AgreeableLandscape

OpenStreetMap link: https://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=18/49.19400/-123.13250

With Reddit shutting down its API setting a precedent in the corporate tech world (and Reddit was a major outlier in that a ton of their users are technical minded and support third party clients, YouTube does not have that kind of userbase and will not get backlash for it), Twitter doing whatever the fuck they're doing, and Google already hellbent on destroying ad blockers, the days of Newpipe, Invidious, and Freetube are numbered. Wouldn't be surprised if they implement Netflix level DRM tomorrow that makes alt clients impossible. I say savour your alt clients while you can guys, you won't be able to soon.

With Reddit shutting down its API setting a precedent in the corporate tech world (and Reddit was a major outlier in that a ton of their users are technical minded and support third party clients, YouTube does not have that kind of userbase and will not get backlash for it), Twitter doing whatever the fuck they're doing, and Google already hellbent on destroying ad blockers, the days of Newpipe, Invidious, and Freetube are numbered. Wouldn't be surprised if they implement Netflix level DRM tomorrow that makes alt clients impossible. I say savour your alt clients while you can guys, you won't be able to soon.

With Reddit shutting down its API setting a precedent in the corporate tech world (and Reddit was a major outlier in that a ton of their users are technical minded and support third party clients, YouTube does not have that kind of userbase and will not get backlash for it), Twitter doing whatever the fuck they're doing, and Google already hellbent on destroying ad blockers, the days of Newpipe, Invidious, and Freetube are numbered. Wouldn't be surprised if they implement Netflix level DRM tomorrow that makes alt clients impossible. I say savour your alt clients while you can guys, you won't be able to soon.

Most admins on Lemmy instances do not have backend access. That is generally reserved for the server owner/head admin only. So if your instance is going on- and offline intermittantly due to server load, admins will also be having a hard time getting on the site to moderate or really do anything. The server owners may be able to use the backend command line to do a tiny amount of moderation, but it's very much not intended to be used in that way.

I say this to remind everyone to please be patient on the 1st, there will be a massive influx of traffic, servers will go down, and admins may not be able to get on the site and moderate effectively until things settle down at least a little. We're trying our best.

So it's almost July 4 so everyone in the US is gearing up for firework day. Plenty people have already had premature firings of fireworks in late June. Even in Canada we have our national day on July 1 and even though you're technically not even allowed to shoot fireworks in many major Canadian cities anymore, people still do and still do it days in advance. And it's not like celebrating with fireworks is a Anglo-North American thing either, pretty sure every country does it.

But here is why I don't think they should be used, and I will attempt to convince you as well.

I think the most obvious problem is noise pollution. Everyone, myself included, has been trying to comfort their dog whenever some asshole decides to unexpectedly shoot one off on June 27. It's generally doable to take your dog to a more remote area on the day of so they don't hear it, designated firework quiet zones in the city are a godsend for this, but do you expect us to go take our dogs away for a week before the actual day? It obviously affects cats and other pets too. As well as young humans, you might have a couple of those in your house as well. And mitigations by moving oneself away from the noise can't help the wildlife in the area, who are even more severely affected. The fast and erratic nature of firework sounds makes it very difficult to ignore. Wildlife can sometimes adapt to ambient human-caused noises like cars on a road, but basically no animal with hearing can tune out fireworks, not even humans. Sources are in the dropdown below, (pop the DOIs into SciHub to read them for free, I usually try to link free papers to begin with but it seems that everything on this subject is pay per view):

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Second and perhaps the biggest issue is pollution. Fireworks are explosives, and as such use a lot of highly reactive chemicals to get the energy needed to fly high up into the air and release a ton of light for all to see. Highly reactive chemicals, especially ones not commonly found in nature and therefore organisms have fewer or no defenses against them, are generally very harmful to both human and ecological health. The unexploded fuel along with bits of plastic and paper casings get thrown everywhere in the vicinity of the firing site, and if you do it at a park with a lot of natural greenspace and wildlife, that's even worse. These pollutants are extremely long-lasting in the environment and get washed into groundwater, rivers and lakes, and eventually the ocean, not really decomposing in any amount of time relevant to human life, just dispersing and becoming less concentrated. Not to mention the smoke and fumes become air pollution and can spike the particulate concentration in an urban area. Same with the metal salts that give fireworks their brilliant colours, they don't really burn up and just fall to the ground or float around in the air. Metallic pollution is also extremely harmful to the environment. Not going to go too far into the ecology or biochemistry behind this, but here are some scholarly sources if you're interested. Sources are in the dropdown:

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The other major ecological impact, and the one that's been memed to death, is the risk of wildfires. Climate change is making summers hotter in dryer in many places, including the US and Canada. And might I remind you that July is indeed the summer in this part of the world. Along with mismanagement of forests and refusal to use controlled burns to reduce the risk of a massive, out of control wildfire, the risk of a single stray spark falling back down burning down entire forest ranges is not out of the realm of possibilities, nor is it unheard of. We've all heard the news reports about gender reveal forest fires and most people seemed to take it as a joke and not as the ecological and humanitarian disaster that a massive unquenchable forest fire actually is. When every year we get thousands of pictures of forest fires rolling through towns and making them look like Dante's Inferno, maybe we should be more careful about what incendiary devices we use. Sources are again in the dropdown:

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Good news is that this is not an unfamiliar issue. Fireworks are already being restricted or banned all around the world. China invented fireworks and they have deep cultural legacies and symbolism, and is extremely important to many people during certain holidays (speaking as a Chinese person), and even they are getting more and more restrictive with it especially in urban areas. I too will miss the sight of fireworks lighting up the sky during lunar new year, but I genuinely believe the ecological impacts outweigh the benefits. Fireworks are pretty, but so is ivory. If its only job is to look pretty and is extremely harmful otherwise, that's no excuse to keep it around.

https://web.archive.org/web/20230624214433/https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/lynn-paltrow-pregnancy-justice-interview.html

https://web.archive.org/web/20230624214433/https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/lynn-paltrow-pregnancy-justice-interview.html