Hatesquash - GenX-Rage

Wanted to bring attention to the fact that Bisan called for mass protests today (April 1st). It’s okay if you can’t march yourself, but please make it a point to spread this so that those who can march do so—and also take this as your own checkpoint to ask yourself if you’ve been faltering in terms of sharing information about Palestine, doing what you can to fund humanitarian aid in Palestine, and staying informed as to the ongoing genocide in Palestine. Some might say it has been 6 months of this, but to me that’s all the more reason to make noise now more than ever. This is one of very few spaces on the Internet where Palestine has not been abandoned in people’s endless efforts to dehumanize Arabs. Please continue amplifying the dialogue surrounding this genocide. Free Palestine. Free Palestins always.

WIRED

Los Angeles Just Proved How Spongy a City Can Be

As relentless rains pounded LA, the city’s “sponge” infrastructure helped gather 8.6 billion gallons of water—enough to sustain over 100,000

As relentless rains pounded LA, the city’s “sponge” infrastructure helped gather 8.6 billion gallons of water—enough to sustain over 100,000 households for a year.

Earlier this month, the future fell on Los Angeles. A long band of moisture in the sky, known as an atmospheric river, dumped 9 inches of rain on the city over three days—over half of what the city typically gets in a year. It’s the kind of extreme rainfall that’ll get ever more extreme as the planet warms.

The city’s water managers, though, were ready and waiting. Like other urban areas around the world, in recent years LA has been transforming into a “sponge city,” replacing impermeable surfaces, like concrete, with permeable ones, like dirt and plants. It has also built out “spreading grounds,” where water accumulates and soaks into the earth.

With traditional dams and all that newfangled spongy infrastructure, between February 4 and 7 the metropolis captured 8.6 billion gallons of stormwater, enough to provide water to 106,000 households for a year. For the rainy season in total, LA has accumulated 14.7 billion gallons.

Long reliant on snowmelt and river water piped in from afar, LA is on a quest to produce as much water as it can locally. “There's going to be a lot more rain and a lot less snow, which is going to alter the way we capture snowmelt and the aqueduct water,” says Art Castro, manager of watershed management at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. “Dams and spreading grounds are the workhorses of local stormwater capture for either flood protection or water supply.”

Centuries of urban-planning dogma dictates using gutters, sewers, and other infrastructure to funnel rainwater out of a metropolis as quickly as possible to prevent flooding. Given the increasingly catastrophic urban flooding seen around the world, though, that clearly isn’t working anymore, so now planners are finding clever ways to capture stormwater, treating it as an asset instead of a liability. “The problem of urban hydrology is caused by a thousand small cuts,” says Michael Kiparsky, director of the Wheeler Water Institute at UC Berkeley. “No one driveway or roof in and of itself causes massive alteration of the hydrologic cycle. But combine millions of them in one area and it does. Maybe we can solve that problem with a thousand Band-Aids.”

Or in this case, sponges. The trick to making a city more absorbent is to add more gardens and other green spaces that allow water to percolate into underlying aquifers—porous subterranean materials that can hold water—which a city can then draw from in times of need. Engineers are also greening up medians and roadside areas to soak up the water that’d normally rush off streets, into sewers, and eventually out to sea...

To exploit all that free water falling from the sky, the LADWP has carved out big patches of brown in the concrete jungle. Stormwater is piped into these spreading grounds and accumulates in dirt basins. That allows it to slowly soak into the underlying aquifer, which acts as a sort of natural underground tank that can hold 28 billion gallons of water.

During a storm, the city is also gathering water in dams, some of which it diverts into the spreading grounds. “After the storm comes by, and it's a bright sunny day, you’ll still see water being released into a channel and diverted into the spreading grounds,” says Castro. That way, water moves from a reservoir where it’s exposed to sunlight and evaporation, into an aquifer where it’s banked safely underground.

On a smaller scale, LADWP has been experimenting with turning parks into mini spreading grounds, diverting stormwater there to soak into subterranean cisterns or chambers. It’s also deploying green spaces along roadways, which have the additional benefit of mitigating flooding in a neighborhood: The less concrete and the more dirt and plants, the more the built environment can soak up stormwater like the actual environment naturally does.

As an added benefit, deploying more of these green spaces, along with urban gardens, improves the mental health of residents. Plants here also “sweat,” cooling the area and beating back the urban heat island effect—the tendency for concrete to absorb solar energy and slowly release it at night. By reducing summer temperatures, you improve the physical health of residents. “The more trees, the more shade, the less heat island effect,” says Castro. “Sometimes when it’s 90 degrees in the middle of summer, it could get up to 110 underneath a bus stop.”

LA’s far from alone in going spongy. Pittsburgh is also deploying more rain gardens, and where they absolutely must have a hard surface—sidewalks, parking lots, etc.—they’re using special concrete bricks that allow water to seep through. And a growing number of municipalities are scrutinizing properties and charging owners fees if they have excessive impermeable surfaces like pavement, thus incentivizing the switch to permeable surfaces like plots of native plants or urban gardens for producing more food locally.

So the old way of stormwater management isn’t just increasingly dangerous and ineffective as the planet warms and storms get more intense—it stands in the way of a more beautiful, less sweltering, more sustainable urban landscape. LA, of all places, is showing the world there’s a better way.

-via Wired, February 19, 2024

(via)

Everyone knows

In Brazil, this couple planted 2 million trees in 18 years, returning 172 bird species, 33 mammals, 15 amphibians, 15 reptiles and 293 plant species to the area.

The whole world should know them. This is Lélia Wanick and Sebastião Salgado.

The couple decided to start the Terra Institute, a small organization that planted 2 million plants and revived the forest.

"There is only one creature that can convert carbon dioxide into oxygen, and that is a tree. We need to replant the forests."

Using only local plants, the couple rebuilt the entire ecosystem from scratch and the area flourished significantly, allowing the fauna to return; thanks to their work, Lélia and Sebastião saved dozens of endangered species.

"The earth was sad as I was, everything was destroyed. Then my wife got a fantastic idea to replant this forest: all the insects, fish and birds returned, and thanks to the new growth of the trees I was born again."

What happened at UCLA 4/30

@FilmthepoliceLA recorded the entire attack on Pro-Palestine Protesers by Zionist attackers

Link to video

The police allowed Zionists to attack the Pro-Palestine protesters at UCLA and even watched them do it. The attacks were solely initiated by the Zionist side. They hurled fireworks at the Pro-Palestine side, yelling anti-Black racial slurs, and using pepper spray.

since the old version of this post was flagged for 'adult content'...

reblog this post if your account is a trans safe space or owned by a trans person!

along with that, reblog if your account is a trans non-binary spectrum safe space or owned by someone on the trans enby spectrum!

struggle-la-lucha.org

Congratulations to Venezuela and re-elected President Nicolás Maduro Moros!

Congratulations to the people of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and their re-elected President Nicolás Maduro Moros! En español ¡Felic

Struggle-La Lucha newspaper and the Socialist Unity Party / Partido de Socialismo Unido salute the working people of Venezuela for the successful reelection of President Nicolás Maduro Moros.

For us in the United States, your victory is also a victory for working, poor, and oppressed people in the belly of the beast. For months, Wall Street and its media were confidently predicting the overthrow of the revolutionary process in the Bolivarian Republic.

Middle East Eye

South Africa to prosecute citizens who served in the Israeli army

'When you come home, we're going to arrest you', South Africa’s foreign minister tells Israeli soldiers

South Africa’s Minister of International Relations and Cooperation Naledi Pandor said that nationals who have served in the Israeli army will be prosecuted upon re-entering the country, as Israel continues its devastating war on the Gaza Strip for the sixth month. "I've already issued a statement alerting those who are South African and who are fighting alongside or in the Israeli Defense Force. We are ready. When you come home, we're going to arrest you," Pandor said during an African National Congress meeting earlier this week.

Why? WHY??

U.S. CDC taking comments on potentially limiting COVID vaccine availbility by age or health status. Never mind that the vaccine is crucial to limiting long-term effects that could lead to immunocomprimisation. 🤬🤬🤬

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