Ryan Cook

Moving a Saskatchewan grain elevator in 1985. credit: nfb/themove

The Japanese railway privatization of 1987 stands as one of the most devastating defeats ever dealt to statist transportation mythology. The government split the bloated Japan National Railways into seven regional companies, sold them off, and watched private ownership transform a bankruptcy-bound disaster into the world's most efficient rail system. JNR hemorrhaged money for decades before privatization. By 1987, the state railway carried debt equivalent to $200 billion in today's money while delivering mediocre service plagued by strikes and inefficiency. Politicians treated it as a jobs program rather than a transportation service. The predictable result: chronic losses, deteriorating infrastructure, and customer service that reflected government monopoly arrogance. Private ownership changed everything overnight. The new JR companies slashed operating costs by 40% within five years while dramatically improving service quality. JR East alone now generates annual profits exceeding $3 billion. These companies invest billions in cutting-edge technology, maintain punctuality rates above 99%, and operate the world's most advanced high-speed rail networks. They achieved this without a single yen of operational subsidies. The transformation reveals a core dynamic of transportation infrastructure: private companies must satisfy customers to survive, while government monopolies need only satisfy politicians. JR companies diversified into real estate, retail, and hospitality around their stations, creating integrated profit centers that cross-subsidize rail operations. Government railways never innovate this way because bureaucrats face no market pressure to generate returns. Meanwhile, Amtrak burns through $2 billion in annual subsidies while delivering third-world service across most routes, and European state railways require massive taxpayer bailouts every few years to stay solvent.

SHOCKING🚨: Sperm Whale fighting a giant squid in its mouth!

Constanza, in the Dominican Republic, has to be the most interesting place in the DR. The "coldest town in the Caribbean," it sits 4,000 feet above sea level, but it's surrounded by peaks that top out at over 10,000 ft. The surrounding pine forest and occasional frost make the idea that you're in the middle of the Caribbean hard to buy. If that wasn't enough, the town also has a substantial Japanese population who moved there in the 1950s to grow strawberries.

A pollinator garden surrounded by lawn is nearly useless. This sounds harsh, but it's backed by research. Isolated habitat patches fail pollinators because most native bees have small foraging ranges and can't navigate seas of inhospitable turf to reach them. What actually works is a strip along your fence line. A corridor along your driveway edge. A narrow band of natives running the full length of your property. Shape matters more than size. A long thin strip connects points A and B. It gives pollinators a navigable route: something to follow, something that guides their movement across the landscape. Research on wild bee communities found that linear semi-natural habitat edges were the single strongest predictor of bee species richness and connectivity. Bees track edges. A 2-foot-wide strip running 50 feet does more ecological work than a 10x10 flower cluster in the middle of your yard. It also multiplies when your neighbors do the same thing. A strip along your fence meets a strip along theirs. Suddenly there's a corridor running the length of the block. That's the Pollinator Pathway model: a network of connected private yards creating habitat routes that no single yard could create alone.

Going down the rabbit hole of vintage giant cacti photos

I have NEVER seen this in my 13+ years gardening! This is an albino cucumber, in the sense that it has a genetic mutation to either not synthesize chlorophyll or not even produce chlorophlasts (the things that synthezize chlorophyll) You can tell it's a true albino because the stem is also pure white. It's smaller than the rest of the cucumber seedlings as well... You might be wondering how it was even able to survive to this point - don't plants need chlorophyll to photosynthesize? YES, they do - but seeds have a little trick up their sleeves in the fact that they have endosperm, which is basically energy from the parent plant that produced the seed it "packs" into the seed to help them get through the first 1-2 weeks of life It's highly unlikely this plant will survive another week, so it's VERY cool to catch this phenomenon!

It Took him three days and $400 but it was worth it

"generates €50K a year selling locally only" is the number everyone should be staring at. this winery has never even TRIED to sell online. no website. no instagram. no shipping. just locals buying wine. put a half-decent marketing person on this and that 50K becomes 200K within 2 years. the business isn't the winery. the business is the winery + modern distribution that the current owner never bothered with. the property is priced on current revenue. the opportunity is in future revenue nobody's captured yet. what business have you seen that's wildly undervalued simply because the owner doesn't know how to use the internet?

Apocalyptic scenes in the Amazon. Illegal gold mining has literally turned the lush rainforest into a barren desert of sand. An area the size of 200,000 soccer pitches has been completely annihilated. The scale of this destruction is absolutely terrifying.

The official vote is in from W Pacific Fishery Council. Every single Pacific National Monument will be opened to commercial fishing. Longlines in Papahānaumokuākea. All fishing gear in Rose Atoll. The entire Marianas Trench reserve gone. ~80% of US protected waters abolished.

Beavers dig canals as they rely on water for protection, and these channels let them travel further into the landscape, acting as quick escape routes from predators. They can also float heavy branches through canals, saving energy and accessing food up to 100 metres away. 1/6

“There are no wrong notes; some are just more right than others.” — Thelonious Monk

The price and difficulty of getting electricity in America is infuriating. Why aren't we building this? I nominate Arizona to be turned into a huge solar panel.