@SethAbramson I live in West Virginia. As long as I stay out of the woods, I feel fine. My house has woods right behind and above; I won't even look at the trees after dark. "If you hear strange noises from the woods, Oh no you didn't!" Get back inside someplace safe. Also, Florida.
An 18-year-old just did what billion-dollar water companies couldn't.
Meet Mia Heller.
A high school junior from Warrenton, Virginia who built a water filter in her garage that strips out 95.5% of microplastics from drinking water.
That's better than most government treatment plants, which sit somewhere between 70% and 90%.
Her secret weapon? Ferrofluid. A magnetized liquid made of oil and powder that latches onto microplastic particles. Then a magnet yanks them out. No membranes. No constant filter replacements. No endless maintenance bills.
The ferrofluid even gets recycled, around 87% of it, in a closed loop.
The spark for all of this wasn't a classroom project. It was a local newspaper article warning that her town's tap water was loaded with PFAS and microplastics, and that nobody was coming to fix it.
So she watched her mom swap out filter after filter and thought, there has to be a smarter way.
She built the prototype herself. Tested it with a homemade turbidity sensor. Then walked into the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair and walked out with a special award from the Patent and Trademark Office Society.
Up against nearly 1,700 students from 62 countries.
She's now eyeing a household version that sits under your kitchen sink.
The future of clean water might not come from a lab in Silicon Valley. It might come from a teenager's garage in Virginia.
Source: Smithsonian Magazine
Elijah Harper, a Manitoba MLA, stood up for his people when he refused to accept the Meech Lake Accord.
With his vote against it, while holding an eagle's feather, he became an icon of resistance.
This is his story.
📸 Wayne Glowacki
🧵1/12
I'm a middle eastern historian. My own family were made refugees. And this is my honest view of the Nakba (“catastrophe”) - the displacement of around 700,000 Palestinian Arabs during the 1947–49 war surrounding the creation of Israel.
A thread. 🧵
If your alliance is not with black Americans against the Trump system of apartheid being enacted here in the US I don't care what your pet issue is.
Right now your genocide doesn't matter to me if the genocide overcome by my people doesn'tmatter to you. Your Medicare For All doesn't matter to me if our rights as equal citizens of this country doesn't matter to you. That is allyship. That is a coalition. If you're not with us against this evil white supremacist you allowed into power we're not with you.
I don’t want a city on Mars. I don’t want AI in every app. I don’t want data centres in space. I don’t want humanoids or flying cars. I want clean water. I want a stable climate. I want bees to survive. And a habitable planet.
People who voted #BernieOrBust, Trump, or the couch, didn’t care about SCOTUS in 2016, nor what it could become 10 years later.
Hillary Clinton was right then, and she’s still right in 2026.
Too on point not to share, “Aussie reply to Trump rant about NATO not being there for us.
Mate. You run a country with 600,000 homeless people sleeping on the street tonight. A country where 40% of adults can't cover a $400 emergency without borrowing money. A country where insulin costs more than a car payment and people are rationing it to survive. A country where medical debt is the number 1 cause of bankruptcy. A country where women are dying in hospital car parks because doctors are too scared of abortion laws to treat a miscarriage.
You lock up more of your own citizens than any nation on earth. More than China. More than Russia. More than North Korea. The land of the free has 2 million people in cages, and a quarter of them haven't even been convicted of anything. They're just too poor to make bail.
Your life expectancy is going backwards. You're the only developed nation where that's happening. Your infant mortality rate is worse than Cuba's. Your kids do active shooter drills between maths and English while you sell the gunmaker's stock to your mates.
Your minimum wage hasn't moved in 15 years. You've got teachers working 2 jobs and veterans sleeping under bridges and you just spent a trillion dollars flattening a country that didn't attack you.
And you’ve got a convicted felon, adjudicating raping, paedophile protecting, porn star shagging insurrectionist running the biggest dumpster fire war campaign since the Taliban thanked you very much for losing again.
And you're calling Greenland poorly run?
Greenland has universal healthcare. Free education. One of the lowest incarceration rates in the world. Nobody goes bankrupt there because they got sick. Nobody dies in a waiting room because their insurance said no.
"NATO wasn't there when we needed them." When exactly was that, champ? September 11? Because NATO invoked Article 5 for the first and only time in history FOR YOU. Soldiers from dozens of countries deployed, fought, bled, and died in Afghanistan FOR YOU. Australia wasn't even in NATO and we still showed up. For 20 years.
And you pulled out at 2am without telling anyone and left them to deal with the mess.
So maybe before you start calling other countries poorly run, have a look at your own backyard, you spray-tanned aluminium siding salesman. The only thing poorly run in this picture is your fucking mouth. Credit (borrowed from) Jim Scroggins - original author 📷 unknown”
@blewis823 Chris Hayes in particular! July 4th weekend 2024; Friday, Hayes fillin in, had 3 hours! He went fro 6 pm to 9 pm talking about nothing but Joe Biden's age! 3 effing hours! I got so angry I threw something at the tv before I shut off MSNBC. I've never watched his show since!
@JamesFLoveIV@grok Fake AI generated videos. I got caught by the first one on YouTube until I researched the facts and realized the thing was false. I saw through the second one immediately once I saw an AI generated Rachel Maddow repeating the story of AG James seizing Trump NY properties.
@notcapnamerica Barking Water, a wonderful Sterlin Harjo (Reservation Dogs) film! And one other ... a surprise. I haven't opened it yet; still sealed as if it just arrived. I have my last Blockbuster DVD, also sealed and I've forgotten what it was. So, also a surprise. One day I'll open them.
RIP Chelsea Quinn Yarbro. A brillliant lady, one of the great fantasy, horror, sci fi writers. I have been a fan for fifty years. It feels like I've lost a friend even though I never met her.
@ClaudetteGGibs1 She doesn't have an artistic bone in her body. She has no sense of beauty, balance, or class. Remember her hideous Christmas White House decor during orange felon's first term? I know there are many worse things her husband is doing, but this news made me particulary sick.
@stuartpstevens Those Ice Agents, Nat. Guardsmen, Marines played Star Wars games only a few yrs ago; I bet they all imagined themselves to be Luke, Andor, the Jedi. I bet they never expected they'd be an evil, old emperor's Storm Troopers when they grew up.
Not sure comments"Trump NOAA cuts" = tragic TX flood deaths are accurate. NWS did warn, NOAA did warn. There were enough personnel on duty. More important narrative: only a few camp officials listened. MAGA have been taught by Trump not tolisten, to not trust science.
Trumpism is cracking in West Virginia. People aren’t loyal they’re desperate. I see it daily in all my organizing. This state isn’t lost. With real focus and a movement rooted in labor and dignity, we can take it back.
Wow the Trump Administration keeps screwing West Virginia as hard as you can possibly imagine!
We are literally getting the worst shake, losing more jobs per capita and more infrastructure than just about any other state!