Sure thing, here's a report from the Greater London Authority tracking the history of air quality in the city since the "Great Smog" event 1952, which caused an estimated 4000 deaths.
The main takeaway is that yes, urban air quality (including fine particulate matter) has improved massively over time, but most of it had little to do with road traffic, as for decades it wasn't a significant contributor to the overall mix. The important change was the move away from burning solid fuels like coal for household heating and in power stations within cities, to using gas and electricity with larger, out-of-town power stations.
As other sources have declined, road traffic has indeed become the largest contribution to urban air pollution, but even here there has been progress. Fine particulate emissions have continued to decline as car manufacturers have adapted to more stringent regulation (cheating scandals notwithstanding). A bigger problem now is higher non-exhaust emissions caused by larger and heavier vehicles. This is something else that will need to be solved via regulation. Other policies like Low Traffic Neighbourhoods can also help to restrict the worst pollution to major roads and away from where most people live.
Urban air quality is never going to be as good as that in the countryside, but it's not true to believe that no progress has been made, and that it's simply been a switch in the type of pollution.
Which cities are you referring to? Some cities have policies that discourage gas and diesel cars, and plans to outlaw them by 2030, but I'm not aware of any that have banned them outright yet.
Would you say someone suffering from locked-in syndrome is of a different order of intelligence due to their no longer having a fully embodied experience?
Not parent, but I would say their experience, even though severely impaired in many areas, is still infinitely more embodied than any human artifact is or even conceivably could be. Simply because the millions of years of embodied evolution which have shaped them into who they are and because of the unimpaired embodiment of most of the cells that make up their organism.
"We’re investing in trade schools and scholarships to recruit technicians for vehicle repair as well as our factories."
"But this is a society problem. The one that bothers me the most is cultural. We, as a culture, think that everyone has to go to an Ivy League school to be valuable in our society, yet we all know that our parents and grandparents made our country wonderful because of these kinds of jobs. There’s incredible dignity in emergency services, and people can have wonderful careers. But our society doesn’t celebrate those people like they do the latest AI engineer."
Of course it is -- if you tout investments, that means previously you didn't invest. Whereas any competent business would be looking at demand, the head counts, ages, and doing some quick math.
And eg
> There’s incredible dignity in emergency services, and people can have wonderful careers.
Not really. Ask anyone who does it; you'll hear minimum wage or not much above, and piles of transport of fat people. ie huge risks to the joint health for the people stuck moving them.
And of course, dignity ain't cash. This The whole thing is an extended whinge that rounds to I don't want to pay more.
Plus the implicit idea that society is responsible for preparing employees for Ford, not Ford.
Yeah, why do we as a society want high paying jobs that we're not forced to take 40 minutes of pay for hours of work? Clearly its the celebration that's missing.
That's the cultural issue that's talked about, which also caused the explosion of people trying to get into tech whether they actually liked the work or not.
Because the choice is/was - make $20/hr busting my ass with body breaking work and barely scrape by, or get a CS degree and live comfortably because no other career offers the pay required.
The cultural issue is - why aren't other careers paid as well? (Aka, why don't we value them). Someone risking bodily injury in a trade arguably should be paid more than most desk jobs, but they aren't.
Much like discussion here on HN about how we need an IC promotion path that doesn't lead to management, society needs equal opportunities for high paying careers across a variety of fields, not just white collar or tech work.
It depends on `image` which in turn depends on a number of crates to handle different file types. If you disable all `image` features, it only has like 5 dependencies left.
It is also important to note that this is not specific to Zed. As someone else have mentioned, it is a cultural problem. I picked Zed as an example because that is what I compiled the last time, but it is definitely not limited to Zed. There are many Rust projects that pull in over 1000 dependencies and they do much less than Zed.
Any new regulation the EPA introduces results in litigation. Some of the previously introduced PFAS regulations weren't done in accordance with how the Safe Drinking Water Act says they should be (regulations were introduced without the necessary public consultation), so they're applying to partially vacate the previous ruling. Notably, they're _not_ applying to vacate the regulation of PFAS chemicals where they say the process was followed correctly.
So, the legal reasoning might be to cut their losses litigating to defend rulings they think they'll lose due to the administrative error. I also suspect that being seen to roll back some regulations likely gives Lee Zeldin (the EPA admin) some political room to maneuver. He's historically be associated with anti-PFAS efforts (in Congress he represented a district with contamination problems and he voted for anti-PFAS legislation), but he's also part of an administration with a strong anti-regulation agenda, so he needs to walk a fine line.
> So, the legal reasoning might be to cut their losses litigating to defend rulings they think they'll lose due to the administrative error.
But they didn't start proper administrative procedures to reestablish the regulations, proving that these regulations are being removed on principle, whatever that is, while the "administrative error" is just an excuse.
There's a lot of outrage inducing judicial rulings that boil down to poor rule following. The main question winds up being: do we get to a good end point eventually or do these rulings look like steps backwards?
While it's a different niche, the worry for YouTube is that younger viewers generally consume a lot of short form video. They might eventually shift to watching more long form content as they get older, but if they're accustomed to one provider it's going to be easier for that provider to expand into long form content than for YouTube to persuade them to switch or use a second provider. So YouTube feels it has to move into short form in order to ensure long term maintenance and growth of its user base.
My personal astrological projection is that none of the astrologers who criticised the original study, designed the new survey, or participated in the experiment will accept the validity of its results.
It doesn't really, at least not to a great extent. Most people seeking advice from astrologers didn't start because of science nor will they stop because of science.
I really recommend reading any of David Foster Wallace's essays about tennis. The book "String Theory" collects all his writing on the subject. He was a lifelong fan of the sport, but also a nationally ranked junior player and he's able to provide exceptional insight in the insane dedication (as well as talent) needed to reach even the lowest rungs of the competitive tennis world, and what a grind the tour can be for lower ranked professionals.
There’s a really fun YouTube series where a virtually no name ex-NBA player challenges top amateurs to 1 on 1. It’s not even close. Brian Scalabrine is his name and his famous quote is “I’m way closer to Lebron than you are to me.”
The dedication to become a top .0001% athlete is absolutely nuts and beyond that is uncomprehendable.
I believe the origin of Scalabrines channel was from people who absolutely grilled his performance while he was pro. He came out and said "If you think I suck so much, come 1v1 me." He then promptly stomped his detractors on the court
0.0001% is one in a million. Or within top 7000 rank out of 7 billion humans globally. Or about 0.001% or one in a 100k out of the 700-1000 million in 20-30 age group.
There are about 70000 pro athletes in the world. So only 1 in a 10000 or 0.01% to be a pro athlete when you are in the age group.
Takes less than a year of recreational devotion for a smart healthy person to get into top 1% globally. getting into 0.01% is obviously more competitive and requires you to give up other things.
Yeah that series is great. And you can tell sometimes he'll play against someone who has a good move or something that works for about 12 seconds before he adjusts/remembers how to deal with it.
I felt slightly unhinged when I instinctively control F'd for "infinite" upon seeing this headline for no particular reason, glad to find this comment.
https://www.london.gov.uk/programmes-strategies/environment-...
The main takeaway is that yes, urban air quality (including fine particulate matter) has improved massively over time, but most of it had little to do with road traffic, as for decades it wasn't a significant contributor to the overall mix. The important change was the move away from burning solid fuels like coal for household heating and in power stations within cities, to using gas and electricity with larger, out-of-town power stations.
As other sources have declined, road traffic has indeed become the largest contribution to urban air pollution, but even here there has been progress. Fine particulate emissions have continued to decline as car manufacturers have adapted to more stringent regulation (cheating scandals notwithstanding). A bigger problem now is higher non-exhaust emissions caused by larger and heavier vehicles. This is something else that will need to be solved via regulation. Other policies like Low Traffic Neighbourhoods can also help to restrict the worst pollution to major roads and away from where most people live.
Urban air quality is never going to be as good as that in the countryside, but it's not true to believe that no progress has been made, and that it's simply been a switch in the type of pollution.