Tootfinder

A report tied Iowa’s water pollution to agriculture. Then the money to promote it mysteriously disappeared https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/30/iowa-agriculture-water-pollution

"Pollution from wildfires can contaminate our water for up to 8 years, study finds"
#Pollution #Wildfires #Environment

Pollution from wildfires can contaminate our water for up to eight years, new study finds
An analysis of 500 watersheds found levels of organic carbon, phosphorus, and other pollutants up to 103 times higher after a wildfire.

Even if “AI” worked (it doesn’t), there’s many reasons why you shouldn’t use it:
1. It’s destroying Internet sites that you love as you use chat bots instead of actually going to sources of information—this will cause them to be less active and eventually shut down.
2. Pollution and water use from server farms cause immediate harm; often—just like other heavy industry—these are built in underprivileged communities and harming poor people. Without any benefits as the big tech companies get tax breaks and don’t pay for power, while workers aren’t from the community but commute in.
3. The basic underlying models of any LLM rely on stolen data, even when specific extra data is obtained legally. Chatbots can’t learn to speak English just by reading open source code.
4. You’re fueling a speculation bubble that is costing many people their jobs—because the illusion of “efficiency” is kept up by firing people and counting that as profit.
5. Whenever you use the great cheat machine in the cloud you’re robbing yourself from doing real research, writing or coding—literally atrophying your brain and making you stupider.
It’s a grift, through and through.

Drinking water shortage looming in the Netherlands. Not the climate change impact you'd expect in this wet place, with growing annual precipitation under climate change.
But periods of drought make more resources necessary, and provinces fail to organize it, due to pollution and competing use.

"Face masks release microplastics and chemicals that could harm people and the environment, study finds"
#Plastic #Plastics #Health

Face masks release microplastics and chemicals that could harm people and the environment, study finds
The global use of face masks surged during the COVID-19 pandemic, but many have since been discarded as waste, contributing to land and water pollution.

Serious pollution incidents by English water companies rose 60% last year https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/jul/18/serious-pollution-incidents-englands-water-companies-data

Face masks release microplastics and chemicals that could harm people and the environment, study finds https://phys.org/news/2025-09-masks-microplastics-chemicals-people-environment.html
Disposable face masks used during Covid have left chemica…

Face masks release microplastics and chemicals that could harm people and the environment, study finds
The global use of face masks surged during the COVID-19 pandemic, but many have since been discarded as waste, contributing to land and water pollution.

Pennsylvania settlement sets US precedent for plastic pellet control. Landmark agreement highlights threat of plastic pollution to human health and environment. Important step towards reducing impact on waterways and climate. #climatechange #climatesolutions

Pennsylvania Settlement Could Set US Precedent for Control of Plastic Pellets
"A Pennsylvania plastics manufacturer will pay $2.6 million for allegedly violating the federal Clean Water Act and will ensure that no more of its plastic pellets leak into waterways, under a proposed settlement with two environmental groups."

Decoding and Engineering the Phytobiome Communication for Smart Agriculture
Fatih Gulec, Hamdan Awan, Nigel Wallbridge, Andrew W. Eckford
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.03584 https:…

Decoding and Engineering the Phytobiome Communication for Smart Agriculture
Smart agriculture applications, integrating technologies like the Internet of Things and machine learning/artificial intelligence (ML/AI) into agriculture, hold promise to address modern challenges of rising food demand, environmental pollution, and water scarcity. Alongside the concept of the phytobiome, which defines the area including the plant, its environment, and associated organisms, and the recent emergence of molecular communication (MC), there exists an important opportunity to advanc…

Court Rules EPA Failed to Properly Consider, Update Water Pollution Standards For Oil Refineries, Plastics Plants https://biologicaldiversity.org/w/news/press-releases/…

Court Rules EPA Failed to Properly Consider, Update Water Pollution Standards For Oil Refineries, Plastics Plants
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled today that the Environmental Protection Agency acted unlawfully in declining to update water pollution control standards for seven major industries. The industries include petroleum refineries, inorganic and organic chemical manufacturers, and factories that manufacture plastics, fertilizer, pesticides and nonferrous metals. The court agreed with conservation groups that the Clean Water Act requires the EPA to consider technological advancements in cont…

Variance-based variable selection in sensor calibration with strong interferents -- application to air pollution monitoring with a carbon nanotube sensor array
Marine Dumon, Berengere Lebental, Guillaume Perrin
https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.05001

Variance-based variable selection in sensor calibration with strong interferents -- application to air pollution monitoring with a carbon nanotube sensor array
Air and water pollution are major threats to public health, highlighting the need for reliable environmental monitoring. Low-cost multisensor systems are promising but suffer from limited selectivity, because their responses are influenced by non-target variables (interferents) such as temperature and humidity. This complicates pollutant detection, especially in data-driven models with noisy, correlated inputs. We propose a method for selecting the most relevant interferents for sensor calibrat…

Just read this post by @… on an optimistic AGI future, and while it had some interesting and worthwhile ideas, it's also in my opinion dangerously misguided, and plays into the current AGI hype in a harmful way.
https://social.coop/@eloquence/114940607434005478
My criticisms include:
- Current LLM technology has many layers, but the biggest most capable models are all tied to corporate datacenters and require inordinate amounts of every and water use to run. Trying to use these tools to bring about a post-scarcity economy will burn up the planet. We urgently need more-capable but also vastly more efficient AI technologies if we want to use AI for a post-scarcity economy, and we are *not* nearly on the verge of this despite what the big companies pushing LLMs want us to think.
- I can see that permacommons.org claims a small level of expenses on AI equates to low climate impact. However, given current deep subsidies on place by the big companies to attract users, that isn't a great assumption. The fact that their FAQ dodges the question about which AI systems they use isn't a great look.
- These systems are not free in the same way that Wikipedia or open-source software is. To run your own model you need a data harvesting & cleaning operation that costs millions of dollars minimum, and then you need millions of dollars worth of storage & compute to train & host the models. Right now, big corporations are trying to compete for market share by heavily subsidizing these things, but it you go along with that, you become dependent on them, and you'll be screwed when they jack up the price to a profitable level later. I'd love to see open dataset initiatives SBD the like, and there are some of these things, but not enough yet, and many of the initiatives focus on one problem while ignoring others (fine for research but not the basis for a society yet).
- Between the environmental impacts, the horrible labor conditions and undercompensation of data workers who filter the big datasets, and the impacts of both AI scrapers and AI commons pollution, the developers of the most popular & effective LLMs have a lot of answer for. This project only really mentions environmental impacts, which makes me think that they're not serious about ethics, which in turn makes me distrustful of the whole enterprise.
- Their language also ends up encouraging AI use broadly while totally ignoring several entire classes of harm, so they're effectively contributing to AI hype, especially with such casual talk of AGI and robotics as if embodied AGI were just around the corner. To be clear about this point: we are several breakthroughs away from AGI under the most optimistic assumptions, and giving the impression that those will happen soon plays directly into the hands of the Sam Altmans of the world who are trying to make money off the impression of impending huge advances in AI capabilities. Adding to the AI hype is irresponsible.
- I've got a more philosophical criticism that I'll post about separately.
I do think that the idea of using AI & other software tools, possibly along with robotics and funded by many local cooperatives, in order to make businesses obsolete before they can do the same to all workers, is a good one. Get your local library to buy a knitting machine alongside their 3D printer.
Lately I've felt too busy criticizing AI to really sit down and think about what I do want the future to look like, even though I'm a big proponent of positive visions for the future as a force multiplier for criticism, and this article is inspiring to me in that regard, even if the specific project doesn't seem like a good one.

MicroDetect-Net (MDN): Leveraging Deep Learning to Detect Microplastics in Clam Blood, a Step Towards Human Blood Analysis
Riju Marwah, Riya Arora, Navneet Yadav, Himank Arora
https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.19021

MicroDetect-Net (MDN): Leveraging Deep Learning to Detect Microplastics in Clam Blood, a Step Towards Human Blood Analysis
With the prevalence of plastics exceeding 368 million tons yearly, microplastic pollution has grown to an extent where air, water, soil, and living organisms have all tested positive for microplastic presence. These particles, which are smaller than 5 millimeters in size, are no less harmful to humans than to the environment. Toxicity research on microplastics has shown that exposure may cause liver infection, intestinal injuries, and gut flora imbalance, leading to numerous potential health ha…

"Labour will eliminate unauthorised sewage spillages in a decade, environment secretary says"
#UK #UnitedKingdom #Sewage

Environment secretary pledges to cut sewage pollution from water companies in half by 2030

Pollution hotspots at England's most famous lake need 'urgent' action #England

Pollution hotspots at England's most famous lake need 'urgent' action
Hotspots of bacteria and phosphorus at England's most famous lake must be addressed urgently, the authors of a study into its water quality warned on Tuesday.

Original post: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:oumckr73jxr2fcxqf6l5xnrv/post/3lubun6g4cs27

Stevenof1 (@stevenof1.bsky.social)
In 1879, Mary Walton filtered train and factory smoke through water tanks—cutting pollution before it reached New York’s air. Then, after Edison failed to solve NYC’s railway noise problem, she invented a sand‑and‑cotton‑lined system that muffled the roar. Cleaner air, quieter streets...

"The UK’s water crisis is a disgrace, but the cleanup is a huge opportunity"
#UK #UnitedKingdom #Water #Pollution

"Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water fined £250,000 for sewage pollution"
#UK #UnitedKingdom #Wales #Pollution

"Revealed: Water firms dump sewage 2,380 times at iconic Blue Flag beaches"
#UK #UnitedKingdom #Sewage #Pollution

Revealed: Water firms dump sewage 2,380 times at iconic Blue Flag beaches
There have also been more 1,000 sewage spills around all UK beaches over the past few days as Britons head to the sea this weekend to enjoy the hot weather

"Call to make wet wipe producers pay for polluting England’s waterways"
#UK #UnitedKingdom #England #Environment