Not a new thing, kills too quickly and efficiently to spread far.
Sucks on multiple levels, though.
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Yeah, hemorrhagic fevers are incredibly nasty if you get one, but theyâre not a big problem overall. Iâm far more concerned about potential mutant Covid-19 strains, the next bad influenza, antibiotic-resistant TB, or just plain old measles.
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Disney is illegally stiffing writers to whom they owe royalties after acquiring other corporations along with their assets and liabilities.
The implications of Disney blatantly violating the law and not paying their debts are ominous not only for creators but for any debtholders owed remuneration by any company that could be acquired by another.
When one company acquires another, the purchase price is based on both assets and liabilities. What Disney is doing is nothing short of stealing.
Whoever at Disney is making that decision either doesnât understand contract law or more likely doesnât care, believing they can get away with breaking it. Theyâre incurring negative publicity for their employer and should be fired before it escalates to lawsuits.
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God damnit, we canât even eat them.
Pythons tested by U.S. Geological Survey research Scientist David Krabbenhoft had up to 3.5 parts per million of mercury. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recommends against eating anything with a concentration greater than 0.46 parts per million.
âWe were not used to seeing numbers like that,â Krabbenhoft said. âThese guys are just loaded with mercury.â
Can we mine them to make thermometers?
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As a thought experiment⌠respectfully submitted, and only after all other possible avenues have been fully exhausted:
- Take the dead python bodies to be composted.
- Establish a Hg / heavy metals baseline in the finished compost before bioremediation.
- After baselining, use bioremediation as a cheap, low-tech, effective way to mobilize the mercury, removing it from the compost:
- Retest post-remediated product to assure Hg levels (et al.) are below federal and state specified thresholds for âfertilizer.â
- Municipal entities that must maintain green vegetated areas will use this in place of chemical fertilizers in landscaped (i.e. non-agricultural) areas well away from water bodies and water ways.
- If using plant material as the accumulator, which will have embodied the Hg, then bag all remaining plant material from the bioremediation process and dispose in a landfill rated to handle and accept heavy metals. Do not incinerate.
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They might not be venomous snakes, but theyâre poisonous snakes.
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Oops, just now seeing this. Itâs kinda related to something I just posted downthread.
There may be a way to detoxify compost (yes, yes, I know itâs all a joke but fwiw):
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I saw that, regarding the pythons, right?
A friend used sunflowers to clean the soil of lead in what used to be a driveway but he was converting to gardens. I remember the care that had to be taken disposing of the sunflowers. So incongruous seeing them stuffed into garbage bags instead of thrown on the compost heap, but necessary.
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Our engineering firm did a bioremediation project in post-Katrina New Orleans in the Lower Ninth Ward. Majority of residents were people of color, economically disadvantaged, and with very limited resources.
We used sunflowers as accumulators there too, for lead, MTBEs, and other heavy metals. Kudos to your friend!
The bagging process has to occur when the plants are still green and juicy because once they start drying and particles of the dried plant tissue are falling off, that heavy metal load that is embodied in that tissue is falling off too. You donât want to breathe it, or have it in your soil or water or food if you are raising your own tomatoes, mirlitons, onions, okra et al.
Yeah totally not what I usually do with biomass, but in this case, as your friend rightly knows, that biomass is toxic waste.
Really great to hear of IRL case studies of people doing bioremediation. Thank you for posting! You made my day.
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Okay, good, someone needed to make that joke.
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so cool. TIL a bacterium can help remove mercury and has a name that is actually quite fun to say aloud - Vibrio fluvialis!
Vibrio fluvialis!
oh and python skin makes some glorious and comfortable boots. I have two pair and absolutely love them. Pythons? fuck 'em. they donât belong in the 'Glades! FWC and MCSO have reported at least six pythons, over 5ft long (one was 9ft!) in Key Largo, closet island to the Everglades. thatâs too close for me!
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This is literally a scene from the film Toys.
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