Backstone President and COO Gray: Blackstone plans to invest $30 billion in AI data centers in Japan over the next 3 to 5 years - Nikkei https://t.co/AyqY0epui0
Amid a series of bear sightings across the country, the major convenience store chain Family Mart has installed a wolf-shaped robot designed to scare away wild animals on a trial basis at its store in Kiryu, Gunma Prefecture. https://t.co/rXH5kjONQf
June 22, 2026
The Daily Drum
Today’s drum features a “Bear Drum” - Muin
The stars were our calendar. The changing positions of the star patterns in the heavens reflect the patterns of the seasons on the earth.
Weli-eksitpu'k (Good Morning)
The only goat tower in the United States.
Built with 5,000 bricks and 276 spiral steps, the Tower of Baa-Goat in rural Illinois was created by Dave and Marcia Johnson as a climbing tower for their goats.
The 31-foot brick structure lets the animals climb, rest, and reach small compartments inside the tower.
It was inspired by a goat tower the couple saw in a wine magazine — and became one of the strangest animal-centered structures in the country.
In 1987, Costa Rica was 21% forest. Today it's 57%.
In the 1990s, Costa Rica passed a law that pays landowners directly for the ecosystem services their forest provides: carbon storage, watershed protection, biodiversity, soil stability. The payments are funded by a tax on fossil fuels.
Keep your trees standing and the government cuts you a check. Clear them and you lose the income.
Nearly a million hectares have been protected or restored under the program. Species that had retreated or disappeared from large parts of the country are recovering. The forest came back because the incentive structure changed, not because people were told to care more.
But it crashed the economy, right? Not at all.
Costa Rica became the top per capita agricultural exporter in Latin America. Tourism built around its forests and biodiversity became one of its largest industries. The economy didn't absorb the cost of keeping the forest. The forest became part of what grows their economy.
This is the version of the story most people never hear, the one where protecting nature and economic growth pointed in the same direction because we humans designed it that way.
It's not forests or the economy and it never had to be.
By 2050, the world is forecast to face 43 million tons of decommissioned wind turbine blades.
These blades are built from high-strength composites made to survive years of weathering.
Still, every single turbine standing today will age out before 2050. Most are difficult to recycle, so most are likely to be buried. But Europe now has a landfill ban for blades coming into force. Nations like Germany, Finland and the Netherlands are already blocking landfills. But they still have blades to dispose of. So the waste is pushed elsewhere. Blades are exported to countries where burial is still allowed, such as the UK.
Net zero creates a mountain of composite waste. And then has the audacity to call it green.