Tootfinder

A few highlights from the Turkish-Persian section of a random carpet symbolism book I skimmed while stopped at a random library in New Jersey a couple days ago

More than 10,000 Starlink satellites currently orbit the Earth.
We see them crawling across dark skies, no matter how remote our location, and streaking through images from research telescopes.
SpaceX recently announced that it wants to launch
one million more of these satellites
as orbital data centres for AI computing power.
A few years ago, we wrote a paper predicting what the night sky would look like with 65,000 satellites from four planned megaconstellatio…

A million new SpaceX satellites will destroy the night sky — for everyone on Earth
If SpaceX launches one million new satellites, it will increase atmospheric pollution and risk of falling debris. And we will see more satellites than stars.

"With so much focus historically on spacecraft being made from the lightest, strongest and most heat-resistant materials available, it may seem counterintuitive to intentionally make some materials weaker. The key is making materials smarter, so they maintain their strength during their mission but weaken under the heat of reentry."

Laos can do more to mitigate chemical pollution of rivers flowing into Vietnam (analysis) https://news.mongabay.com/2026/04/laos-can-do-more-to-mitigate-chemical-pollution-of-rivers-flowing-into-vietnam-analysis/…

Laos can do more to mitigate chemical pollution of rivers flowing into Vietnam (analysis)
Southeast Asia’s growing demand for rare earth elements and gold, driven by global needs in electronics, renewable energy, defense and high-value commodities, has accelerated mining across the region. While Myanmar’s unregulated mines have drawn attention for contaminating Mekong River tributaries, monitored by the Mekong River Commission, an equally pressing but less scrutinized issue exists along […]

"""
[…] and I opened the case (politely examined by the guards of the Palace at four stages of my approach to the Red Hall) that held my ansible and some pictures. The pictures—films, photos, paintings, actives, and some cubes—were a little gallery of Man: people of Hain, Chiffewar, and the Cetians, of S and Terra and Alterra, of the Utter-mosts, Kapteyn, Ollul, Four-Taurus, Rokanan, Ensbo, Cime, Gde and Sheashel Haven … The king glanced at a couple without interest. “What’s this?”
“A person from Cime, a female.” I had to use the word that Gethenians would apply only to a person in the culminant phase of kemmer [a cyclical period of heightened sexual activity during which secondary gender characteristics emerge], the alternative being their word for a female animal.
“Permanently?”
“Yes.”
He dropped the cube and stood swinging from foot to foot, staring at me or a little past me, the firelight shifting on his face. “They’re all like that—like you?”
This was the hurdle I could not lower for them. They must, in the end, learn to take it in their stride.
“Yes. Gethenian sexual physiology, so far as we yet know, is unique among human beings.”
“So all of them, out on these other planets, are in permanent kemmer? A society of perverts? So Lord Tibe put it; I thought he was joking. Well, it may be the fact, but it’s a disgusting idea, Mr. Ai, and I don’t see why human beings here on earth should want or tolerate any dealings with creatures so monstrously different. […]”
"""
(Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness)

Space waste - an update of the anthropogenic matter injection into Earth’s atmosphere: #SpaceDebris

I have some sketches of an essay that I need to write, but I think it's worth brain-dumping a bit more in the mean time.
#LLMs are an attempt to make tech grow forever. But like, how many "your mom/a friend, but done by a precarious worker instead" apps do we really need? Everything right now is in the AI grift hole, but there's almost nothing of interest (even if you ignore the ethical concerns). Like, no, I don't fucking want a robot to lie to me about my groceries. That doesn't sound like a useful feature. There's a lot of useless shit being pumped out to prop up the bottom line, and a lot of people just want to be able to use their old phone for more than a couple of years.
No one is happy with this. No one wants this. Except the billionaires who are forcing us all to drink the capitalism koolaid, because they'd rather exterminate life on earth than live in a world where they experience consequences.
Nothing grows forever. That's not how literally anything in reality works, or has ever worked, at all in history. Some people think that the universe itself may work like that, but that's only an educated guess. Finite things don't grow forever. Every organism, every society, every technology, every dynamic and adaptive system we have ever known goes through a growth phase and then goes in to a stabilization phase. Or, following a Malthusian pattern, grows until it reaches a catastrophic point and collapses. Like lemmings. Or reindeer. Or cancer.

An invisible forever chemical rain is falling across the planet #environment

An invisible forever chemical rain is falling across the planet
A surprising study suggests that chemicals introduced to protect the ozone layer may have unintentionally created a growing global pollution problem. Researchers found that refrigerants and certain anesthetic gases have generated more than 335,000 tonnes of trifluoroacetic acid (TFA), a highly persistent "forever chemical," that has been deposited across Earth's surface since 2000. The pollutant is now showing up everywhere from rainwater to remote Arctic ice, and scientists expect levels to ke…

Want a long and healthy life?
You might want to follow the example of Italy’s Emma Maria Mazzenga.

But following her won’t be easy.

Almost 93, Mazzenga may be the fastest female nonagenarian on Earth.
She holds the 90-to-94 age-group world records in the outdoor 200 meters and the 60, 200- and 400-meter indoor events.
At 92, she’s as fit as someone half her age

At 92, she’s as fit as someone half her age
What science is learning from the muscles of Emma Mazzenga, the fastest female nonagenarian on Earth and holder of multiple sprinting world records.

NASA is racing to save an aging telescope from falling back to Earth with a daring rescue mission.
The $30 million salvage operation gets underway as soon as this week with the planned launch of a robotic lifesaver.
NASA hired startup
Katalyst Space Technologies
to boost the Swift Observatory to a higher orbit
where it can continue hunting for some of the universe’s biggest explosions.
A three-armed spacecraft built by Katalyst will chase after Swift once …

NASA races to save the Swift telescope with a $30M robotic rescue mission
NASA is racing to save its Swift telescope from falling back to Earth with a daring rescue mission. The salvage effort gets underway as soon as this week with the planned launch of a robotic lifesaver. NASA has hired Katalyst Space Technologies to boost Swift to a higher orbit where it can continue hunting for some of the universe's biggest explosions. Launched in 2004, Swift has been sinking faster and faster because of recent intense solar activity. It needs to get to a higher orbit as soon a…