24yrs ago I took a Buteyko breathing course. Basically cured my asthma, I went about 16yrs without taking medication (this was down from taking around 4 doses per day). I've had a few flare ups in the last few years due to environmental changes but it is under control again now.
I'd recommend this over taking drugs.
https://www.buteykobreathing.org/
I've already tried stopping and reducing my medication. All that does is end up with me being hospitalised. I don't have mild asthma, I have chronic asthma. That's not the kind of thing you can heal with breathing techniques.
Yeah I had chronic asthma as well, I was hospitalised multiple times and I'd been on medication for 16yrs. I learnt the techniques and over 6months as I felt comfortable I was able to reduce my medication. You'd be mad to just stop your medication cold turkey. I'm not advocating that.
It is not a cure for asthma but a complementary technique. This means that people using Buteyko should still continue take their inhalers as prescribed however research has shown that inhaler use can significantly reduce over time.
- does not require any state management beyond regular javascript
- is fast
- has a built-in router
- has input bindings
- has a small, concise API
is 9k gzipped
As for Mithril, there is a great write up that goes into a detailed comparison on their website - https://mithril.js.org/framework-comparison.html#react. One thing stood out for me personally - and it's true for both frameworks - it's pragmatic. There is just not much to it. There is just not much to building SPAs as React might make you think.
On the other hand, React has a massive community and a whole lot of complimentary projects that solve all sorts of problems - I am thinking of styled components for instance - and so perhaps, from that point of view, React is rather pragmatic.
Maybe the infrastructure that is in place to support cars could pivot to public transport?
We could replace some/all lanes on motorways/interstates with train tracks. Reduce roads in cities to one way and install trams in the other lanes.
Replacing interstates with rail doesn't work. For one thing, there is already rail running parallel to most of them, so there is no need for it.
Moreover, the usage is different. A person lives in the suburbs, they drive five miles through their suburb, then get on the interstate for 10 miles, then drive to an office park 5 miles off the interstate. If you get rid of the interstate, what are they supposed to do? Drive 5 miles to the train, take the train 10 miles and then walk 5 miles? Buy a second car to use for the other leg of the commute?
What you need is to relax the zoning/density restrictions in the city so that more people and businesses can afford to be there instead of in the suburbs. Then they can use the existing mass transit within the city, which unclogs the interstate for the people who can't, e.g. because one of their endpoints is outside the city for legitimate reasons or because they have to transport bulk material in addition to humans.
One possibility is to take a Lyft to the train station and then an Uber to your office. Which is slightly easier if you've automated the cars so that you don't have to load-balance the wetware part of it, but it's not entirely necessary.
Getting more people into the city is also helpful, but that's a lot of change. A lot of people have become adapted to the pace of suburb life, including me. Getting me into the city is less about cost than about the stress of having so many people around all the time. A lot of people want that, but a lot of people will want to live in the big empty green space, and would pay the costs -- including externalities, if we were to price them in. Improving city mass transit is good, but ultimately I think we'll also have to cope with a lot of people who just want to disperse at the end of the day.
> One possibility is to take a Lyft to the train station and then an Uber to your office. Which is slightly easier if you've automated the cars so that you don't have to load-balance the wetware part of it, but it's not entirely necessary.
Sure. But you can do that already. There are already trains/subways/buses in cities and there is already Uber and Lyft, without any need to close interstates that still have other uses, like transporting bulk material. (Notice also that most interstate highways go between cities.)
Moreover, the original claim was that we should have more trains which would make it so we wouldn't need electric cars. But now we're back to at least needing electric cars for Uber and Lyft.
> A lot of people want that, but a lot of people will want to live in the big empty green space, and would pay the costs -- including externalities, if we were to price them in.
Which is fine. Let the people who prefer the suburbs to live there. You don't need 100% of people to live in the city, what you need is to make it so that all the people who want to live in the city can afford to do so.
And fortunately electric cars powered by solar/nuclear get rid of most of the "externalities" of that -- the only one really left is traffic congestion. Which can be solved not by making it more expensive to live in the suburbs but by making it less expensive to live in the city. Then more people do, even if none of them is you, and there is less congestion on the road because all the people who do prefer to live in the city can use its existing mass transit system.
Well I agree people should work locally and communities should be organised to facilitate that.
> Moreover, the usage is different.
What I am suggesting is in an effort to force/encourage different usage (que communist/fascist labels).
But in answer to your question. Take tram/bus, change to train, change to tram/bus. Pain in the arse. Yes. Maybe that is what is required to re organise around more sustainable communities?
The problem is that you can't have a tram/bus there because the population density for that part of the trip is too low to justify it. An empty bus is worse than a single occupant car.
Sure, so a combination of on demand and better scheduling.
Lightweight electric transport (ebikes, scooters, golf carts? etc.)
Obviously implementation depends a lot upon the local geography/density/weather etc.
Definitely not proposing a one size fits all solution.
> Lightweight electric transport (ebikes, scooters, golf carts? etc.)
These already exist. But compared to an electric car they're less safe, slower, less comfortable, have less cargo capacity, etc. Their primary advantage is being less expensive. The reason they aren't already used more is some combination of not being able to meet the relevant safety standards and their cost advantage not overcoming their numerous disadvantages.
There is a reason hospital emergency rooms call motorcycles donor cycles. The fatality rate for that kind of transport is astoundingly high.
The reason they are less safe is because our infrastructure is setup for massive lumps of steel. I'm not suggesting driving lightweight vehicles on roads. I'm suggesting changing the roads so they are optimised for lightweight vehicles and big lumps of steel are second class citizens, either banned or only allowed to operate at certain times etc.
Get the big lumps of steel off the roads and you have far less issues at the ER.
> The reason they are less safe is because our infrastructure is setup for massive lumps of steel.
It isn't. If you want to go 60MPH on an ebike, it's not just hitting a car at 60MPH that will kill you, it's hitting anything at 60MPH with nothing to protect you from it, including the ground.
The only way for something with no airbags, crumple zones or even seatbelts to be as safe as a car is to limit the top speed to about 20MPH, at which point the collective response will be "no" because you're tripling the length of everyone's commute.
I was under the impression that guy was paid by like the Belgium meat board or something. I can't find the reference to that right now so might be wrong. (I came across him in another thread where it was discussed)
You are right that there is no political will right now. We need to make it happen.
Historically non violent direct action has been successful in changing politics (see womens suffrage, civil rights movement). This is the primary goal of the Extinction Rebellion http://extinctionrebellion.org
From everything I've researched the opposite is true. Properly managing grasslands (which used to happen naturally with large herds) makes for health grasses which develop root systems, create soil and sequester carbon.
Poorly managed grasslands that are under grazed leads to soil degradation. The answer seems to be intensive grazing followed by rest periods to allow grasses to use nutrients and grow.
I made a reply to your post on that subject of potentially transformational management of grasslands.
On this ungainly subject of grassland vs mixed forest here, I'll just remind - two hundred years ago about 60% of the earth surface was covered in mature and native forest. The figure is less than 30% today. Most of the worlds fertile crops are grown on deforested land, on the soil which native forests developed due to ecological diversity and lack of erosion. Most of the grasslands which are used for grazing, don't have soil to support demanding crops.
One of the things I find interesting about Carbon Engineerings process is that it requires a lot of heat to separate the captured carbon from the fluid (I forget what the fluid is called). Last I heard they were using natural gas for this (with more carbon capture tech attached).
I wonder if they have considered using concentrated solar as the heat source instead? The temps are pretty high and obviously there is no carbon capture needed so it might be a cheaper way of doing it.
Also you already build those plants out in the desert so you probably have a lot of cheap land available to put the units nearby.
I've been watching waay too many youtube videos about reforestation, agriculture and land management recently and I think I've learned a little from it (links at the end).
We no longer have the number of massive herds of animals that used to roam the plains/savannahs grazing, pooing and to a lesser extent escaping from predators.
This has meant that the grasslands are no longer trampled on and "fertilised". This has caused the grasses to die back, the soil to degrade, to not hold water and to turn to desert. (see the sahara, the outback, parts of china and the usa).
Subsequently we've tried to be really careful with the land and not over graze it etc. which tends to have the opposite effect than what is desired.
Now I also looked into reforestation because I thought trees were the answer. Grow trees sequester carbon etc. But it turns out the cost of doing this £/$ and water (desalination) would actually be outweighed by both the albido effect (green trees absorb more sunlight than deserts that reflect it back) and that trees don't really grow fast enough to have the impact required.
Getting back to the grasslands, it turns out that when you intensively drive a herd over grasslands the grass initially dies back but the root system expands, the plant grows quickly and sequesters carbon into the ground. It actually builds soil and traps carbon and it does it faster than previously thought. The ground is also more permeable to water so when big storms come it actually soaks up the water for later use rather than it running off and causing floods, erosion etc. Also grass is lighter (colour) than trees so the albido effect is not so bad.
This is just my understanding of one part of the problem. This is what I think may be a solution to that:
We need to change the way we manage livestock. Probably change legislation so they can't be kept indoors or feed grains (I think that is a big methane contributor as well). We should have grazing plans for entire countries that manage existing land well and restore broken land. We should stop eating them because we need a big herd to restore the land and we probably need to employ a lot of people to drive the herds (yeeha).
Grazing plans are simple, illiterate people seem to cope fine with them. We've got the technology to scale this and in the west we probably have the maps/surveys etc. to make this relative straight forward.
Whatever ends up being the solution to these problems we need to make government act. Historically the best way to do that has been non violent direct action. As we are at crisis point now (5yrs until the arctic has melted based on current melt) it is really our final option. You may be interested in joining the Extinction Rebellion to make this happen.
I came across those videos before and noticed the main speaker has been giving talks for many years claiming he has transformed the fertility and productivity of multiple cattle farms in the course of research, by simply increasing cattle density and intensity. Alas if there were truth to the idea, Allan Savory would not need to promote it - he could own or have franchised thousands of farms by now.
The purported enhanced stocking strategy would catch like wildfire if it were real and could at least be well documented after years of research, but there are no studies of any substance for it. There is no difficulty in implementing it - just keep more cattle than before, allow it to herd, move the herd around and presto your output increases and costs reduce - climate and environment get fixed and we all eat steak. This is not an exaggeration of the case made in the videos.
I think the theme detracts from the image of practical sustainable farming techniques, which are very real, continue to develop and have to compete in the current economy.
I absolutely agree with you regarding regenerative agriculture and moving towards a plant based diet. We have to do that so we can stop destroying the soil and can actually produce food with adequate nutrition.
With regards to intensive grazing it appears that some farms do do it and there have been some studies that suggest it does work. For instance this study (of which I've only read the abstract) seems to support the technique - http://www.publish.csiro.au/sr/SR07220
There are quite a few more studies and supporting material on this site http://www.regenerateland.com I won't pretend to have read them all but from the few abstracts that I have read it seems to be based in science.
As a vegan I don't want to see more animals being killed and eaten, however if farmers are going to keep farming then they should do it this way (and using silvopasture we need multiple approaches!). However if ensuring the survival of the planet involves using animals to do some work then I'm definitely open to it.
Something which may be of additional interest to you are Forest Gardens which seem to be pretty good at optimising a whole system https://www.agroforestry.co.uk/about-agroforestry/forest-gar.... The book "Creating a Forest Garden" by Martin Crawford is definitely worth checking out if only for the wealth of information regarding types of plants and their use.
The doubts about the technique seems warranted. On the other hand there is a simple reason why it might be true : if large herds destroyed the herbs on which these herds depend on, they would die off. So from an evolutionary point of view, it makes a lot of sense for large herds to fertilize soil. They NEED grass to thrive.
There are few simple rules to count on. The stability of grasslands depends on circumstances, usually including a range of herbivores to prevent forestation. Mega-fauna, like mammoths used to contribute to grove and prairie creation by eating trees, before humans dominated.
I wrote this to dereke in another comment, I think it is relevant to understanding the present situation:
>
Two hundred years ago about 60% of the earth surface was covered in mature and native forest. The figure is less than 30% today. Most of the worlds fertile crops are grown on deforested land, on the soil which native forests developed through ecological diversity and lack of erosion. Most of the grasslands which are used for grazing, don't have the soil quality to support demanding crops.
I think weird cyclical state changes are a feature of your chosen framework. For instance I worked on an angular (1.x) project where we would routinely have these issues - in fact they were well documented. We ported the project to hyperdom and I've never seen an issue with state since.
