Lawns aren’t really the issue for utah. Agriculture uses something like 70+% of the water, and a lot of that is flood irrigation or other inefficient irrigation. The water is mostly used for crops like alfalfa that get exported to places like China.
The governor, unsurprisingly, is heavily invested in alfalfa farming, so do the math.
Utah uses an astronomical amount of water when compared to other states. Residential water use is the single greatest non agricultural use of water in the state. I’m going to go out on a limb and say the green lawns might be a contributing factor.
Agricultural water use is a problem, sure. In a state that has very little water maybe growing plants that need a lot of it is a bad idea. Why wouldn’t this apply to grass as well?
In Utah, it absolutely does not. It takes a massive amount of water to keep lawns, parks, and golf courses green. The amount of ‘green’ space that you’d get from adding up everyone’s lawns isn’t insignificant.
70% of the non agricultural water use is residential. Which means residential water use is a little more than 20% of the state’s water usage. Let’s be generous and say that watering yards is only 15% of the state’s total per capita consumption.
15% of an already massively over taxed water system isn’t anything to shake a fist at. It’s even more important when you consider how much more water Utah is using than it’s neighbors, which while difficult to precisely calculate, isn’t a small amount by any measure.
Ruminants are much more efficient processors of plant fiber than humans are. They also eat a lot of agricultural waste that humans can’t.
To replace the calories lost from meat, we’d actually need *more."
Not to mention that we’d be creating a lot of agricultural waste we can no longer deal with.
No offense if you’re on a vegan diet, but vegan diets are ridiculous. They aren’t the solution they’re purported to be, and most people can’t stay on them longer than a few years before health issues creep in.
Not to mention the swathes of the population that are diabetic or prone to diabetes that require a low carb, high fat diet that can’t be easily done vegan, and can’t be done in a healthy way without animal fat and protein. Not without a lot more nuts and avocados which are, as it happens, huge problems for the environment on their own.
Ruminants might be more efficient processors of plant fiber, but the transformation of plant fiber into meat for consumption is a hugely inefficient process.
Meh. Most of it isn’t traveling very far. You’re tilting at windmills now. None of it travels half as far as the bananas you put on your oatmeal, which has also traveled farther to most Americans than cattle feed to most cattle.
There are a lot of processes we could be doing now efficiently. It would be better to eat exclusively locally grown meat and produce and pasture raise every farm animal. It wouldn’t be affordable but it would be environmentally better.
I’m not going to sit here and spell it out for you, because it’s a fruitless effort. But know that you’re wrong and the vast majority of the world’s scientists agree.
And that use is spread across millions of people. Even if you cut lawn use by 75%, you’re cutting at most 6% of the states use. Or can cut agriculture use by 10% and get a larger reduction in overall water use.
We don’t need alfalfa. We don’t need flood irrigation. We also don’t need Lawns, but that is such a small percentage you might as well tell people to stop flushing their toilet when they shit.
Like they do with coffee or tried to do with clothing. Yeah buddy I am going to spend 110 dollars on your fucking hemp sweater that looks like I am off to go get high off gas in a bag later today. I want to spend my all too few dollars on that.
There should be age limits in politics. Such as retirement age minus minimum voting age. It would be 67-18 in the US. Make it so you can’t run again after you exceeded the limit.
Just for curiosity’s sake, what did he do to deserve 25 1/2 years before he can be eligible for parole that convicted rapist Brock Allen Turner didn’t do when he raped an unconscious woman behind a dumpster? They were both convicted in California. Why did Turner, who has been going by Allen Turner and was last seen in the Dayton, OH area, do differently such that his custodial sentence was for 6 months, roughly 2% of the custodial time that Masterson will serve?
Let me be clear that my issue here isn’t that Masterson was penalized too much. He took two women’s lives and he should spend the rest of his in prison for it. It’s just that I see two rapists, one was righteously destroyed by the justice system and the other whose court proceedings essentially made it seem like no one wanted to punish him at all but they very reluctantly felt like they had to.
If we look at it from a pragmatic point of view, the answer is time I believe, the Brock turner case was quite a few years ago, when the laws and public opinion were still in quite a mysogynistic place, the Danny Masterson case was settled today and I believe opened after the metoo movements, where public opinion was shifting more favourably towards the victims. Its wild to see this amount of progress this quickly but I think were starting to see a change for the better overall, same as to how we saw better changes to views of homophobia in the early 2000’s from the 90’s, where it was “fashionable” to call everything gay in a derogatory way. Also if I recall, brocks dad was involved heavily in the trial if that counts for anything
I think it was the fear that got put into other judges by the recall of the judge that oversaw the Turner debacle. He was removed from the bench by outraged voters, as is right and good.
I have no idea about this case, but there’s a big difference between restorative (which is tentatively being trialed in many places) and a more traditional retributive justice system.
The first seeks the victims input and attempts to compensate the community effected. Retributive justice uses a more nebusous sense of what’s right/deserved and what’s wrong/unjust.
Pros and cons to both approaches. It’s still debatable which one is better at rehabilitation. But our current system doesn’t seem to place a high priority on that anyways.
This isn’t a case where a different theory of justice was being experimented with. In this case, the rich white man going to the prestigious, expensive ivy league school was given 6 months for raping an unconscious woman behind a dumpster because, among other reasons, a stiffer sentence would have negatively impacted his career as a competitive swimmer. The judge who sentenced Turner to only 6 months for raping an unconscious woman behind a dumpster had also presided over a case where an underage girl was gang-raped, also while unconscious. He allowed to be entered into evidence photos of her at a party a year after she was raped as evidence that she did not suffer from PTSD after being gang raped by a baseball team. It’s hard to imagine anything other than that this judge was a proponent of rape and did his best to protect rapists from any sort of punishment at all, but when absolutely forced to render some sort of sentence he punished rapists as little as possible.
Damn this seems like a hot take given the comments but I think these rules are dumb. If I go on a two week vacation somewhere else I should be able to rent out my place for those two weeks. The issue isn't AirBnB as a whole, it's people buying up places for the express intention of only using it for AirBnB,
There should be some cap on often a place can be used for short term rentals like 4 weeks out of the year, enough that people who vacation somewhere else can use AirBnb and low enough that it makes more financial sense for people to rent it out long term instead of short.
The issue is how to enforce granular rules like that. You’ll end up with people buying time shares of airbnbs or some other wacky workaround. The issue ultimately is, if you leave any wiggle room, grifters will ruin it for the people using that wiggle room as intended. You can’t put in a law and expect everyone to adhere to the spirit of said law. I think with the litany of other property value issues that NY has, this hard line in the sand makes sense. It sucks that the grifters ruined it for people like you and I but the fact of the matter is that they did.
Honestly, I don’t understand what everyone has against short term rentals. It may be an unpopular opinion, but shouldn’t we let the market decide the best use of a space? For a city like New York that gets visitors and transient workers from all over the world, maybe it would be better for it to have lots of short term rentals. Ultimately the market would find an equilibrium between short term rentals, long term rentals, and owner occupied properties.
I do think there needs to be more regulation for the rentals though, probably similar to hotels. Any property being rented out should be subject to the same safety inspections and regulations.
They increase the overall cost of both buying and renting a property within that market, and are a nuisance for existing residents.
Historically – in the UK, at least – the market equilibrium has been that the rich own all the property and the poor pay rent until they die, aware that they can be served an eviction notice at any time.
This has not proven to be a popular policy. In 1918 all British men, regardless of whether they owned property or not, got the vote, and since then politicians have found it useful to not have the majority of voters perpetually furious about it.
All of the neighbor problems I and my neighbors have had, without exception, have been from short-term renters. That includes noise that continues all night, off leash, aggressive dogs, unsupervised kids, and threatening, overtly hostile renters.
The “market” can’t deal with this kind of thing, it requires regulations and enforcement.
but shouldn’t we let the market decide the best use of a space?
When it comes to something necessary for survival, like shelter, “letting the market decide” is a terrible idea.
For example: if corporations purchased all of the water so that people couldn’t access it, and you had to buy all your water from corporations, you couldn’t “let the market decide” what a fair price of water is. They have created this scarcity so they can profit off it, and the amount people are “willing to pay” to live turns out to be about “all the money they have.”
Definitely not advocating for full blown free market capitalism. My comment was more along the lines of letting the market organically find the best solutions. The government should set broad goals, like “maximize the amount of occupied housing units and minimize homelessness” and then provide the appropriate incentives to guide the market in that direction.
I agree that for inelastic goods like healthcare, food, water, shelter the situation is even more tricky. NYC just seems to be limited in that sense with already high density and low supply. Having any form of vacant units should be taxed heavily. Maybe even extend this to progressively tax larger units that reduce density. Billionaires row where the ultra wealthy have an entire floor for an apartment that they never use makes no sense to me.
The government should set broad goals, like “maximize the amount of occupied housing units and minimize homelessness” and then provide the appropriate incentives to guide the market in that direction.
So that’s not “letting the market decide the best use of space.” That is the Government deciding the best use of space and passing laws to encourage that, which is exactly what is happening here.
Definitely agree that the free market can come up with some undesirable solutions which is where I think regulation comes in to “guide” the more desirable outcomes that can be found organically. Personally, I think maximum occupancy and increased supply should be the goal where there is limited supply like NYC. Things like a vacancy tax and better zoning could help a lot.
Also, I’m not sure that I trust the government to find the best use of space either, especially in the face of corporate lobbying. The current road/highway system being built to the detriment of public transportation is a good example where a government prescribed solution can have a negative impact decades later.
the issue is that there aren’t enough available apartments in nyc. there’s high competition to actually get an apartment. it’s normal to look at apartments with all your papers ready and apply on the spot… and still not get the fucking place even though you have a very high credit score, have been working at your job for years, have high savings etc. so you end up having to keep applying to a bunch of places until your application gets accepted. it’s a nightmare.
I wanna draw a compromise like you. I think the rental system does suck ass and shorter terms could be better negotiated into the system.
The problem is that this current disruption in the market is making people homeless. So that some wealthy people can stay for the weekend.
The ‘market’ isn’t gonna solve this, these social conventions have always been written by lawyers. This market just keeps trying to squeeze people out to reduce housing supply for all but the filthy rich. But playing into that market is also zoning laws, approval processes etc. It would be nice to fill in these gaps! Hostels, taverns, larger hotel rooms for big groups, short term rentals for 1 - 3 months without ‘year long lease’ and all that crazy approval bullshit.
Agree that regulation and zoning laws can be way better but I’m not sure how much more could be done about supply in NYC. The place is already one of the densest on the planet. Having an vacancy tax makes total sense too. Make sure that maximum available supply is actually being used.
The issue seems to be short term vs long term rentals and I’m not sure if I favor one over another for a place like NYC where a large part of the population has always been transient.
There should be a cap to how many buildings a person or a company can own. Why a person can have more than 3 homes? In the current world, this does not make any sense.
100% agree and while at it I don't think any single family homes or rowhouse/townhouses should be owned by corporations. Apartments and such I can understand the building owned by a management company that only does long term rentals but otherwise homes should be owned by people.
So then the person creates an LLC and now the LLC owns the properties. Do you then think corporations shouldn’t be able to own more than 3 properties, too?
Limiting the number of companies someone can spin off and operate is reasonable to stop monopolies as well. An unlimited regulation would in fact just cause people to spinoff new companies whenever they hit a limit and just pretend it’s a different company and person doing anything. Limits to corporations is absolutely anti monopoly
A single person or entity having control over specific commercial commodity or service or a vertical monopoly in which a group or entity own the means of production, distribution and other levels of the commercial activity,
All of which can be done by increasing the amount of companies that a group or entity runs or acquires.
People seem to forget we used to tell companies “no” about encroaching on other companies or buying them out to have a larger market share literally as anti-monopoly policies.
Trouble is, any legitimate effort to stop that sort of property prospecting would affect other real estate development, which is a huge industry (and political contributor) in New York.
We need age limits for politicians. I’d be more than fine with that being 60. But this skeleton is 83; she will be 88 by the time her term is done if she wins again. Nobody near 90 should decide the future of the younger generations
I’d make it whatever the retirement age is. In Australia, that would be 67. If we have an age where we agree it’s time to collect your pension and live out your life, then it should apply to politicians as well.
No, we don’t actually have this policy. Plenty of our pollies are over 67.
Businesses that are projecting growth, but are in cost saving mode, had layoffs, sub inflation raises, and hiring freezes aren’t exactly doing much to drive morale.
On another note if you are interested in the topic, I can’t recommend Growing Up in Scientology enough on YouTube.
Aaron is an amazing educator, commentator, and satirist on the subject of Scientology. Beyond that he has one of the most genuine, yet charismatic personalities of any person on the platform. I can’t say enough good things about him, his journey, and his work with both exposing as well as freeing people from Scientology’s grip.
Yeah A A Ron covers Scientology really well, cuts through the nonsence with a great deal of knowledge about the subject and does a lot to help victims of the cult. Well worth a watch.
Flo Barnett shot herself three times in the chest and once in the head with a long rifle.
Gary Webb, who exposed the crack cocaine conspiracy within the CIA shot himself twice in the head with a revolver. FWIW, Webb’s death Bay actually have been a suicide. The first shot went through his face.
Shelly Miscavige is still held unlawfully by Scientology.
Are you sure about that? I don’t mean that in the sense of doubting that Scientology kidnapped her, but in the sense that I’m unaware of any proof she’s even still alive.
This is why I don’t watch Tom Cruise, Elisabeth Moss, et al vehicles. You can’t separate the art from the artist when you’re literally financing their criminal organization.
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