Re: the power of junk, Is Parallel Programming Hard, And, If So, What Can You Do About It?

On 5/23/2025 12:03 PM, Scott Lurndal wrote:

BGB <cr88192@gmail.com> writes:

On 5/23/2025 9:21 AM, John Levine wrote:

According to Scott Lurndal <slp53@pacbell.net>:

Don’t you have regulations, or at least discouragements, against e-waste
going to landfill?

>
Yes, in the last two decades.   A quarter century ago, not so much.

>
This is 'Murica, pretty much everything goes in the trash here...

>
Nonsense.

>
It's sort of true. In my town they pick up paper and containers and yard waste
at the curb but I have to take electronics down to the recycling dump. Most
people don't bother.
>

>
Theoretically, they pick up recycling (paper and plastic), but whether
or not they bother is another matter. Usually the garbage trucks come by
and empty both bins, so it might not make much difference.

 There are trucks that have two holding areas, so they can make
the trip with one truck rather than two.  In my rural neighborhood,
there are three trucks - trash, recycling and greenwaste.  I have
the smallest trash can they offer and it takes me two to three
weeks to fill it.
 

No greenwaste trucks, one has to take any tree branches or similar down to the greenwaste place themselves, if not burn them.
The area I am in, isn't really either urban or rural I think.
IIRC, yard here is around 2.5 acre, whereas a neighbor has somewhere around 8 acres (so a much bigger yard).
Another neighbor (across a different fence), having a much smaller yard (around 1 acre).
Contrast, say, in suburbs or housing developments where the houses are basically right next to each other with very little yard space.
At the relative's house, I think the yard is in the area of 4 acres (so, enough that we could set up a machine shop in the back yard, along with a few storage units, etc).
The neighbor with the horses has a much bigger yard, maybe 12 acres, but I think maybe much smaller and horses would be unhappy as they seem to like to run around and would need at least some distance to get up to speed.
Maybe counts as rural, dunno...
Still not quite the same as the open expanses of land further away from cities though (where the land is either wide open, or the occasional corn fields or similar). Which is like, more rural.
Maybe the metric would be whether one could easily walk to the neighbor's house (say, in a few minutes or so), vs probably needing to get in a car or similar and drive there.

It's pretty easy to reduce the amount of waste you generate
through the choices you make and the goods you purchase.  Don't
by canned sparking water or water in disposable plastic
bottles, for example.  Eschew products packaged in
in excessive plastic packaging.  Don't use one-time plastic
items (straws, eating utensils, plates etc).   Prefer glass containers
over plastic containers.
 

We don't use that much single use plastics here at least.
Things like plastic bottles and jars tend to get cleaned out and reused.

>
Though, looking, it might depend on state as well.

 Very definitely.  Unenlightened states (generally red)
don't give a shit.
 

Pretty sure Oklahoma is pretty solidly in the red camp.
I think there are some blue areas down by Oklahoma City and similar though, but where I am living is pretty far from OKC.
Here, we are near a city (Tulsa), but not particularly close to the main urban parts of the city (nor in "Broken Arrow" which is mostly the land of suburbs). Partly up near Owasso and similar as well.
But, yeah, also up near the borders with Kansas, Arkansas, and Missouri.
Where, Kansas and Missouri are the closest borders, Arkansas a little further.