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Leaf blowers are a scourge. Why is it hard to get rid of them?

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Re: Leaf blowers are a scourge. Why is it hard to get rid of them?

#111

Post by guiriduro »

campboy wrote: post #85
guiriduro wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public parks are too. If you've got reasonable access to one, do you need the other? Or rather, is a private lawn something that should be taxed (much?) more heavily where a park is available within 15 mins walk? And should urban planners take that into account, and developments be penalised when they don't?

Sounds like you’d prefer homeowners to be against public parks; I guess you’d rather folks without their own private property not have access to open spaces?

What gave you that impression?

Re: Leaf blowers are a scourge. Why is it hard to get rid of them?

#112

Post by r3trohack3r »

superchroma wrote: post #101
r3trohack3r wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless that water makes it to a street drain, it’s a 100% renewable resource. When that water evaporates, it goes up in the air, and then falls back down as water.

The contention is that the usage of groundwater removes it from the ground, which has long lasting effects. Long term overuse of groundwater has caused some serious problems. It's of little use to us in the sky anyhow.

Ah yeah, don’t pump your ground water for agriculture, doesn’t matter if you’re dumping it on almonds or grass. I’m well aligned on that.

But water is not a scarce resource and putting it on plants is not a negative sum game.

The planet recycles water. Grass is 100% sustainable if maintained using the planets natural water cycles.

The water in the sky falls on a water shed which is harvested into a local water supply which comes right back to a tap.

Re: Leaf blowers are a scourge. Why is it hard to get rid of them?

#113

Post by 4death4 »

giantrobot wrote: post #109
rootusrootus wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast majority of lawns don’t get watered aside from the rain.

That's not the case at all in California. There's thousands upon thousands of lawns and most people water them all year. Many cities still have ordinances requiring lawns be maintained, you can't just let them die or go to weeds lest you be fined. It's expensive to convert them to drought tolerant landscaping so most people just keep grass lawns. HOAs are militant about lawn maintenance and often restrict how lawns c…

And yet total residential usage of water is only 10% California’s residential / agricultural / industrial water usage. Agriculture is 80%.

Re: Leaf blowers are a scourge. Why is it hard to get rid of them?

#114

Post by jauntywundrkind »

DC banned gas blowers. There is one dude left in the neighborhood but everyone else has converted in the neighborhood. It's fantastic.

Especially working from home, it just felt like there were only brief intermissions of relative quiet. It's wild how you can hear that 2 stroke whine from blocks and blocks away.

Now, it's just nice out. (Also a lot less air pollution to boot!) Your city can do it to! We also recently banned right turn on red, another recent submission; https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38147864

Re: Leaf blowers are a scourge. Why is it hard to get rid of them?

#116

Post by mcpackieh »

galleywest200 wrote: post #57
mcpackieh wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ridiculous, kids love trees. But also, rats and therefore snakes love leaves, as does fire. If you live in the woods the kids will love it, but you still have to keep leaves away from the perimeter of the house.

You would let a small child just run around in the forest? OP said small. Where I live the woods have bears and mountain cats. A teenager may be able to navigate those dangers successfully but a small child, toddler age, would not do so alone.

> You would let a small child just run around in the forest?

Yes of course! My entire childhood was spent running around in the woods. Bears and mountain lions are rare and most of them are more scared of you than the other way around. No more than a small handful of people are attacked by those across the entirety of North America, the last time a child was killed by a mountain lion was about 25 years ago. There were only two or three fatal mountain lion attacks against kids in the 90s, two in the 80s, and three in the 70s.. there are less than 20 of these kind of incidents in the entire 20th century across all of North America. Why the hell would you bring up such an unlikely risk? And fatal bear attacks are only marginally more common, they're still incredibly rare.

Your kids are many thousands of times more likely die from choking on food than by getting attacked by an animal in the woods, do you ban grapes in your house? How did you become so cowardly? Forbidding kids from playing in the woods is absolutely pathetic, reading your comment left me with a feeling of visceral disgust.

Re: Leaf blowers are a scourge. Why is it hard to get rid of them?

#117

Post by mcpackieh »

ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #99
rootusrootus wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You actually want cops to police leaf blowers? Are you joking? We won’t even hire enough so they can police petty crime.

> You actually want [police] to police [law breaking]? Are you joking? If this is what you meant to ask, the answer is obviously yes. Do you actually want homeowners to police law breaking? Are you joking? It's not even their job, and enforcing the law is literally what we pay police to do, that's why their job is called "policing" and their employer is the "police". You want to talk about hiring budgets, what's the…

Siccing police on landscapers using leaf blowers is like trying to get rid of a hornet nest with a napalm bomb. Fining the property owner is far more appropriate.

Re: Leaf blowers are a scourge. Why is it hard to get rid of them?

#118

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

mcpackieh wrote: post #117
ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You actually want [police] to police [law breaking]? Are you joking? If this is what you meant to ask, the answer is obviously yes. Do you actually want homeowners to police law breaking? Are you joking? It's not even their job, and enforcing the law is literally what we pay police to do, that's why their job is called "policing" and their employer is the "police". You want to talk about hiring budgets, what's the…

Siccing police on landscapers using leaf blowers is like trying to get rid of a hornet nest with a napalm bomb. Fining the property owner is far more appropriate.

> Siccing police on landscapers using leaf blowers

Rephrased it in a straightforward, non-melodramatic way: "asking *police* to *police* people who break the law"

What a difference an honest phrasing makes: that's not so outrageous, is it? If we didn't want police to police illegal stuff, we wouldn't have made it their job. If we didn't want the illegal stuff to be illegal, and thus policed, we wouldn't have made it illegal.

Asking the police to do the job they're paid to do is more appropriate than siccing governments on homeowners and siccing homeowners on landscapers without paying any of them.

Re: Leaf blowers are a scourge. Why is it hard to get rid of them?

#120

Post by krupan »

guiriduro wrote: post #64
krupan wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lawns are beautiful and useful. Are we not allowed to expend resources for beautiful and useful things?

Public parks are too. If you've got reasonable access to one, do you need the other? Or rather, is a private lawn something that should be taxed (much?) more heavily where a park is available within 15 mins walk? And should urban planners take that into account, and developments be penalised when they don't?

Comrade guiriduro, I appreciate your efforts to better the community for all by attempting to motivate the behavior of our comrades through tax policy. This sentiment will be noted in your social profile.
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