On this day nine years ago, the Marikana massacre. The South African state murdered 37 people on behalf of Lonmin mines. Current South African President Ramaphosa was a Lonmin non-executive director at the time.

https://libcom.org/library/states-brutality

This empire, too, will be eclipsed 🌒

Forget massive seawalls—coastal wetlands offer the best storm protection money can buy | Phys•org

"Seawalls are expensive to build, require constant maintenance and provide limited protection.

Consider China, which already has a huge number of seawalls built for storm protection. A 2019 study analyzed the impact of 127 storms on China between 1989 and 2016.

Coastal wetlands were far more cost effective in preventing storm damages. They also provided many other ecosystem services that seawalls do not.

[...]

Coastal wetlands reduce the damaging effects of tropical cyclones on coastal communities by absorbing storm energy in ways that neither solid land nor open water can.

The mechanisms involved include decreasing the area of open water (fetch) for wind to form waves, increasing drag on water motion and hence the amplitude of a storm surge, reducing direct wind effects on the water surface, and directly absorbing wave energy.

Wetland vegetation contributes by decreasing surges and waves and maintaining shallow water depths that have the same effect.
Wetlands also reduce flood damages by absorbing flood waters caused by rain and moderating their effects on built-up areas.

[...]

Coastal wetlands also provide other valuable ecosystem services. They provide nursery habitat for many commercially important marine species, recreational opportunities, carbon sequestration, management of sediment and nutrient run-off, and many other valuable services."

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these are the people that inspired my attempts at gardening (first two years were failures mostly, but this year is a lot better)

https://www.yesmagazine.org/environment/2018/05/14/farming-and-food-for-the-soul

The Taliban has opened fire at the protesters in the city of Jalalabad, #Afghanistan.

A protest was taking place in Jalalabad to reinstall the Afghan flag instead of the Taliban flag. The Taliban forces opened fire on the crowd to disperse it, they also beat up several journalists covering the protest. At this moment there is no information about how many people got killed or injured,

thank you Sen. Corbyn for informing the whole world that US is secretly holding 30k troops on Taiwan