Tootfinder

"One of the biggest microplastic pollution sources isn't straws or grocery bags. It's your tires"
#Microplastics #Plastic #Plastics

One of the biggest microplastic pollution sources isn't straws or grocery bags. It's your tires
Every few years, the tires on your car wear thin and need to be replaced. But where does that lost tire material go?

Skills Ontario hosting summer camp in Ottawa for students
https://www.ctvnews.ca/ottawa/article/from-changing-tires-to-welding-ottawa-students-get-hands-on-at-trades-summer-camp/

car update: the chabge of tires only marginally helped the hum from the front wheels. So it is either wheel alignment... or worse, wheel bearings need to be replaced :(

Sonnet 053 - LIII
What is your substance, whereof are you made,
That millions of strange shadows on you tend?
Since every one hath, every one, one shade,
And you but one, can every shadow lend.
Describe Adonis, and the counterfeit
Is poorly imitated after you;
On Helen's cheek all art of beauty set,
And you in Grecian tires are painted new:
Speak of the spring, and foison of the year,
The one doth shadow of your beauty show,

Using (cargo) bikes to get shit done. Had to pick up the car after getting new tires installed, so on the way home from work swapped cargo bike for car at the gas station, drove home, rode the 3-speed back to the garage, and towed it home behind the cargo bike.
The cost of the car repair was equal to the cost of the Big Dummy's frame (though not in inflation-adjusted dollars, the Big Dummy is 16 years old).

Aw, flat tires, so sad. Hopefully that's not a sign of low quality tires, it would be tough situation if that became a common problem for ICE! https://kolektiva.social/@615ANTIFASCIST/115180400255033086

ANTIFASCIST 615 (@615ANTIFASCIST@kolektiva.social)
Attached: 1 image Crowd Jeers as Border Patrol vehicle with flattened tires leaves Rochester neighborhood. https://13wham.com/news/local/crowd-jeers-as-border-patrol-vehicle-with-flattened-tires-leaves-rochester-neighborhood-park-avenue-westminster-road-us-ice-customs-and-border-protection-federal-agents-trump-administration-immigration

done!
I had them swap the rims onto the winter tires so that we could potentially put sensors on the other rims or maybe sell those rims and just keep one set. We'll see in the spring.
The tread is definitely better
lol
edit: oh yeah, and I have a appointment for wheel alignment tomorrow.. #evcrosscanada #tires #cars #maintenance

Cowboys kicking tires on former star OT, familiar face amid injury woes https://www.si.com/nfl/cowboys/news/dallas-cowboys-kicking-tires-offensive-tackle-lael-collins-amid-injury-woes

Muscle beaches, drag racing, and drones falling into the sea. Summer in Odesa hasn’t stopped: https://benborges.xyz/2025/08/18/muscle-beaches-drag-racing-and.html

A hive of activity around here! A few seconds ago a full logging truck left and now there is an empty logging truck in its place. Every bay is full. Everyone running full bore!
Pearson Tire/Kal Tire in Port Alberni.
Been getting my tires here for 20 years! Great people. And free tire changes!
Edit: just to emphasize the point… a full Kal Tire delivery truck just pulled up on the main street beside and is now sitting there in the left turn lane waiting for the logging truck to be done so it can pull in. Crew now working double fast lol.
Winter tire season definitely on!
#evcrosscanada #tires #cars #maintenance

Why it makes sense for Cowboys to 'kick tires' on ex-No. 1 pick Jadeveon Clowney

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/why-it-makes-sense-for-cowboys-to-br…

Car tires are polluting the environment and killing salmon. A global plastics treaty could help https://phys.org/news/2025-07-car-polluting-environment-salmon-global.html

Car tires are polluting the environment and killing salmon. A global plastics treaty could help
In the 1990s, scientists restoring streams around Seattle, Wash., noticed that returning coho salmon were dying after rainstorms. The effects were immediate: the fish swam in circles, gasping at the surface, then died in a few hours.

I took the old 1970's Raleigh out this morning and it was creaky and had problems shifting, but it was also sort of a fun ride!
I only did about 1.5 miles and when I got home I realized the tires were low... like a lot more low than I think they should have been since I filled them three days ago.
Anyway, I may try to make the ride a bit smoother and see if I can get the shifting working better.

When I was a little kid, the only thing I ever wanted for my birthday was a tricycle. I never got one. This yr, on my 64th bday, my dream finally came true. Mr. Boots got me an electric trike.
I AM OVER THE FCKING MOON. 🥰
He’s making me get—and wear—a helmet, tho. 😒 #ZiggyTheTrike #TheCircleOfLife

"In recent times, tire wear particles have been found to account for about 45% of all microplastics in both terrestrial and aquatic systems...
Rain washes those tire wear particles into ditches, where they flow into streams, lakes, rivers and oceans...
In a recent study, we tested pine wood chips and biochar – a form or charcoal made from heating rice husks in a limited oxygen chamber, a process known as pyrolysis – and found they could remove approximately 90% of tire wear …

One of the biggest microplastic pollution sources isn’t straws or grocery bags – it’s your tires
Rain storms wash those tire shards into streams and ultimately into lakes and oceans. That’s bad news for fish and other aquatic life.

remember folks, when you read "microplastics" think "bits of tires in the air"

Scientists identify 4,200 plastic chemicals of concern and highlight safer approaches https://phys.org/news/2025-07-scientists-plastic-chemicals-highlight-safer.html

Scientists identify 4,200 plastic chemicals of concern and highlight safer approaches
Countries are currently negotiating a global treaty to end plastic pollution and make plastics safer and more sustainable. Plastic chemicals are a core issue because all plastics, from food packaging to car tires, contain hundreds of chemicals that can leach into foodstuffs, homes, and the environment.

I had to change both tires on the 50 year old Raleigh and it was a bit of a pain but it’s up and rolling again. Too hot to ride now though… might give it a spin in the morning.
#bikes #bikeTooter

Integrated Wheel Sensor Communication using ESP32 -- A Contribution towards a Digital Twin of the Road System
Ventseslav Yordanov, Simon Sch\"afer, Alexander Mann, Stefan Kowalewski, Bassam Alrifaee, Lutz Eckstein
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.04061

Integrated Wheel Sensor Communication using ESP32 -- A Contribution towards a Digital Twin of the Road System
While current onboard state estimation methods are adequate for most driving and safety-related applications, they do not provide insights into the interaction between tires and road surfaces. This paper explores a novel communication concept for efficiently transmitting integrated wheel sensor data from an ESP32 microcontroller. Our proposed approach utilizes a publish-subscribe system, surpassing comparable solutions in the literature regarding data transmission volume. We tested this approac…

Good Morning #Canada
Today, we celebrate the #FallEquinox, not to be confused with the Chevy Equinox, which is an entirely different thing. The Fall Equinox means summer is officially over, and some of you missed 3 weeks of nice weather when you gave up back on Labour Day. Right now, day and night are roughly equal, more or less, across Canada, but our days are getting shorter for the next several months, until December 21st-ish. Start thinking about snow tires and Christmas shopping because the calendar moves quickly this time of year. If you're in the Southern Hemisphere, please ignore this message.
Some bonus content - your Fall 2025 #Horoscope. It's from the CBC, our national news service, so you know it must be accurate. I read mine (Virgo) several times and haven't got a clue what it means. So I've got that going for me.
#CanadaIsAwesome ##WinterIsComing
https://www.cbc.ca/life/culture/fall-equinox-horoscope-2025-1.7638561

Glassy interphases reinforce elastomeric nanocomposites by enhancing percolation-driven volume expansion under strain
Pierre Kawak, Harshad Bhapkar, David S. Simmons
https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.04755

Glassy interphases reinforce elastomeric nanocomposites by enhancing percolation-driven volume expansion under strain
For nearly a century, introduction of nanoparticles to elastomers has yielded extraordinarily tough nanocomposites that are critical to technologies from actuators to tires. The mechanisms by which this reinforcement occurs have nevertheless remained a central open question in material science. One widely debated hypothesis posits that strong interactions between polymer and particles induce "glassy bridges" that cement particles into a cohesive percolating network that resists elongation. Here…

Cowboys insider reveals whether team plans to sign Jadeveon Clowney https://www.si.com/nfl/cowboys/news/dallas-cowboys-insider-reveals-whether-team-plans-sign-jadeveon-clowney

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on KEXP's #JazzTheatre
Medeski Martin & Wood:
🎵 Flat Tires
#MedeskiMartin #Wood

My bike is in the shop so I rode the old Raleigh today. It wasn't great.
I did get new tires & tubes, but the shifting is still bad, the brakes not great, hand grips not comfortable, the gearing is blah. I don't think I could take hills with it.
It's a 3 speed but sometimes I just can't get it to shift.
I did just 3 miles around the neighborhood and the chain came off after the first mile. On my Trek I can get the chain on in 15 seconds. This thing took…

My 13yo held up a glass of water and asked me if it had microplastics in it. "Probably," I replied. He then said he wasn't going to drink it, and I told him that microplastics are EVERYWHERE. You can't avoid it, they're in all the water and air. I explained that it's a problem we need to solve at society's level - a huge amount of environmental microplastics come from car tires, and we need to wean ourselves off of fossil fuels.
He and the 8yo both then as…

Enhanced premelting at the ice-rubber interface using all-atom molecular dynamics simulation
Takumi Kojima, Ikki Yasuda, Takumi Sato, Noriyoshi Arai, Kenji Yasuoka
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.20448

Enhanced premelting at the ice-rubber interface using all-atom molecular dynamics simulation
The ice-rubber interface is critical in applications such as tires and shoe outsoles, yet its molecular tribology remains unclear. Using all-atom molecular dynamics simulations, we studied premelting layers at the basal face of ice in contact with styrene-butadiene rubber from 254 to 269 K. Despite its hydrophobicity, rubber enhances structural disorder of interfacial water, promoting premelting. In contrast, water mobility is suppressed by confinement from polymer chains, leading to glassy dyn…

And just to emphasize the point, we don’t use our car lightly.
We have gone on numerous road trips including from the Pacific to the Atlantic cross Canada in 2022. We have a hitch on the Kona that I use to pull a trailer for everthing from camping, to road trips, to hauling a yard of soil or rock.
We have certainly had some maintenance costs for the Kona. Some regular (brakes, after 150,000), checkups, 12V battery twice, etc. and some self inflicted (alignment and back shocks due to trailering). Visits to the dealer are your standard $500 to $2000 affair once a year. We have a second set of rims for the winter tires. We have bought 2 new sets of tires, one winter, one all season. The all seasons will be replaced after this summer.
The main battery was replaced under recall in February 2022 (before our road trip) at about 50,000km so we have a slightly newer battery than the car but not significantly, and we have not noticed any degradation in charge life.
On this day in 2022 we were visiting Wanuskewin, Saskatchewan just outside Saskatoon on our way back. We stopped to charge in Saskatoon, North Battleford, Lloydminster and Vegreville on the way to the West Edmonton Mall that day :)
#EV #ElectricCar #cost #electricity #bchydro #bcpoli #endfossilfuels