Britain Just Ordered 29 Battery Trains – What Each One Costs and Why They Beat Overhead Wires
Britain has ordered 29 Alstom battery-electric trains for TransPennine Express in a deal worth roughly £1 billion (~$800M for the trains, ~$200M for maintenance), marking the UK’s first mainline battery-electric fleet. Each five-car train can run about 80km on battery power alone, letting them cover non-electrified stretches of track without the cost and years-long approval process of installing overhead wires along the entire route — supporting over 350 jobs at Alstom’s Derby factory, with services starting winter 2034.
21 Aug 2026 #Heatwave #Japan #Farming
Japan’s farmers are opting for more nocturnal schedules as daytime summer heat makes working conditions dangerous. North of Tokyo, Motoaki Iijima harvests flowers in his illuminated greenhouse long after sunset. The farmer was pushed to make a dramatic change after a worker suffered heatstroke picking sunflowers in the greenhouse three summers prior. A few towns away, poultry farmer Tetsuya Usuba has also adopted a nocturnal schedule, waking his flock at 2:30 am to eat.
#Japan #Heatwave #Farming
27 Aug 2026
A single Khaki Campbell duck can lay over 340 nutrient-dense eggs a year—easily outproducing the standard industrial chicken. Yet today, chickens supply more than 92% of the world’s 1.6 trillion eggs. The reason you don’t eat duck eggs for breakfast isn’t a matter of taste; it is the direct result of a century-long clash between waterfowl biology and modern industrial factory automation.
What You’ll Discover:
The Super-Layer: How an English breeder created a duck in 1901 that out-produced chickens while thriving in freezing winter conditions.
The Battery Cage Failure: Why duck digestive physiology and webbed feet caused 20th-century automated poultry cages to collapse within 72 hours.
The Microscopic Wash Hazard: How commercial egg-washing tunnels strip the duck egg’s waxy shell mantle, turning oversized pores into bacterial vacuums for Salmonella.
The Feed Conversion Deficit: The metabolic math and 40% to 60% grain penalty that made duck farming financially unviable for corporate agribusiness.
Frying Pan Chemistry: Why duck egg albumen cross-links into rubbery silicone when slightly overcooked, despite having yolks prized by pastry chefs.
The Hardware Lock-In: How automated sorting suction cups, 12-egg pulp cartons, and 21-day hatchery schedules permanently standardized global infrastructure around chicken eggs.
The Asian Rice-Paddy System: How integrated wetland farming and alkaline chemistry (century eggs) allowed Eastern agriculture to build a parallel multi-billion-dollar duck egg industry.
20 Sept 2026
This past week, a herd of 40 buffalo roamed the concrete canyons of Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn – life-size puppets that are part of a public arts project by St. Ann’s Warehouse, a Brooklyn theater. Correspondent Anthony Mason reports.
“CBS News Sunday Morning” features stories on the arts, music, nature, entertainment, sports, history, science and Americana, and highlights unique human accomplishments and achievements. Check local listings for “CBS News Sunday Morning” broadcast times.
18 Sept 2026 TILBURY FORT
I head down to the River Thames not far from my Essex based home, and unbelievably see a whole pod Pilot Whales swimming around!
Floral Public #art #mural by Yulia AvgustinovichTo see different angles & close-ups of this awesome #StreetArt in Ridgway, CO. – go here: yulia-art.com/public-art-m…It has hidden animals within the flowers. #murals
20 Sept 2026
What if the biggest challenge facing solar power isn’t making the panels cheaper, but finding somewhere to put them? From solar panels between railway tracks in Switzerland to photovoltaic motorway noise barriers in South Korea, engineers are finding increasingly ingenious ways to generate clean electricity from infrastructure we’ve already built — without competing for valuable agricultural land.
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The “I’m Lovin’ It” jingle is one of the most recognizable melodies on Earth. But the story behind it involves a global competition, thousands of mixes, a Trojan Horse pop song, and a surprising amount of celebrity beef. In this updated version of one of our favorite episodes, we trace how a five-note jingle became a worldwide phenomenon, and the controversy over who actually wrote it. Featuring Tom Batoy and Franco Tortora of Mona Davis Music.
MUSIC FEATURED IN THIS EPISODE
Looking Behind the Bar by Stationary Sign
Tempest Rondo by Dian Shuai
Norwich by Steven Gutheinz
Yeah Yeah Yeah (Instrumental) by Goldenface
Noir by Red Licorice
A Classical Noir by Mary Riddle
Just the Right Amount by Arthur Benson
Odd Behavior by Arthur Benson
Feeling Alright (Instrumental) by Gavin Luke
Jokers by Mary Riddle
Soft and Way Up by Plum King
Mr. Mole and Son by Love and Weasel
For We Shall Know Speed by Truck Stop
Funky Nights by OTE
Paula Cole is a singer, songwriter and producer from Massachusetts. She put out her first solo album, Harbinger, in 1994. Her second album, This Fire,came out in 1996 and was a real breakthrough; she was nominated for seven Grammys, and she won the Grammy for Best New Artist. In fact, that year she was the first woman in Grammy history to be nominated for Producer of the Year without a male collaborator. For this episode, Paula told me about how she made one of the big hits from that album: “I Don’t Want to Wait.” It spent 56 weeks on the Billboard charts. And then, it was heard by millions more, when it was used as the theme song for the hit TV show Dawson’s Creek.
These days, Paula has been reclaiming her old music in various ways. A couple of years ago, she re-recorded some of her songs, including “I Don’t Want to Wait.” And that’s the version of the song that you’ll hear throughout this episode, and at the end, in its entirety. And on September 10, 2026, Paula is putting out an archival collection of her demos. It’s called Sonic Memoir: Demos 1989-1998.It includes the original demo of “I Don’t Want to Wait,” which you’ll also hear in the episode, as Paula tells the story of how she wrote and produced the song.
