I recall one paper that tried to analyze how long it would have taken to go from a pre-coal civilization in the 1800s to spaceflight, all without hydrocarbons from the ground, and they estimated over 8,000 years to develop sufficient biological sources of hydrocarbons that could advance tech enough to just get into orbit. And the planetary population would have never exceeded 2B in the process. Oil, gas, and coal have done a shitton to enable technology. Even something as simple as electricity requires significant hydrocarbons Just in the infrastructure, not to mention the production of electricity itself.
Anyone owning land can put up bollards or barriers that are meant to stop vehicles.
Where bylaw and other authorities might start having kittens, however, is if you design said bollards to do more than just stop the vehicles… like, making them look like giant scythes sticking out of the ground, with reinforced blades that could split in half most any smaller vehicle that hits them.
There are some schools of thought that say that a large moon like ours should be a part of the Drake Equation, because without which life would have a very hard time even on supposed “garden planets”.
Another factor that is likely to affect civilizations is an easy source of energy, like oil. We got lucky, in that the evolutionary development in Lignin in plants - and the several million years needed for bacteria to catch up and be able to break it down - are what created those massive deposits of organic matter that became trapped deep in the Earth and modified into oil. Without that oil we are unlikely to have reached several milestones, including transportation, population levels, trade, high technology, and even access to space. And this would start affecting us several hundred years back, with steam engines.
My phones/tablets would be dead in the water, but I avoid wifi for almost everything not actively mobile. So all my iron - even the laptops - are hardlined.
Unless they’re looking to employ Carrington-event-class interference, my networks are fine.
Any gelatine dish recipe from the 40s and 50s.
North America as a whole - America mostly, but also Canada being not that far behind - has been on a crazy rush to the bottom with cultivated ignorance.
Anything intellectual is mocked and degraded. Children who are smart try to hide it because it’s “not cool”. Adults who are competent and erudite get treated like freaks.
As of late, my longer-form content been frequently flagged as a product of AI because I use “big words” -- and the language I use is no more sophisticated as something put together in first or second year university. It’s not sophisticated in the least, but the problem arises because a majority of adult Americans can’t read past a 5th grade level. So when I write at a completely bog-standard adult level, most adults simply cannot keep up.
And this intellectual decline in our culture is hella terrifying.
the cable sizes in this infographic are all the same gauge?
They’re not. They are clearly marked as different gauges, except the left most two which have different plug types… one is two prong, the other is three prong.
a 50ft 12 gauge extension cord is about $40
$40USD would be $58CAD.
A 50-ft 12-gauge extension cord costs $112+ CAD anywhere in Canada. A 100-ft is $200+ CAD. Like… fffffuuuuuck.
The “velocity of money” has absolutely nothing to do with assets.
The “velocity of money” has been very much proven. You take money out of a community, you deny it to that community. That’s why the existence of the wealthy is the presence of a parasite.
For any vessel/vehicle, travelling at maximum speed is not only unsafe, but it is also very inefficient on fuel and induces an exorbitant amount of stress on the engine, transmission, and propulsion system, requiring much more frequent and intensive maintenance.
Very few vehicles routinely exceed 80% of their maximum speed. And even then, only when the coast is clear and it’s safe to let the throttle out.
People who vote for the Leopards-eating-people’s-faces party are always shockedpikachu.gif when the leopard eats their face.