IVE BEEN WAITING ALL YEAR TO POST THIS YOU DONT EVEN KNOW

Grist

He'll try, but Trump can't stop the clean energy revolution

The cost of renewables is plummeting, heat pumps are selling like crazy, and red states are raking in cash from the IRA. There's no stopping

From the article:

“Texas has the most solar and wind of any state, not because Republicans in Texas love renewables, but because it’s the cheapest form of electricity there,” said Zeke Hausfather, a research scientist at Berkeley Earth, a climate research nonprofit. The next top three states for producing wind power — Iowa, Oklahoma, and Kansas — are red, too. [...] “You picture a web, and we’re taking scissors or a machete or something, and chopping one part of that web out,” said Elizabeth Sawin, the director of the Multisolving Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that promotes climate solutions. “There’s this resilience of having all these layers of partners.” All told, climate progress has been unfolding on so many fronts for so many years — often without enough support from the federal government — that it will persist regardless of who occupies the White House. “This too shall pass, and hopefully we will be in a more favorable policy environment in four years,” Hausfather said. “In the meantime, we’ll have to keep trying to make clean energy cheap and hope that it wins on its merits.”

Reasons to be Cheerful

Abandoned Coal Mines Are Becoming the Batteries of the Future

“Gravity batteries” give former mines a second life — while offering an economic and environmental boost to communities once reliant on coal

From the article:

From Europe to North America, an energy revolution is breathing new life into empty, long-forgotten coal mine shafts — by repurposing them into places to store renewable energy. Using “gravity batteries,” these underground facilities aim to tackle one of renewable energy’s greatest challenges: storage. The method is simple: Excess renewable energy is used to power winches that lift heavy weights — such as containers filled with sand or rock — up the mine shaft. When additional energy is needed, these weights are released, generating power as they descend. This approach not only gives these disused mines a second life but also offers economic and environmental benefits to communities once reliant on coal. Hundreds of thousands of abandoned mines — about 550,000 in the U.S. alone — pose economic, environmental and safety risks. In some areas, these old shafts have caused collapses or polluted groundwater, while in others, the loss of mining jobs has hit local economies hard. Meanwhile, as renewable energy scales up, storage limitations become a pressing issue, especially with solar and wind, which are naturally intermittent. This year, solar is expected to surpass coal as a leading global power source, according to the International Energy Agency, highlighting the need for reliable storage to balance supply and demand. During the U.K.’s 2020 lockdown, for example, National Grid warned of potential blackouts when energy demand dropped by 20 percent, leading to excess renewable power that went unused.

Gravity batteries offer a straightforward but powerful — and cost-effective — way to address both of these problems at once. Their potential is already being realized. In Rudong, near Shanghai, the first commercial grid-scale gravity battery was connected to the grid in December 2023. Capable of storing up to 100 megawatt hours of energy, it can power nine homes for an entire year using only stored electricity. Across China, nine additional projects are in development, while in Switzerland, a commercial demonstration unit has been connected to the national grid for testing since 2019, showcasing the technology’s promise on a global scale. And now, other countries, from Finland to Australia, are getting on board.

Everyone Right Now

my eye is twitching

Good News Network

Researchers Discover New Mechanism for Rapid Liver Regeneration to Restore Damaged Livers

Researchers discovered a mechanism after acute liver damage occurs—and it could lead to treatments for those with severe liver problems.

"Researchers at the National Cancer Research Centre in Spain (CNIO) have discovered a mechanism that is triggered just minutes after acute liver damage occurs—and it could lead to treatments for those with severe liver problems.

The avenues for future treatments of liver damage include a diet enriched with the amino acid glutamate.

“Glutamate supplementation can promote liver regeneration and benefit patients in recovery following hepatectomy or awaiting a transplant,” wrote the authors in a paper published in ‘Nature’.

The liver is a vital organ, crucial to digestion, metabolism, and the elimination of toxins. It has a unique ability to regenerate, which allows it to replace liver cells damaged by the very toxins that these cells eliminate.

However, the liver stops regenerating in cases of diseases that involve chronic liver damage–such as cirrhosis—and such diseases are becoming increasingly prevalent, associated with poor dietary habits or alcohol consumption. So activating liver regeneration is key to treating the disease.

Learning to activate liver regeneration is therefore a priority today, to benefit patients with liver damage and also those who’ve had part of their liver cut out to remove a tumor.

The research has discovered in animal models this previously unknown mechanism of liver regeneration. It is a process that is triggered very quickly, just a few minutes after acute liver damage occurs, with the amino acid glutamate playing a key role.

“Our results describe a fundamental and universal mechanism that allows the liver to regenerate after acute damage,” explained Nabil Djouder, head of the CNIO Growth Factors, Nutrients and Cancer Group and senior author of the study.

A “complex and ingenious” perspective on liver regeneration

Liver regeneration was known to occur through the proliferation of liver cells, known as hepatocytes. However, the molecular mechanisms involved were not fully understood. This current discovery is very novel, as it describes communication between two different organs, the liver and bone marrow, involving the immune system, according to a CINO news release.

The results show that liver and bone marrow are interconnected by glutamate. After acute liver damage, liver cells, called hepatocytes, produce glutamate and send it into the bloodstream; through the blood, glutamate reaches the bone marrow, inside the bones, where it activates monocytes, a type of immune system cell. Monocytes then travel to the liver and along the way become macrophages – also immune cells. The presence of glutamate reprograms the metabolism of macrophages, and these consequently begin to secrete a growth factor that leads to an increase in hepatocyte production.

In other words, a rapid chain of events allows glutamate to trigger liver regeneration in just minutes, through changes in the macrophage metabolism. It is, says Djouder, “a new, complex and ingenious perspective on how the liver stimulates its own regeneration.”

The research also clarifies a previously unanswered question: how the various areas of the liver are coordinated during regeneration. In the liver, there are different types of hepatocytes, organized in different areas; the hepatocytes in each area perform specific metabolic functions. The study reveals that hepatocytes producing a protein known as glutamine synthetase, which regulates glutamate levels, play a key role in regeneration.

According to the CNIO group, when glutamine synthetase is inhibited, there is more glutamate in circulation, which accelerates liver regeneration. This is what happens when the liver suffers acute damage: glutamine synthase activity decreases, blood glutamate increases, and from there, the connection with the bone marrow is established, reprogramming macrophages and stimulating hepatocyte proliferation.

Possible therapeutic applications

The experiments have been carried out in mice, but the results have been tested with bioinformatics tools, using databases of mouse and human hepatocytes.

According to Djouder, “dietary glutamate supplementation may simply be recommended in the future after liver extirpation, and also to reduce liver damage caused by cirrhosis.”

The first author of the paper, CNIO researcher María del Mar Rigual also wants future research to explore using glutamate supplements in humans who have undergone liver resection for tumor removal."

-via Good News Network, March 30, 2025

Literally sobbing. A judge, a US judge defended us. A judge brought up intersex people, uaing the term intersex, to *defend* us by not allowing our erasure. I'm having a lot of feelings right now

I feel like I should say that you don’t have to be Jewish to care about things that hurt the Jewish community. The idea that we are insular and would rather no one stick up for us than have gentiles stand with us is antisemitic. The idea that we would rather suffer in silence is a way to isolate us. Your Jewish friends do not want to struggle alone. They do not want you to look the other way. We want you to care while respecting the boundaries of our culture and faith. You don’t have to be us to stand with us.

As a rule of thumb, don't reblog donation posts or people asking for donations unless they've been vetted and reblogged by Palestinian bloggers. We usually go to lengths to verify this shit because we know scammers have been faking to get people to send them money, using the urgency of our genocide as bait.

It's disgusting this is what we're dealing with, but people are losing money because of some truly evil people out there.

Accounts don't just randomly spring up on tumblr without gofundmes while asking for someone to help them create a campaign. Fuck out of here with that shit.

i love telling people "godspeed" it adds so much weight and dignity to everything i'll say it to a friend driving cross country or a coworker grabbing lunch from the corner store like good luck bitch!! may the road rise to meet you and the wind be at your back!!!

I finally made the meme I've had in my head for over a year