Robert Ouellette, Clean50 2020

MESH Cities Lab: Improving our world through design, the Internet of Things, sustainability, and smart investment. #architecture #urbandesign #IOT #m2m

[Brian Roemmele @BrianRoemmele]

https://t.co/7FUkbcWc1n

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

U.S. farmers are intentionally flooding their fields to revive ancient "prairie potholes," creating temporary "pop-up" wetlands that deliver a huge boost to migratory birds while improving soil health.

In regions like California's Central Valley and the Mississippi Delta, innovative programs—most notably BirdReturns (launched by The Nature Conservancy in 2014)—pay farmers to strategically flood low-lying or post-harvest fields at precise times during bird migrations. These short-term wetlands mimic the natural prairie potholes and seasonal marshes that once dotted the landscape but were largely drained for agriculture.

By timing floods to align with peak migration periods (e.g., spring and fall for shorebirds, waterfowl, and sandhill cranes), farmers provide essential stopover habitat: shallow water, mudflats, and abundant food for millions of birds traveling along flyways like the Pacific Flyway. The approach has transformed tens of thousands of acres of working farmland into critical refueling stations, with studies showing dramatic increases in bird use and numbers—sometimes 3.5 times higher in these managed pop-up wetlands compared to standard fields.

Farmers also gain practical benefits. Seasonal flooding enhances soil structure, boosts nutrient cycling (as bird activity and water help break down residues), recharges groundwater, reduces erosion, and supports long-term land productivity—often without hurting crop yields in subsequent seasons.

This win-win model proves that modern agriculture and wildlife conservation can reinforce each other, turning productive farmland into flexible ecological assets that sustain both birds and resilient farming systems.

[The Nature Conservancy. BirdReturns: Creating Dynamic Habitat for Migratory Birds. The Nature Conservancy California]

[Robert Ouellette, Clean50 2020 @MESHCities]

@BrianRoemmele Aaaah, good government, planning, form-follows-function, and Aaron Copland. Was it ever so?

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

In the 90s, the Human Genome Project cost billions of dollars and took over 10 years.

Today, you can plugged MinION into your laptop and sequence a genome in 24 hours. The only portable, real-time device for DNA and RNA sequencing

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

A small Canadian town has officially granted trees the status of living beings with legal rights.

Terrasse-Vaudreuil, located roughly 40 miles (64 km) west of Montreal, unanimously passed a resolution on June 9 declaring that trees possess “the right to life, natural growth, integrity, and regeneration.” The town is among the first in Canada to endorse the Universal Declaration of the Rights of the Tree.

Mayor Michel Bourdeau credited the initiative in part to filmmaker André Desrocher, whose work helped shift local perspectives on trees from mere scenery to vital living entities. “A tree is like a human being,” Bourdeau told CBC. “It breathes, it lives, it takes in water. It protects us from all sorts of things.”

Facing repeated flooding in recent years, the municipality views trees as critical infrastructure. They cool urban areas, sequester carbon, purify air, support biodiversity, mitigate heat islands, and assist with stormwater management.

The resolution calls for a review of local bylaws to strengthen tree protection and ensure proper replacement when removals occur.

This step reflects the expanding global “rights of nature” movement, which seeks legal personhood for ecosystems, much like corporations already enjoy. A notable precedent in Quebec is the 2021 granting of legal personhood to the Magpie River by a regional government and the Innu Council of Ekuanitshit.

Advocates believe such recognition could reshape development decisions, enhance climate resilience, and transform urban planning. In Terrasse-Vaudreuil, the message is clear: trees are not simply property, they are living systems essential to human communities.

[Civixplorer @Civixplorer]

The rusting remains of the Soviet jet-powered experimental train stand as a striking relic of Cold War ambition.

It symbolizes a bold but ultimately abandoned attempt to push the limits of high-speed rail using aviation technology.

[Steven Pinker @sapinker]

If critical thinking skills are so fragile that they can erode when people use AI, those skills could not have been robustly taught in the first place.
https://t.co/FcaRlcesOS

[Simon Kuestenmacher @simongerman600]

Trees. Trees. Trees. They matter. Plant them. Protect them.

[Geoffrey Lean @GeoffreyLean]

Plummeting numbers of insects are now severely affecting birds, research shows. They are getting smaller and producing fewer young.

https://t.co/9PxIfCEZMY

[Architectural Record @ArchRecord]

With a score of 44.5, the latest Architecture Billings Index is the lowest since January. Image courtesy AIA

https://t.co/slQkg80SU5

[China Daily @ChinaDaily]

#China's total installed #power generation capacity recently reached a historic milestone of 4.01 billion kilowatts, exceeding the combined total capacity of the United States, the European Union, India, Japan and Russia, according to data from the National Energy Administration on Thursday. #tech https://t.co/W2FcE0culZ

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

Andrej Karpathy is the man who taught Tesla's cars to see the road and drive themselves. Before that, he was one of the founding researchers at OpenAI. In the world of artificial intelligence, he's royalty.

A few days ago, he posted a simple, excited message. He'd been using Claude, an AI assistant, and it was blowing his mind. "It works like a real teammate," he wrote. He was genuinely thrilled.

The replies tore him apart.

Strangers called him a shill. People who'd never built anything mocked him. The pile-on grew and grew and grew.

Then Karpathy went quiet for a moment. And when he came back, he didn't defend his original post. He said something bigger.

"After 20 years on this platform, X has never been this toxic. The algorithm actively pushes rage, insults, and pile-ons because they get engagement. That's why even I post and visit less now."

Twenty years. This man watched Twitter grow from a tiny blog tool into the global town square. He survived every era of the platform. And now, for the first time, he was saying: I don't want to be here anymore.

Elon Musk read those words and replied within minutes.

"We need a complete overhaul of the algorithm."

Not a patch. Not "we'll look into it." A complete overhaul.

Think about what that means. Right now, the machine that decides what you see on X has one job: keep you engaged. And the fastest way to keep you engaged is to make you angry. Outrage gets clicks. Insults get replies. Pile-ons get retweets. The algorithm learned this on its own, and now it feeds you rage all day long because rage works.

The result: the smartest, most interesting people slowly stop posting. Why would they? Every time they share an idea, a mob shows up. So they go quiet. And what fills the void is screaming.

Musk just said he wants to tear that entire machine out and build a new one from scratch. One where the most useful, most interesting, most original posts rise to the top. Where sharing a genuine thought doesn't get you punished.

One of the greatest minds in AI came home excited, like a kid showing off a new discovery. X beat him down for it.

That's exactly the disease Elon is now trying to cut out.

If he actually does it, you'll feel it in your timeline before anyone announces it.

[Robert Ouellette, Clean50 2020 @MESHCities]

@BrianRoemmele I had one at the office. The ultimate.

[Robert Ouellette, Clean50 2020 @MESHCities]

@svpino Im a long, long time Nikon user and I can honestly say I've never seen this camera!

[Amber Mac @ambermac]

Good read from @betakit on Canada's Bill C-22, just the basics if you need to get up to speed.

[🇨🇳XuZhenqing徐祯卿 @XueJia24682]

✨🇨🇳Xi Jinping:I once lived for many years in a small village on China’s Loess Plateau. When the ecological environment was damaged, the people fell into poverty. Even then, I realized that harm done to nature will eventually harm humanity itself. Resolving to close down some mines was a far-sighted move, for lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets. We must not pursue development in a destructive way that exploits our ancestors’ legacy and leaves no future for descendants. Indeed, if humanity does not betray nature, nature will never fail humanity.

[UrbanToronto @Urban_Toronto]

Demolition is now well underway at the former McLaughlin Planetarium on the University of Toronto’s St George campus, where the long-vacant Modernist structure at 90 Queen’s Park Crescent is being removed to make way for the new Centre for Civilizations, Cultures, and Cities. https://t.co/504bgnwcMZ

[Mastery Mindset @_masterymindset]

Jensen Huang literally explains what a smart person really looks like in this age

[Physics In History @PhysInHistory]

Although I am a typical loner in daily life, my consciousness of belonging to the invisible community of those who strive for truth, beauty, and justice has preserved me from feeling isolated.

--A. Einstein

[Gurwinder @G_S_Bhogal]

“The highest reward for a man's toil is not what he gets for it but what he becomes by it.”

—John Ruskin