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City residents live with mental illness at higher rates than general population

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Re: City residents live with mental illness at higher rates than general population

#91
post #44

Every time I visit my relatives in their rural area, I feel a sense of liberation. The air is cleaner, there is less noise, you can hear the breeze, and even the sky seems bigger. You can see the Milky Way at night. Coming from a city, it's a relief. However I also know the dark side of rural areas, mainly substance abuse triggered by boredom and lack of opportunity. There is always a trade-off.

That's not my experience with rural areas at all. Instead, it's usually pretty noisy because of all the neighbors with barking dogs (yes, there are neighbors in rural areas; most people can't afford 40 acres all to themselves, so they live in little clusters), and it stinks because of the cow and horse manure. Just hope you're not located close to a pig farm. And of course there's all the noisy trucks everyone drives…

Finnish has a unit of distance that means “distance a barking dog can be heard.”

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/peninkulma

I like rural places fine but the constant barking kills me.

Re: City residents live with mental illness at higher rates than general population

#92
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, but the simple fact is that city living is far more efficient than rural living. Having a car is a luxury in much of the world, and has a huge toll on the environment, as well as simply being expensive compared to walking. Rural life in America requires a car, full stop. Should people be given enough UBI to afford to live this way? I don't think so. Enough money to live in a small apartment in a city with a ro…

I don't think it's useful to add conditions to UBI - if you want to spend your UBI on a car and I don't agree with that, it's tough luck for me. You do raise a valid point, which is that a car is a luxury. Having lots of land is a luxury. Having kids is a luxury. Living in a long Urban center where the grocery store is a 2 minute walk away is a luxury. It's up to the people receiving the UBI to decide which luxuries…

>I don't think it's useful to add conditions to UBI - if you want to spend your UBI on a car and I don't agree with that, it's tough luck for me.

I never said conditions like that should be added, only that we shouldn't give out enough UBI for people to live a luxurious lifestyle, which is what rural life really is in America, in a way. Think about it: what would happen to poor, rural Americans if we jacked the price of gasoline up to European levels, where it really should be?

>Living in a long Urban center where the grocery store is a 2 minute walk away is a luxury.

It's really not, it's simple geometry. If you pack people into a dense urban environment with tiny little apartments and remove the luxury of a car and lots of land, then a 2-minute walk to a grocery store becomes almost automatic. It's a tradeoff: you simply cannot have a 2-minute walk to a grocery store if everyone has a separate, freestanding McMansion with a giant yard. Anyone with a basic understanding of geometry should understand this. Put everyone into tiny apartments in high-rises and a quick walk to the grocery store is easy to accomplish (make sure the urban area has mixed-use zoning though).

Re: City residents live with mental illness at higher rates than general population

#93
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I smell more sewage in the city I live in than cow manure or pig farms visiting the rural areas.

Do you live in NYC? That city really does stink. However, I just spent 2 weeks in Japanese cities, including almost a week in Tokyo, and it was extremely clean. Even on trash day it didn't stink.

It's by no means a constant, permeating stink. Sure, there are some neighborhoods with open air food markets that can be smelly, or some that are downwind of waste processing centers (most of East Williamsburg), or smelly because of wastewater (parts of East New York and Canarsie), but for 95% of the city, you're not going to smell anything unpleasant unless you're leaning in to sniff trash bags.

Re: City residents live with mental illness at higher rates than general population

#94
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not my experience with rural areas at all. Instead, it's usually pretty noisy because of all the neighbors with barking dogs (yes, there are neighbors in rural areas; most people can't afford 40 acres all to themselves, so they live in little clusters), and it stinks because of the cow and horse manure. Just hope you're not located close to a pig farm. And of course there's all the noisy trucks everyone drives…

Finnish has a unit of distance that means “distance a barking dog can be heard.” https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/peninkulma I like rural places fine but the constant barking kills me.

Is constantly barking dogs a thing in rural Finland too? I thought this would something that only America would have, along with various very poor and underdeveloped nations.

Re: City residents live with mental illness at higher rates than general population

#95
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>(And if it's sadness or fear or anxiety, expect to have everyone suggest spurious religious interpretations instead of physical explanations, which, honestly, as a devout Christian, I now find really damaging both to peoples mental and spiritual health.) Yep, I've seen this with Christians: "you have mental problems because you have demons in you!" This kind of thinking is extremely common in rural America these day…

"Wells are pretty expensive. Sure, the water itself is free, but the electricity to run the pump is not, and even at the frequently cheaper electric rates that rural areas enjoy, it adds up." Having had wells... The electricity isn't the least of it. These things require regular servicing. Hopefully, you aren't unlucky enough to have it back up... which happened to my mother soon after moving into a newly purchased h…

>Having had wells... The electricity isn't the least of it. These things require regular servicing. Hopefully, you aren't unlucky enough to have it back up... which happened to my mother soon after moving into a newly purchased home. You need to watch the toilet paper you use because some are better than others.

You're confusing wells with septic systems. Wells are where you get water (you pump it out of the ground), septic systems are how you dispose of wastewater (basically by dumping it into the ground in a concrete tank, from which it then percolates into pipes with holes in a "septic field").

You're right, septic systems can be a maintenance nightmare.

>Not to mention the need for a water softener in some areas. I've lived in areas whose water smelled of rotten eggs.

Yep, this is the other problem with well water: it frequently has sulfur in it, and is really nasty.

Re: City residents live with mental illness at higher rates than general population

#96
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you so much for making the counterpoint. I grew up in a rural setting and would give just about anything to take back that loss of years of my life. A few extras: * You can't exercise, because dogs don't just bark but also chase you, and no one cares or thinks you're the asshole for complaining because you're in the country. * Daily life is /very/ stressful. Forgot milk? Well, fuck you, buddy, because you're ei…

> Daily life is /very/ stressful. [...] Want a pizza delivered? Nope. Chinese? Hahah. uh. if that constitutes stressful, how do you survive receiving bad personal news?

First world problems...

Re: City residents live with mental illness at higher rates than general population

#97
post #93
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you live in NYC? That city really does stink. However, I just spent 2 weeks in Japanese cities, including almost a week in Tokyo, and it was extremely clean. Even on trash day it didn't stink.

It's by no means a constant, permeating stink. Sure, there are some neighborhoods with open air food markets that can be smelly, or some that are downwind of waste processing centers (most of East Williamsburg), or smelly because of wastewater (parts of East New York and Canarsie), but for 95% of the city, you're not going to smell anything unpleasant unless you're leaning in to sniff trash bags.

I've walked all around Manhattan many times. No, it's not a constant, permeating stink, but that city does stink a lot, though it's worse of course when they put the trash out since NYC doesn't have alleys like other American cities.

However, I haven't had the same experience in non-US cities like Tokyo and Munich. Those cities are just much, much cleaner in many ways than NYC, and it's not just the smell.

Re: City residents live with mental illness at higher rates than general population

#98
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why electric cars are so important. No exhaust, no noise. They're perfect for urban use.

They are a sign of urban failure. If your city needs cars your city has failed. Go spend some time a city without cars - or sections of a city that don’t allow cars - I’ll wager you like it. Unfortunately in the US many criticize such efforts as being like Disneyland - as if that is a bad a thing.

Do you guarantee that the legal items one would normally transport in a car will be allowed on public transportation?

Re: City residents live with mental illness at higher rates than general population

#99
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the big picture, with amount of killing that has been done in the name of religion over millennia, I just find it hard to reconcile.

In terms of body count, more people have been killed in the name of science than in the name of religion.

We kill with science, do we kill in the name of science?

But even so, that doesn’t make all the killing in the name of religion less bad.

Re: City residents live with mental illness at higher rates than general population

#100
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's useful to add conditions to UBI - if you want to spend your UBI on a car and I don't agree with that, it's tough luck for me. You do raise a valid point, which is that a car is a luxury. Having lots of land is a luxury. Having kids is a luxury. Living in a long Urban center where the grocery store is a 2 minute walk away is a luxury. It's up to the people receiving the UBI to decide which luxuries…

>I don't think it's useful to add conditions to UBI - if you want to spend your UBI on a car and I don't agree with that, it's tough luck for me. I never said conditions like that should be added, only that we shouldn't give out enough UBI for people to live a luxurious lifestyle, which is what rural life really is in America, in a way. Think about it: what would happen to poor, rural Americans if we jacked the price…

> If you pack people into a dense urban environment with tiny little apartments

You're actually proving their point for them:

>> which is that a car is a luxury. Having lots of land is a luxury. Having kids is a luxury. Living in a long Urban center where the grocery store is a 2 minute walk away is a luxury.

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