San Francisco – The 16th Avenue Tiled StepsIrish ceramist Aileen Barr & mosaic artist Colette Crutcher joined forces, working with over 300 community volunteers for over a 2 1/2 year period until it's unveiling in 2005.#PublicArt #art #mosaics
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.
