Imagine the power of combining this tosser initiative with the revenue sharing aspect of New York’s vehicle idling program. Save the planet and get paid all at the same time.

I’m not sure the builder profits much more by using engineered timber given its expense compared to concrete. Given the environmental cost of building with concrete, it’s important to find alternative materials.

Even in your anecdote, it’s not as though the addition of a single floor was the cause of the fire, just like the material type wasn’t. It’s much easier for an incomplete building to go up in flames than a completed and occupied one.

Technology isn’t always a solution, but it’s not like pressurized stairwells, automatic hallway segmentation, or even sprinkler systems are things of science fiction. These are all pretty established techniques of fire control.

In terms of prevention, given the number one cause of fires in homes and buildings is in the kitchen, the easiest solution is opting out of the methane infrastructure in new projects. Though there’s a rather large industry that pushes for this practice to continue, so that’s a difficult thing to do.

Also, to bring it back to the topic relevant to this post, I’m not advocating to make escape harder in a burning building by eliminating stairwells. My point is precisely what’s in the content of the post - single stairwell buildings in other areas don’t have people on the upper floors dying hand over foot because they had to descend an extra flight or two.

If it was harder, I’m sure we would have heard about the trend of every building seven levels and up having dead bodies pile up in the stairwell after someone tried to flambé a quail.

While it isn’t clinical, I think the practice of building beyond a few levels with a single egress point in so many other countries is sufficient enough evidence to justify changing this building standard.

The multiple references to ‘fire safety organizations’ read to me like ‘fire departments’. Fire departments across North America already dictate what our roads (and therefore cities) look like. Seems like a logical leap they would also impose control over the corridors within buildings too.

I’ve seen some of the photos of people driving American-sized pickup trucks around Europe and I hope they get outlawed. Unfortunately, Europe and Asia do have so many more options - sometimes even by American companies much to my annoyance.

I occasionally look into getting a Kei car of some sort. Though it’s not really practical for me. Maybe one day, by the time a sub five inch flagship phone is developed perhaps.

Small vehicle sales represent less than a fifth of the market. Major manufacturers have ceased production of sedans and hatchbacks in favour of larger platform SUVs and pickup trucks.

I realise that vehicles aren’t really the focus here, but the smartphone market isn’t too dissimilar in certain ways. The major manufacturers have discontinued their smaller for factor devices citing ‘sales’, but those devices cost nearly what a larger one did so it’s reasonable that consumers would opt for the bigger screen, especially when it’s typically coupled with a larger battery and superior camera.

Also similar between these two markets, if you look overseas, or at older used models, or make any of a variety of compromises, you can find something if you’re determined. Or you don’t find something and just deal with the giant phone that sticks half out your pocket and you can’t sit down without removing it.

Personally, I’m enjoying watching the advances in folding phones. They are approaching Westworld standards pretty quick. Trouble of course will be when they get there, it’ll cost the same as a car and at that point it better unfold some wheels too.

Similar to vehicles, smaller phones probably would sell just fine.

The issue would be that not many people would buy a phone 2/3 the size unless it was also 2/3 the price. Even if the manufacturing of such a device was 2/3 the cost (it wouldn’t be), the bottom line for the manufacturer would be same number of devices sold, but 1/3 less money.

Companies don’t do less money.

Too bad burgers outpaced inflation then. It’d be nice to have a $1.50 option commonly available.

I agree about everything in your first point. I hadn’t previously considered that the novelty of a new technology would necessarily increase have disproportionately high initial cost.

That said, I feel like any calculation of cost against how many hours played is entirely subjective. Your suggestion of $0.75 / entertainment hour is quite different than what I consider ideal. Games will vary genre to genre, person to person, platform to platform.

A person with limited time might exclusively play shorter titles, or maybe just multiplayer titles. A person with significant free time might spent hundreds of hours replaying an RPG.

To be incredibly broad, I would say that games shouldn’t cost more per entertainment hour than half of what any given person earns at their job - but even that is quite subjective and should be taken with salt.

You make a good point, and I agree. I wasn’t thinking that it was the only thing on the market and therefore the price is whatever a new technology costs.

I tend to think of video games - being a form of entertainment - as a great way to be entertained while also being an incredibly low cost option for the amount of time I spend enjoying them.

Buying a $600 console just to enjoy a single $60 title is an extreme example but to me, if that game provides 100 hours of playtime, that seems well worth it. Cheaper than going to a theatre or most other forms of entertainment.

To be sure, I don’t do this, but I’ve always viewed gaming through a $/h lens, and could never understand why so many people saw it as a waste of time. That’s what I was thinking when I wrote that comment earlier - it seems to me that you get more playtime with some RPG from this decade than you would playing Pac-Man. Though perhaps I feel that way because games like Pac-Man don’t appeal to me.

Thinking about it, your point might be valid again, with the Atari being a new technology, people were likely to sink far more hours into a title than they might do with modern games since we have so many to choose from now. I’ve never thought about it that way. Thanks for pointing this out.

The Atari 2600 released for $190 in 1977. Or about $1000 today.

The best selling title, Pac-Man released for $28 in 1982. Or about $95 today.

Compared to so much else that has risen dramatically over time, vastly outpacing video games comparatively, I think it’s a bit hard to argue with the value proposition of modern titles.

A bacon egg vehicle?

That comment is a bad take to be sure, but it isn’t really about eliminating every vehicle in existence. We’d still need individual vehicles to serve for delivery and emergency services, as well as a bunch of other stuff.

The main thought is just that it’s a bit silly to have half the population driving a two tonne vehicle to the grocery store. There’s already communities where golf carts are used instead of cars.

The whole concept of ripping out every road and installing solar tramways is just as much a nonsensical extreme not worth taking seriously as ‘what do I do if I order a computer and I work from home’. I get your use of the example though, it is the equivalent counterpoint.

I did of course mean ecologically friendly and not economically friendly.

That said - less than ten times the price to help the environment and of course make the country smell like a pancake breakfast? Sign me up!

They run on maple syrup though, which means they’re eco friendly.

Again, you repeat the same words as the Americans did some hundred years ago when Hitler was rising to power.

I hope for the sake of your neighbours that you are correct and that the Nazism of the west does not bleed beyond the borders of the United States.

Do check in four years down the line. Best of luck.

Given the noise Musk has been making surrounding the political landscape in Germany, the United Kingdom, and lately Canada, it stands to reason that the richest person on the planet is actively trying to make the world revolve around him.

Sentiment similar to yours was undoubtedly stated a century ago throughout Europe; ‘You overestimate the impact Germany has on the citizenry outside of it.’ Look where that attitude got the world, and here you are saying the same thing.

Certainly not an expert in the field here, but I’m not sure there’s much environmental benefit from laundry bags of that sort, given the collected microplastics optimistically end up - Germany excluded - collated in your local landfill.

Guppyfriend even recommends sealing them in a container for disposal to ensure they don’t blow around during waste collection and transport. This assumes of course that you can successfully transfer microplastic fibres from a large bag into a small container without spillage, but that’s a matter separate from my conjecture.

While I don’t think any particular company that makes similar bags is purposefully guilty of this, the marketing strategy used to promote these as environmentally responsible products just smells like greenwashing to me.

The ones I’ve had are also made of synthetic materials, and so eventually break down and begin releasing their own fibres.

Frankly, the true environmental benefit I see is something I’ve never seen advertised: I can wash groups clothes I want kept from intermingling in the same load and therefore run the machine half as often.

That’s understandable. I imagine a large section of the user base doesn’t navigate to a specific community to look through posts, and instead just skip through the main feed. I didn’t realise the community until you pointed it out.

While I agree with your sentiment that no one wants to be so bombarded with foreign politics, at the very least the joke that user made was in keeping with the theme of the meme.

Regarding your final question, depending on your method of consuming this content, you may be able to entirely block comments by setting a blacklist of words, perhaps including ‘Republican’ in this case. The same I know is true on most applications for post titles, but I’m just assuming here the same is applicable to comments.

Either way, best wishes with the situation in the fatherland, I do hope to visit some day.

If the word ‘Republican’ were omitted, that comment could be applicable in most countries on the planet.

It’s kind of nitpicking anyway, don’t you think? Almost as nitpicky as pointing out when the country of the United States is referred to by the name of the continent it shares with other nations.