It reminds me of similar work with beaver dam analogs.

The small dams they’re using sound like check dams, which apparently can do some damage if they’re not maintained but I don’t know enough of the history there to know how different this is.

I get all my lead from old window weights but you can also use the wheel weights they balance new tires with

That probably fits phytoremediation but I don’t think I’ll be able to compile a list of specific contaminants/solutions just because there’s so many of them and the effective plants/fungus/bacteria have to be geographically appropriate. If you gather that info I’d love to add it! Someday I really would like to try and pull together a list of every known bioremediation option, it’s native range, and the contaminants it works on/how.

Sorry, I suspect my sarcasm may have passed you by. They already make electric mining/construction equipment, solar powered factories and recycling facilities. Steel smelting can be done with grid-connected electric arc furnaces or solar furnaces. The production of solar panels and wind turbines may not be fully detached from oil for some time, but then horses played an important role in heavy industry for decades alongside gasoline and diesel trucks and steel hulled sail ships were still hauling grain well into the 1950s. These transitions are always uneven and the tipping point can be hard to spot even with hindsight, let alone while it’s happening.

Electrification can replace more and more links in the chain until the majority or even entirety of the supply chain is no longer reliant on fossil fuels. Even if those components are made with the use of fossil fuels - just like automobiles made with metal hauled by horses could replace those horses.

Much like how when automobiles were new, you could prove they weren’t actually viable because you still needed horse carts to haul the iron ore, and the coal to smelt it from the mines. The idea that someday the entire fleet of mining and transportation equipment would use internal combustion engines seemed quite impossible.

Probably there’s no way to transition to electric mining equipment, electric smelters, electric battery recycling facilities, and electric transport fleets.

Some would call it a bootstrap problem but it’s possible you’re right and there’s no way to transition from one suite of existing technologies to a new, cheaper one.

I’m so glad it’ll be useful!

It’ll take awhile to build out but I’m excited to add it, and very hopeful it can get some outside feedback since my current main project could also use a set of eyes on the phytoremediation content.

I’ve been hoping to get started with it - this’ll be a big help!

Question from someone who has only done extremely basic electrical work: if this thing is feeding power in on one circuit, can devices on another circuit use that power? I’d been assuming you’d have to plug it in next to whatever you intend to draw from it.

Best of luck!

Hi, I think I made okay progress this month. I kept up edits on the TTRPG campaign, mostly just spit-and polish stuff at the moment. I also did some work on our community worldbuilding wiki. I added two new pages - one on rough mounding and one on landfill mining. I also added a bunch of new links and examples to the existing pages.

I’m currently working on a page on phytoremediation (really a consolidated page for three related fields - removing contaminants from places using plants or fungus or bacteria), which is a massive topic and also a quite new field of study which I feel is a little harder than average to get a grip on as a layman (I’ve been doing my best to make sense of the options for my region for the last couple years of working on this campaign).

Unfortunately putting together a full collection of all known/potential phytoremediation species, the contaminants they help with, their ranges and invasive status really isn’t looking very doable with my work/life schedule (or maybe ever, that might honestly be worthy of its own academic research project!)

So I’m holding it down to basic facts about how phytoremediation works, different types, lists of contaminants, and where they come from etc. plus the steps I follow to narrow down which plant/fungus/bacteria fits and how to find useful tidbits for a scene without going insane from all the options and considerations.

If anyone knows anyone in that field, I’d love to run what I’ve got past them and ask them some questions

Same, I’ll read through the last bit, make some edits as I see things, then pick up where I left off. Also: OP try to park on a hill where you can - leave off where you know what you want to do next so it’s not as hard to get going. Best of luck!

Thanks for writing this out! It really helped me understand how this all works

That’s good to know, thank you!

Yeah how do you do that? I really ought to save this stuff off at some point

X Minus One is amazing! We have a lot of fun with that on long drives.

I had the same experience when trying to crosspost to here. I was wondering if the community was unlisted somehow.

Also they weren’t singled out, other American companies producing small cars/fire traps did get sued. Ford caught actual criminal charges not because they had money but for the elements above when they came to light.

Their victory (bought with famous lawyers) helped set a precedent that ensured American corporations are an effective shield against liability and real consequences even in truly horrendous deliberate, documented harms.

It wasn’t unique in small American cars in those couple decades (notable for rushed designs with an indifference to safety across the board) but the numbers were a bit worse. They stood out for Ford’s extensive crash tests, and well-documented knowledge of the lethal design flaw, their early decision to pay out for deaths rather than make a quite inexpensive design change, and recall, and for the decade of expensive legal battles and PR campaigns where they lobbied against federal rear-end collision safety requirements which would have saved lives and identified the problem. They were happy to throw money at every aspect of the problem except for the part that kept burning their customers alive.

Also it wasn’t just the gas tank design but flaws with the frame and (essentially cosmetic bumper) which jammed every door even in minor rear end collisions.

This was half the problem with the Ford Pinto - the big name in burning people alive after minor collisions.

I stopped once to move a big snapper but he wasn’t having it. A guy in a truck stopped around the same time and approached with a snow shovel with this sort of weary confidence, like he’d done this a thousand times.

He tapped it gently on the shell, then put the shovel in front of its face. The turtle chomped right on and he pulled it off the road. I don’t know if that was the right way to move it but it worked - mostly I was impressed he had a turtle-moving protocol (and shovel) ready to go.