How To Make Solar Cells Without Toxic Materials

The bottom line is that there is no longer a financial or technical excuse to leave low-income and vulnerable people at risk in prolonged power outages. 

We’ve seen the breakthroughs in clean energy technology from Tesla and SolarCity, but these companies are primarily marketing only to big commercial customers that want to reduce their utility bills. While this is a good way to build the early markets for clean energy and solar-plus-storage systems, vulnerable residents don’t have time to wait for these innovations to trickle down to their communities — not when they are economically feasible today and mean the difference between protection and tragedy.

(via Build Affordable Housing That Can Weather the Next Superstorm – Next City)

Why Leftover Mashed Potatoes Are The Best Kind

Want to know more about how millions of people are forced to pick cotton by the Government of Uzbekistan every year?

This video explains the issue clearly in just two minutes:

When’s the last time you thought about the revolving door? This modest invention—something you likely encounter with a sense of dread while rushing off to the office or airport—is something of a modern miracle. Every time a revolving door rotates, it generates enough electricity to power a 60-watt light bulb for 23 minutes, equalizes indoor temperatures, and reduces carbon output—ultimately slowing climate change.

Revolving Doors Are an Energy Powerhouse. Why Don’t We Use Them? | GOOD

Turtles Saved From Sudden Death Thanks To New Train Lanes

The Japanese built special pathways to protect the slow-moving reptiles.

Mapping the World’s Air Pollution in Real Time

[Image: Air Quality Index China]

Forests For All Forever

From tissue and paper, to packaging, furniture and building materials, people consume and depend on forest products every day.

We often take our surroundings for granted. This is an excellent piece that outlines some of the problems and proposes a cool way to keep our forests going. 

To Fight Inequality, Turn On Clean Energy Everywhere

Much of the world is still held captive by last century’s dirty-energy system that has a long history of locking inequality into place, economically and politically. Look across the world and you will find the vast majority of people subject to the whims of a very few…

Check out the rest of my piece here. 

Apple yanks drone-strike-tracking app from App Store

The app, Metadata+, was created by Josh Begley, research editor for The Intercept; Begley changed its name from Drones+ after it was rejected as “objectionable” by Apple five times.

At the time, an Apple employee told Begley that the app would never be approved if it focused on US drone strikes, but would have a chance if he “broadened his topic” because “there are certain concepts that we decide not to move forward with, and this is one.”

Metadata+ never the word “drone” – this may be how it snuck past the Apple censorship board. But seven months later, Apple has unceremoniously yanked it.

Apple: a giant corporation that gets to decide which journalism you’re allowed to access with apps on your device, and whose lawyersrepeatedly told the US government that changing this situation should be a felony punishable by five years in prison and a $500,000 fine.

Ecosystems work great – they just fail miserably. The important part of a benevolent dictatorship isn’t the “benevolent” – it’s the “dictatorship.”

Read the rest

NASA’s Curiosity Rover Is Able to Drill Holes Into Rocks Again

“The team used tremendous ingenuity to devise a new drilling technique and implement it on another planet,” said Steve Lee, Curiosity Deputy Project Manager of JPL, in a statement. “Those are two vital inches of innovation from 60 million miles away. We’re thrilled that the result was so successful.”

That’s one small hole for a probe, but one giant leap for NASA. This past weekend, the space agency jerry-rigged Curiosity’s malfunctioning drill, allowing the rover to bore into Martian rock for the first time in over a year.

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