Urban noise is a common problem, and the vast majority of it is created by motor vehicles. Noise is far too often dismissed as a minor nuisance, rather than the legitimate health issue that it is.
The book "Curbing Traffic" has a chapter about the health impacts of noise pollution. I explore the research in the book, and visit Delft, the city that is highlighted in the book as being a shining example of what can happen when noise pollution is taken seriously.
This video explores the problem that farting cars, farting motorcycles, and farting mopeds create in our cities.
#US #army raises upper age for recruits to 42 and scraps marijuana restrictions
The US army has raised the maximum enlistment age to 42 years old and scrapped a barrier for potential recruits who have a legal #conviction for #marijuana or #drug #paraphernalia #possession.
People aged up to 42 can now enlist in the army, the army national guard and the army reserves, according to the new US army regulation, lifting the previous ceiling of 35 years old.
A whole industry of data brokers buys up vast quantities of electronic information from cell phone apps and web browsers and sells it to advertisers who use that data to target ads. The same industry also sells that data, including bulk cell phone location data, to police departments and federal government agencies in ways that can reveal intimate details about Americans without a warrant.\ \ Now, privacy advocates say that the best chance for Congress to close the well-known loophole around the Fourth Amendment that allows for that sort of governmental snooping is coming up in just a few weeks.\ \ That's when Congress is expected to take up reauthorization of what is known as Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which is set to expire on April 20.
CNN Data Guru Harry Enten Predicts Major Disaster for Donald Trump After Dems Flip Mar-a-Lago
A Democratic victory in a state special election in President Donald Trump’s backyard is the latest sign that Democrats are on track to take back the House of Representatives in November, according to CNN’s resident data guru.
Democrat Emily Gregory beat Republican Jon Maples 51 percent to 49 percent to represent parts of West Palm Beach—including Trump’s private Mar-a-Lago estate—in the Florida state House.
Trump ... won the district in 2024 by 11 points. Gregory’s predecessor, state Rep. Mike Caruso, had won by 19 points before resigning to become county clerk and comptroller.
I periodically get pushback on "petrodollars"... they are real, and we are boned #ThanksNixon
Iran, the $39 trillion national debt and dedollarization: How Trump exposed America's Achilles Heel | Fortune
The year was 1974 and President Richard Nixon had dispatched his Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to Saudi Arabia to strike a secret deal. Three years earlier, in August 1971, Nixon had already administered the “shock” that ended the Bretton Woods system governing global finance since World War II — suspending the dollar’s convertibility to gold in a televised address that transformed every major currency overnight. By 1973, the system had fully unraveled.
The world wouldn’t know for another 50 years what Nixon and Kissinger replaced it with, striking a deal that would quietly govern the global economy for the next half-century. Riyadh agreed to price and trade its oil in U.S. dollars and channel its petroleum windfalls back into U.S. Treasury bonds; in return, Washington promised military aid, equipment, and security guarantees—a deal that would quietly govern the global economy for the next half-century.
The existence of this secret agreement wasn’t even publicly confirmed until 2016, when Bloomberg News filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the National Archives.
So many people feel justified in participating in the culture war, when the class war being fought against us by the billionaires is what's primarily ruining our lives. :/
The fact: Cities like Chicago, New York and Denver maintained welcoming policies without having the federal budget to keep up.
Verdict: BAD. This is a basic management failure. In 2025, these cities had to cut essential services (police, sanitation, libraries) to fund emergency sheltering. Result: an immediate decline in quality of life for local residents and an explosion of social tensions. This is the textbook example of an ideology colliding head-on with the limits of a real budget.
I've got the same problem. MX_Linux seems to be drifting toward System disease. PCLinuxOS isn't as good as it used to be. At least on my hardware. But PCLinuxOS-Debian is good if you don't get some of the bugs it has. I'm on MX now and I don't agree with some of the things they have done, like renaming all the apps MX-[some different name]. What on earth were they thinking???
Installing Gentoo in a chroot is actually a really good way to hone your skill set. You should also look into a Gentoo container with either Docker or Podman (but knowing you don't like systemd bloat, I am certain you would prefer Podman)
Just another chapter of this regime's incompetence, just like the airplane crashes in early 2025. Really sucks how people have been dying because of it since the very beginning. :(
“The pilot and co-pilot of an Air Canada Express regional jet have been killed after it collided with a fire truck while landing…
collision also caused serious injuries, with nine people in the hospital. It happened as a firefighting vehicle was responding to a separate incident…
In the moments before the crash, an air traffic controller could be heard on a radio transmission giving clearance to a vehicle to cross part of the runway, then trying to stop it.”
The Japanese title, "Poco a Pokémon", may originate from a combination of poco a poco (Spanish or Italian for "little by little") and Pokémon. Similarly, the name "Pokopia" used in other languages may originate from a combination of Pokémon, copy (in reference to Ditto) and utopia.
If that's true, couldn't they have called it Poko a Pokémon in Spanish? It's called Pokémon Pokopia in that localization like the rest. 🤔
Neil E. Hodges
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