protist
I don’t think anyone with a scientifically informed perspective pretends they know the big bang was finite in nature. We’re just inferring based on our understanding of physics and our observations of the universe that what we perceive as the universe seems to have grown from an ultradense, unfathomably energetic smaller point. We have no idea what, if anything, came before, or whether there are other universes besides our own
I live in Austin and this is the first I’ve even heard about this happening, meaning they didn’t exactly make waves. Ignoring these guys is the best strategy. They want counterprotests so they can try to rile them up and try to draw attention. They thrive on attention, so we should focus on trying to defeat them politically while ignoring them as much as possible
Austin’s City Council is currently on summer break, but when its members return next week for the meeting scheduled on July 20, they’re taking on a fairly significant land use resolution with the potential to shape the future of housing across the city. You’d think Agenda Item 126 might have dropped with a little more fanfare, considering its seemingly enormous scope — let’s dig in:
If you don’t want to sift through all those “be it resolved”s, the gist is that Austin’s 1980s land development code imposes a minimum lot size of 5,750 square feet for homes built under the single-family zoning regime that dominates the vast majority of the city’s available land. This size requirement, combined with Austin’s sky-high land values, drives up the price of even modestly sized “starter” homes — so the resolution proposes amending the code to reduce the minimum lot size in single-family zones to 2,500 square feet or less “so that existing standard-size lots can be subdivided, and be developed with a variety of housing types such as row houses, townhomes, tri-and four-plexes, garden homes, and cottage courts.”
The housing types listed here represent the so-called “missing middle” residential typology that’s currently absent from most of Austin due to the current restrictions of our code, and unlocking this style of lower-density infill development is generally considered an effective way to increase housing stock in existing neighborhoods. To incentivize this kind of development, along with its proposed minimum lot size changes the resolution also proposes amending the code to allow at least three units per lot in single-family zoning districts.
To streamline this process, the resolution also directs the City Manager to propose amendments adjusting current limits on setbacks, height, impervious cover, floor-to-area ratio, building cover requirements, and other tweaks like only imposing the city’s McMansion Ordinance on projects that intend to construct a single home on one lot. The time and cost of jumping through all the hoops of the city’s current code is reflected in the final price of new housing, and fast-tracking the development of these missing middle residences should benefit local affordability.
If this isn’t surprising enough for you, perhaps you could chew on the fact that this item is sponsored by Council Member Leslie Pool — yes, that Leslie Pool — with co-sponsors including CMs Vela, Qadri, Ellis, and Mayor Watson. We’ve often ripped on CM Pool as part of council’s longstanding NIMBY bloc, but she (and her staff) deserve a hand for taking a clear-eyed look at Austin’s housing crisis and rejecting the typical priors of the do-nothing crowd with this proposed legislation. The part we can’t figure out is how the resolution, as a change to existing zoning regulation, plans to avoid the property owner notification requirements that currently have even more modest tweaks to Austin’s zoning code mired in legal trouble thanks to those aforementioned NIMBYs — fingers crossed that the folks on the dais know something we don’t.
This is a lot to drop on a humble blog without any official urban planning credentials, but we’re doing our best to wrap our heads around the ramifications of this change. Although these code tweaks are a major step in the right direction, they’re similar to light rail in the sense that we should have passed them about 20 years ago to truly stave off a crisis — at this point, we’re trying to close a wound with band-aids, but it’s a lot better than doing nothing. For the record, that 2,500-square-foot minimum lot size is a more modest reform than the infill renaissance we’ve seen with townhomes in Houston, where the minimum lot size is a mere 1,400 square feet.
Still, a triplex on every residential lot could win over at least a small portion of the housing-skeptic crowd with its lack of intensity compared to a typical apartment building rising five floors or more. We’re fond of all types of housing, but this proposal has the potential to become the most significant land use reform Austin’s passed since the failure of the land development code rewrite in 2018. Can you tell we’re nervous?
No Brain? For Jellyfish, No Problem
“I think sometimes people use its lack of a brain to treat a jellyfish in ways we wouldn’t treat another animal,” Helm says. “There are robots in South Korea that drag around the bay and suck in jellyfish and shred them alive. I’m a biologist and sometimes sacrifice animals, but I try to be humane about it. We don’t know what they are feeling, but they certainly have aversion to things that cause them harm; try to snip a tentacle and they will swim away very vigorously. Sure, they don’t have brains, but I don’t think that is an excuse to put them through a blender.”
Ok, but the question was whether or not they feel pain. We can definitively say they display escape behaviors when presented with an aversive stimulus, so I’d say it’s likely they do feel some sort of pain, even if their perception of it is nothing like that displayed by animals with central nervous systems.
The morality of shredding them alive by the thousands is a different conversation, but I would say yes, nature is cruel, and yes, it’s possible for humans to mimic nature and kill animals in similar ways, but humans also have a knack for taking things too far, eg chickens bred to be so big they can’t even walk or jellyfish-murdering robots
There is no evidence that they do.
You say this, but do you know anything about the research and science in this regard?
Here’s one intro clip from Wikipedia, there are also many thousands of scientific studies related to learning about how different organisms feel things if you want to learn:
Crustaceans fulfill several criteria proposed as indicating that non-human animals may experience pain. These fulfilled criteria include a suitable nervous system and sensory receptors; opioid receptors and reduced responses to noxious stimuli when given analgesics and local anaesthetics; physiological changes to noxious stimuli; displaying protective motor reactions; exhibiting avoidance learning; and making trade-offs between noxious stimulus avoidance and other motivational requirements.
The goats will stay at the trail day and night for the next three to four weeks, taking breaks to chew their cud and sleeping in their on-site trailers. Guests of the trail should not be affected, Anderson said, as the goats will remain in the vegetation and not on the dirt path.
Those visiting are asked to keep their pets on leashes and not touch the goats or the electric fencing while they work.
“It’s a little like being around a working therapy dog,” Anderson said. “It’s very tempting to want to pet them, but we ask that you do not do it.”
Anderson said she hopes once word spreads about the goats at the trail, TTC will be able to secure funding to continue the program throughout the trail. Additionally, she said when the goats have finished their work, TTC will use heavy mulch to prevent the germination of invasive plants in the future, and will replant the areas with native plants during the fall and winter months.
How do you link gifs in comments? Trying to link the Carlton dance but failing
