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Sydin posted:The problem is a cultural one. You have to change the image that comes up in most peoples' heads when you say the word "farmer" from the idealized hardworking, rural farmer working his little plot of land from dusk till dawn to the more modern machine run mega farm owned by big agribusiness. That's not an easy thing to do, for a few reasons: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMpZ0TGjbWE
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Sep 8, 2015 06:53
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I hated that loving commercial when it first aired and still hate it today. My grandparents own a shitton of land in a rural area in California. Them and most of their neighbors leave it undeveloped because it would cost them a fortune to actually commercially farm. They do have a tiny portion tilled for their own vegetables, but other than that, my grandfather spends most of his time mowing down the dead grass so it wont catch fire. They do have a neighbor who commercially farms, but his land looks like an industrial plant than a farm. It's why I hate it when people talk about farmers; they still think they look like my grandparents struggling to make a living when real farmers in fact are probably better off than the regular population, exploiting laws and loopholes just like their fatcat brothers on Wall Street.
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Sep 8, 2015 15:47
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Hitlers Gay Secret posted:I hated that loving commercial when it first aired and still hate it today. That commercial is like something out of They Live 
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Sep 8, 2015 15:56
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Hitlers Gay Secret posted:I hated that loving commercial when it first aired and still hate it today. I wonder if it's a uniquely american problem coming out of the last century. I mean, most of history, it's always been Landowners/Serfdom, and we're sort of moving back towards that. You own a bunch of land, then hire out undocumented workers, farmhands, etc.. to do the actual labor, and tell them how lucky they are for the privilege to scoop up pig poo or pick fruit for 10 hours a day. And guldurn it, they should be thankful to make so little.
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Sep 8, 2015 18:27
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that only is fun and more Feudal'esque if you can punish/execute your serfs whenever you feel like it too.
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Sep 8, 2015 18:45
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Klaus88 posted:That commercial is like something out of They Live 
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Sep 9, 2015 02:31
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California State Assembly finally approved Right To Die legislation. It now moves to the Senate where it's expected to pass.
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Sep 9, 2015 23:02
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^^ Good news. In bad news, the Haggen saga continues: http://www.ksby.com/story/29991782/haggen-grocery-store-chain-files-for-bankruptcy
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Sep 9, 2015 23:59
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In non-news news, the bay area has not built enough housing:quote:These targets were based on assumptions rooted in a time that pre-dated the Great Recession and subsequent recovery. The bill helped set a regional housing target of approximately 660,000 units that needed to be built in the region by the year 2030. The Bay Area Council saw that need closer to one million units, and it unsuccessfully fought for 900,000 units. tl;dr there was a sizable shortfall of housing even assuming # of new jobs went according to plan, and we got 3x as many jobs as expected (as the tech industry has been doing crazy good).
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Sep 10, 2015 00:18
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Score a win for the oil industry. The petroleum reduction provision in SB 350 just got removed. http://www.capradio.org/articles/2015/09/09/vehicle-petroleum-mandate-out-of-climate-bill/#.VfDGuorsYeM.twitter quote:
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Sep 10, 2015 02:07
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Well, that sucks. Maybe one day we'll get some better legislation in before its even more too late than it already is.
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Sep 10, 2015 05:33
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In happier news though the other two provisions of SB 350 just passed the legislature and are on it's way to Jerry Brown's desk for his signature 
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Sep 12, 2015 08:14
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California is likely to become the second state to automatically register voters.
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Sep 14, 2015 17:29
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To be honest I don't see how California could possibly cut its use of vehicle fuel by 50% in 15 years. Not only would Californians have to give up almost all their non-Prius cars they own right now, vehicle manufacturers would have to start selling cars with 50% better mileage today. Or I guess the idea is that we'd replace 50% of the cars on the road each day with mass transit? Again I don't see that being remotely feasible in a 15 year timeframe.
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Sep 14, 2015 17:35
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Most people definitely do not keep cars anywhere close to 15 years. Fuel efficiency is going to continue to go up, and electric vehicles are going to continue to get better and cheaper. 50% is definitely still an extremely ambitious goal, but it's not completely unreachable. Gains in efficiency over the past couple decades have been crazy. The new Camaro is getting the same performance out of a 2-liter turbo that the 90's ones did from a huge V8. It's not unreasonable to expect this trend to continue, and for smaller engines to become the norm in most vehicles. If we see carbon fiber become more affordable within the next decade, too, that will make a huge dent as well - vehicle weight could drop dramatically. Dr. Eldarion fucked around with this message at 17:48 on Sep 14, 2015 |
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Sep 14, 2015 17:42
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ComradeCosmobot posted:California is likely to become the second state to automatically register voters. I've had non-american friends be called into Jury Duty in California... I wonder if they'll be registered to vote too.
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Sep 14, 2015 17:43
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ComradeCosmobot posted:California is likely to become the second state to automatically register voters. It's fun seeing all the folks that think this is some sort of sinister plot to register an army of illegals to vote.
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Sep 14, 2015 21:25
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I also know a non-citizen (green card, with a legal driver's license) who's gotten a jury summons. He got it BECAUSE he has a license. So to deal with this:quote:If the California bill becomes law, then starting in 2016, every adult citizen in the state who gets a driver's license, renews a license, gets a state identification card, or fills out a change of address form with the Department of Motor Vehicles will be registered to vote — unless he or she declines to be registered. Presumably there's a "citizen? y/n" box somewhere on the reg forms and only those people will get registered. And then all of the illegals who get drivers licenses in communist CA will obviously risk jail (probably?) by lying and checking yes. Then they'll vote to give themselves more government benefits! And we'll be ruined!
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Sep 14, 2015 21:42
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Wrong statistic. People buy and drive used cars. Most cars sold today will still be on the road in 15 years, albeit with different owners than the ones that purchased them new. An average car sold today can go 300,000 miles, which is quite a bit better than average cars sold just 20 years ago. The average fleet fuel economy will rise (and has been rising for a decade) but 50% is too fast for a 15 year span. quote:Gains in efficiency over the past couple decades have been crazy. The new Camaro is getting the same performance out of a 2-liter turbo that the 90's ones did from a huge V8. It's not unreasonable to expect this trend to continue, and for smaller engines to become the norm in most vehicles. If we see carbon fiber become more affordable within the next decade, too, that will make a huge dent as well - vehicle weight could drop dramatically. Actually, the gains aren't as great as you might think. Cars have been getting heavier, as we load them down with more safety equipment - that's why Honda could make a conventional-gas-engine 50mpg car in the 80s that it couldn't possibly make today. And, fuel economy as represented by CAFE or EPA gas mileage numbers isn't real-world fuel economy; at best, it's a tool for comparing economy between other vehicles of same-year manufacture, but manufacturers are so good at designing cars to optimize CAFE/EPA numbers that comparing today's estimated mileage to that of cars a decade or two ago doesn't work either. It's also a bit disingenuous to compare a gas-guzzling Camaro V8 - basically the epitome of wasting fuel for not much gain in performance but lots of big gurgling noises - to a modern Camaro with variable-valve timing and fuel injection specifically designed to help the company bring up its fleet average fuel economy numbers. A much more typical comparison would be to look at what most people commute in right now - sedans and SUVs - and try to imagine how you'd get both of those vehicle classes to improve economy by 50%. SUVs are heavy and will continue to be heavy for 15 years, and sedans are already highly optimized for good fuel economy and will continue to be for 15 years. Hybrids are increasingly common but a hybrid getting 50MPG isn't twice as fuel efficient as a typical Honda or Toyota sedan getting 35. I've no doubt CA's vehicles will continue to improve in fuel economy, although with gas prices very low right now, consumers are not being pushed economically to choose more expensive hybrids vs. their conventional-engined competitors in the same vehicle class. And I'm definitely in favor of California continuing to lead the country in forcing manufacturers to make cars with increasingly good fuel economy. 50% in 15 years is a crazy pipe dream. It's so unachievable that passing a law demanding it is effectively just imposing whatever penalties are written into the law, onto all of the vehicle manufacturers, inevitably.
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Sep 14, 2015 22:03
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50% in 15 years does sound too aggressive, but I think 25% in 15 years could be doable between fuel efficiency improvements (including electric cars) and transit/bike improvements.
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Sep 14, 2015 23:17
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I got a new car two months ago and so far I've been matching the combined city/highway rating or even exceeding it slightly, but I came up 1 MPG short on pure highway driving. My car before that, I fell square in the middle (city 20 mpg, highway 26 mpg; I averaged about 22-23 most of the time.)
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Sep 14, 2015 23:55
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ComradeCosmobot posted:California is likely to become the second state to automatically register voters. I believe there's already a federal law that requires the ability to register to vote at the DMV, it's just not mandatory. This still doesn't solve the issue of people needing to go out and do something in order to register to vote.
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Sep 15, 2015 00:10
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Leperflesh posted:To be honest I don't see how California could possibly cut its use of vehicle fuel by 50% in 15 years. Not only would Californians have to give up almost all their non-Prius cars they own right now, vehicle manufacturers would have to start selling cars with 50% better mileage today. Or I guess the idea is that we'd replace 50% of the cars on the road each day with mass transit? Again I don't see that being remotely feasible in a 15 year timeframe. I think that MPG is only part of the solution. If people could afford or have incetive to live closer to their jobs, then overall car usage would go down and everyone could still hang onto their 1995 tacoma. A cash for clunkers type program would address the problem directly, but better public transit, more pedestrian and bicycle accessibility, and more affordable housing in the cities would also help. As for the percentage, I couldn't say how realistic 50% reduction in 15 years is but it doesn't hurt to be ambitious in this case. I'm mostly disappointed that oil lobbyists have so much influence, and that the politicians are throwing their hands up in response to them. California has been largely successful in cutting water usage during the drought through peer pressure and PSAs. If only we could do the same with fossil fuels.
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Sep 15, 2015 00:23
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computer parts posted:I believe there's already a federal law that requires the ability to register to vote at the DMV, it's just not mandatory. This still doesn't solve the issue of people needing to go out and do something in order to register to vote. You can register online! http://registertovote.ca.gov/ However, same day registration would be good and automatic registration would be even better.
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Sep 15, 2015 00:26
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The Wiggly Wizard posted:I think that MPG is only part of the solution. If people could afford or have incetive to live closer to their jobs, then overall car usage would go down and everyone could still hang onto their 1995 tacoma. People can't live closer to their jobs without a massive change in how we develop and re-develop inner cities, combined with a massive change in the general direction of where new commercial and industrial space is being developed. The thrust of the last 30 years has been expansion of suburbs and satellite-cities. Public transit definitely needs improvement, but without re-centralizing employment centers, adding enormous amounts of housing to inner city areas, and changing the way the american worker thinks about how they want to live and where they want to raise families, public transportation is inefficient and expensive. Cash for clunkers is terrible. Up front, it can get the oldest (and therefore most polluting) cars off the road. But longer-term, it absolutely murders the market for used cars under $2-3k, which is where poor people find cars they can afford to drive. After the last program ran, it started to get more or less impossible to find a reasonably-running sub-$3k car that didn't immediately need $3k of work done on it. You can't just crush all the oldest cars without addressing the needs of the lowest-income segment for reliable transportation, particularly in areas where public transportation is inadequate for them. quote:I'm mostly disappointed that oil lobbyists have so much influence, and that the politicians are throwing their hands up in response to them. Oh, I agree with you. Politicians seem to be really bad at writing good regulations, though. In this case, it seems to me it was really poorly (or not at all) thought out rules, being heavily lobbied against by a powerful monied interest. I think part of the reason it died was because the rules were also clearly not based on any sort of research or evaluation that could show exactly how - using real-world numbers - a 50% reduction could be remotely achievable. You can't just hand-wave new technology into existence, and you also can't just ignore the 13 million cars already on the road in California. The Wiggly Wizard posted:You can register online! Best of all would be elections held on Saturdays. Forcing people to try to get home, feed their kids, and get to a polling station before they close at (if I remember right) 8pm on election night sucks. There's a lot of reasons why old and retired people vote in disproportionately larger numbers than working-age people, but weekday elections is one of them.
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Sep 15, 2015 00:45
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Leperflesh posted:50% in 15 years is a crazy pipe dream. It's so unachievable that passing a law demanding it is effectively just imposing whatever penalties are written into the law, onto all of the vehicle manufacturers, inevitably. Transportation fuels are a much tougher thing to substitute than fossil fuels used for electricity generation. To switch to "green" electricity, it only requires paying a little bit more (or maybe even less depending on the location) but paying more is something we know how to do. Reducing the use of transportation fuels, on the other hand, requires people to make major changes in their daily behavior. Electric cars are affordable to such a small percentage of the population and even new, high MPG cars are out of reach of many Californians. I agree with the posted above, that better mileage is only part of the solution. I think it would take a large increase in gasoline prices sustained over a long period of time in order to get people to come around to driving less and biking more.
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Sep 15, 2015 01:43
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Saint Fu posted:Were the potential penalties under consideration ever released? I'd be interested to see how they planned to achieve it. quote:I think it would take a large increase in gasoline prices sustained over a long period of time in order to get people to come around to driving less and biking more. There's only ~200 miles of protected bike lanes in the whole country, and even those are a recent development. By comparison, there are about 950,000 lane-miles of non-local urban roads/highways. Cicero fucked around with this message at 01:52 on Sep 15, 2015 |
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Sep 15, 2015 01:46
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Cicero posted:That would help, but what would help even more is having non-terrible bike infrastructure. Bike lanes in the US are largely jokes. A strip of paint on the ground next to cars going 30+ mph isn't going to make grandma feel comfortable biking around with a grandkid strapped to the bike. You need protected bike lanes all over the place and lower speed limits in residential areas to make a difference. Countries that actually do this have high bike share rates.
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Sep 15, 2015 09:35
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I don't know why biking is the magic replacement for cars other than "oh well it's cheaper to set up in theory".
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Sep 15, 2015 12:25
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Maybe not replacement, but how many cars spend their life making trips mostly 5 miles or less? It is not an end all solution, but easy to navigate bike routes that go some place usefull and don't involve playing chicken with cars will help*. For replacement we would need a master plan involving long haul and last mile transit that sadly is not going to happen in our lifetimes... Or ever. E:While visiting Copenhagen I saw that a lot of families had one of these for errands: http://www.christianiabikes.com/en/ *I have no data beyond anecdotes to back up anything I am saying CopperHound fucked around with this message at 13:31 on Sep 15, 2015 |
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Sep 15, 2015 13:19
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CopperHound posted:Maybe not replacement, but how many cars spend their life making trips mostly 5 miles or less? It is not an end all solution, but easy to navigate bike routes that go some place usefull and don't involve playing chicken with cars will help*. For replacement we would need a master plan involving long haul and last mile transit that sadly is not going to happen in our lifetimes... Or ever. <5 miles, probably not that many just due to the density of car heavy regions. One possible solution is the Electric Drive which is a tiny electric car. It only has a range of ~70 miles so you can't have gigantic commutes but it's still more familiar to car owners, and it is relatively cheap (~$25k before tax rebates).
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Sep 15, 2015 13:36
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Leperflesh posted:try to imagine how you'd get both of those vehicle classes to improve economy by 50%. SUVs are heavy and will continue to be heavy for 15 years, and sedans are already highly optimized for good fuel economy and will continue to be for 15 years. The obvious answer is that the usage of SUVs and sedans are gonna go away or at least be severely curtailed.
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Sep 15, 2015 16:23
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Biking replacing cars is stupid because I'm not going to ride a bike to the grocery store to buy a shopping cart full of groceries and attempt to balance them on two wheels back home.
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Sep 15, 2015 16:28
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Hitlers Gay Secret posted:Biking replacing cars is stupid because I'm not going to ride a bike to the grocery store to buy a shopping cart full of groceries and attempt to balance them on two wheels back home. This is why we don't deserve anything better than what we have.
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Sep 15, 2015 16:45
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I feel like Americans just don't know what they're missing. If you can't travel internationally, at least treat yourself to "how cycling can be" by checking out these Dutch videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=user?markenlei When I was there, we got groceries by bicycle every couple days. Every meal was fresh, and we carried a bag on each side of the cargo rack. Like the people in these videos, we didn't worry about safety, and I always felt I was moving in the fastest, best way to get where I was going. For intercity, the trains took us where we needed to be. Edit: This one in particular is pertinent to the discussion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2THe_10dYs Dalrain fucked around with this message at 16:59 on Sep 15, 2015 |
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Sep 15, 2015 16:54
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ok but what if im fat
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Sep 15, 2015 17:35
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Dalrain posted:I feel like Americans just don't know what they're missing. If you can't travel internationally, at least treat yourself to "how cycling can be" by checking out these Dutch videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=user?markenlei We live in a Wal*Mart country. The vast majority of people buy in bulk to save money. You are talking about a lifestyle that is much more expensive than the American standard. Europe is far more densely concentrated around city centers, and those city centers are more oriented towards small-scale retail. Most Americans are pretty ignorant of how people live in other countries, that's very true and a big issue for us culturally and politically... but bicycles are a sideshow. Eliminating the use of big SUVs in favor of more efficient people transport (like minivans and wagons), improving light rail and commuter rail options, gradually shifting employment centers back towards concentrated city centers (which can be better served by public transport), an increase in telecommuting, gradually improving fuel economy for all vehicles, gradually falling cost of hybrid and electric vehicles (especially on the used market), and - most achievable of all - gradually shifting to non-fossil-fuel electricity generation. That's how we're going to resolve the greenhouse gas crisis and reverse climate change... if we're going to to it at all. I'm all for encouraging bicycle use but in America, no realistic plan produces more than a drop in the very large bucket of routine daily transportation for the vast majority.
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Sep 15, 2015 17:44
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It's worth pointing out that Holland is flat. That means grandmas don't have to go up 30-degree hills with their sacks of groceries. It is also much more thickly settled than much of the U.S. People in, say, Atlanta outer-ring suburbs, don't live near a supermarket, thanks to zoning. They don't live near their work thanks to urban sprawl. Most American cities as of 2015 are designed for long-distance travel with cars. It's not as straightforward as "build protected bike lanes and they will come". There is also the issue of winter travel. Until global warming does away with snowstorms, a slushy Tahoe street turned to glare ice is more unsafe for a bike than for a much-heavier car. A car is much, much more comfortable for travelling through a pelting (assuming El Nino does its thing) California winter rainstorm. tl;dr: you have to consider the ways in which cars are an adaptive response to the varied American landscape and climates, including the varied Californian landscape and climates.
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Sep 15, 2015 17:46
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Dalrain posted:Edit: This one in particular is pertinent to the discussion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2THe_10dYs The thing I like about this video, is he clearly points out the 'racing type' and 'relaxed type' cycling. American roads breed a very hyper-aggressive type of cyclist for pretty obvious reasons, and those type of people can be kind of off-putting to your non-cyclist. Which is probably why people react so poorly to cyclist people in general. I think when you mention increasing bicycles on the road, people just imagine a sea of angry lycra dudes bolting through traffic instead of casual cyclists.
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Sep 15, 2015 17:55
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Hitlers Gay Secret posted:Biking replacing cars is stupid because I'm not going to ride a bike to the grocery store to buy a shopping cart full of groceries and attempt to balance them on two wheels back home. It won't work if you've got more than two bags, but they do make panniers for a reason. Edit: Won't work in some of the cases mentioned above either (buying in bulk, avoiding weather) but it's not like there aren't ways to bring groceries home in some cases. ComradeCosmobot fucked around with this message at 17:59 on Sep 15, 2015 |
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Sep 15, 2015 17:56
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