Forrest service roads and cleared lanes don’t really do anything to help us mitigate our fires. A recent fire by me in NorCal was growing at a rate of nearly 1000 acres per hour. At that speed it was moving faster than 60mph and created its own weather including dry lightening and fire tornadoes. We have tons of freeways with at least 75+ feet of width to them for miles and they just jump those containment lines all the time.

Back burns/prescribed burns are about the only thing we have that does anything useful. In fact that earlier fire was talked about how it got out of control because a prescribed burn wasn’t done when it was scheduled and it was right in the starting path.

I’d recommend you go watch videos on the Camp fire (paradise) but also the Carr fire. The old thinking in Cali before that fire season was that cities were safe because of defensive spacing, pavement, underground power and access to water. The Carr fire wiped out a huge swath of western Redding and the Camp fire effectively removed paradise from the map. Both were 40k + people cities. Our fires aren’t like everywhere else. Our mountains create channels for wind to speed through and the steep inclines mean that flames spread faster when traveling up hills. Our trees are massive and when they fully engulf they basically become giant matches spewing embers for miles in every direction. In some cases we’ve had fires creating spot fires up to 1-2 miles away. We just can’t account for everything. Look at Nevada though, they consistently get larger fires than even California (due to remote locations and those same dry, hot winds. No one ever asks Nevada to sweep a forest or bury power lines.

We also resource share with Canada and Australia in California. So we have a few NSW water drop plane here for the summer helping us, and then in our winter we send a few of our DC-10s over and a 747. On top of that we’re also a state that sends its firefighters out even during our summer to go to Montana, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Arizona and any other states that request our mutual aid.

Lastly, look up at Canada and Montana. Their wildfires are growing out of control. Specifically because they have a lot of dead trees after the bark beetle basically kills them.

There’s a great documentary on YouTube about the last watchman for the Forrest service. It’s just not needed much since our camera system uses multiple angles to geo-locate faster. With drones often sent and used to survey fires and help teams on the ground prepare to fight them.

Oh, and our smoke jumpers. We pay crews of people here in Cali to jump out of planes and live in the Forrest for weeks on end possibly while they fight fires. It’s just incredibly difficult in some of these more remote areas like the mountains.

This is every dumbass right wing talking point. Cali has the largest fleet of firefighting aircraft in the world. We have been deploying night time attack helicopters, we recently finalized like 5 new C-130 conversion craft (on top of our 747s, DC-10s and other various attack craft) that drop 4000 gallons of retardant and we have propositioned personnel across the state in strategic locations so they can water drop on any fire within 20 minutes. We’re a massive state with a ton of federal lands so cutting in the woods isn’t really a California thing. We’re burying power lines, but a lot of these fires recently have been dry lightening. We don’t really use watch towers since we have a system of cameras positioned on peaks all across the state that monitor for us. We have more firefighters and keep them on payroll year round. These fires down in SoCal happen frequently due to Santa Ana winds which is a dry (like 10% humidity), hot and fast wind that whips over the mountains. People in flat states or humid ones act like we just twiddle are thumbs at this but the state is just an environment that constantly caught on fire, and the weather and topography make those fires grow faster and burn hotter. Not to mention the eucalyptus that colonizers brought over that spontaneously combusts.

It’s a little ranty/ramble-y, but fire risk is something we’re use to here. It isn’t new to us.

If you’re from the west coast of the US that seems to be a more West Coast thing. I recently went to Chicago and was amazed at how clean it was. The Lyft driver told me it was the cleanest city in the country (and possibly the world since he grew up outside of the states) but I wasn’t prepared for it. I walked everywhere in the city and there just wasn’t a single piece of trash anywhere. We actively looked too.

Government Accountability Office: Am I a joke to you?

These stupid fucks don’t even realize we already have something that does this. It’s just not as in your face since you have to actually read about it.

Those yellow bump things for blind people. They need to follow a spec that then in turn cart manufacturers, wheelchair manufacturers, and wagon cart manufacturers all build around so that when I travel over them they don’t jostle my whole cart around and tip over my drink.

You don’t get to that level of wealth by getting haircuts from a stylist. He pinched every penny, got bowl cuts while his friends got specialty cuts, skipped the avocado toast and drank water instead of $5 coffees. Then his rich parents just gave him a small 10 million dollar loan and sent him to a prestigious school where only other rich kids went.

Honestly, respect to him for the shit tier haircut. At least he didn’t try to fake it like Elon.

I believe it goes

Queen: Asad

King: Ahmadinejad

Rook: Bin Laden

Knight: 747

Castle: a cave (?)

These days I’m usually against the death penalty, and I know it seems a bit harsh to advocate for this… but people entering in an exit door should be absolutely blasted with an Anti Aircraft gun (thanks Kim Jong Un for the idea!). It absolutely rustles my jimmies.

I (American) felt like the Brexit election was a huge catalyst of right wing sentiment across the world. We’re also seeing a big swing in it after the rise of social media in young men’s lives.

I always love when someone from a country with a homogenous ethnic and cultural background tries to tell me about how racist the US is.

This is basically the Hispanic dress code for every guy in the Cali Central Valley to Texas.

I completely agree that a base of people who are looking to do things for free or cheap will have a harder time with brand deals for goods for sure. That’s why I use PDS debt. It helps me better understand where I’m spending money and how I can cut costs.

I’m sure there’s a crossover too. There’s also clothing exchanges like Freestyle (in my area) that have a large presence that I could see advertising through influencers. Even though they’re trying to “consume less” they still are a market. They just might not be as likely to spend more openly.