DIY Pee-Powered Phone Charger
“The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has funded research to develop a pee powered smartphone battery… but you can make one right now. Lemon batteries are cool, but salt batteries are powerful. And, hey, there’s salt in urine, so a urine powered battery would be the ultimate emergency battery to top off you cell phone, right? Sure, if you’re squeamish, you can use salt water instead o’ urine! We show you how to build a battery from aluminum foil, copper wire, charcoal, and salty liquid that’ll charge a smart phone in the video!”
Source: DIY Tryin’
Also: Nuns & Fertility Drugs  |  Nuns & Supercows  |  Nun Pee Yuth
Also: Peecycling (all) and Peecycling (last year) & Peecycling Project
Bloody Tree
Dracaena draco, aka Dragon’s Blood Tree
…or possibly Dracaena cinnabari
Any of you tree/plant folks know which one this is?
Disruption
“The Choluteca Bridge is a suspension bridge located in Choluteca, Honduras. Originally constructed in 1930, the bridge was rebuilt in 1996. The Honduras government, knowing the bridge was likely to face extreme weather conditions, commissioned some of the best architectural minds in the world to build a bridge that could withstand any hurricane.”
Sure enough, in 1998, Honduras was hit by Hurricane Mitch, a category 5 storm that devastated the Caribbean. …Â Even though the bridge stood its ground, there was one problem, the storm caused the river to carve a completely new path which no longer ran under the bridge. Thatâs right, the Choluteca Bridge no longer stood over the river, rendering it essentially useless.”
Source:Â Why A Honduran Bridge Is A Perfect Metaphor For Disruption (Medium)
ENVS 100.1/100.2/400.1: Updated for Spring 2021!
Yay 2021! The syllabus, schedule, and project information is mostly updated for the Spring semester! Link to those pages using the menu above.
Land Inequality
Land inequality is directly threatening 1.4 billion of the worldâs poorest people, according to a recent report.
New calculations have discovered that disparities in rights and access to land are more than 40 percent higher than previously thought. Just one percent of the worldâs largest farms currently operate more than 70 percent of all farmland.
A lack of access and ownership is pushing rural and Indigenous communities off of the land. It is also putting the livelihoods of an estimated 2.5 billion people at risk, the International Land Coalition (ILC) & Oxfam report found.
âGrowing inequality is the greatest obstacle to poverty eradication; in countries like Guatemala, extreme inequality costs lives,â says Ana MarĂa Mendez, Oxfamâs Guatemala director.
âIn rural Guatemala, extreme land inequality undermines the rights and livelihoods of indigenous and small-farmer communities and exacerbates the climate crisis.
Source: Euronews