i_haz_rabies

6 年前議論

I don't think that's true. They had relatively small-scale problems with huge, but narrowly distributed consequences. We have global-scale problems with huge, widely distributed consequences. It's great that we can predict storms and mitigate droughts... but that will not help if someone sets off an accidental nuclear exchange. That peasant from the 1800s and I are exactly equal in our ability to deal with that sort of problem.

i_haz_rabies

6 年前議論

Yeah, that's the mechanism I'm describing.

Droughts, storms and volcanoes are on a totally different scale than nuclear war, climate change, or topsoil erosion though. You could argue that we're in control of those problems, but I'm not holding my breath.

i_haz_rabies

6 年前議論

This argument that the world is more peaceful than ever is true... but it's true for a really bad reason. It's true because we have nukes. Full stop.

The reality is that we're staring down the barrel of not one, not two, not three, but potentially dozens of existential threats. The aforementioned nukes, climate change, environmental collapse, bioweapons, topsoil erosion... it's not an illusion created by the media. We're really not in good shape.

i_haz_rabies

6 年前議論

I'm hoping they will!! For most municipalities, it should be very easy... just submit a url and the site will pull the markup and search it for an address string. More complicated municipal setups, or municipalities with actual data feeds, will be tougher.

i_haz_rabies

6 年前議論

Alerting people when proposals are put before municipal councils to develop natural land. I found out too late that a huge, beautiful forest where I live is going to be ripped up and turned into investment condos. So in the interest of giving natural land a fighting chance, I'm setting up a system that will notify users when an address they've submitted is being rezoned.

The challenge is obviously scaling, since every municipality is different. For now it's going to cover my region and we'll see from there.

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