Masterlist

HAH! When I was working on character/prop design on Arthur, the script just said that Buster showed up in his pajamas. But since it struck me that Arthur’s pajama design included bunny slippers… and his best friend was a bunny, it seemed fitting to include Aardvark slippers on Buster’s pajama design.

Apparently the storyboard artist was amused and he featured the slippers in a closeup! I was so proud!

How much you wanna bet the State of California will “prohibit” use of this system, because “reasons.”

If it’s in international waters they can’t do anything about it. And I’m pretty sure the federal government decides what can and can’t go on off our coasts too, not local or state.

Slat has been working on this since he was literally a child. I remember the first posts, articles, and I think there was even a fundraising campaign at one point.

I am so, so proud of him holy shit.

^^^ me too!! I remember the first news yeaaars ago that some kid had thought up a brilliantly simple method of cleaning up the oceans, and even that first prototype was amazingly efficient in solving a problem that the grownup world seemed to have given up on. It was so simple I couldn’t believe no scientist or engineer had thought of it before.

And he’s just been refining it and making it better and better? Amazing news!

Well done, sir, well done and thank you <3

My big memory of this is that every time he sent out a prototype, people would overwhelmingly go “AH HA! See? It didn’t work as advertised because a storm broke it/it didn’t filter as much as he predicted/etc.”

And every time, Boyan would analyse what went wrong, tinker with it, and send a stronger version back out.

There are still issues with it, like, but this guy isn’t some shitty billionaire - he’s a normal man walking the walk to clean up an international problem that everyone else is just wringing their hands over. I have no clue why everyone is desperately waiting for him to fail. He’s picked his hill, and he plods along, and if the latest design hasn’t met expectations, he creates a new one.

Their website is here, btw, in case anyone wants to have a look; they still accept donations

Lol whoops THIS is the website

Whoever was all “LOL Watch Cali Ban it”: besides the fact that isn’t how it works, LA county has actually deployed similar systems here to help clean up our beaches. They work, and of course we’re using them.

Some of y’all are way too cynical and way too confident about it, yikes.

@kilodelta Thanks for the addition, this is so true

LA isn’t just deploying similar systems, it has literally officially teamed up with the Ocean Cleanup, using one of their river cleanup systems! To absolutely massive success

That article actually appears to be non-paywalled right now, but here’s a guaranteed no-paywall Internet Archive copy just in case!

“After a historic winter hit California with dozens of atmospheric rivers, the last line of defense protecting the Pacific from much of L.A.’s trash held strong.

In the first storm season of a two-year pilot project, Ballona Creek Trash Interceptor 007 stopped nearly 155,000 pounds of garbage from flowing out to the ocean.

“Its performance has exceeded our wildest expectations,” said Boyan Slat, founder and chief executive of the Ocean Cleanup. The Dutch nonprofit partnered with the Los Angeles County Department of Public Works to introduce the interceptor in October.

The system floats a few hundred yards from the outlet of Ballona Creek into the Pacific Ocean, its twin booms extended to the shoreline to funnel trash to a solar-powered system that lifts objects from the water with a conveyor belt and drops them into six dumpsters. The trash collects in the dumpsters and awaits manual removal…

In all, the first rainy season of the interceptor’s operation saw the collection of 77 tons of material, the vast majority of which went to landfill.

This first pilot year “had all the challenges we wanted it to have: heavy pollutants, lots of flow,” said Mark Pestrella, the Department of Public Works director. In January, storm-generated waves caused one boom to tear, and it had to be replaced.

According to Lee, L.A. County Department of Beaches and Harbors maintenance crews noted “a 75% reduction” in trash along local beaches adjacent to the interceptor.”

-via Los Angeles Times, May 11, 2023

These exist in Baltimore, too! Meet Mr. Trash Wheel and the Trash Wheel Family.

That’s Odin

ME: ☝️ no it isn’t

YOU: but that’s clearly-

ME: [sotto voce] Odin gets upset when he feels he isn’t tricking people, just indulge him. [loudly] hail and well met, ordinary subway peasant

ODIN: [to self] the fools…