I think microplastics and biohazards would come into play at some point, but sure, why not. Choose your own adventure.

It’s not just about the size, it’s also about their weight and maneuverability due to the use cases I outlined above and that the article also goes into.

face recognition scanners everywhere

Peter Thiel beat you to it!

Palantir has secretly been using New Orleans to test its predictive policing technology (2018)

I used to live there and yes, Bourbon St. is gross, but I was trying to say that it is cleaned regularly and very well. But it will also continue to be regularly trashed, so the cycle will continue indefinitely.

I feel like there are a lot of misunderstandings here and it makes sense as to why.

New Orleans (my former home) is complicated. It’s not as straightforward as bollards vs no bollards or vehicles vs pedestrians, etc.

NOLA has obviously been through a lot over the past 20 years - Katrina, Rita, and recently Ida in 2021 were all hard hitting storms.

The influx of visitors for Mardi Gras in 2020 is what made Covid especially devastating for the city.

It’s a poor city that relies on tourism to stay alive. The overall education system in Louisiana is abysmal and the politics are extremely dysfunctional. The rest of the state (conservative) despises NOLA (liberal), but they realize their livelihoods depend on its debauchery so they “allow” it (a whole other story).

So the city needs tourism to stay alive. The tourists mostly stick to the French Quarter - Bourbon Street is the famous one, right? There are a lot of businesses on Bourbon - mostly bars/clubs, tourist shops, restaurants, some hotels, etc.

Those places need to be able to receive regular deliveries, but there are also residences on Bourbon and in the FQ as a whole.

Could some system be put up to accommodate the delivery drivers, the employees, the residents, the tourists who park at hotels, taxis/Uber/Lyft and the safety of pedestrians? Let’s assume sure, why not.

Where does the money come from? The city itself is poor. The state hates the city so why do they need to direct money to the place of sin and majority poor Black residents? Louisiana infrastructure overall is shit, anyway. Federal? Okay, but that would mean the city talking to the state talking to the federal government and that’s fucked up in so many ways. And Trump is about to be inaugurated, so good luck with that.

My point is/TLDR - projects like this aren’t something that NOLA can do on its own. The state won’t help it and I don’t expect the Trump admin to, either.

It’s a difficult and complex situation and most Louisiana politicians have no incentive to do anything about it until it somehow begins to impact them directly. They’ll just get on TV during press conferences and point fingers at the failure of the liberal NOLA politicians while ignoring their own failure to act over the years.

It’s a fucking shitshow and it’s sad.

If you’re referring to the levees that failed during Katrina, that was the fault of the Army Corps of Engineers.

They were redone and performed as intended during category 4 Hurricane Ida - the hurricane that hit the city in 2021. It was the first big test.

I highly recommend the book “The Storm: What Went Wrong and Why During Hurricane Katrina: The Inside Story from One Louisiana Scientist” by Ivor van Heerden.

The author was a cofounder of the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center and lost his job after speaking out about the levee failures.

It’s not tinfoil hat stuff - I’m a degreed engineer and he goes into great detail about things like different soil compositions and what types of beams need to be used to work effectively.

It’s still not a difficult read though, and he also goes into social issues such as the poor Black community in New Orleans and corruption in Louisiana politics.

Highly, highly recommend.

They have street cleaning down to an art. It’s amazing to watch. Does the French Quarter often smell like a mixture of piss and vomit? Yes, because drunk tourists are consistently doing these things on the streets/sidewalks.

Not to mention all of the leftover trash from the various parades…imagine if there was no regular street cleaning.

It’s truly a spectacle to behold.

Another source said he was an Army veteran. I don’t have it on hand, but it was a law enforcement source speaking to the Advocate.

So Iran is basically Texas. Or vice versa, but in more ways than just being a theocracy.

Thank you for this informative comment. I appreciate it.

Holy shit I never realized it until you explained it like this. Thank you, and also we are fucked.

You win the internet today, my friend.

You get the Navy’s “highest civilian honor” for being in movies? TIL

Pull yourselves up by the bootstraps and deal with it, he said to the people who were shot and killed today. /s but yeah pretty much that.

Fernandez was a 17-year-old sailor on board the USS Curtiss during the 17 December 1941 attack that propelled the US into the second world war.

I’m sure it’s a typo, but the attack was December 7, 1941. (Not Dec 17)

So wear sunglasses when watching tv. Got it.

Just when we think it can’t get worse, some rich asshole has to laugh and say “Hold my beer and watch me enshittify even harder.”

Just tried to go to my account - here’s the pop up. Promptly said fuck off and deleted my account.

It’s nice to think they’re freaking out, but I feel like whatever extra precautions they take for themselves and their families will be passed onto us and result in even more expensive healthcare.

Still worth it tho.

Holy fuck.