I wonder if just like Brits and French, Unitedstaters emigrating elsewhere will call themselves “expats” instead of immigrants.

We, white people of the west, can go anywhere in the world for work, affordability and/or safety without considering ourselves immigrants.

Many years ago I was chatting with someone from Malmö. He was complaining how immigrants were “taking over his city”. But when I mentioned that I, a Canadian, would also like to move to Sweden, he told me it would be fine, that he would not consider me “an immigrant” because I’m from the west.

Anyway, I understand why anyone would want to leave. It’s just that it seems the vocabulary used is different for different people.

Cars make people miserable.

AFAIK the former prince Andrew was arrested in relation to national secrets he was giving to Epstein, not because of the pedo stuff.

Yes but I’m not living near an expressway (anymore). Most people also don’t. AFAIK most people living in an urban environment will be near a low speed street. So as mentioned, I’m in my apartment with the windows open and can now hear the the noises of electric cars’ pedestrian warning systems when they pass in front. Or I’m walking along a slow street to go to the grocery and of all the cars on that street, only the electric one can be heard. Even when I have my headphones on.

Sure, electric cars are as noisy as cars with internal combustion engines at high speed. But what I’m specifically concerned about is how much more noisy those things make in an urban environment when at low speed.

Electric car advocates are often saying those are much quieter than cars with internal combustion engines, and that it’s a positive. That electric cars will make our urban environments much more relaxed and quiet. However, because of all those pedestrian warning systems making different types of noises at different volumes and frequencies, they often end up noisier than cars burning gas.

I never had the displeasure to hear one yet. But as my country just opened up to Chinese electric cars, I guess it won’t be long before there’s one more annoying sound in our urban environment.

Star Trek

So we’re just spreading trash in the environment and feeling good about it because it can be reused by other animals?

This just made me look up and learn about the environmental impact of tennis balls.

Every year, an estimated 300 million tennis balls are manufactured globally, and most of them end up in landfills. The rubber core is pressurized with air or nitrogen to give the ball its signature bounce. However, rubber itself is a challenging material to recycle, especially when combined with pressurization and other materials. The felt covering is partially synthetic (nylon), which contributes to the microplastic pollution problem. Synthetic fibers shed during play, adding to global plastic waste.

I’m going to add Sony to this list.

And IRC now has web clients that can display inline images, upload them on a channel, preview URLs, push notifications, keep history, and more.

I use The Lounge but there is also Convos and a few others.

To me this is defending motonormativity.

I also walk and bike at night, sometimes on multiuse paths with pedestrians, dog walkers and cyclists. Dogs don’t have lights and are sometimes unpredictable. You know what I do when I’m cycling on a shared path, instead of expecting everyone to flash like a christmas tree? I slow down! This way I can react before hitting a pedestrian or a dog. I’m the one going much faster than them. I’m the one that has to be careful.

Once I nearly got hit by a truck passing me on a countryside road. It was day time but it was also raining. I was wearing a bright orange t-shirt. But apparently I wasn’t visible enough?! In all the cases. I’m sure it was my fault for existing and not taking all the necessary precautions to make sure I can be seen from space and avoid getting hit.

I don’t carry reflective hardware and flashing lights with me just in case I have to walk somewhere in the dark. Sometimes I’m walking a few km in my sister’s town in the dark or in the rain. Sometimes I’m walking in another city, or country. I’m not carrying “safety equipment” with me everywhere I go just because some idiot motorists wants to go the speed limit in the dark without regard to other road users, or animals. Whatever happens, it will always be my fault for being there outside of a car anyway. Did I have headphones on? Maybe I was wearing dark makeup? I came out of nowhere! Or maybe I was not walking or cycling at the right place or at the right time.

Motorists are the one that drive a multi ton lethal vehicle, sometimes in the dark, and everyone not in one is expected to take precautions against them.

Motonormativity.

EDIT: Wear reflective gear if you want to. It’s not a bad idea. But it SHOULD NOT be expected.

Deer, raccoons, and the billion animals killed every year should also do more to be visible.

I’m a man and don’t like most scents of the deodorants/antiperspirants “for men”, so I just use one “for women”. I smell fruity instead of some agressive chemical fragrance.

I’m just pointing out that cheaper energy means people tend to use more. I’m very much for renewable energy and against AI. Just that we also need to find ways to be much more efficient with it. I live in a place with “cheap” renewable energy and we use more per capita than most of the rest of the world. So it’s just something to keep in mind. I’m saying it’s excellent to have renewable energy, it’s excellent to have it as cheap as possible, but it can also lead to waste and pollution in other ways.

You don’t have to make a false dichotomy where it’s either one or the other.

EDIT: Just to give you an example. People know here that our energy is “renewable” and cheap. So when we’re asked to reduce usage during peaks, there’s a few people yelling at the top of their lungs that we just have to build more dams, flood more land, and that “water will always flow in the turbines anyway”.

It’s a natural phenomenon but AFAIK it can be accentuated or accelerated by the rise of the sea level, or the passage of boats and vessels. It can be entirely normal, but it can also be provoked or worsened by other factors. And that’s why we document and do some research about it?!

I’m not a climate scientist but luckily the Wikipedia’s article on the Streisand effect has a link to coastal erosion if you want to know more.

It’s Barbara Streisand’s.

The term was coined in 2005 by Mike Masnick of Techdirt after Barbra Streisand attempted to suppress the publication of a photograph by Kenneth Adelman showing her clifftop residence in Malibu, taken to document coastal erosion in California.

Have you read it? Translated or in French? Because this is a list of facts, with a conclusion addressing what you are pointing out. It’s literally from the government of the province.

Le Québec, avec son climat hivernal rigoureux, connaît des besoins élevés en puissance électrique lors de périodes de grand froid, alors que toute la population doit se chauffer simultanément. Ces épisodes, appelés périodes de pointe de puissance, ne durent que quelques heures par année, mais exercent une pression sur le réseau.

Translated: The province of Québec, with its cold climate, has high energetic needs during the peaks of extreme cold periods, because the whole population has to heat their homes at the same time. Those periods, called power peaks, are only lasting for a few hours every year, but are putting pressure on the network.

Also, those places have summer. Most of the population in Québec and Norway don’t live in an arctic tundra.

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If the electricity bill would be lower people would use more energy and switch to electric cars real fast. I’m sure some people would not change their habits, but I’m inclined to think a lot of people would just use more and care a bit less about trying to use it as efficiently as possible.

Just take cars as an example. Everyone wants low gas prices, but when gas prices are low, people are buying bigger cars that consumes more gas/energy. Another example are places with renewable energy powering the grid, having cheaper electricity, but also ending up using more per person.

The province of Québec is one of the biggest consumer of electricity per inhabitant in the world, behind Iceland and Norway. Source in French.

Those places have super high percentages of cheap renewable energy being generated, but they also consume much more per inhabitant. Sure, if we cover the earth in solar panels, reservoirs, tap geothermal, and have enough energy to waste for everybody, and every manufacture. But this takes resources, space, batteries, and ends up polluting too. The less we need, the better it is for everyone.

I’m not saying we don’t need renewable nor deserve lower bills. Just that the actual system of consumption cannot only be reduced to “more cheap renewable energy”. I’m in Québec and energy is mostly renewable and relatively cheap here. But we also can’t just continue to build giant reservoirs visible from space to quench our insatiable appetite for electricity. We’ll have to learn to use less energy too; be more efficient with what we have. Not just convert everything to renewable and call it a day.

Fuck cars. I’m car free and glad to be. My bike doesn’t spy on me. And I don’t really fancy getting an e-bike that requires an app just to work. The only thing spying on me is my Android phone.