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My anzenkutsu (安全靴, safety boots). Essential when you need to walk over broken glass, climb over tsunami wrecked houses or traverse dangerous urban rubble. I keep them near my bed at night in case of an earthquake shattering windows or glass in my home. Better safe than sorry.

A tsunami at 50cm will kill 4.8%, at 70cm height 71.8% of victims are expected to drown. At 100cm, 100%.

The "green seawall" or "forest levee" concept. A built levee is planted with an as dense and varied forest as possible. Should a tsunami overwhelm the levee itself the forest will protect the levee from scouring, lessen tsunami force, block debris from being pulled back to sea.

Use puncture proof insoles to make any shoe safe enough* to traverse broken glass and building debris after a natural disaster or major accident (wildfire, earthquake, tornado etc.). After the tsunami in 2011 there were thousands of cases of tetanus as survivors evacuated or

There's about 100,000 public pay phones in Japan. They don't need electricity to function so in case of grid power failures or disasters you can still use them to call emergency services, family, etc. There are apps to find their locations. Pay phones are a public safety measure.

With wolves back in Yellowstone the aspen trees can grow tall again. news.oregonstate.edu/news/yellowsto…

Farmers try to control fly populations by adding insecticides to cattle feed, which doesn't really kill off the flies but destroys the beneficial dung beetles and predators that live on or near dung. cals.cornell.edu/news/2025/06/d…

It's difficult to comprehend a world where under 35s had the majority of the nation's wealth We structurally flipped the script on something huge with these transfers.

Imagine cities being different from each other.

I think I scared a young man just now. He was reading about the tsunami alert (no sirens in Tokyo) on his phone and asked me smiling "A 3m tsunami in Tokyo is no problem right? We are on higher ground right?" I replied: "I doubt we will get any tsunami at all down here but if a

40 Tradd St Charleston South Carolina was built by ca 1718 by John Bullock or his widow Mary. This is good example of what a Charleston town house would have looked like in the early 18th century. Most of these houses have been demolished or destroyed by fire over the years and

From his autobiography, about his life before and after meeting his wife-to-be: “But there are four lamps of thanksgiving always before him. The first is for his creation out of the same earth with such a woman as you. The second is that he has not, with all his faults, 'gone

Chesterton in a letter to his fiancee on the evening of July 8th, 1899, describing his dress and the weather. Possibly making fun of the repeated attempts to get him to attend to his own appearance more diligently than was his usual habit: “My appearance, as I have suggested, is

To post has a certain antagonistic connotation, like nailing your thesis to the church door. Tweet on the other hand, is gentler, the promise of a bird song. One posts and opinion but tweets a witty phrase or a short poem. But I am probably overthinking it.

The poor are just as entitled to beautiful places of worship as anyone else ... what a drab, dull, insipid, Talibanesque idea of Christianity

That feeling when you need to replace a shoe lace and in your box of assorted lengths of shoelaces that you have saved just in case these last three decades provides you with the perfect replacement.

Currently reading St. Francis of Assisi, the 1924 biography by G.K. Chesterton. Interestingly, this 1957 edition by Doubleday Books was typeset by a young Edward Gorey (1925-2000) famous for his macabre illustrations.

Incidentally this is one of the main plot-points of the SF novel Tau Zero by Poul Anderson, 1970. An excellent book that is crying for someone to turn it into a major motion picture.

The native Hawaiian singer Israel Kamakawiwoʻole (1959-1997) was often on radio when I grew up and I still enjoy his simple music of just song and ukulele.

If you are in Taiwan go see their new railway museum.