as i can tell. turns out there's a specific molecule whose job it is to attach to waste and signal macrophages to come eat it. it remains inactive in cats for some reason, but the molecule is still there. basically what he's done is found the switch to activate them. this will be profound not only for our domestic babies, but for big cats too - especially cheetahs!

although his research was focused on cats, it's already being used to develop drugs for humans too!

on top of that, since these molecules are tags for waste, this could also dramatically lower the rate of fatty liver disease, liver cancer, urinary crystals, rheumatoid arthritis, and even some neurological cases! like, they're hoping it may have an impact on parkinson's and alzheimers, but it DOES have an impact on stroke recovery. like. holy shit.

furthermore, he's insisting that the feline drug be affordable if and when it rolls out onto the market. he wants this to be something anyone can get for their cat!! idk how much sway he'll have over the human drug, but hopefully enough that it, too, won't be that expensive.

annnnnd in his research that he's still doing for the human side of things, he's found a potential link between this molecule and estrogen. in the 20,000 samples he's tested, women between ages 10 and 29 had the highest amount of this molecule present in their blood (a higher amount means Something Fucky is going on, essentially. There's a higher amount of waste the body is trying to clean out) but it drops down to be almost equal amongst men and women after menopause. it hasn't been looked into yet, but fuck, just the fact it's noted and known and probably WILL be looked into soon??? imagine if this is what leads to figuring out all the various ways the ovaries and uterus fucks with people and how to fix it. or even like, maybe there's something about estrogen that makes it work better. who knows! but it's rad the link is there to be researched :D

Earlier this week I was able to visit Willow Bar Beach on Sauvie Island, which I adopted as part of SOLVE's Adopt a River program. It's actually the second time I have adopted this place; the first was before my eight year sojourn out to the coast.

I was glad to see that the dumpster in the parking lot has reduced litter by quite a bit, but I did manage to pick a bag full in an hour. Mostly litter but also some strands of invasive Eurasian watermilfoil (Myriophyllum spicatum), which reproduces in part through fragmentation.

The biggest problem is Himalayan blackberry thickets (Rubus armeniacus). I'm hoping to start doing a bit of experimental removal when I get back in town after the book tour, with a goal of getting some larger group activities together through SOLVE. I also need to learn more about the native plant communities normally found in the riparian and upland habitats on Sauvie Island so I know what we should be looking for and planting once the blackberry starts to thin out. (We're always going to have to keep spot-treating the blackberry, but we can at least make the place better and more resilient.)

October 3, 2025

Two small islets crucial to the resiliency of the local environment in the Marshall Islands Republic are witnessing a major ecological revival.

Island Conservation, a global nonprofit organization with a mission to restore islands for nature and people, has successfully eradicated invasive black rats, allowing the native forests and seabird population on Bikar Atoll and Jemo Islet to recover.

The rats have had a devastating effect on their delicately balanced ecosystems on certain islands in the Marshalls. Bikar Atoll, one of the smallest atolls in the country, is located 360 miles (580 kilometers) north of the capital, Majuro. The reef surrounds a lagoon roughly 14 square miles. 

The Jemo Islet is a 16-hectare inhabited coral island that’s known to be one of the major feeding grounds for green sea turtles and a seabird sanctuary. With the arrival of invasive species such as black rats on both these landmasses, the native environment has been heavily disrupted as native plants, seabirds, and other animals fall prey to the rats’ scavenging. 

In addition to turtles, Jemo had been used for generations as a place to gather and hunt, but had become something like an ecological graveyard since the rats arrived. Having already eradicated black rats on dozens of islands before, Island Conservation trained local teams with the best practices to remove the rats via poison without harming the native wildlife.

After one year, a trip back to these islands, accompanied by Island Conservation, the Marshall Islands Marine Resources Authority, Ministry of Natural Resources and Commerce, and community members from Utrik Atoll, found that the efforts to eradicate the rats had succeeded and that wildlife was bouncing back. The recovery of the native seabird population has positively impacted the link between land and sea. The nutrients from the seabirds’ droppings play a critical role as natural fertilizer for the plant population which anchors the local food web.

Part of a trend

The rat invasion has depleted the useful resources of Jemo for the Likiep people for many years, but with the help of major participating organizations, it not only benefits the natural ecosystems of the Marshall Islands but also the communities that depend on these resources.

“Our Marshallese friends continue to add restored, pest-free islands to their list of achievements,” said David Moverley, Invasive Species Adviser for the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Program (SPREP), who partnered with Island Conservation on the project.

“Participating in the first rat removal workshop in Tonga ten years ago allowed them early on to achieve successful eradications on small islands by themselves. Now with modern technology and expert technical support from our partner Island Conservation, they are really pushing the boundaries and people are starting to realize the treasures that abound within the Marshall Islands and the opportunities that they present”.

Previously, WaL had the opportunity to report on Island Conservation projects, one being Loosiep, located in Yap State within the Federated States of Micronesia.

The project focused on the removal of invasive rats—the almost ubiquitous problem on Pacific islands—that threatened the biodiversity of its area. In partnership with the Island Conservation, local groups removed the rats allowed the “turtle islands” to thrive once again. 

WaL also reported on the 2022 Island Conservation removal of invasive rats across the Pacific Islands using technological advancements of drones and poisoned bait.

I measured four tablespoons of the flying dragon orange jelly that I made yesterday and heated it in the microwave for 20 seconds to reduce it back to syrup. I poured it over ice, topped it with 8 oz. club soda, and voila, homemade orange soda from my own tiny little oranges. Super refreshing!

Commercially made sodas must have so much artificial color added.

They did stuff people take for granted because "they're obviously smart ideas, so they probably already existed a long time ago." That's all it is.

Also, I want to add to the list:

Birth control (1936)

Abortion (1973)

Domestic violence becoming a crime (yes, really)

The suffragettes (1903) were decades ahead of social work (late 1900s), so women weren't doing that either

The first woman was elected to the house of representatives in 1916 (Jeanette Rankin)

In 1922 Florence Ellinwood Allen is the first woman elected to a state supreme court

Women are granted the right to serve on juries (1947)

The use of contraceptives is completely legal for married couples (1965)

No fault divorce (1969)

Sex segregated "help wanted" signs banned (1973)

Housing and credit discrimination based on sex outlawed (1974)

Abortion is under attack, with birth control the next admitted target.

Some people really do want to get rid of no-fault divorce. (Murder rates went down when we got no-fault divorce because someone’s death was no longer the only way out.)

Our current administration wants to eliminate DEI, which is just diversity, equity and inclusion. What they want is to push out anyone who disagrees with them, or is not a white man. It’s re-segregation, but they don’t want to call it that…yet.