5 ms·
When i first realized that their primary purpose was to get rid of rats, I had quite the chuckle.
by chirau 6mo ago
When i first realized that their primary purpose was to get rid of rats, I had quite the chuckle.
- sdrm 6mo agoParis should take notes
- VerifiedReports 6mo agoI thought Paris's main problem was dog shit.
- nonethewiser 6mo agoYeah this is why I dont find it endearing. It's just pointing to unsanitary conditions. It's ubiquitous in NYC which may have dulled some senses but it's not ubiquitous everywhere. Cat's themselves are not very sanitary. Better than rats, sure, but they are a source of toxoplasmosis which is very dangerous to pregnant women for example. Limiting exposure is manageable when keeping as a pet, but its a terrible baseline for a cramped public store.
- bombcar 6mo agoThe vast majority of NYCs problem can be tied to their trash debacle, which is so outlandish it's hard for anyone not from there to believe is a real thing in 2206. It appears they finally discovered dumpsters recently: https://www.amny.com/news/curbside-empire-trash-bins-coming-nyc/ https://www.amny.com/news/curbside-empire-trash-bins-coming-... (Another crazy trash city was (is?) Seattle with their weird judgement causing everyone to compact their trash.)
- pcrh 6mo agoIt's still a problem in 2206?
- bombcar 6mo agoOh sheesh now I have to leave the typo in (and it'll probably be correct, at least according to the historical documents: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20SwR_zIWv4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20SwR_zIWv4 )
- carabiner 6mo agoI'm from 2207 and it's not a big deal.
- bombcar 6mo agoDon't listen to the raccoon.
- addaon 6mo ago> 2206 Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. [Posted from 2026.]
- RandallBrown 6mo agoWhat about Seattle's trash was crazy? I've lived here for 14 years and never noticed anything weird about it compared to other places I've lived.
- bombcar 6mo agoIIRC they got a judgement against them a long time ago and charged more per can to pay for it - but my memory may be off. All I know is all the older homes have trash compactors and there was something called the "Seattle Stomp" and it wasn't a dance. https://www.spokesman.com/stories/1995/jan/26/seattle-stomp-blamed-in-garbage-rate-increase/ https://www.spokesman.com/stories/1995/jan/26/seattle-stomp-...
- buildsjets 6mo agoYou do not recall correctly. That's not an article about Seattle. It's an article about Spokane, which is little college town close to five hours away from Seattle. There was no legal judgement, and there was no municipal government action here. A private corporation raised their prices, and their customers reacted by trying to get more for their money. John Smith's invisible hand continues to sculpt our reality.
- buildsjets 6mo agoHe's being overly dramatic, and it's not a "Judgment", it's simple economics. Seattle is basically out of landfill space, the Cedar Hills landfill is a 96.6% capacity, so all trash needs to be trucked out of state. To minimize the cost of doing that they encourage sending most of your waste stream to recycling or compost instead. Many of the local trash haul haulers provide nice large recycle and compost bins, but a tiny landfill waste container unless you pay extra, hence the necessary compacting and stomping. My hauler charges an extra $25 fee if the flip-down lid on the garbage container is not fully closed, and they send you a photo and video of your non-compliant container along with the bill. Again, this is not a judgement or a mandate. You can pay for a larger garbage can or for a multiple garbage cans if you want to. But you have to pay for how your consumption habits impact the cost of disposal.
- blatherard 6mo agoAnd the difficulties of trash handling are further traceable, at least in Manhattan, to the decision by city planners in 1811 to not build alleys. No obvious place to store trash, nor an obvious place to put it when being collected. If you drive in Manhattan you'll also notice a whole lot of delivery trucks and other vehicles blocking lanes, and a lot of designated delivery-only parking zones. This is rooted in the same lack of alleys.
- wahern 6mo agoSan Francisco doesn't have alleys, either, not anymore than NYC. In older buildings, including older apartment buildings, trash cans are kept under stairways, in service rooms, in ground-level hallways, or for single-family homes in garages or backyards, then wheeled out to the sidewalk the night before collection day, blocking pedestrians. Then the garbage men have to roll those bins into the street, maneuvering around parked cars, etc. NYC doesn't have trash cans because New Yorkers perennially chose to continue to throw their trash on the ground like they always had. Blame unions, blame habituation, but you can't blame NYC's architecture and layout; nothing about it is unique compared to other cities globally or even nationally.
- brianwawok 6mo agoChicago has allys. Trash goes in ally. Streets smell nice. NYC has no allys. Trash goes on sidewalk. Streets smell stinky.
- dirck-norman 6mo agoNYC was built without alleyways and much of NYC is single vaulted sewer systems due to its age. There is no space to put underground trash bins. NYC is also non-uniform, so there are different types of trucks and streets. Adam's admin largely solved this during his term, but the above ground bins are unpopular because they're ugly and then it takes time to retrofit the garbage trucks for mechanical pickup. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/03/02/upshot/nyc-trash-rules.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/03/02/upshot/nyc-tr...
- yardie 6mo agoThe reasoning gets worse the further you peel back that onion. Basically dumpsters are too large for sidewalks. Logically, it would make sense to put them on the curb. But no, drivers would complain because having to give up any curbside parking whatsoever.
- tombert 6mo agoI was baffled when I first moved to NYC and found out that people just throw their garbage onto the sidewalk. I have the wheely bin now, which is good, but it's insane that it took until 2025 to actually require it. Probably the only good thing Eric Adams did.
- Barbing 6mo ago“Empire Bins, which can only be picked up by specially-designed side-loading garbage trucks, will be mandatory for the owners of buildings with 30 or more units in those areas to use. … Anderson said expanding Empire Bins to more parts of the city is “not easy,” due to the expense of and time it takes to acquire the side-loading trucks, which are custom-built and have not been used in North America before. The trucks are assembled through a combination of American and Italian parts and designs. “These bins and the trucks that service them did not exist two years ago,” Anderson said. “We are now building a new supply chain that stretches across the Atlantic Ocean to get those trucks here, built, and ready to use. That takes time.”” Had to go custom huh…
- nonethewiser 6mo agoI absolutely could not believe the trash situation in NYC. For people that don't know, it's literally just piled on the sidewalk and street. Stuff like this is completely normal: https://preview.redd.it/manhattan-nyc-this-is-worse-than-usual-but-there-are-often-v0-arnjqupnyy6c1.jpeg?width=1080&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=586fde3c9f506d4680b8c23a7ba0eb527890fcbe https://preview.redd.it/manhattan-nyc-this-is-worse-than-usu...
- alexjplant 6mo ago> they are a source of toxoplasmosis You are far more likely to get it from undercooked beef or shellfish than from a cat. Less than 1% of cats broadly are shedding it at any given time and that number is even lower for indoor cats. If, like me, you have a penchant for rare steak and beef tartare then there's a decent chance that you have it.
- vedaba 6mo agoYou just angered a lot of cat people
- delecti 6mo agoIn my experience most people lovingly refer to their cats in negative-sounding ways. One of the terms of endearment we used for our most recent cat was "stinky little piss baby". I think most cat owners are well aware that they're unsanitary creatures.
- jjtheblunt 6mo agodog person here : they're unsanitary how? they constantly fastidously clean themselves, from what i see. dogs roll in rotting anything for sport.
- kevin_thibedeau 6mo agoIf you covered yourself in spit would that be sanitary?
- jjtheblunt 6mo agoyou just made me wonder if the fact we sweat serves a similar purpose as your spit covering example. (i don't know, but you triggered a thought!)
- imp0cat 6mo agoNope, it's evaporative cooling (like a swamp cooler) for your body.
- jjtheblunt 6mo agothat's only the famous part of the story, though. here's what i was thinking...presence of protein lysing enzymes in sweat as a protective mechanism. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1874391917300064 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187439191...
- jjtheblunt 6mo ago> Cat's themselves are not very sanitary. Better than rats, sure, but they are a source of toxoplasmosis Hyperbole and toxoplasmosis go well together. In particular: it's a limited time window when an infected feline could transmit toxoplasmosis. It can be dangerous to pregnancies, or immuno-compromised individuals. Most humans (and other beings) aren't pregnant or immunocompromised, but the drama of the topic gets clicks, so it's a meme of sorts, and it resurfaces every six months or so in the news as if a revelation.
- kirubakaran 6mo ago> Most humans (and other beings) aren't pregnant or immunocompromised Just because pregnant and immuno-compromised people are in the minority, it's not a big deal?
- sporadicism 6mo agoAdditionally, I can't imagine being blase about gaining parasites just because you're not pregnant or immunocompromised.
- jjtheblunt 6mo agono one is being blase : we're immersed in a biological world teeming with such critters...and we exist through evolutionary adaptation to such. for fun, check out mites around eyelashes, for an innocuous example.
- nkrisc 6mo agoYou’ve likely already got many critters living in an on you.
- darick 6mo agoNot all of those give you brain lesions.
- zdp7 6mo ago
- technothrasher 6mo agoThe rats that the cats are keeping out of the stores are a much larger source of pathogen transmission to humans than the cats are. Not only do rats carry many more dangerous diseases than cats, but both can also transmit toxoplasmosis to humans. As it is transmitted through contact with feces, from which of the two are you more likely to encounter feces spread all over the store? So, while I actually find both rats and cats endearing, I'd take the cats over wild rats in the stores any day.
- trhway 6mo agoI think we owe our civilization to cats - without them we would have never been able to stop being hunters-gatherers and settle into agricultural society as having food stores would have been impossible due to rats. And Black Death, owing to Church persecution of cats, is another great illustration of cats' role.
- throwaway29812 6mo ago[dead]
- Amezarak 6mo agoCats were not widespread in the ancient world until very late. Herodotus writes about cats as an Egyptian novelty. People had mass food stores long before then.
- trhway 6mo agoHerodotus' anecdotes vs. modern genetics: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5790555/#:~:text=Experts%20traditionally%20thought%20that%20the,agriculture%20was%20getting%20under%20way. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5790555/#:~:text=Ex... "But recent genetic and archaeological discoveries indicate that cat domestication began in the Fertile Crescent, perhaps around 10,000 years ago, when agriculture was getting under way." Edit in response to the comment below as i hit post-limit: As it happens, we owe to weasels too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_depictions_of_cats#Ancient_Greece_and_Rome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_depictions_of_cats#An... "Housecats seem to have been extremely rare among the ancient Greeks and Romans;[16] the Greek historian Herodotus expressed astonishment at the domestic cats in Egypt, because he had only ever seen wildcats.[16] Even during later times, weasels were far more commonly kept as pets[16] and weasels, not cats, were seen as the ideal rodent-killers" The main point still stands though.