If Napoleon were alive today, St. Helena would probably have a huge tourism industry because people would think it was some kind of fountain of youth.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ky2NeKj21mY

Are all those actually different names, and not just varying latin alphabet transliterations of the same farsi word?

I wonder when we’ll find out that flood basalts (the Deccan Traps, in this case) are the “exit wounds” of the meteor impacts?

(That’s my hypothesis, anyway, but I don’t have the geology background to investigate it properly.)

I’ve been thinking about getting a Slate truck eventually, and I’m suddenly realizing a generator on a trailer might be good for overlanding, since there aren’t any chargers on remote trails.

I’m willing to bet it would’ve been more efficient (but less maneuverable/flexible in its direction of travel) with a sail, just because that would avoid the electric conversion losses.

From AIPAC’s perspective, they’re very effective.

No it’s just a fact you are lying about San Jose.

You spout nothing but bad faith bullshit and you accuse me of being the one who’s lying? That’s rich.

The fact that San Jose’s zoning law got overridden by the state two seconds ago doesn’t somehow magically instantly change the entire built environment of the city that resulted from decades and decades of the previous policy, and you fucking know it.

YIMBYs oppose public housing more often than NIMBYs.

Cite or GTFO.

My point is trying to inject your libretarian housing politics focused on zoning to a discussion about gas reserves is stupid.

THEY WOULDN’T NEED THE GODDAMN GAS RESERVES IF THEY DIDN’T HAVE SO MUCH CAR DEPENDENCY!

How absolutely moronic and dishonest do you have to be to refuse to acknowledge that extremely basic connection?!

This is why I’ve never liked pinatas, chocolate Easter bunnies, or character-shaped cakes.

There is literally not true: https://ternercenter.berkeley.edu/research-and-policy/single-family-zoning-reform-highlights-a-breakthrough-in-california-housing-policy/

“The fact that people just now finally made some headway in solving the problem proves the problem never existed in the first place!”

Sure, buddy.

The idea that zoning is why private markets are failing to build supply is delusional, you can look at housing production in the US, tell me when zoning laws changed based on this chart: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/HOUST .

They changed before the chart started. Your “gotcha” demand is disingenuous.

Private markets just aren’t good at building sufficient adequate housing, because housing isn’t fungible building luxury flats for landlords to further inflate the housing market isn’t the same as building public housing or affordable housing.

And yet that still has fuck-all to do with windmills and solar panels, so what’s your point? Do you deny that NIMBYs oppose public housing?

The “influential Christian ministers” are the Zionists, entirely for their own doomsday-cult purposes. Nobody gives a fuck about Jewish people themselves, except to herd them back to the “Holy Land” because that’s what their fairy tale says is a precondition for getting “Raptured.”

I mean, sure, the Israeli government is happy to encourage that because it serves their own interests, but simple bribery doesn’t even begin to explain Christian Zionists’ motivations.

The UK doesn’t use US style zoning though.

Maybe not explicitly, but make no mistake: “modernist” American city planners’ terrible ideas were exported to the whole English-speaking world.

Take Milton Keynes, for example.

And zoning on both sides of the Atlantic has very little to do with the under supply of housing.

It has everything to do with it! In most North American cities, something like 75% of all residentially-zoned land is single-family only. In the worst, it approaches 95% (e.g. San Jose, CA). Housing is not fungible: people want to live in or near the city center, not the exurbs, and in these places it is literally illegal to build the dense housing necessary to meet that demand.

I mean, think about it: the entire purpose of restricting density is to create shortages of dense housing; if the demand weren’t there, the restriction wouldn’t need to exist. Shortages are the goal! You might try to rebut that by saying they want single-family housing to be produced as a substitute good, but land is finite so physical reality does not work that way. If you restrict the maximum number of people who are allowed to live per unit area of land, then the rest of the people who want to live there, can’t!

The idea of fixing the undersupply of housing without abolishing zoning density restrictions is just straight-up delusional magical thinking. Geometry and physical reality simply does not permit it.

And getting back to the original point: when you literally enshrine suburban sprawl into law – whether by North American-style Euclidean zoning or whatever the fuck the UK did in New Towns like Milton Keynes – you force car-dependency and make your country vulnerable to oil price shocks. That’s just how it works, and windmills and solar panels have fuck-all to do with it!

🤔

🤔

I wouldn’t say “especially” renewable electricity. The magnitude of that NIMBYism pales in comparison to opposing zoning dense enough to support walking, biking and transit (which is, in turn, the far bigger contributor to “petroleum supplies cut off” being a problem).

There’s a real easy solution to this: use strong copyleft instead of permissive licensing, and don’t require copyright assignment. You won’t be able to rug-pull even if you wanted to!

When project founders refuse to do that, well, now we know their true intentions.

Not sure “clean[ing] up the mess” means helping the US, though (I say as an American).

The “pretzels” are the tire plugs. They’re actually sticky rubber strips. You poke them into the tire, then pull the tool out quickly so that the plug stays behind:

(Also, I’m aware that you were probably just joking, but I figured somebody reading this might be genuinely curious so I gave a sincere reply anyway.)

What I had in my head was something like this, a street-tuner Impreza that’s been lowered:

The point was that just because something’s AWD doesn’t inherently mean by itself that it’s a good idea to take it off-road.

They’re going to be used as cannon fodder. They’re not ever coming home to be in a position to do a coup.