Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and Colorado Gov. Jared Polis have formed a coalition of governors to fight against “increasing threats of autocracy” and strengthen democracy during a second Donald Trump presidency.

The goal of Governors Safeguarding Democracy, or GSD, is to protect state-level institutions of democracy — and to utilize their collective legislative, budgetary, executive and administrative powers. Pritzker said it will “catalyze collaboration across state lines.”

“It’s built off a model that all of us governors have already successfully pioneered through the Reproductive Freedom Alliance,” Pritzker said. “And together, what we’re doing is pushing back against increasing threats of autocracy and fortifying the institutions of democracy that our country and our states depend on.”

I have an indoor/outdoor thermometer to keep track of how hot the back of my Expedition gets. I drive pretty regularly with two dogs in the back, and over the summer and winter the temps can get a little extreme.

I need to be able to take it out to keep an eye on it remotely (it has about 1/4 mile range) but also have it not rolling around while I drive.

There was a coin holder there that I popped out, and used as a template for an insert to keep this mounted semi-permanently.

Printed with kinda crappy Amazon Basics PETG. If it holds up well, I'll reprint it with better quality black PETG so it matches the car better.

Tips to keeping your identity secure, and protecting other members of your community from being accidentally doxxed or forced offline.

Extremely useful, especially for people who coordinate larger protests or online communities.

Neat time lapse video of a bunch of different plants (and fungi) growing from seed to flowering/fruiting.

We planted a variety of plants, at different stages of growth. After a bit of experimentation, cosmos grow extremely well. These were cuttings we put in just a couple weeks ago, and they're already bigger than most of the other plants that have been in there for over a month.

The very young plants did not survive, but the larger ones did. If they're too small, they just get swallowed down into the cups by the bobbing of the water.

Seems like the plants need to be large enough to reach all the way to the bottom of the pots, and still stick out enough.

Going to be interesting to see what it looks like at the end of the season.

The experimental mat has been out for about a week now, but extremely high winds during a storm last night pulled up a corner of the mat spilling out the contents.

Luckily the majority of the plants were able to be saved, so we have one empty spot now.

I added some weights to the four corners to hopefully prevent this from happening again.

This is why we're experimenting! Learning what works and what doesn't with the setup.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/15830343

Our retention pond in our neighborhood has a lot of algae and problematic plant growth due to the surrounding farms and lawn runoff, so we're experimenting with a floating island to pull nutrients out before they can cause problems. This will also provide some interesting flowering plants, and more fish habitats.

Will be an interesting experiment to see what survives and what does poorly.

Zinnias, sunflowers, marigolds, and a few others are in net pots, inserted into cutouts in EVA foam mats.

Design is from:
http://www.beemats.com/

More reading:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/02/flowers-grown-floating-on-polluted-waterways-can-help-clean-up-nutrient-runoff/

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666765723000637?via%3Dihub

Our retention pond in our neighborhood has a lot of algae and problematic plant growth due to the surrounding farms and lawn runoff, so we're experimenting with a floating island to pull nutrients out before they can cause problems. This will also provide some interesting flowering plants, and more fish habitats.

Will be an interesting experiment to see what survives and what does poorly.

Zinnias, sunflowers, marigolds, and a few others are in net pots, inserted into cutouts in EVA foam mats.

Design is from:
http://www.beemats.com/

More reading:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/02/flowers-grown-floating-on-polluted-waterways-can-help-clean-up-nutrient-runoff/

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666765723000637?via%3Dihub

Really important step towards expanding our research on the moon, is creating highly detailed maps of the entire surface.

China is doing some great work on building out infrastructure and studies of the moon. They're the only country that's brought back any moon rocks in decades.

Space Race 3.0 is on, and we'll see how different approaches to the research and manned missions will move forward.

The US is currently building out an extremely upfront cost heavy project, but with a lot of long term benefits.

China is building a more straightforward moon project, but with higher ongoing costs, as much of the infrastructure is disposable (more like Apollo).

The amount of detail in these pictures is amazing. You can really see the texture in the nebula, and the features are so crisp, it kind of looks 3d.

Pretty interesting topic, would be interesting if it could be used to move satellites to a "parking orbit" once they run out of fuel. It's unclear just how much movement in an orbit that can be done, as it says it needs to be in the same energy level.

Source press release: https://www.surrey.ac.uk/news/new-technique-uses-knot-theory-create-tube-map-around-planets-and-moons

Source journal article: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42064-024-0201-0