When do we get teeth that aren’t made of a substance that our food literally dissolves? Seems like a major design flaw.

A fair point. I think I largely agree. But in the US there are a lot of grants for electric vehicles. Most public agencies are totally paralyzed and can’t do anything new without federal funding. My suspicion is it’s easier to get money for shiny new buses than for a new line. Especially because capital upgrades are mostly a one time cost while a new line requires ongoing funding. Funding they largely don’t have.

When I talk to my transit agency about new lines they look at me like I’m crazy and explain that they’re fighting as hard as they can just to maintain existing service. But it’s totally possible or maybe even likely there is mismanagement at play there.

Most of the passenger vehicles. A good chunk of heavy trucking could be replaced with rail too.

I didn’t mean any category would be totally eliminated, just the numbers reduced substantially for some.

Ah, I see. From a 10,000’ view this makes sense, but at least in my local political context, local government is relatively powerless to do much to reduce personal vehicle usage. But they do have total control over what buses are used. So I don’t see those changes as direct alternatives.

Changing from the personal car as the default means of travel is going to require a large, powerful political movement. It’s not something government leaders can do unilaterally. The backlash will be very intense. So I think it’s up to concerned and motivated members of the community to create a positive force for change that overwhelms that opposition.

Not sure I agree with this. Many of those vehicles don’t even need to exist, so effort is better spent on eliminating them. Buses are among the few vehicles that actually provide public benefits greater than their costs, so it makes sense to invest in new technology to improve them.

And as you alluded to, the air pollution benefits can be substantial.

Most insects don’t have a strong odor. It’s all types of ants as far as I’ve noticed.

With ants I typically notice it on my hands after I’ve touched them. So it’s strong enough to linger in that way.

I usually only smell it after they are agitated. I assume that’s what they meant? But usually when I’m smelling ants they are agitated.

It smells so weird and strong. I’m surprised not everyone can smell this. I wonder how common this is?

Well I believe this has happened. Wasn’t brachiosaurus found to be a mashup of multiple species? Or maybe it was a different one…

I’m assuming the research more meant that there were 3 cryptic species lumped into what we today call t-rex

I love hearing about these old struggles. Our history presents it as if everyone just accepted the tyranny of that time but the reality is people have always been fighting the same fight.

It’s also nice to know that some of my ancestors were trying to help people instead of all of the awful things the aristocracy were doing.

Great quote. Who said this?

I’m sorry but you’re just totally ignorant on what you are talking about. I recommend reading Tending the Wild by anthropologist M Kat Anderson to educate yourself.

Indigenous land management was often more intensive than what we have been doing with uncultivated lands and indigenous groups in my local area have been trying to tell people for decades that it’s partially our neglect of these practices that are causing some of the problems we see today. So ironically you are the one who has not been listening.

I’m not saying they created issues, but I am saying they also had a fairly intensive system of land management. So if we move to a system of little or no human intervention, that’s not a state that has existed for tens of thousands of years and we don’t know what that looks like. Could involve major ecosystem shifts, species extinctions, major fires, who knows.

I’m talking about indigenous land management practices. It’s been a very long time since most places were not being managed by humans in some way.

So you think do nothing and hope the fires even out? I have wondered about this but it’s not clear what would happen since our ecosystems have not operated that way for tens of thousands of years–and had dozens of now extinct megafauna engineering them back then.

While I’m sure that would work, I don’t support conscription.

I love this topic but I feel like no one has a realistic solution for how we’re going to manage huge ecosystems in a very labor intensive fashion. I don’t think it’s really possible in the current socioeconomic context.

The natives did it by having the entire community involved. We may need to move towards something like that.

100%. Also humans seem to have a natural tendency to ideate about the apocalypse that goes beyond the rational. All kinds of people have been predicting the end of the world for millenia at minimum, and so far they’ve all been wrong. It’s a lot less likely than we think it is, and so predicating our ideas and actions on this fringe situation that is unlikely to happen in our lifetimes renders us less able to act in the conditions that will exist.

“Miles away” technically lol but that really understates it. It’s like a thousand miles away.