Especially when he says "I wish this story had a happy ending. Spoiler: it doesn’t.
I couldn’t keep the Amazon Bump out there; there were some serious liability issues. I did get the SFMTA’s attention, they let me know a month later that my application was approved. That was 35 months ago and we still don’t have a bump."
There's actually even a name for such actions: tactical urbanism.
It reminds me of the old story about the guy who had been calling the county to fill a pothole for months and finally as soon as he started filling it himself and let the county know, the crews came out to fix.
Or there's stories in Atlanta of steel plates being laid for months to years (a common scourge in Atlanta) and then magically they get fixed and removed once someone spray-paints dicks on them.
The upside of adding "traffic calming" features needs to be weighed against the downside. If you only consider the upside of reduced accidents, then we'd have speed bumps and stop signs every 100 meters on every road.
On residential streets where you want slow traffic yes. When you have a wide straight road people go fast on it. To prevent that you narrow the road, install curves and bumps. These require to the driver to slow down and be careful, which means they also notice when there are children nearby playing and don't run them over.
The actual point, is that not every action has the intended consequences. In this case, traffic calming curves do the opposite for a non-zero percentage of people.
>I did get the SFMTA’s attention, they let me know a month later that my application was approved.
Does this "approval" mean that at some point in the future, the relevant authority will look into things? Or that some traffic calming measure was approved, now the waiting for implementation is underway?
Especially since the only camera facing the street is the author's own! The city would have to ask the author if his camera happened to pick up the "culprit" responsible for the rogue speed bump
That's a bad idea - the speed bump can be semi-invisible in bad weather, and you'll have cars hitting it at high speed, going airborne and crashing.
There's a reason they have large warning signs before a speed bump.
There is also the implication that speed is the issue - but the linked video shows a car crash with slow cars, so they problem may lie elsewhere (visibility probably).
I have anecdata that shows that plenty of intelligent, highly motivated, affable people with (hard science) PhDs still struggle to obtain employment of the "club" caliber, even after they're in the "club".
Most people are stupid and incredibly short-sighted, most of the time. If pre-modern serfs and slaves had access to a fairly reliable, inexpensive means of avoiding contraception, none of us would exist and the human race would be caught between Malthus on the one hand and demographic collapse on other.
It's obvious that future generations are a net gain as far as the advancement of knowledge or our material well-being go, but the immediate cost of having and raising a child is shouldered mostly by their family. Incredibly few people (both now and back then) have children for the greater benefit of society.
The ROC has not had any formal military alliance with the United States since 1979. TSMC was not founded until 1987, didn't start producing chips until 1993. It was not even publicly traded until 1994 (and that was only on the Taiwanese stock exchange; it was listed on the NYSE in 1997).
The reason the PRC hasn't done it is because it would make no sense politically or economically. They have a lot more to lose and a lot less to gain than Russia did in 2014 (Sevastopol was/is seen as integral to the Russian navy...there is no parallel with Taiwan as the PRC has plenty of excellent ports on the mainland).
And the continued existence of Taiwan gives the PRC a convenient excuse to sabre-rattle.
No formal alliance, but in reality, if you look up the proportion of Taiwanese-made chips used by the US military in... everything - aircraft, missiles ,tanks, planes, everything - invading Taiwan would probably cripple the US military's production capabilities so it's probably kicking off a proper war with USA.
It would be a headache but it wouldn't be the end of the world. At the end of the day there are other fabrication plants to manufacture microprocessors. And it's not as if China invading Taiwan would suddenly make all of the existing supply stop working.
Nearly every racoon in North America is a carrier of roundworms. Their eggs are nearly impossible to kill, and if you ingest them, they hatch in your intestines and begin migrating through the rest of your body, resulting in severe and sometimes fatal neurological damage.
Ive been fixated on the domesticated raccoon idea since I was a child and the disease reservoir problem is what really killed the fantasy for me.
Roundworms and they’re also a reservoir for rabies. It would be impossible to prevent the domesticated raccoons from interacting with local wild raccoons, so there really isnt anything that can improve the situation.
Its worth noting about 60% of infectious diseases are zoonotic, and every additional domestic species increases the routes existing viruses can take to evolve into infecting humans. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8808746/
> Ive been fixated on the domesticated raccoon idea since I was a child
When I was about 12, I spent a summer volunteering at an Audubon Society program. Among my other responsibilities was caring for a litter of four orphaned raccoon babies (kits).
They were just like kittens or puppies. Adorable, sweet, friendly, funny, amazing. They'd climb on you, ride on your shoulder, loved to run and play. My favorite part was their hands/feet, which were always surprisingly cool to the touch.
I desperately wanted to take one, or all four, home with me at the end of the summer.
In retrospect, I'm not sure if the Audubon Society adults had a plan, per se -- the kits were found orphaned and brought in by someone. But the stated intention was to reintroduce them to the wild at the end of the summer, when they were old enough. I'm not sure whether that happened, and not at all sure it would have been successful, but these are the harsh understandings of adulthood.
(PS: I do not have, nor have I ever had, roundworms. I do not doubt the commentariat-wisdom here, but FWIW these kits were apparently clean.)
...
We also had a great horned owl who had been at the facility for a few years, due to a permanent wing injury. He generally preferred to be left alone (and that was respected), but he greatly enjoyed being fed mealworms from (a gloved) hand.
> I desperately wanted to take one, or all four, home with me at the end of the summer.
Had you read about pet raccoon attacks your mind would have been changed. They're definitely not suitable pets even though the kits are very charismatic. (I'd classify them in the same bucket as people who try to keep chimpanzees as pets... That works out tragically for all parties involved too.)
The difference is that other domestic animals do not have wild counterparts with rabies that live in our backyards, constantly trying to socialize and mate with (infect) them.
There is hope though, the feds have been working to eliminate rabies in raccoons for a couple decades now.
While this, and of course antibiotic tolerance in bacteria is a concern, it doesn't validate that Raccoons should be shied away from domestication. All it would mean is, if it comes to this, killing all cats and dogs.
(Because, releasing billions of cats and dogs would leave them starving to death)
Note the "procyonis", ie raccoon roundworm. The procyonis version is indeed terrible, easily among the worst parasites a human could encounter.
Whether, as one comment suggested, every raccoon is positive, is debatable. I sure hope not, and would definitely expect cohabitating or proximal wildlife to exhibit symptoms, which has been observed, notably in squirrels, but not as frequently as one would expect if it were half as pervasive as most or 'every'.
But the risk is severe where present, necessitating the destruction of tools that make contact with feces. This worm is quite comfortable in both formaldehyde and subzero temperatures for months or years, remaining infectious. Extremely adhesive and generally not to be fucked with.
Edit: expect racoons to start harboring angiostrongyloids now, especially in Florida. Cuban tree frogs and snails certainly being on their menu, as well as being primary vectors. This worm has similar appetite for flesh, favoring the brain too, but is much smaller and less dramatic than baylis. Regardless, expect parasites to be an increasing problem.
Just going off of this one thing the worm can't survive is high temperatures and spice. I find raccoon meat goes particularly well with east asian cuisine, a cuisine which is far more open minded regarding nontraditional meat sources. My raccoon ovary drunken noodle is to die for, and packs a lot of heat! No parasite survives the wok!
The efficacy of administering advice to the clinically insane remains unknown to me.
However, you could marinate this shit in resiniferatoxin, bring it to a boil and leave it sitting in the desert sun for a year and it would remain infectious. Don't consume it, or more importantly, do not handle it.
Wouldn’t this be an argument for domestication? They can easily be treated if they’re pets. If they’re carriers it’s far better for them to be treated than wandering around outside your house shitting wherever they want.
This is mostly a myth. It's impossible to actually keep only the soil underneath one's home a consistent degree of wet. If you water the soil under your house, the water eventually gets sucked out by capillary action to all of the dry parts of your lawn (and your neighbors lawn).
It would only work if everyone watered EVERYWHERE, by a uniform amount.
https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14339a.htm
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