Favorites: Prevention, Protection, and Policy
January 9th 2024
As much as I’ll tell you that China getting ahead of the US in industrial capacity is bad for liberalism worldwide, I’m also happy to admit that these linear motor based suspension systems are badass.
That’s a lot of extra time at home!
Terrifying. The Getty Villa survived due to advanced fire suppression systems. The main Getty museum apparently has even more fire suppression (cached), and so it's safe despite its place in the hills.
The whole conversation thread is interesting, but this was the most memorable part.
Longer Reads
• Short thread on how to reduce wildfire risk, prescribed burns alone aren't enough because you can't use them in urban/rural (cached) interfaces. (src)(cached)
• longer thread on fire prevention tech (src)(cached)
Flotsam and Jetsam
– Video of wreckage of Pacific Palisades (src)(cached)
– Really bad look for the mayor of LA to be in Ghana right now (src)(cached)
– ~40% of US Forest Service budget goes to complying with NEPA and other regulatory requirements. Someone even found a citation for this claim (cached). (src)(cached)
– There is precedent for fires like this in LA, it’s not entirely climate change / bad leadership (src)(cached)
– The recent fire could result in a $1000 surcharge on CA insurance policies (src)(cached)
– Crazy good aim on this helicopter water drop, and a second one if you like watching helicopters dump water (src)(cached)