We found a genius way to revive a poisoned river [video]

Yes, I know, proscriptive rules of language w/ grammer etc. are, fundamentally, wrong in so far as they attempt to describe a single unchanging standard that should always be adhered to. Language is fluid and always has been, and grammar is less about being "correct" and more about "that's how it's been done for a bunch of decades".

So I'm alright with word usage changing, I just don't like the forms it takes on when it's adopted en masse by content farmers or anyone else generating click-baity titles. This style of use for "genius" is relatively new. A time line of ngram probabilities through to 2019 [1] show almost no usage while a google search [2] with more recent results shows plenty, mostly in the vein of SEO optimized headlines/titles etc.

[1] https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=genius+ways&ye...

[2] https://www.google.com/search?q=%22genius+ways%22

smcl3• 3 years ago

"X is genius" has become normalised. It sounds stupid and lazy to me, but it seems to be popular enough (particularly among YouTubers and Gen Z) that I'm outvoted and in the minority.

BiteCode_dev• 3 years ago

Everything in the US is getting the superlative treatment anyway. When I read something, if it's from UK I x2, if it's from the US I x0.1.

If it's from Autralie, I subtract the number of "cunt" and multiply by pi.

throwaway2902• 3 years ago

s/genius/promising

"genius" and "ingenious" are both super weird for describing own idea. Not grammatically wrong but still wrong. Like if you refer to your own post as "my genius article" I'd assume you are being self deprecating and if not I might start wondering if you're OK. Even if I thought your article was actually genius.

Pick anything, promising, practical, and you know for me personally simply "a way" to "revive" a river would sound awesome because I knew zero of those until now.

burkaman2• 3 years ago

It's not their idea, they are funding and publicizing another existing organization: https://rewilding-oder-delta.com/en/rewilding-oder-delta/. So they did literally "find" someone else's idea and make a video about it.

I agree the wording is a little off, but they are German so it might just be a not-quite-right translation. I don't think they are intending to take credit for other people's work, I am a contributor to Planet Wild and they are very clear in their app and videos and everything that they are helping existing organizations.

amelius• 3 years ago

Can't watch video now. Could anyone post a summary?

Giorgi• 3 years ago

yea, basically added small streams to main river so fishies can escape.

burkaman2• 3 years ago

https://planetwild.com/blog/how-were-reviving-a-poisoned-riv...

MayeulC• 3 years ago

In short: restore tributaries to create pockets of biodiversity, even if the main river is subjected to toxic event.

They create suitable breeding grounds by undoing previous canalization work, and restore the riverbed by adding gravel.

Of course, the video contains more details and images.

SillyUsername• 3 years ago

Unfortunately how long will it be before the guilty companies, who won't fix their dumping problem, realise they need to offload an even higher capacity into a clean river which is now coping well? Helpfully there's now a nearby tributary allowing a shorter pipe...

Cymrukicks• 3 years ago

Its clearly a breakdown of politics and the law that they can get away with this scot free globally. How soon before these companies are just attacked by mobs as restitution pollution of an area is in itself a form of violence one that goes seemingly unpunished.

specialist• 3 years ago

I'm in awe.

For me, bioremediation is sci-fi made real. It was all hypothetical back in the 90s. (I was volunteering at an org trying to save PNW salmon from extinction.)

Developers were being allowed to pave critical habitat in exchange for creating "wetlands" somewhere else. But no one knew how to do that. And many were skeptical it could even be done.

restore the riverbed by adding gravel

https://youtu.be/ZgItGjKu4mQ?t=415

So important.

Same info pulled from the accompanying article https://planetwild.com/blog/how-were-reviving-a-poisoned-riv...

"By filling up the river bed with a specific kind of gravel, multiple things happen... [ new breeding grounds, water cleansing, oxygenation, natural overflow, new habitats]"

One tidbit I learned about PNW salmon is that all the varieties need very specific conditions, like the kind of gravel, to successfully reproduce.

It's makes me so frikkin happy to learn that people are now routinely doing stuff we only dreamed about just a few decades ago.

derealized2• 3 years ago

Some countris have mandated >30 meters of green area on each border of rivers. That also helps a lot from what I've seen. Before that, especially with plantations, the crops would go up to the border and that killed the rivers (plus all the agrotoxics would feed more easily into the water).

dghughes• 3 years ago

My province does it's mainly for the fish. It is called a buffer zone I'm not sure of the dimensions. The province even buys up land from old farms that have fields that used to go right to the water edge.

Even the orientation of furrows helps. Not having them perpendicular to the river the furrows should be parallel.

Even provincial workers cutting trees need to use canola oil for bar oil (bar and the saw chain lubrication).

Farms can have runoff of fertilizer and it can cause fish to die rapidly in large groups aka a "fishkill". The farmer is fined too.

rewmie• 3 years ago

Some countris have mandated >30 meters of green area on each border of rivers.

I think this has more to do with flood plain management. Some countries prohibit construction within X meters of the average water level because that's expectedly where water will rise. In some shallow areas municipalities even build parks with no permanent structure because of the high probability those areas will be flooded, and that ensures no life is put at risk and economic damage is limited to whatever infrastructure was placed there (i.e., park benches, public restroom, small public cafe, camping ground, etc.)

jwitchel• 3 years ago

People engineering solutions for the win.

We found a genius way to revive a poisoned river [video]

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