• @[email protected]OP
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      05 months ago

      Texas literally means “roof tiles”. That’s cuz you can probably get roof tiles by cooking Texan soil. So I’m sure there were fires there that go back to the beginning of civilization in the Americas. But now we finally found the limit.

  • mad_asshatter
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    05 months ago

    In related news, MAGA is asking all Texans to double their “rolling coal” output.

  • @[email protected]
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    5 months ago

    From what I’ve seen of Texas during my visits I have to ask: WTF kind of alternatives are there? Houston is 80% ramps and intersections, and walking practically anywhere is impossible due to the roads effectively dividing up the city.

    No matter where you’re going in Houston, you’re going to need a car. It’s among the cities least suitable for moving around without a car I’ve ever been to.

    • @[email protected]
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      05 months ago

      Texas simply put is built for cars. Some new areas are more walkable and bikeable but you are right, it’s not convenient or safe to bike or walk a lot. And cars are still assholes to bikers.

      Texas, and America, need a culture change of we want to fix transit.

      • @[email protected]
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        05 months ago

        Texas simply put is built for cars.

        No, even Texas was built for people and then bulldozed for cars.

        Compare downtown Houston circa 1920…

        …to downtown Houston circa 1980:

        • @[email protected]
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          05 months ago

          Fair point, do you know if there is any truth to the idea that the auto manufacturers and the oil Libby “conspired” to make out cities more car friendly and less walkable?

          • @[email protected]
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            05 months ago

            Well, the GM Streetcar Conspiracy was real.

            Aside from that, though, I don’t think it really matters whether other conspiracies existed or not. The same outcome of car-dependency and suburban sprawl was a fait accompli back then because of:

            • The prevailing attitudes of Modernist urban planners – look at the Garden City Movement, Le Corbusier’s Ville Radieuse, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Broadacre City, etc.

            • The Federal Housing Authority (created in 1934) giving those Modernist ideas the force of law, via things like the 1938 technical bulletin Planning Profitable Neighborhoods (pages 12 & 18) directing developers to prefer suburban strip malls to traditional “main street” commercial development, the 1936 Planning Neighborhoods for Small Houses directing developers to ditch the street grid in favor of insular subdivisions connected only via arterial roads, and, infamously, the Underwriting Manual that penalized traditional development via redlining,

            • The prevailing attitude of the public, who were (a) justifiably fed up with the squalor of early-20th-century cities, (b) thoroughly enthralled by the mid-century “American Dream” (read: single-family house with a white picket fence etc.) and car-culture (‘freedom of the open road’, drive-ins, cars as status symbols, etc. – helped along by things like GM’s Futurama, of course), and last but not least, (c) racist AF and engaging in White Flight.

            The Suburban Experiment was inevitable because of the above factors, regardless of any collusion between GM and Standard Oil. Besides, since their interests were aligned anyway, if they did collude they probably just agreed to do the same things they already were going to do to begin with.


            (By the way: I could’ve sworn I read or heard something somewhere about Frank Lloyd Wright himself being involved with the establishment of the FHA and maybe even having a hand in writing some of the publications I cited, but for the life of me I can’t find the reference anymore. Anybody else know anything about it?)

      • db0
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        5 months ago

        Maybe the new slur filter was being used by your admins and they cocked it up? I can’t imagine why they’d want to censor “theapp”

        • dave@hal9000
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          05 months ago

          Do you think it’s an instance level thing? I want to post somewhere and ask. I never gave much thought to what instance I am on, I just kinda looked for a big one when I first learned about Lemmy

          • db0
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            5 months ago

            If it’s the slur filter, then it’s an instance level thing yes. It’s not censored on my end, and it’s on lemmy.world, so I assume this is maybe a bad regex.

            • dave@hal9000
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              05 months ago

              As in you can see my URL normally? Thanks for the info, I will post somewhere to ask about

              • db0
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                5 months ago

                I actually can’t see your URL, because it’s censored before being federated. However I can see me typing “theapp” on my end. However if I visit your instance it’s shown as removed

  • @[email protected]
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    05 months ago

    Air quality is bad. Fix this by doing things outside of your vehicle, y’know, in the air.