“One of the worst things that you can do to a garment, in terms of its durability, is wash it.” So says Mark Sumner, a lecturer in sustainable fashion at the University of Leeds. During a wash, he says, garments can tear, shrink and lose colour. With his colleague Mark Taylor, Sumner studies how microfibres from household laundry end up in marine animals. But while he says reducing the frequency of our clothes washing is the right choice for the environment, he doesn’t advocate a complete washing machine moratorium.
“We don’t want people to think that they can’t wash stuff because… they’re destroying the planet,” Sumner tells BBC Culture. “It’s about trying to get the balance right.” Washing clothes is important for medical and hygiene reasons, he says, for example for people suffering from eczema who are trying to avoid irritation caused when our natural skin bacteria multiply inside our clothing. It’s also important for people’s self-esteem “to not feel embarrassed about their clothes because they’re dirty or smelly” […]
The best approach, it seems, is to be flexible. “If your clothes don’t smell, then don’t bother [washing them],” advises Sumner. “And when you’re going to wash them, be clear about what to do to get the garment clean, but in the most effective way.” Wash things on lower temperatures, he suggests, or do a really short refresh cycle without any washing powder at all.
Month: May 2023 (Page 1 of 7)
After buying a new Philips Sonicare toothbrush I was surprised to see that it reacts to the insertion of a brush head by blinking an LED. A quick online search reveals that the head communicates with the toothbrush handle to remind you when it’s time to buy a new one.
Looking at the base of the head shows that it contains an antenna and a tiny black box that is presumably an IC. The next hint can be found in the manual where it says that: “Radio Equipment in this product operates at 13.56 MHz”, which would indicate that it is an NFC tag. And indeed when holding the brush head to my phone it opens a link to a product page: https://www.usa.philips.com/c-m-pe/toothbrush-heads.
Tesla has failed to adequately protect data from customers, employees and business partners and has received thousands of customer complaints regarding the carmaker’s driver assistance system, Germany’s Handelsblatt has reported, citing 100 gigabytes of confidential data leaked by a whistleblower.
A government official in India has been suspended after he ordered a reservoir to be drained to retrieve his phone.
It took three days to pump millions of litres of water out of the dam, after Rajesh Vishwas dropped the device while taking a selfie.
In the end, the team identified four chemicals that were associated with being slightly more attractive to mosquitoes and three that appeared to repel them, but the results were generally weak and variable for all chemical scents tested except one: coconut.
“It confirms what past studies have found, that mosquitoes don’t like coconut-scented products, so our safest bet right now is to use those,” Vinauger said.
“Give the world the best you have, and you will be kicked in the teeth. Give the world the best you’ve got, anyway.”
~ Hedy Lamarr
The actress Hedy Lamarr captivated audiences during the 1930s and 1940s in films like “Algiers” and “Ziegfeld Girl,” and became known as an iconic beauty. “Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story,” a new documentary, showcases her overlooked achievements in technology, including her work on an invention that helped form the basis for Wi-Fi.
During WWII, the screen starlet wanted to help the Allies. So, she invented a secret communication system. The military used it a little. But in the 1960s, they finally caught up to Hedy’s invention and began using it for cellular, Wi-Fi, and GPS signals.
“You, sir, present an ongoing threat and a peril to this country, to the republic and to the very fabric of our democracy,” Judge Amit Mehta told Stewart Rhodes, adding, “For years, its clear that you have wanted the democracy in this country to devolve into violence and you have thought that violence is an acceptable means of accomplishing your ends.”
CBC | BBC | Politico | NYT | WaPo | NPR | NBC
Last Updated on May 30, 2023
Michael J. Fox is proud to be the face of Parkison’s, but it hasn’t always been that way. The actor-turned-activist met in New York with CBC’s Harry Forestell, who is also living with Parkinson’s, to talk about learning to accept the disease and opening up about his fight in the new documentary,
Previously, DeSantis has rolled out harsh measures against undocumented immigrants (Axios) and claims that defending Ukraine is not of vital interest (NYT) to the United States.
Also, this appears to be more evidence that Musk has made Twitter the home of the radical far-right?
Global clean energy investment to be over USD$1.7 trillion in 2023
International Energy Agency (IEA) Executive Director Fatih Birol said the projection is the latest sign that a “new global clean energy economy is emerging” at a rate that is consistent with UN targets for limiting global warming to 1.5°C (2.7°F) above preindustrial levels.
Invasion of Ukraine ‘has fuelled funding boom for clean energy’
The Guardian | Business Green | Financial Times 🔒 | DW |
The wonderful Tina Turner passed away today at her home in Switzerland. She was 83.
Tina Turner (Nov 26, 1939 » May 24, 2023) » Rest in Peace
TINA (2021) Official Trailer | HBO
The law came into force two years after lawmakers had voted to end routes where the same journey could be made by train in under two-and-a-half hours.
[…]
France’s Citizens’ Convention on Climate, which was created by President Emmanuel Macron in 2019 and included 150 members of the public, had proposed scrapping plane journeys where train journeys of under four hours existed.
Comparing emissions per passenger per km travelled from different modes of transport
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