241–250 of 257 posts
You need to the Open311 API and not just the DataSF 311 case dump to see this unfortunately. But SF311 closes a large number of tickets with "duplicate of SR #"
So without this data it's unclear if the poop is increasing, or if it's just that SF311 usage is way up and duplicate reports are increasing.
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"The animal parts used for pet food may include damaged carcass parts, bones, and cheek meat, and organs such as intestines, kidneys, liver, lungs, udders, spleen, and stomach tissue"[1]. These are all byproducts of the meat industry for humans. Humans don't eat any of these animal parts. Pets are doing us a favor by eating all these things that would otherwise simply be thrown away, with a great deal of pollution in…
> Pets are doing us a favor by eating all these things that would otherwise simply be thrown away, with a great deal of pollution involved Seriously, just the fact of making their food, the food containers/packages (aluminium, plastics or whatever, not talking about the further recycling environmental costs), end-to-end delivery/transport, all of this has a massive impact, e.g. pets industry in US is $75b/year [1], t…
I didn't say that. They're just not as bad as you make them out to be.
> Pets are like a virtual human extra-population (1 billion in order of magnitude)...Their footprint is probably somewhere between 3% and 10% of the average person,
So like 30-100 million additional humans? You also didn't specify what country the "average person" is from, whose footprint you're comparing a pet to. Either way, it's not that big - barely 1.5% of the human population in terms of impact.
I can only think of two reasons why anyone would suggest "eliminate all the pets" as a serious solution for environmental problems:
1. They already hate pets. Which is a valid (if unpopular) personal opinion, but not a basis to formulate any sort of policy on.
2. They want to alienate people who might otherwise be on board with environmentalism. Because that's what will happen if you suggest to people they have to put Fido to sleep right now to save the planet.
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While the problems are more global in nature, they have affected San Francisco disproportionately worse than other cities. Some cities have been better at patching these issues than San Francisco has - e.g Austin, TX is forcibly removing homeless encampments from their streets. Seattle have revised zoning and is building new housing to offset housing shortages even though the local NIMBYs oppose muh gentrification. S…
Yeah I seen that the governor was going after the mayor about Austin. Wonder what the solution is though? Actually try to help homeless or just tell them to move elsewhere? I know Key West, FL and Nashville, TN has a busing program to send homeless people to Colorado. I know even here there's a huge heroin problem. Seen recently that the county sheriff and city police joined together kicking out a bunch of homeless i…
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There are some cities that seem to have better salary/cost of living ratios. I'm thinking of places like Boulder, CO or Provo, UT.
One might ask why increasing productivity in a region leads to higher cost of living (rent). Well, that one is pretty obvious. Landlords will charge the highest prices they can get away with. The more interesting question is why landlords are supposedly entitled to all of the new wealth. After all they had no role in creating any of it.
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I don't "remember" what happened last time "we" culled cats, so what happened? (If you're alluding to the idea that the "black death" plagues were worsened by cat culls, that's an oft-repeated story but somewhat dubious with regard to verifiable facts. Cats themselves can carry the plague bacteria & transmit it to humans – eg https://www.nytimes.com/1994/04/08/us/house-cats-spread-huma... – and even regions where cat…
lol no first of all you have to control prey population because pests will balloon with the increased safety and consume resources, strangling the prey population. secondly if you can't control the whole area Predator population will follow the pest increase, often resulting in larger problems or an out of control spiral of environmental issues you don't have to go back to pre scientific anecdotes like the stories ar…
A huge problem is the lack of public toilets. When I first lived there, I got locked out of my apartment and could not find anywhere to go to the bathroom. I had to wait until my roommate got back. If I did not have a place to go back to, what could have I done except poop on the street?
Wouldn't a restaurant or fast food outlet let you use their bathroom? I think if you make it clear that your options are to take a dump either on their toilet or right where you're standing, they would show you the toilet immediately.
In my experience the east side of town, especially the financial district, businesses start being cagey about letting you use the bathroom.
Going westward, when you get to the Lower Haight or so, I can start naming many coffee shops with decent bathrooms and no lock on the door. And decent park bathrooms too.
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Conductors not enforcing laws is mostly a manner of safety and liability. Conductors are not trained police officers, so them trying to enforce laws will probably end up poorly for them, most likely severely injured or killed. And then Caltrain would have to deal with an injured/dead employee and also whatever the perpetrator was doing in the first place. Requiring police training for a conductor position would proba…
Your relative sense of what's possible and proper contributes to the lack of impetus to enforce rules and have real consequences . Cities on the East Coast, cities in Europe, Asia, conductors are always checking tickets, and in some cases have police powers. In New York, not having a ticket can get you arrested. Same in many other cities. Here, on Caltrain, all they can do is make you get off at the next stop. You do…
Tickets are not checked on the bus and subway. Fare enforcement is done by NYPD, the local police department consisting of police officers.
Tickets are checked on the commuter rail, but conductors only really are empowered to ask people to pay the onboard fare, which is higher than purchasing a ticket at a machine or at an office outside the train. Conductors can call police, but are not able to make arrests or use physical force to remove farebeaters from trains.
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> Pets are doing us a favor by eating all these things that would otherwise simply be thrown away, with a great deal of pollution involved Seriously, just the fact of making their food, the food containers/packages (aluminium, plastics or whatever, not talking about the further recycling environmental costs), end-to-end delivery/transport, all of this has a massive impact, e.g. pets industry in US is $75b/year [1], t…
> Saying pets are environmental-friendly is dangerously wrong, I didn't say that. They're just not as bad as you make them out to be. > Pets are like a virtual human extra-population (1 billion in order of magnitude)...Their footprint is probably somewhere between 3% and 10% of the average person, So like 30-100 million additional humans? You also didn't specify what country the "average person" is from, whose footpr…
speaking for "First-world" countries mostly. I live in France, there is as many pets as inhabitants roughly (63M-66M), figures say 21M of cats+dogs, other European countries are comparable. I compare pets footprint to their owners' basically, and a 10% larger footprint in developed countries is a problem, even 3%, even 1% is something to work on, there is always a start if we want to clean up the planet
About your 1. and 2.
Not specially, I could argue the exact opposite points in return, I'm just pragmatic about it. I'd also want to address the cigarette smoking problem more seriously (my mom died from that), to ban a bunch of cosmetics, all of insecticides, plastic wrappings... Pets seem like an easy lever to deal with, 'seem' because I understand your reaction, people get attached to them, they react with passion more than reason about it, but they must understand the consequences: ecosystem and pollution damages, neutering/spaying doesn't seem enforced in Brasil like showed my previous 'impact on ecosystem' link. Of course, we really can't put every pet owner in the same bag, I'm mostly targeting the way pets become a trend, a norm, e;g. the Shiba trend, the way pets have become so "normal", so present everywhere, internet, TV, young generation are kinda educated with that.. I mean, they wouldn't really question their existence later or their environment footprint, so I'm just here trying to have a critical, in a positive sense, view
"if you suggest to people they have to put Fido to sleep right now to save the planet."
I didn't say that either, I said "cut down"
You were right about arguing against my initial argument about "pets eating one fifth of the world's meat and fish" [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pet_food#Impact] but I hope you understand all the other "invisible" pollution cost for processing, delivering those food, and all the other pets services pollution costs (vet, beauty, ...). So my point stands with their significant environmental impact, even if pets were fed insect-based food like they suggest in the wikipedia link, there would still be a significant background environmental impact
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if you "shipped" them somewhere, they'd be in an asylum/shelter/jail facility which is set up to handle them, not in a back yard, not downtown, not IN THE STREETS.
Sure, I suggested local jails upthread. You as thread parent suggested "outside the city limits". SF is a "city and county", so it's not possible to have a local jail outside city limits. You're going to have to bribe some other county to take care of the homeless you've charged with crimes. That's not going to be cheap! It's not cheap even if you manage to get all your jails built in Sunset or some other backwater.…
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Your relative sense of what's possible and proper contributes to the lack of impetus to enforce rules and have real consequences . Cities on the East Coast, cities in Europe, Asia, conductors are always checking tickets, and in some cases have police powers. In New York, not having a ticket can get you arrested. Same in many other cities. Here, on Caltrain, all they can do is make you get off at the next stop. You do…
As someone from New York, this information is incomplete and incorrect. Tickets are not checked on the bus and subway. Fare enforcement is done by NYPD, the local police department consisting of police officers. Tickets are checked on the commuter rail, but conductors only really are empowered to ask people to pay the onboard fare, which is higher than purchasing a ticket at a machine or at an office outside the trai…