Good News: Alligator Alcatraz's last days; glow in the dark plants; and at least one city pushes back against DeSantis's spray-painters
Not all news is bad news. Here are several stories to brighten your day. Feel free to pass this along to your friends. We all need cheering up now and then...
One of my wife Sandy’s favorite movies is Avatar, with its beautiful and dangerous world filled with bioluminescent plants, bizarre creatures, and floating mountains.
She really likes the plants.
And now she can have some of her own, thanks to biologists in China.
This from today’s Science Alert blog that I begin my mornings with:
A team of scientists at South China Agricultural University has managed to create succulents that glow in the dark through a process that can be recharged using sunlight. Moreover, they can glow in multiple different colors to form a rainbow of lights – even in the same succulent.
The glow doesn't last forever, and each leaf needs to be treated separately. But the first step of creating an injectable medium that makes the plant emit a gentle luminescence has been achieved.
Hey, if lightning bugs can glow in the dark, why not plants? Probably save some money on nightlights when this is perfected.
If you figure out how to get some for yourself, let me know. But don’t tell Ron DeSantis. He’s got this weird thing about the colors of the rainbow. Put some of these succulents in your garden, and the next thing you know one of the governor’s squads of mad spray painters may be in your front yard.
Speaking of rainbows…
The Fort Lauderdale commission has decided to buck DeSantis’s order to paint over its rainbow street art. As the Sun Sentinel reports:
Fort Lauderdale will not bow down to the state’s demand that it remove four street art designs — including a rainbow-colored pride flag painted on a street near the beach.
Before a packed house, commissioners voted unanimously Wednesday night to appeal the state’s order to remove the pavement art by Sept. 4 or risk the state removing it.
Mayor Dean Trantalis warned of what might happen if the city were to back down to the state on what he called a draconian order.
“You have to ask, where does it end?” he said. “Tonight, we must stand our ground. We cannot be bullied into submission and to allow others to dictate what happens in our community.”
And about Alligator Alcatraz …
Fort Lauderdale is not the only one defying DeSantis these days.
Having already ordered the state and federal governments to dismantle Alligator Alcatraz, the Everglades prison camp for immigrants, Miami Judge Kathleen Williams today told the Department of Homeland Security she would not put the brakes on her decision.
DHS is appealing her ruling and asked the judge to pause her decision until it could be heard by an appeals court. She denied the request.
Consequently, the government is removing the prisoners, according to DeSantis, and has “increased the pace of removals.”
I think they’ve been having rapid removals from Alligator Alcatraz, and I think that’s caused the census to go down.
The Miami Herald reports that Kevin Guthrie, the executive director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management, said:
We are probably going to be down to 0 individuals within a few days.
J.C. Bruce, journalist and author, is the founder of Tropic Press. He holds dual citizenship in the United States of America and his native Florida. Share this email with your friends. They will love you for it.
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