Prepare for Change

  The early "deprogammers" would persuade someone to leave a cult, then consider their job done and go on to the next person. But in fact, that was only the beginning of the now ex-cult member's road to recovery. Similarly, many rebellions in countries would depose their lousy dictator, and think that's what needed to be done, so now we can rejoice and relax. Again, that was really only the beginning of repairing the country. Humans seem to have this flaw where they think that once the first step of something is done, they can sit back and relax. In fact, the task has really just begun.   "Revolution, once its makers pluck up the courage, is the easy part. It is what follows that is so hard... Overnight, people who weren't allowed to decide anything their whole lives have to decide everything. It is not a learning curve, it is a sheer cliff." [The New Middle East: The World After the Arab Spring, by Paul Danahar, p. 49]

 "A secret US diplomatic cable sent in late 2008 said: Israeli officials have confirmed to Embassy officials on multiple occasions that they intend to keep the Gazan economy functioning at the lowest level possible consistent with avoiding a humanitarian crisis... As part of their overall embargo plan against Gaza.  Israeli officials have confirmed... on multiple occasions that they intend to keep the Gazan economy on the brink of collapse without quite pushing it over the edge." [The New Middle East: The World After The Arab Spring, by Paul Danahar, p. 161]   Israel's modern army CAN avoid more civilian deaths and injuries.  They just don't care.

https://alaskapublic.org/2023/12/07/key-findings-released-in-kenya-universal-basic-income-experiment/   "Their findings cover the first two years of the effort and compare the outcomes for about 5,000 people who got the monthly payments to nearly 12,000 others in a control group who got no money. But, just as significantly, the researchers also compared the recipients to people in two other categories: nearly 9,000 who received the monthly income for just two years, without the promise of another decade of payments afterward; and another roughly 9,000 people who got that same two years’ worth of income but in a lump-sum payment." Conclusions so far:  1. Giving cash aid in a lump sum has some major advantages over parceling it out. 2. Lump sums are so useful that even those who didn’t get them have banded together to create their own version. 3. Making the benefit ‘universal’ – by paying every adult in the village – seems to have greatly increased the impact. 4. The gra...

  https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/08/frackers-can-use-dangerous-chemicals-without-disclosure-due-to-haliburton-loophole/   For almost 20 years, US public-health advocates have worried that toxic chemicals are getting into ground water and harming human health because of an exemption to the federal Safe Drinking Water Act that allows operators of oil and gas fracking operations to use chemicals that would be regulated if used for any other purpose. The so-called Halliburton Loophole, named after the oil and gas services company once headed by former Vice President Dick Cheney, means that the industry can use fracking fluid containing chemicals linked to negative health effects including kidney and liver disease, fertility impairment, and reduced sperm counts without being subject to regulation under the act. * * * * * So... what's the use of the EPA if the largest fracking company on earth can skirt rules?  

  https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/05/business/single-family-zoning-laws/index.html   More than a century after the first single-family zoning laws were passed, roughly 75% of land that is zoned for housing in American cities is for private, single-family homes, only. In some suburbs, zoning laws make it illegal to build apartments in nearly all residential areas. Municipalities have also made minimum lot sizes bigger and added height requirements. This has had the effect of encouraging ever-larger single-family homes and limiting housing options, like smaller houses. “Zoning has gotten more complicated and more restrictive,” said Jenny Schuetz, a senior fellow at Brookings Metro who studies urban economics and housing policy. “It’s getting harder to build stuff, particularly in high-income areas that want to have a lot of control over development.”  Policymakers and advocates are making several changes to increase the housing stock: eliminating s...

  A Baby Boomer's Lament by Jeff Jacobsen I was born in the US in1955, ten years after World War II, but smack in the middle of the Cold War. I lived near an air force base that had B-52 bombers flying around non-stop, ready to drop nukes on the Soviet Union should we be attacked first. We didn't practice hiding under our desks at grade school, but I'm sure that's just because everybody knew if the time came we were all screwed anyway. Us Baby Boomers (born 1946 to 1964) lived through technological change never before seen. Looking back, things seem so old. On my grandparents' farm on the other side of the state was a phone on a community line. The other farmers in the neighborhood were on the same line, so if you heard the phone ring (certain rings for certain customers), you could surreptitiously listen in on any phone call. Black and white TV had 3 channels available. Drinking water was hauled in from the artesian well. When it got hot, there...

  https://www.wired.com/story/the-microplastic-crisis-is-getting-exponentially-worse/   Overall, the team found that microplastic levels have been doubling in Arctic Ocean sediments every 23 years. That mirrors a previous study of ocean sediments off the coast of Southern California, which found concentrations to be doubling every 15 years. Other researchers have found an exponential rise in contamination in urban lake sediments .  The problem is likely to keep getting worse, lead author Seung-Kyu Kim, a marine scientist at Incheon National University, told WIRED by email. “The input of microplastics into the Arctic has increased exponentially over the past decades, with an annual increase rate of 3 percent,” Kim writes. “The mass production of plastic at an 8.4 percent annual increase—coupled with inefficient waste management systems—is projected to further increase loads of plastic entering the ocean for the next several decades, and thus plastic entering th...

      " Millions of tons of sargassum wash up on beaches across North America every year. Exposure can lead to breathing problems, and it costs millions to clean it up. Now, one Mexican entrepreneur is building houses out of bricks made from the invasive species."

  https://digg.com/digg-vids/link/guy-succinctly-explains-why-all-billionaires-are-evil-GSG72n6kBe?utm_source=digg   We see now that Elon Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion, not as an investment, but as a toy. We see now from the time of the pandemic who really are the "essential workers" and it's not billionaires. We see now that billionaires are hoarders who simply keep money like Smaug because they are addicted to it, not because they do anything incredible with it.

  https://digg.com/data-viz/link/public-transit-national-usa-decline-data-lockdown-graph-vMCJsvimdx?utm_source=digg   "Before the initial pandemic lockdowns of early 2020, average ridership for these transit systems was around 100 million daily. That plummeted to less than 25 million after March 2020's lockdowns. After staggered openings since mid-2020, ridership has slowly started to rise, but is still nowhere close to pre-2020 levels." * * * * * Mass transit is the best way to fight global warming.  It's cheaper than owning a car.  It helps take cities back from the cars to the people.

  https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/24/business/drive-thru-fast-food-chick-fil-a-urban-planning/index.html   Magnets of traffic and congestion, drive-thrus discourage walking, public transit use and visits to neighboring businesses. They also lead to accidents with pedestrians, cyclists and other cars, and contradict the environmental and livability goals of many communities. A host of cities and regions want the sprawl to stop: Atlanta lawmakers will vote this summer on whether to ban new drive-thrus in the popular Beltline area. Minneapolis; Fair Haven, New Jersey; Creve Coeur, Missouri; Orchard Park, New York, and other cities have banned new drive-thrus in recent years .   * * * * * If we want to prevent urban sprawl and turning our cities over to cars instead of people, we need to take steps to make local access more reliable.  

  https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/08/opinions/homelessness-solutions-houston-model-eichenbaum-nichols/index.html   Then we made three crucial decisions. First, we decided to work together as a collaborative system, aligned around a standardized set of goals, processes and strategies, rather than as individual organizations and government entities each trying to chip away at the problem. Today, more than 100 entities in the Houston area are working together and combining their efforts and resources to move the needle on reducing homelessness. Our collaboration includes using a centralized database to capture information and track the service needs of people experiencing homelessness and using a standardized assessment to determine which housing and/or service interventions best suit each household. Second, we embraced the data-proven best practices of Housing First , a strategy focused on getting individuals and families out of homelessness and into ...

https://www.euronews.com/green/2023/06/06/europes-richest-country-made-public-transport-free-could-other-countries-do-the-same   The tram has exclusive right of way and has priority at crossings so is never stuck in traffic jams. This combined with the fact that it’s free encourages more people to use it. Bausch sees it as a measure of the success of Luxembourg’s transport transformation. Cars haven’t completely disappeared and the country still has the highest car ownership per household in Europe. Around 230,000 people cross the border into Luxembourg each day for work and 75 per cent of these journeys are made by car. “You shouldn’t argue against something, but for something,” Bausch says. “I do not make policies against cars, but for another mobility system in which the car has its place.” * * * * *     Luxembourg has spent years working on making their cities more livable by turning away from cars as the major mode of transport.  It's working!   ...

  https://www.businessinsider.com/electric-bikes-popularity-sustainability-evs-2023-4    "According to the US Bureau of Transportation Statistics, more than half of all trips in the US are under 3 miles .  A University of Oxford study found that swapping a car for a bike just once a day slashed an individual's transportation emissions by a whopping 67%. Another study found choosing an e-bike for 15% of one's miles traveled cut their transportation emissions by 12%.  Fast, fun, and convenient, e-bikes are already helping people make that kind of shift in their daily lives. " * * * * * While many cities in the US don't have good bicycle infrasctructure, e-bikes should make that somewhat easier as they gain popularity, since travel distance for the average rider will substantially increase.  This will make a larger part of the city available to any plan to ride a bike rather than a car.  E-bikes don't need special charging stations, plus they can contri...

  https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/22/why-porsche-mercedes-and-gm-are-betting-on-silicon-anode-batteries.html   Batteries made with silicon instead of graphite — the commonly used material in battery anodes today — have been shown to enable significantly higher energy density and faster charging.  “Silicon anode has 10 times higher energy density than graphite,” according to CEO Kang Sun of Amprius Technologies , one of the companies working on the technology. “We’ve demonstrated that we can charge to 80 percent in under six minutes,” added Jon Bornstein, the company’s chief operating officer. Amprius is already working with Airbus , the U.S. Army, AeroVironment and BAE Systems on early iterations of its silicon-anode batteries.  * * * * *  Is it easy to switch battery production plants to a new method easily?  I certainly hope so.

 "Despite all of the recreational opportunities for bicyclists within the Black Hills region, bicycling is the least utilized method of commuting to work in the Rapid City Area. According to American Community Survey (ACS) data for 2017, only 0.4% of residents commute to work via bicycling. Pedestrians made up 3.7% of work commuters, and transit riders made up 0.6% of work commuters." * * * * * At least here in South Dakota, not many people bike to work.  While Rapid City has a very nice bike trail that winds along the creek, much of the city has no real bike trail, so you're fighting cars in many places.  Hopefully bikes can be given a higher transportation status so more people will choose that method, weather permitting, of course.

  https://www.salon.com/2023/04/09/is-a-post-car-future-actually-possible-experts-say-yes-heres-how-we-could-get-there/   "If there was efficient mass transit so that everyone can sort of theoretically get around, I would say [that] is pretty close to what is in place in Europe," Fulton told Salon, where Europeans have managed to maintain a functioning society despite using cars far less often than Americans. Yet Europe is still an imperfect example because even there, automobiles are so ubiquitous that they still consume a large chunk of transportation time. The key difference is that while Americans overwhelmingly rely on cars to get around, Europeans have an infrastructure that mixes cars more robustly with alternatives like buses, trains, bicycling and even walking. Fulton noted that the environmental situation in Europe is better than that in America because Europeans rely less on cars, which suggests that there are lessons from their experience. * * * * * T...

  https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/interactive/2023/pedestrian-safety-covid-pandemic/?itid=hp-top-table-main_p001_f004   "But a reliance on cars for work and life is ingrained in the DNA of most American environments, and there has been vigorous pushback. Newly proposed bike lanes have become politically explosive and cities have struggled to formalize once-popular streeteries. Business owners worry that fewer parking spaces means fewer customers. Some warn of gentrification, others of gridlock. With traffic returning to pre-virus levels — and bringing with it an alarming rise in pedestrian deaths — the future of America’s streets still hangs in the balance." * * * * * The United States has long ago given over its cities to cars.  We need to look to Europe to see how to make cities human-centric again.    

  https://theconversation.com/why-the-humble-city-bus-is-the-key-to-improving-us-public-transit-199052?utm_source=pocket-newtab   Today, there’s renewed interest in improving bus service in the U.S., inspired by innovations around the globe. The Brazilian city of Curitiba , which is well known for its innovations in urban planning, set a model in the 1970s when it adopted bus rapid transit – buses that run in dedicated lanes, with streamlined boarding systems and priority at traffic signals. Curitiba helped popularize bi-articulated buses , which are extra-long with flexible connectors that let the buses bend around corners. These buses, which can carry large numbers of passengers, now are in wide use in Europe, Latin America and Asia.  Cities across the globe, led by London, have also aggressively expanded contactless payment systems, which speed up the boarding process. Advanced bus systems and new technologies like these flourish in regions where politicians s...

  https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/08/plastic-particles-oceans-marine-pollution-production   An unprecedented rise in plastic pollution has been uncovered by scientists, who have calculated that more than 170tn plastic particles are afloat in the oceans. They have called for a reduction in the production of plastics, warning that “cleanup is futile” if they continue to be pumped into the environment at the current rate. * * * * * I think what's needed in business today is not first how to make money, but first how to do no harm.  If you CAN make money burying the earth in your product, should you be allowed to?  

  https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/02/14/1068582/everything-you-need-to-know-about-heat-pumps/?utm_source=pocket-newtab "Heat pumps’ real climate superpower is their efficiency. Heat pumps today can reach 300% to 400% efficiency or even higher, meaning they’re putting out three to four times as much energy in the form of heat as they’re using in electricity. For a space heater, the theoretical maximum would be 100% efficiency, and the best models today reach around 95% efficiency."       "Beginning in 2023 state programs offer low- and moderate-income households rebates for heat pumps at the point-of-sale, cutting costs of purchase and installation up to $8,000. If home electrical upgrades are needed to integrate new heat pumps, rebates of up to $4,000 are available to households."   * * * * * Heat pumps have gotten very efficient, and now with tax incentives and rebates available, it's the time to switch!

https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/02/the-big-reuse-25-mwh-of-ex-car-batteries-go-on-the-grid-in-california/   "The idea of repurposing electric vehicle batteries has been around for a while. To work in a car, the batteries need to be able to meet certain standards in terms of capacity and rate of discharge, but that performance declines with use. Even after a battery no longer meets the needs of a car, however, it can still store enough energy to be useful on the electric grid. So it was suggested that grid storage might be an intermediate destination between vehicles and recycling."   * * * * Cool idea!  I hope this works out until some better recycling process comes along.

 https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/mormon-church-multibillion-investment-fund-sec-settlement-rcna71603   The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and a nonprofit entity that it controlled have been fined $5 million by the Securities and Exchange Commission over accusations that the religious institution failed to properly disclose its investment holdings. In an order released Tuesday , the SEC alleged that the church illicitly hid its investments and their management behind multiple shell companies from 1997 to 2019. In doing so, it failed to disclose the size of the church’s equity portfolio to the SEC and the public. The church was concerned that disclosure of the assets in the name of the nonprofit entity, called Ensign Peak Advisors, which manages the church's investments, would lead to negative consequences in light of the size of the church’s portfolio, the SEC said. * * * * * So, perhaps we need to review our rules on religious tax exempti...

  http://www.jeffjacobsen.org/finland-ukraine.htm   From the very beginning it was obvious to all that there was no legal basis for Russia to invade Finland. Nikita Krushchev, Russian leader in the 1950s, wrote that “There's some question whether we had any legal or moral right for our actions against Finland. Of course, we didn't have any legal right. As far as morality is concerned, our desire to protect ourselves was ample justification in our own eyes.” [p. 17] Finland had only become an independent nation in 1918, and even then quickly devolved into a civil war that lasted several months. This meant that the fledgling Finnish army was slow to develop. By 1939 there was not much of an army, navy, nor air force. It would be difficult for Finland to find outside help as well, since World War II had just begun, and other potential allies had military and political quagmires of their own.   Russia is in Groundhog Day mode, repeating man...