When the agreement was renewed and a new dam was built a century later, Paris still wasn’t interested.
If France wasn’t interested in water rights as recently as 1984 – well within the era of decent understanding of both hydrology and climate change – that’s squarely its own damn fault.
I imagine the third option is that they could run the cooling water in a loop with some really big radiators and not take water from the river at all if they wanted, but it would be very expensive.
Tens of thousands of Palestinians were fleeing Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, on Saturday, after Israeli warnings to evacuate before an imminent military assault that will open a bloody new phase of the seven-month-long conflict....
humans are selfish, and most of us are not willing to make major sacrifices to avert disaster
I am sick and tired of this cynical bullshit argument. It’s wrong in two ways (and neither are the way you think):
It assumes that we have to reduce our standard of living in order to reduce our fossil fuels consumption, instead of innovating
It presumes that the lifestyle changes that we do have to make (e.g. higher density zoning and walkablity) represent some kind of deprivation, rather than the improvement they would actually be.
That’s part of the issue, but the even bigger problem is that people fallaciously think they have to give up much to fix it when the reality is a combination of (a) they don’t, and (b) the changes that they do have to make actually represent an improvement in lifestyle, not a deprivation.
For example, Americans who’ve been brainwashed for decades by GM propaganda about the “open road” and car-dependent suburban “American dream” and whatnot have to be dragged kicking and screaming into higher zoning density and walkabilty, but once people have it they realize they’re happier, healthier, have more free time, etc.
But the truth is, most people don’t want to lose their comfortable lifestyle.
The real truth is, the notion that a lower-carbon lifestyle is somehow inferior to our current car-dependent bullshit is 100000% fallacious bullshit brainwashed into us by the automobile industry. Walkability is just better in every way (environmentally, economically, sociologically) and people whose lifestyle doesn’t depend on cars are, statistically, happier and healthier than people who do.
I don’t mean to diminish your point about the utility of nuclear, but (a) it’s subject to the same ramping up/scaling issues as anything else*, and (b) you’d be surprised how quickly we could ramp up manufacturing of renewables if The Powers That Be actually wanted to.
(* Or worse: in particular, the absolute debacle that was Plant Vogtle 3 and 4 – delivered years late and billions overbudget, while bankrupting Westinghouse in the process – shows that we definitely did not maintain our nuclear expertise over the past several decades of building exactly fuck-all new plants.)
Mass extinction events have a cause. The Permian/Triassic one I mentioned, is generally agreed to be from unusual movement of earth’s crust, creating severe volcanic activity.
I think you’d get your point across even better with less understatement.
We have barely existed on earth, but are throwing it off balance like never before. (With the exception of the meteor that killed the dinosaurs, but that’s a whole other tangent)
I think we may very well be on par with the meteor, TBH. Especially in the worst-case emission scenario.
(Speaking of the K-Pg meteor, another large igneous province, similar to but smaller than the one at the P-T boundary, was basically the “exit wound” of that meteor impact. It could very well be that the P-T extinction was caused the same way, but all evidence of the crator would have been obliterated by subduction over the past 250 MY because the antipode of Siberia back then would’ve been somewhere in the middle of the Panthalassic Ocean. Edit: I take that back; turns out there that managed to survive, so that’s neat.)
Why do you persist in assuming that all those shitty circumstances would continue to exist when they are exactly the things I’m saying we should be fixing? The whole idea is to have lots of nearby employers, good train and bus connections, grocery stores within walking distance (and with little to no parking), etc.
The #1 priority for reducing climate change (and fixing almost all our problems, from housing affordability to obesity) is zoning reform.
You’re not genuinely trying to help Biden; you’re just bitching about what he’s doing wrong. It’s nothing but dishonest concern trolling and I’m sick and tired of you spamming that bullshit all over Lemmy.
LOL, you think just because I’m not in lockstep agreement with your bullshit I’m some sort of neoliberal Hillary fan? Get out of here with that nonsense.
What I understand, but you don’t, is that the time for trying to pick a better candidate has ended. The primary is over; Biden is the candidate whether you like it or not. So what the fuck are you trying to accomplish by opposing him at this point? The answer is, for Trump to win. That is the ONLY possible outcome of discouraging people from voting for Biden now.
Von Braun and the rocket scientists were the most famous part, but not all 1,600 were involved in aerospace specifically.
Here are some relevant snippets from the Wikipedia article on it:
Scientists taken were often involved in the Nazi rocket program, aviation, and chemical and biological warfare.
The operation was not solely focused on rocketry; efforts were directed toward synthetic fuels, medicine, and other fields of research.
Operation Paperclip was part of a broader strategy by the US to harness German scientific talent in the face of emerging Cold War tensions, ensuring this expertise did not fall into the hands of the Soviet Union or other nations.
Anyway, I don’t know that any of them ended up doing fucked-up stuff for the CIA, and was making a joke. But like many jokes, the kernel of plausibility is part of what makes it funny.
That’s what I mean, he’s spent his whole life saying it’s not about him, it’s about the movement. He needs to let a younger progressive take his spot so that person gets “the experience” and run for president.
Okay, so who? Name the person. What prominent 62-year-old (or 42-year-old, or 22 30-year-old, which is the minimum age allowed in the Senate) Vermont progressive should be running instead?
Maybe the problem is less Bernie being unwilling to give up the job and more that nobody else is stepping up to replace him.
Biden’s in a tough position. It’s a very good thing the president can’t control the Federal Reserve. I would have dropped the rate if I were him.
Remember how Trump was badgering the Fed to lower rates in 2019 (before the pandemic) because of his disastrous tax handout to the rich and trade war with China? I wish more people did.
Sony… and they are one of the few megacorps I still buy from.
Dear God, why? Between the continuous pushing of proprietary formats and the fucking rootkit they inflicted on people via music CDs almost two decades ago, they were one of the first megacorps I started boycotting!
And I just learned paramount plus does not allow screen shots.
I would just like to point out how asinine and dystopian it is that Paramount has the power to dictate what they “allow” you to do with your property. What gives them the right to sabotage your computer against you?
I feel like articles like these are red-herrings designed to distract people from the real problem, and/or give them an excuse to feel morally superior when they shouldn’t because they drive a normal-sized car instead of a big one.
But here’s the real problem: America was a catastrophe of car-dependency even before the bloated SUVs and such started showing up, and merely shrinking the cars back down to normal size isn’t gonna fix it. The biggest issue with cars isn’t the injuries and deaths from crashes or the or the greenhouse gas emissions; it’s the fact that cities are absolutely ruined by trying to build enough parking to accommodate them all. Forcing everything to be spread out in order to fit parking lots and wide roads in between destroys walkability and the viability of transit. The costs of all the extra land – or even just all the extra concrete for parking decks – drive up housing prices. Euclidean zoning prohibits convenient access to third places, harming mental health, and even when the zoning does allow e.g. a pub to be built, customers have to drive drunk to get home because it’s too far to walk!
My city imposes minimum parking requirements for businesses that want a license to serve alcohol. Not maximums, minimums. Think about how fucking insane and ass-backwards that is for a minute.
The article makes a big deal about how big vehicles are more dangerous to things they crash into than small ones, but consider this: car wrecks kill tens of thousands of people each year, but that harm is dwarfed by the fact that hundreds of millions of people are obese because they’re forced to drive everywhere instead of walking. Over 40% of the total US population is obese now, compared to 10% in the 1950s before the effects of car-dependency had a chance to kick in.
The point is, all of these things don’t change whether the cars we’re dependent on are little hatchbacks or gigantic SUVs. Practically speaking, every car is the same size: one parking space*. It’s the parking spaces themselves – and therefore the cars that occupy them, whether big, small, electric or gas-guzzling – that have got to go!
(* or one two-second safe following distance when in motion, compared to which the length of the vehicle itself is negligible in terms of its effect on road lane capacity)
The obesity in America has very little at all to do with walking or not walking. It has everything to do with the American diet.
Fine, then. I have four words for you:
Drive-though fast food.
(And if that’s not pointed enough, here’s a video about how much easier it is to shop for healthy groceries in a walkable area, and another that points out (among other things) how lack of walkability correlates with obesity even if, as you say, it’s not the single direct cause.)
Just because it’s factually true, doesn’t mean it can’t also be a red herring anyway. You’ve got to think about why it’s a point that’s being brought up.
In this case, there are a lot of people with a vested interest in keeping their [perceived to be] convenient car-oriented lifestyle, but who may have been feeling twinges of guilt and doubt about it lately because of all the talk about climate change and whatnot. There are also a lot of businesses with a vested interest in selling them cars and fuel and drive-thru food and pavement and other trappings of said car-oriented lifestyle. So there are huge forces motivated to push narratives aimed at absolving these drivers of their guilt.
That’s what I believe the intended takeaway of an article like this is: “Oh, it’s not me who’s the problem; it’s those other folks with the bro-dozers and mall-crawlers who are the problem. I’m behaving just fine – virtuously, even! – because my ‘green’ and ‘safe’ hybrid sedan shuts off instead of idling in the Starbucks drive-thru in the morning.”
They want you to pay no attention to the fact that the existence of that Starbucks drive-thru, and more to the point, the existence of the stroad upon which its queue overflows each morning, are what’s really causing the car crashes, and the lack of walkability, and the unsafe biking, and the climate change from everybody whose car doesn’t shut off when it stops, and so on…
In a country without special half-sized parking spaces for kei cars/city cars/smart cars, all cars are the same size (one parking space each) and are therefore equally bad.
I mean, sure, bigger cars are more dangerous to the people they crash into, but that’s beside the point because crashes are the least of the harmful things about cars! The real problems with them are things that are inherent to the nature of cars – all cars – and cannot be fixed merely by making them 1980s-sized again.
Specifically, the biggest problem with cars is the way the built environment has to be absolutely ruined to make space to accommodate them, and how that not only destroys walkability and transit viability, but also causes stuff like obesity and lack of housing affordability. All these things are inherent problems of car-dependency, and it doesn’t make the slightest shred of difference whether those cars being depended upon are Isettas or F-250s.
I think it’s ridiculous to suggest that small vehicles have the same impact as massive SUVs/trucks.
I’m not saying its zero; I’m saying it’s a lot closer to negligible than people desperately wanting to scapegoat one type of car while clinging to their own would like to think. The only thing capable of significantly moving the needle is not switching from big cars to small cars, but switching from cars to not-cars.
Bigger cars are not only more damaging in crashes with pedestrians/cyclists (which you’ve mentioned but seem to think is unimportant?!) but they also cause more accidents because of poor visibility and longer stopping distances.
Having smaller cars with better visibility and shorter stopping distances could provide a minor improvement in crash frequency and severity. But if you want to get it to zero? Then you’ve got to redesign the streets to quit prioritizing cars over other road users (pedestrians/cyclists/transit riders). And you’ve got to make it so that those alternatives are actually viable and get used, which means zoning reform.
Also, environmentally-speaking, larger vehicles have a much bigger impact than small cars. Not only are they less fuel-efficient, they also cause more damage to roads leading to more frequent need for repairs.
The environmental difference between a big car and a small car is tiny compared to the difference between a car and a bicycle. We need to quit chipping around the edge of the problem quibbling about car size and attack it directly by providing alternatives to driving via (say it with me!) zoning reform.
it’s a little too early to be getting out the pitchforks and torches
Not really; the fact that they even agreed to hear this bullshit (thus blatantly interfering in the election by delaying Trump’s trial) is torch-and-pitchfork worthy by itself.
From December 1, 2012, until January 31, 2013, a stylistic disagreement unfolded between editors on the English-language Wikipedia as to whether the word “into” in the title of the Wikipedia article for the 2013 film Star Trek Into Darkness should be capitalized. More than 40,000 words were written on the article’s talk...
Yeah, and I definitely never pause a video because I want to look more closely at the frame I paused it at. Obviously, covering it over with something different is exactly what I was hoping for!
When the water runs dry: Why France is freaking out over a tiny Swiss dam (www.politico.eu)
Water-rich Switzerland controls Western Europe’s taps — and wants it to stay that way. Its drought-ridden neighbors are getting nervous....
Charlamagne Tha God Won’t Come Out for Biden After Getting ‘Burned’ With 2020 Endorsement (www.thedailybeast.com)
the first rule i thought of (lemmy.world)
No ill will or hate towards anyone, but my mind immediately went to this type of bear when I first heard the hypothetical....
PSA: A website called SteamHistory enables stalkers through Steam mass data harvesting. Here's how stalkers found me despite creating a new, private, anonymous account.
cross-posted from: lemmy.cafe/post/4800845...
The Patriarchy (lemmy.world)
Weird (s3.eu-central-2.wasabisys.com)
It’s weird how when the Department of Transportation is using the bike lane, they give themselves an entire car lane for protection....
deleted_by_author
Senator Katie Britt is back at it, pushing a bill to launch a pregnancy tracking federal database (www.salon.com)
Terrified families flee Rafah as Israel set to open all-out assault (www.theguardian.com)
Tens of thousands of Palestinians were fleeing Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, on Saturday, after Israeli warnings to evacuate before an imminent military assault that will open a bloody new phase of the seven-month-long conflict....
Mozilla to protect Firefox users from bounce trackers - Stack Diary (stackdiary.com)
‘I am starting to panic about my child’s future’: climate scientists wary of starting families (www.theguardian.com)
A fifth of female climate scientists who responded to Guardian survey said they had opted to have no or fewer children...
77% of Top Climate Scientists Think 2.5°C of Warming Is Coming—And They're Horrified (www.commondreams.org)
“I expect a semi-dystopian future with substantial pain and suffering for the people of the Global South,” one expert said.
Biden hits Trump with major Microsoft announcement in Wisconsin (www.axios.com)
Are we the baddies? (lemmy.world)
Leaked audio reveals Donald Trump discussing his VP picks (www.independent.co.uk)
deleted_by_author
Star Trek: Looney Decks (lemmy.world)
Fed keeps interest rates at 23-year high (www.npr.org)
deleted_by_moderator
I diagnose you with dystopia (lemmy.world)
Ensign, why do you look so tired all the time? (lemmy.world)
Most powerful Republican in Congress complains he has no influence: Mitch McConnell has admitted he can’t control the Republican Party. (newrepublic.com)
One of Congress’s most powerful Republicans apparently feels powerless in the face of Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign....
FBI data shows America is seeing a 'considerable' drop in crime. Trump says the opposite. (www.usatoday.com)
The Ten Forward Hot Take Thread
Lets say contentious things about Star Trek! I’ll start!...
Qapla' (lemmy.world)
The reckless policies that helped fill our streets with ridiculously large cars (www.vox.com)
The reckless policies that helped fill our streets with ridiculously large cars (www.vox.com)
Even the lies? (lemmy.world)
The Court Just Sealed Everyone’s Fate, Including Its Own (newrepublic.com)
cross-posted from: lemmy.world/post/14751971
rule (lemmy.world)
May I present to you: The Wikipedia Star Trek Into Darkness Debate (en.wikipedia.org)
From December 1, 2012, until January 31, 2013, a stylistic disagreement unfolded between editors on the English-language Wikipedia as to whether the word “into” in the title of the Wikipedia article for the 2013 film Star Trek Into Darkness should be capitalized. More than 40,000 words were written on the article’s talk...
YouTube could roll out ads while videos are paused after “strong traction” in experiment - Dexerto (www.dexerto.com)