> It really looks different from what you see from cars. It's like a haze.. sorta like fog, but more gray. But it's very uniform and everywhere.
Cars can cause it too. Long time Los Angeles residents can attest to that. The fuel efficiency and smog requirements in recent decades have made it much less likely though[1].
> Yes, but this problem has only affected the city like this for the last 2 years or so (to this extent).
As someone pointed out with an infographic on Twitter recently, before the Clean Air Act really began to take effect, the air quality was always like this in California summers, fires or not.
> Yeah but do they calculate your personal time value in sitting at a charging station for an hour?
An even more interesting calculation would be how much you are shortening your life by standing at a gas pump inhaling carcinogens. Not to mention breathing the exhaust of all the vehicles around you.
LA has some of the worst air quality in the developed world [1]. Do you want to live there and breath that everyday?
> in Philadelphia ... Every time I washed my car there was a thick black layer of soot covering it within a couple days
A layer of soot in Philadelphia? I've spent plenty of time there, know plenty who live there, and never saw or heard of such a thing. Were you parking next to a chimney sweep?
> To give an example, houses in the Bay Area has gray/black roofs.
Those are no longer legal. Title 24 requires a “cool roof” *
When I had my roof re-covered a couple of years ago the roofer apologized and said he had to use a light color. Which wasn’t a problem for me so no apology was needed.
> I can’t think of anyone I know who has been affected by holes in the ozone layer. Must be a fabricated government boogeyman designed to force me to buy an inferior fridge.
There are many [1] counties in California that come immediately to mind - but I digress.
I'll readily admit that things have changed - organized crime was indeed a much bigger problem in the past - but I might argue that even then the fault lay not with a lack of enforcement, but the existence of really, really dumb laws (prohibition). I might further argue that what organized crime is still problematic, is also a legislative rather than an enforcement issue (current prohibition, which we euphamize as the 'war on drugs').
Even if it's enforcement that's doing the work of eliminating the effects of organized crime on actual citizens - the potential for harm is way bigger from an organization with a monopoly on violence, a state mandate, and practically unlimited coffers.
> whose been affected by an organized crime syndicate
I can’t think of anyone I know who has been affected by holes in the ozone layer. Must be a fabricated government boogeyman designed to force me to buy an inferior fridge.
Law enforcement agencies have been quite effective in controlling them over the last few decades (that and they’ve been replaced by foreign drug cartels..). It was probably quite different back in the 60s or 70s
>Oakland Fire is actually totally fine, which is weird.
Remember the Oakland Hills Fire? A direct result of complete incompetence of the Oakland fire department.
Hundreds of homes burned in Oakland. Barely any in Berkeley. (For those not familiar with local geography, driving along the ridge it's almost impossible to tell when you've left Oakland an entered Berkeley; the fire certainly wouldn't have been able to tell the difference.)
You could see the line of destroyed homes right up to the Berkeley border, where the Berkeley FD was able to stop its progress.
Oakland had completely broken infrastructure: Fire took out power, which then prevented any pumping stations to get water up the hill. Oakland had refused to update their fire hose connectors to a standard size, so the Berkeley fire trucks wouldn't work in Oakland even if the water were pumping, and other area trucks (probably a dozen cities sent help) were similarly useless. Trucks FULL OF WATER sat unused at the base of the hills because of lack of communication.
And the ENTIRE FIRE happened because the fire chief violated the department's policy: A brush fire they'd put out the night before the BIG fire was what flared up and caused the tragedy. This was a windy season, and their policy states that any such brush fires should be monitored for 24 hours after they've been put out to ensure that they don't flare up again, because of the dangers of fire when the winds are that bad. Story had it that the fire chief (a crony appointment of a useless mayor) told the crew to come home because it was Saturday night.
So if Oakland Fire is actually good now, it's certainly improved from utterly incompetent. Granted the loss of life wasn't bad considering the size of the fire (7 people died, if memory serves), but my sister lost a good friend to the fire, and therefore to Oakland Fire's incompetence. So maybe I'm a bit prejudiced.
Regardless, that die is cast, and I've left California entirely for the time being.
> So it was that while running, but not so much as to force my body into open rebellion, I noticed something odd. When I was heading down the gently sloping hill on Peter Coutts Road towards Stanford Avenue, I turned right as usual to head back home, passed along the edge of a grassy area, and smelled...cookies. But not really cookies. Raw cookie dough. Outside.
> been one of the most open minded places in the country
What if you want to ride a Google Bus to work, and have the audacity to think that you don't deserve to be shot at or have bricks thrown through your window? [1] [2]
The entire city, if you’re asking what started the fire ruptured gas mains caused quite a few.
> Has anything relevant changed since then?
The city is full of Lithium Ion batteries that can burn uncontrollably when crushed or punctured. These fires cannot be extinguished quickly unless special chemicals are used.
> residents block the expansion of BART down the SF Peninsula, residents in northwestern Bay Area blocking BART from entering their area for fear of criminals accessing their area easily from the East Bay.
This one I believe. I live near a BART station and it is where most crime happens. My next place will be far, far away from any public transportation.
Cars can cause it too. Long time Los Angeles residents can attest to that. The fuel efficiency and smog requirements in recent decades have made it much less likely though[1].
1: https://www.google.com/search?q=la+smog&tbm=isch#tbm=isch&q=...
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