Author: TomsWrite

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Plastic Eating Fungus

Plastic Eating Fungus

This New Zealand Fungus Eats Plastic—and Finishes the Job in Just Weeks
In a breakthrough that could revolutionize how we tackle plastic waste, scientists in New Zealand have discovered a native fungus that can break down plastic in just 140 days—without needing heat, pressure, or industrial processing.
The fungus, Daldinia concentrica—nicknamed “carbon antlers” for its striking layered growths—was already known for feeding on decaying wood. But researchers at the University of Canterbury have now found that it can also digest common plastics like polypropylene and polyethylene, which make up a huge portion of global waste.
What’s especially remarkable is that the fungus does this in regular soil conditions, making it a potential game-changer for landfills and polluted environments. Unlike traditional recycling, which often requires high temperatures and clean, sorted plastic, this fungus works in the dirt—breaking down even mixed and dirty plastics.
During testing, the fungus degraded plastic samples by over 90% within five months. In the final stages, it left behind a material that was biodegradable and nontoxic. Scientists believe the fungus releases enzymes that break long plastic polymer chains into simpler molecules, which it then absorbs as food.
The team is now exploring ways to scale this up—possibly creating bioreactor systems or even plastic-degrading soil pods that could be used in waste management, environmental clean-up, and remote locations where recycling infrastructure doesn’t exist.
It’s still early days, but the implications are huge: a living organism that treats plastic like mulch, capable of restoring balance to some of the most polluted corners of our planet.
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Seedling Containers

Seedling Containers

I was just casually complaining about not having enough space for my seedlings… and next thing I know, my husband disappears into the garage, makes a bit of noise, and BOOM—comes back with THIS! 😲
An upcycled vertical garden made entirely from old water containers and scrap wood. It’s not just functional, it’s BRILLIANT.
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There IS No Valid Reason To Be Lonely! You Have A Skill. Have The Courage To Share It!

Kathy

“Every afternoon, 68-year-old Kathy set up two folding chairs and a chalkboard on her porch. Rain or shine, she’d write, “Homework help. Free. All ages.” Her neighbors in the quiet town of Cedar Hills thought she was wasting her retirement. “Kids today have tutors and iPads,” muttered Mrs. Jenny, watering her roses. But Kathy had a reason. Her husband, a former principal, had passed last year, leaving her his favorite quote “A mind left untaught is a door left unlocked.”

The first visitor was Manny, a 9-year-old who’d missed three weeks of school after his dad lost his job. “I don’t get fractions,” he mumbled, kicking a pebble. Kathy handed him a cookie and drew a pizza on the chalkboard.. “Let’s split it into slices. Your turn.” By sunset, Manny was grinning. “So that’s how it works!”

Word spread slowly. A single mom, working nights at the hospital, left her daughter Lily with Kathy. A shy teenager, Jake, slunk over to “borrow notes” but stayed to learn poetry. Kathy’s porch became a mosaic of mismatched chairs, dog-eared textbooks, and laughter. Retired engineers taught algebra. A former librarian read stories aloud. Even Manny’s dad joined, brushing up on Excel for job interviews.

Then came the letter.

“CEASE & DESIST. Unlicensed educational activity.”

The town council called it a “safety hazard.” Kathy’s son begged her to quit. “You’re risking fines!”

The next morning, 30 kids and parents crowded Kathy’s lawn, holding protest signs, “Our brains need her!” “Where’s the harm in kindness?” A local reporter filmed Jake reciting a poem he’d written, “Her porch is our castle. Her chalkboard, our shield.”

The council caved. Sort of.

“You can use the old rec center. But no budget. Fix it yourself.”
Volunteers transformed the crumbling building. Teens painted murals of books. Carpenters built desks from donated wood. A grandmother knitted cushions. They called it “The Open Door Learning Center.” Teachers donated supplies. Parents traded shifts for snacks.
Last week, Lily won a statewide essay contest. Her topic? “The lady who unlocked my world.”

Kathy still sits on her porch some days, sipping tea. The chalkboard now reads, “Knowledge is a seed. Plant it anywhere.”

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The Fixit Hub

George

“When 79-year-old George retired, he didn’t buy a golf club or a hammock. He hung a handmade sign in his garage window: “Broken things? Bring ’em here. No charge. Just tea and talk.”
His neighbors in the faded mill town of Maple Grove thought he’d lost it. “Who fixes stuff for free?” grumbled the barber. But George had a reason. His wife, Ruth, had spent decades repairing torn coats and cracked picture frames for anyone who knocked. “Waste is a habit,” she’d say. “Kindness is the cure.”
She’d died the year before, and George’s hands itched to mend what she’d left behind.
The first visitor was 8-year-old Mia, dragging a plastic toy truck with a missing wheel. “Dad says we can’t afford a new one,” she mumbled. George rummaged through his toolbox, humming. An hour later, the truck rolled again—this time with a bottle cap for a wheel and a stripe of silver duct tape. “Now it’s custom ,” he winked. Mia left smiling, but her mother lingered. “Can you… fix a résumé?” she asked. “I’ve been stuck on the couch since the factory closed.”
By noon, George’s garage buzzed. A widow brought a shattered clock (“My husband wound it every Sunday”). A teen carried a leaky backpack. George fixed them all, but he didn’t work alone. Retired teachers proofread résumés. A former seamstress stitched torn backpacks. Even Mia returned, handing him a jar of jam: “Mom says thanks for the job interview.”
Then came the complaint.
“Unlicensed business,” snapped the city inspector. “You’re violating zoning laws.”
Maple Grove’s mayor, a man with a spreadsheet heart, demanded George shut down. The next morning, 40 townsfolk stood on George’s lawn, holding broken toasters, torn quilts, and protest signs: “Fix the law, not just stuff!” A local reporter filmed a segment: “Is kindness illegal?”
The mayor caved. Sort of.
“If you want to ‘fix’ things, do it downtown,” he said. “Rent the old firehouse. But no guarantees.”
The firehouse became a hive. Volunteers gutted it, painted it sunshine yellow, and dubbed it “Ruth’s Hub.” Plumbers taught plumbing. Teenagers learned to darn socks. A baker swapped muffins for repaired microwaves. The town’s waste dropped by 30%.
But the real magic? Conversations. A lonely widow fixed a lamp while a single dad patched a bike tire. They talked about Ruth. About loss. About hope.
Last week, George found a note in his mailbox. It was from Mia, now 16, interning at a robotics lab. “You taught me to see value in broken things. I’m building a solar-powered prosthetic arm. PS: The truck still runs!”
Today, 12 towns across the state have “Fix-It Hubs.” None charge money. All serve tea.
Funny, isn’t it? How a man with a screwdriver can rebuild a world.”
While George from Maple Grove may be fictional, but it is inspired by real people around the world, who have done remarkably similar things. Here are a few inspiring real-life individuals and movements that mirror the spirit of the story:
1. Martine Postma – Founder of the Repair Café Movement (Netherlands). In 2009, Martine launched the first Repair Café in Amsterdam. Volunteers fix broken household items for free — from lamps to toasters. The idea has since grown into an international movement with over 2,000 locations worldwide. Her motivation: to reduce waste and bring communities together.
2. Kyle Wiens – Founder of iFixit. An American entrepreneur who started iFixit, a free online repair guide for electronics. While not a community café, iFixit empowers people to repair rather than discard their tech.
3. Sugru and the “Fixpert” Community (UK) : Sugru, a moldable glue brand, helped launch the “Fixperts” initiative. Volunteers use their fixing skills to help others — often students, designers, or retired professionals. It’s a global network of story-based fixers who share their repair work for social good.
4. The Men’s Sheds Movement (Australia, now global) : Started in Australia in the 1990s to combat isolation among older men. Sheds became workshops where men could fix things, build projects, and connect over shared skills. There are now thousands of Men’s Sheds worldwide, providing free repairs, mentorship, and community support.
5. Peter Mui – Founder of Fixit Clinic (USA) : Started in 2009 in California, Fixit Clinic is a traveling event where people bring broken items and learn to repair them. Peter focuses on teaching repair skills, not just doing the repairs. Clinics now take place in libraries, makerspaces, and schools around the U.S.
These people and groups may not have started in their garage with tea and duct tape, but they embody the same values: community, sustainability, kindness, and empowerment through repair.
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Permaculture Passion

Permaculture Passion

Ten years ago, I learned the truth about our food system and it broke my heart. But it also planted a seed that changed my life.

The Radical Garden is my current passion project, or maybe it’s more of a mission. A living, breathing response to the ecological crises we face and a personal act of resistance and regeneration.

I first learned about the scale of environmental destruction while studying at university in Wisconsin. Like many, I was shocked by the reality: climate change, deforestation, mass species loss and at the center of it all, the industrial food system. I felt overwhelmed, anxious, even hopeless. And perhaps worst of all, I felt I was participating in the problem every time I ate.
Alongside that despair at the same time, I discovered a lifeline. A solution so simple and powerful that it changed the course of my life: growing our own food. I joined a local community garden and began learning from my first mentor, Wes. From there, I dove into studying regenerative agriculture, working on organic farms, WWOOFing, and taking permaculture courses.

All of that has led to this: The Radical Garden.

A small-scale, regenerative garden (just 50 x 50 feet) designed to show what’s possible in a fraction of an average American lawn. This is a living experiment in what any family can grow and manage with intention and consistency.

It’s a closed-loop system, a soil-building, biodiversity-boosting, food-producing powerhouse. My goal is to generate at least 80% of the compost needed from within the system itself, and to grow enough food to feed myself and my partner year-round. (Honestly, I think it could feed more.)

But this isn’t just all about food. It’s about reclaiming power. Healing disconnection. Taking real, tangible steps toward a more regenerative way of living. My hope is to make this as replicable as possible to share with others.

The Radical Garden is really my simple message to the world. It’s where I turn eco-anxiety into action. It’s where I become the kind of person I believe the future needs.

And I hope it inspires you to do the same.

 

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The Great Colonnade of Apamea

The Great Colonnade of Apamea

Imagine walking down the most magnificent street ever built – welcome to the Great Colonnade of Apamea. This wasn’t just any ancient walkway; it was a stunning 2-kilometer parade of massive columns that would make modern skyscrapers seem modest in comparison. Each column reached as high as a three-story building, thick as a small car, and lined a street longer than 20 football fields!
Built during the height of the Seleucid Empire, this wasn’t simply architecture – it was a show of power carved in stone. When a devastating earthquake shook the region in 115 AD, the people of Apamea didn’t just rebuild; they created something even more spectacular. Imagine yourself there: massive columns rising on both sides, their carefully carved spiral patterns catching the sunlight, their shadows dancing across the wide avenue as merchants, nobles, and travelers passed beneath.
Each column stood like a stone giant, 9 meters tall, with bases so perfectly squared they’ve survived nearly two millennia of time’s endless march. The fluted patterns spiraling up their sides weren’t just decoration – they were a statement: “This is Apamea, where even our street corners rival the grandest temples of other cities.”
Today, we build impressive shopping malls and broad avenues, but none quite capture the sheer audacity of Apamea’s Great Colonnade – a street that didn’t just connect two points, but proclaimed to the ancient world: “This is what power looks like when it’s carved in stone.”
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Informed Consent

They Renamed GMO to Fortified

Informed consent is the term given in law and commerce to describe the condition of a person having all relevant information known to them prior to making a decision.

There are various statutes that proscribe how this is to be applied – insurance terms and conditions, investment prospectus, health regulations, even nutrition information panels on food products.

This is to ensure that people making decisions are fully appraised of all factors, for and against, and are not blind-sided by factors that would have affected their decision if they had known them prior to making the decision.

These different pieces of legislation came about as a result of various unsavoury activities – from withholding information all the way up the scale of dishonesty to deception, lies, fraud, confidence tricks, covert attempts to harm or kill  etc. Any means by which a person could be led to make a decision not in their best interests.

As we have experienced during the Great Covid Con, even governments, their agencies and medical authorities, let alone educational and medical research institutions, big Tech, big Pharma and the media have all been guilty of abusing this principle.

OK, that’s all about ’the other party’. What about you and me, the person making the decision. What’s our responsibility in this?

Well first, we have to be prepared to look at the actual facts of the situation. Not what we’d like to see, not what we hope to see, not what was there before, not what we are told is there, not what is inferred to be there, but what is actually, observably there, here and now in present time.

Only by looking at what is there can we be fully informed for our decision.

“No argument!” you say, “Makes perfect sense.”

Oh yeah, but do you do it? How well do you apply that principle of “Informed Consent” to your decision making?

Do you read the political platform statements of the representatives for whom you vote come election time?

Do you read the nutrition information panels of every food purchase you make?

Do you know the health risks of every food additive, colouring, preservative and flavour enhancer you allow in your diet from ultra-processed foods?

Do you know the 20 different names by which aspartame is called on food labels?

I don’t pose these questions to make you wrong but rather to illustrate the point that we can all do better in applying this principle in our lives. And be better off for doing so.

Now I know what most will think when reading this, that it’s all too hard. There is so much to know and I am busy enough already.

But as I have in my personal email footer:

Our most formidable enemies are:
Personal and collective ignorance,
personal and organisational out-ethics,
lack of personal integrity and
lack of self-discipline.

What we don’t know and what we know we should do but do not discipline
ourselves to do are two things that will kill us. Gradually or suddenly.

Self-discipline is a skill and just like any skill, it improves with practice.
On what are you going to practice yours today?

To your being better off!