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If you try to make a planting bed in any settlement that’s more than say 100 years old on a site that was continuously lived on, you are guaranteed to come across at least some shards of glass, pots, plates, etc. Even if the spot was never explicitly a trash mound. Things break, people usually try to pick them up and put in trash, but (especially in grass) miss pieces. When kids break stuff you often don’t want them picking up sharp objects. Things get stepped on and pressed into soil. Many many reasons to find pottery shards where they seemingly don’t belong.

In general, the availability of credit has been a positive economic factor that helps enable capital expenditures that otherwise would only be available to the wealthiest. Lack of such credit leads to capture of means of production and rent seeking behaviors in economic terms.

However, it’s become more and more clear that not all credit is created equal and what you spend the resulting capital on matters a lot. If one buys a house to live in or equipment to make money with - that’s generally good use of credit, assuming costs do not outweigh the benefits. I can’t think of a situation where buying lunch that one has to finance is a good thing (as different from credit card points harvesting/optimization). The implications of anything similar to payday loans going mainstream feels like a large societal risk.

It’s a rather old project (2009), so many articles covering it are defunct. Found some of the info: “The purpose of the Prince Edward Island (PEI) Wind-Hydrogen Village is to use excess wind energy along with hydrogen technologies to offer sustainable energy. Excess electricity produced by wind turbines on the island is being used to power a 300kW uni-polar electrolyzer.

A uni-polar electrolyzer uses alkaline liquids, rather than solid polymer, as its electrolyte. The electrolyzer can produce about 6kg of hydrogen per hour. The hydrogen is then stored as compressed gas in storage tanks that have a total capacity of about 500kg. The hydrogen is then used in the bi-fuel hydrogen/diesel genset to power the village when there is no wind.”

Source: https://martinottaway.com/rhemmen/hydrogen-as-the-ultimate-f...

I guess it’s no fun covering things that just work. News need drama…

Those links are so oversimplified to not be useful. The arguments are for an ideological point of view and not a real analysis. Just consider that population growth is stagnating and going into decline. While energy use per capita is likely to increase, it’s not clear at all that things will continue as before even a 100 years from now. Even the AI race is seeing smaller models perform as well or better a year old ones. We are definitely in a fast growth phase of energy use there, but will it continue to grow indefinitely or will we become much more efficient and hit diminishing returns stalling further investment or plateauing energy use? Who knows… On the scale of the next 100 years, humanity can definitely meet its energy needs with nuclear and clean sources if we have the collective will. Will we? Time will tell.

These are only finite within Earth. Add even modest solar system travel capabilities and a lot more resources open up. Mining asteroids is just one idea there.

If the finite resources here are fossil fuels then the idea is to never use them again. It was a bad idea to continue using these a long time ago and it will still be a bad idea in the future. Sustainable energy production is not about deferring something, it’s about not poisoning where you live. That does not mean giving up on useful technologies. For example, synthetic hydrocarbon fuels can be made in a carbon neutral way, it’s just very expensive today. These would solve for some applications where EVs are not yet practical, etc.

The growth is unsustainable argument is very strange to me. We absolutely have the technology to make growth sustainable, but societies choose to go for other things because overall growth and advancement of humanity is not generally a goal at mass individual level.

For example, currently society is busy transitioning to electrified transport. Los Angeles had a vast network of that 80+ years ago (red car light rail system). We also have had nuclear power as an option for a very long time. And yet, red cars were scrapped, rail removed, freeways built, we still burn gas and what not for power, and California has a ban on new nuclear… It’s not that we can’t do all this, it’s that for various reasons we choose not to.

It’s quite human-centric to assume that all other possible civilizations will make the same choices. It seems more likely that there will be as many choices and value systems as there are possible life sustaining planets out there. This doesn’t answer the paradox of course.

Agree, the forced two-party system is very limiting and the identity tied to politics is emblematic of modern US. In EU, as I believe in India from the anecdotes in the article, a lot of the identity is tied to the place you are from and the social strata the family occupies. Those are somewhat immutable things (where you were born and what family you are from), so deciding to break off communication with that community is “expensive” socially because there is no other community that will readily accept you as their own. Whereas in US, it’s quite normal to change social circles at will. Density/proximity makes it much more obvious, but the semi-fixed social circles I believe have a lot to do with it. Many US expats report loneliness when moving abroad for similar reasons - it’s hard to find a new inner circle in societies built around other identities.

Infra in CA is not going so well. Roads as an example are terrible compared to most developed countries. When last years winter storms damaged many roads, the newly paved replacements are not very smooth at all and some have been redone multiple times in the span of a single year. I don’t know what the causes are, but when comparing to EU where they have to account for freezing temps, CA doesn’t seem THAT complicated. Yet EU highways on average are a lot better.

From your reply you haven’t actually lived in either Europe or Japan. They generally do not have people die on the streets and you enjoy some excellent infrastructure. It would be nothing short of amazing to get half the services or protections people in other developed countries take for granted.

Taxes are also money invested, in schooling, infrastructure, etc.

Not presently. Most tax dollars are spent elsewhere and infrastructure/education get less than 7%: https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder...

Even that spending is not effective. Drive California roads and you’ll often see fixes that aren’t much better than the damaged roads they replaced. And let’s not talk about our wonderful train projects…

In theory, this money would make a lot of difference. In practice, it’s heartbreaking.

The community college system does a good deal here. As an example in California, students can get a great deal of their undergrad lower division work done at a community college for a fraction of even UC or State university cost (which for instate students is already fairly low).

Community colleges are also where folks would normally turn to for casual the classes they wanted to take but didn’t necessarily want the formalities of the full degree. Online delivery of there helped further but vs MOOCs, CC has geographic and residency restrictions for who can actually study there.

But here’s the thing: Low – or, for that matter high – birth rates are not a problem in and of themselves.

High birthdates are a problem with scarce resources and tend to be associated with poor treatment of women[1]. Low birthrates are an extreme problem because as people age, they need to be taken care of. Even if that old person is very rich through responsible investments in their younger age, that money won’t bring them the proverbial glass of water without another younger person there.

Like with most things in life, balance is important and hard to achieve.Two to three kids per family seems to be ideal, but comes with an extreme life style hit unless you happen to be very well off. There are many irrational worries too that come with being a parent. While not perfect, I’ll take some support over none. „Too much” support is an ethics/ideology question and also has to do with social cohesion and ability of the society to integrate new members into that cohesion.

[1]https://worldpopulationhistory.org/womens-status-and-fertili...

To take this a step further, I’d argue such framings encourage either creation or amplification of risk perceptions in order to sell the remedy (and for political gain), at least in the US. Kids aren’t really allowed much autonomy the way even their parents enjoyed. All interactions are in a sense supervised and structured.

From a scientific perspective, the text is very rich and shows somewhat chronological evolution of beliefs and society systems. Coupled with responses to catastrophic events/influences, like the Babylonian captivity influencing what heaven and hell were understood to be, there’s a lot to study/research. There are many university courses on the subject that are not a religious class.

I was commenting on freeway style roads. Pedestrians shouldn’t be on an „autobahn”. City streets are a different matter all together.

Being distracted behind the wheel has a lot of cultural aspects - in US driving is viewed as almost a right, else where it is a hard earned and expensive privilege. People tend to value what they had to work hard for. Of course there will be those who don’t, but increasing the barrier to entry to operating dangerous machinery might be a good thing. Look at licensing approaches around the world and you will see places with higher barriers having a bit more order on the streets.

A truism, which is not very useful. The strategy of reducing speed to reduce collisions/severity compared to reducing dangerous behavior that leads to collisions is like the failed war on drugs.

I’ve been hit a few times in US and always it’s a distracted driver going fast and not following any rules. Speed limit didn’t slow them one bit. Not even in a school zone. Training, enforcement and more training is in my view a better answer. Not perfect, but better.

Unless pot holes are fixed, increasing speed limits will just make them more dangerous.

Speed is not the issue. Weaving in and out, tailgating and other similar behaviors are.

Just came back from Germany and drove on the no speed limit part of the autobahn. It was orderly and I felt perfectly safe with family going equivalent of 120mph. No one cutting you off, unless passing, no sitting in left lane. Getting passed at that speed like you are standing still takes a bit getting used to, but again, it’s very predictable. Did not witness any accidents in 2 weeks of driving. It can be done, just need proper rules, penalties for breaking them that are actually enforced and of course good roads (didn’t see any pot holes either).

Things get occasionally found that are older, but the prevalent building material has been wood and it doesn’t preserve nearly as well as rock. For example: https://www.livescience.com/ancient-cemetery-fortress-discov...

There are still feature limitations, such as Apple Watch with same number as your phone, etc.

4 is still an oligopoly[1]. It’s a little better than 3, but we didn’t have super cheap cell plans. Compared with most of the rest of the world, it was still quite expensive.

[1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oligopoly

Four.

Interestingly, the US cell phone industry would seem competitive - major players (Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile) and a bunch of smaller and/or regional players including the incumbent telcos like xfinity and spectrum. Then you dig a little deeper and see that all that “competition” runs on the towers of one of the three and unlike with the reform of British Telecom (BT), there are no requirements for this infra to be offered at any kind of lower price or at cost enabling competition for the last mile service.

It is an odd remark, but during the housing bubble crash, there was an inventory uptick. A lot of it was bought up by cash investors and even institutional investors securitizing housing. However, if you were still employed and had decent credit, there was a lot to choose from and prices were lower than rent. It didn’t last though - 2009 through 2012 was probably the best, then every year it ticked up until just before Covid. With Covid some areas shot up others went sideways for a bit.

I’m quite interested in the subject, but literally never heard of Rejewski until now and it feels pretty terrible. A lot gets said about other biases, but Poles seem to not get a lot of credit pretty consistently and often get appropriated by the host countries they had to work for. Hope that’s all in the past now…

Didn’t see this in the article, but having a thriving bird population is great for pest control as well! They keep all kinds of bugs in check, so less need to spray stuff, etc.

In my comment I said we looked into metal and other materials, but all increase weight, requiring engineering evaluation of the house and likely reinforcing the structure. Ceramic and concrete tiles are common here, but have the same problem. Don’t know about slate, but for the tiles you mention underlayment still needs to be replaced every 20-30 years at least requiring these to be removed and reapplied. Since labor is the major cost driver, it’s basically like paying for a new roof.

Materials may cost that, but you are not getting a roof replaced for $1,700. Maybe $17,000 and even then it’s pushing it on the coasts especially. Labor and other overhead costs have really gone up and contractors don’t want to deal with small jobs. Sad really.

I’ve never seen slate roofs in California, so not sure if these are to code here. We looked at metal and other materials, but the problem is the weight is different, so now you are engaging an engineer to evaluate structure, submitting plans, dealing with code updates. Or just new asphalt shingles every 15-20 years. The payoff isn’t there and folks don’t tend to keep houses for generations, unlike in the UK.

25Mbps up may be adequate in a pinch, but it’s laughably outdated. Symmetric down/up enables a lot of great use cases including seamless backup. I briefly lived with AT&T fiber symmetric 1gbps (actually more like 940mbps at the router, but close enough). It was a game changer and losing it definitely undid a bunch of great use cases. If you WFH, it’s even more important.

Meanwhile our Swiss friends have 10+gbps to home…