Halfway through 2025

Hey fam,

On July 2 (next Wednesday), we'll hit the halfway point of 2025 after 183 days.

What did you do in the first half of the year that you want to continue doing?

What didn't you do that you'd like to start?

Now's your chance :)

This week, we're covering the best ocean photos of the year, the largest digital camera ever made (which is genuinely blowing my mind), anti-ultra fast fashion legislation, a new paint that "sweats", and more!

Call your senators to make your voice heard! (watch)

*This was a paid collaboration just for social media, but I wanted to include it here as well to fill in today's gap and provide more interesting content that you may like :)

Think calling your senator is hard, intimidating, or scary?

Think again!

I literally called mine up from beneath a tree, in a park, while it was raining... and it was pretty fun. I specifically called to demand the "Big Beautiful Bill" doesn't get passed, as this is possibly the most anti-environmental bill in US history.

This was a social media collaboration with my longterm partners at Climate Power, but one of the best actions we can take right now, and I promise that if I could do it, so can you.

This year's best photos of our world's greatest wonder (watch)

A Japanese Warbonnet fish was found beneath a shipwreck about 100 feet underwater and photographed by Andrey Nosik who said the fish was fearless and even tried to sit on his camera.

Out of thousands of photographers, this was chosen as one of four winners for the UN World Oceans Day Photo Competition from earlier this month, aimed at capturing the beauty and awe of our world’s greatest wonder to reignite our wonder of the ocean which does so much to sustain us and needs us to sustain her back.

The second winner is this magical and bittersweet eye of a humpback whale taken by Rachel Moore just days before the animal tragically collided with a nearby ship, taking her life yet inspiring a movement to advocate for stronger protections like speed limits during whale season.

Dani Escayola was surrounded by millions of jellyfish in this Indonesian lake yet unafraid as they lost their stinging ability since they live without predators and don’t need the defense mechanism.

And the final winner is Leander Nardin who was flying through Australia and captured this brilliant blue lake in the middle of barren dunes, with incredible contrast between the land and water.

All these amazing photos remind us how important it is to protect our oceans.

The biggest digital camera ever made (watch)

The new image (above) of 10 million galaxies is so enormous it would need a screen the size of a basketball court to display at full detail, but it pales in comparison to what’s coming next.

The largest digital camera ever built called the Vera C. Rubin Observatory on top of a mountain in Chile, is just starting a 10-year mission to understand the Universe's biggest mysteries like dark matter and dark energy which make up 95% of the Universe but no one yet knows what it is.

In just the first 10 hours of observation, the camera found 2,104 never-before-seen asteroids in our Solar System, and even more mind blowing, the amount of data this observatory gathers in just the first year will be more than was ever collected from all other optical observatories combined. 

Scanning the full southern hemisphere sky every few nights for 10 years, it will observe billions of galaxies and generate 20 terabytes of data per night, making an astonishing time lapse while finding asteroids and comets, pulsating stars, supernova explosions, far off galaxies, and possibly cosmic phenomena that no one has ever seen before...

What do you think is out there? 

Wednesday, June 25 (watch)

👚 In a vote of 337 to 1, France adopted a bill that bans ultra fast fashion ads including on social media, with mandatory reporting on resources and materials used to assign an eco-score, with the lowest scorers getting taxed 5-10 euros per product, expected to be finalized around September (France24)

🪵 Cities in the US, Japan, Switzerland, and around the world are embracing deconstruction which disassembles old buildings more carefully to repurpose salvaged wood, which saves money and cuts down fewer trees, while training and awareness are scaling up (Lauren E. Oakes|Yale e360)

🇮🇪 Ireland just became the 15th coal-free nation in Europe, largely thanks to a shift to wind power as they closed down their last remaining coal plant, with both Italy and Spain expected to follow this summer into a clean energy future (Blathnaid O’dea|PV Magazine)

✍️ writermaddineunenswander (from our community) is putting together an anthology book donating the proceeds to the US National Park Service.

Thursday, June 26 (watch)

💦 A new paint that sweats was just invented to passively cool down surfaces by slowly evaporating water, like we do when we sweat, while reflecting about 90% of sunlight which tests show reduces electricity needs for air conditioning by 30-40% (Larissa G. Capella|Science News)

☢️ New York announced plans to build their first new nuclear power plant since the 1970s, which will generate at least one gigawatt of clean energy to power about a million homes while creating thousands of new jobs (Kristin Toussaint|Fast Company)

🍣 Lab-grown salmon is now available for sale for the first time ever, as a version was just approved by the USFDA, which is made by cultivating cells in a lab by a company called Wildtype offering this real fish without having to kill animals or negatively impact ecosystems (Friday Garza|Grist)

🚶 TeamJB1 (from our community) has been organizing weekly nature walks with their friends to just talk while learning about native plants and species.

What else is going right?

🔋 What if batteries sucked out carbon while pushing out power?

🌞 Even without subsidies, clean energy is cheaper than fossil fuels!

🐆 Brazil and Argentina teamed up to save jaguars from local extinction.

💚 A bittersweet move to classify pangolins as endangered will help protect them.

✈️ For the first time, a fully electric plane landed at JFK airport.

🥗 Can a restaurant really have no waste at all?

🌳 The coolest vertical forest you've ever seen.

Tell me your stories!

Know of someone making the world better?

Doing an impactful project yourself?

I'm always looking for new stories to report, so if you know of something awesome that I should cover, please respond to this email and let me know about it!

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This newsletter was written by Jacob Simon. Over 1 million people are in our community across Instagram, TikTok, Threads, YouTube, and Bluesky. You can say hi on LinkedIn, or by emailing jacob@jacobsimonsays.com. See you next week for more :)