I can understand the /fuck lawns/ ideology in some specific contexts, like lawns that are in water-starved regions. But I don’t get the across the board blanket stance that all lawns are always a bad idea.

What about buffalo grass lawns, as opposed to blue grass? Or whatever kinds of sustainable grass species that do not need to be watered artificially for a given region?

What about use cases like turf for dogs and kids to play on?

Downtime by a freedom-respecting trully decentralised node like slrpnk.net really exposes how Lemmy clients leave a LOT to be desired.

The prospect of data loss is gutting. A proper client would be syncing threads of interest between the server and my PC, so during downtime I can still at least locally access past content. No proper clients exist for Lemmy.

Indeed. The instances that have solid uptime have, in most cases, sold their soul to the devil (aka Cloudflare, which is a centralised threat on the free world and all things good).

For me, rats are filthy, gross, and creepy. But that is not why I fight them. I normally would not care about their presence as long as they stay on their side of the walls. But I fight them for two reasons:

• Their teeth never stop growing. So they are teething their whole life and also build nests, which means non-stop house destruction.
• They can carry hantavirus. It’s an airborne transmission and can come from rat urine and feces.
• The day I decide to remove my ceilings (likely to take away rat turf), I expect to get a shower of feces.

I’ve heard that as well; and claims that they are essential to keeping the sewer pipes clear. Not sure to what extent I would put stock into all that but they are certainly a pest. Disease, filth, destruction of homes.

My city ultimately considers them a pest considering there is a tax-funded public pest control office fighting rats year round. People can call them and they will come to the home and deploy rat control measures (usually poison) at no cost, just like a pro exterminator.

Would be useful to plant a specie that attracts rats, so the trams can cut down the rat population.

I agree. But you have to start somewhere. The guideline has been converted into legislation in Belgium since last week.

Do you have more detail on what was implemented? I could only find this repairability index, which I suspect won’t be much more useful than energy indexes and nutrition indexes.

This is why I said at the local level. City council cannot change federal laws.

The EU has been grappling with right to repair laws for over 10 years now. It’s a complete shit show.

At the moment, a washing machine maker in the EU is only required to release repair documentation to professional repairers who are insured, not consumers. And they only have to do it in the 1st 10 years, not in the time period that things actually break. At the 10 year mark, they automatically lose the docs and stop making parts.

The law you reference is not yet in force AFAIK. But when it comes into force and each member state eventually legislates, look at what we are getting-- from your reference:

A European information form can be offered to consumers to help them assess and compare repair services (detailing the nature of the defect, price and duration of the repair). To make the repair process easier, a European online platform with national sections will be set up to help consumers easily find local repair shops, sellers of refurbished goods, buyers of defective items or community-led repair initiatives, such as repair cafes.

That’s crap. It’s fuck all. Consumers are not getting service manuals. They are just being told where they can go to get someone else to do the work. We can of course already find repair cafes because they publish their own location. But repairers at repair cafes are just winging it. You cannot bring them a large appliance like a washer. They don’t even have water and drain hookups. And even if one repair cafe made an exception for large appliances, their repairers are not insured and thus cannot legally get access to service manuals.

Everything at the state/fed/intl levels is a total shitshow. This is why I asked in the OP what can be done at the local level.

I should have linked the parent thread. Federal laws are a shit show. In the US, most states have paltry R2R protections typically only covering cars, wheel chairs, and farm equipment.

This is why I am collecting ideas for what we might petition LOCAL govs to do, like city councils.

I don’t think that is true. I never heard of a creativity test or measurement as a precondition to copyright protection. As I understand it, anything you write (regardless of artistic creativity) is automatically protected under an all rights reserved copyright unless you explicitly state otherwise.

If you are talking about voting in elections (as opposed to voting with a wallet), I’m eligible to vote in two countries. In one country, I vote every opportunity because it’s a good system with no assault on privacy, no barriers, no exclusivity, no voter intimidation. You need not even be a citizen. In the other country it’s a shitshow in just about every aspect you can consider. It’s a moral duty to vote but the gov takes many steps to hinder you and block you. Luckily influence is not limited to elections. You can vote every day with your wallet.

I don’t simply neglect to vote in the shitshow of a broken election system. I write letters to civil liberties orgs and politicians to say why I am not voting. Because if I were to vote, it would send a misleading signal (that the voting system is working).

When I do vote, I also write letters to those I am voting against to state why they lost my vote.

⚠ That article is a bit enshitified and autoplays video. Just a warning to anyone on a limited internet connection.