Among the worst offenders is plastic, a material that is largely unregulated and can contain thousands of chemicals. Silicone and coatings on metal cans can also contain toxic or understudied compounds, Geueke said. Many paper and cardboard products were until recently treated with PFAS and can contain a layer of plastic.

Over the past 40 years, Americans have been moving to more disaster-prone regions of the U.S. South and West. “A hurricane cutting the Gulf side of Florida now just encounters way more houses, way more businesses, way more roads, way more infrastructure than it did 40 years ago,” Keys said.

At the same time, climate change has been increasing the frequency and severity of extreme storms and wildfires in those fast-growing regions. Finally, when disaster strikes, inflation and labor shortages have driven up the cost of rebuilding.

All of these factors have made disasters more expensive, and contributed to the rise in premiums. But the biggest factor behind the rise, according to Keys, is the way that climate change is reshaping a fundamental pillar of the insurance industry.

Insurance is built around the assumption that disaster doesn’t strike everyone at the same time. For many types of insurance, that assumption is mostly true — a car insurer, for example, knows that it’s unlikely that every driver will get into a fender bender on the exact same day. But when it comes to home insurance, climate change is causing this assumption to crumble. A major wildfire could easily burn down an entire town, or a hurricane could easily rip the roofs off all the homes in a neighborhood. For this reason, insurance companies in disaster-prone regions end up purchasing their own insurance policies, known as “reinsurance.”

Reinsurance protects regular insurance companies from going bankrupt from a string of major disasters. Since reinsurance companies cover the epicenters of extreme weather, they’ve recently become extremely sensitive to climate risk. Since 2020, premiums for reinsurance have doubled, and will likely continue to rise. In states that experience frequent extreme weather disasters — like Louisiana, Texas, and Florida — insurance companies end up purchasing a lot of expensive reinsurance, and those costs get passed down to customers.

This is the biggest factor behind the recent surge in home insurance premiums, and Keys doesn’t expect it to stop anytime soon. In a recent interview with Bloomberg, Jacques de Vaucleroy, the chairman of the major reinsurance firm Swiss Re, said that reinsurance premiums will continue to rise until people stop building in dangerous areas.

Good article, several interesting specifics and a food overview. The last bold is mine.

Two full systems were donated using German funds. I hope more are in the pipe.

Each Skynex system is composed of four Revolver Gun Mk3 cannons, a CN-1 control node, and an X-TAR3D radar.

Another great list.

Practical Engineering is beloved. I used to like Smarter Everyday about the same, but Grady is just so much more consistent and interesting on the infrastructure world.

And Jenny is a geek I can get along with. The Starwars hotel failure was fascinating. Wish there was a bit more economic context, but she’s great.

Looking forward to some binges here.

Lots of good ones in there. Thanks!

B1M is great, Mega Projects and others of Simon’s channels are good (some better then others). Wendover is amazing, I just wish he out more out, but the production quality is probably to high to increase the rate.

I’ll have to check the rest out. :)

He is indeed a great find. His Dubai lights was one I was just thinking about due to another post.

As I said in the other comment, PreRun mentioned the same. It’s actually impressive to see how well Ukraine has adapted to EU/NATO/Western standards whilst in a war. More ways Ukraine is winning this, or at least staying afloat.

Indeed, PreRun said similar in his most recent video about Ukraine’s War Economy. Still, percentages or some indication of how close they are to being capable would make me feel less frustrated with the situation.

I read this on the 14th or so and did a face palm. Floridaland is for the alligators apparently.

Additionally, the federal government has failed to provide sufficient data to support the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 boosters, or acknowledge previously demonstrated safety concerns associated with COVID-19 vaccines and boosters, including:

• prolonged circulation of mRNA and spike protein in some vaccine recipients,

• increased risk of lower respiratory tract infections, and

• increased risk of autoimmune disease after vaccination.

And my favorite:

• Potential DNA integration from the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines pose unique and elevated risk to human health and to the integrity of the human genome, including the risk that DNA integrated into sperm or egg gametes could be passed onto offspring of mRNA COVID-19 vaccine recipients.

Apparently we are at risk of covid immune babies!

Exactly true in the newpipe comparison. Same with YT-dlp variants.

I’m an always on VPN sort of guy, but most are not. So yes the fingerprint tradeoff is one I accept within my ability to deal with inconvenience. Mostly upside at this point with no ads, just sponsors that slip through sponsor block.

My fingerprint it’s perfect, but I know it’s working as I can see other peoples feeds are more adaptive and directed then whatever I get. I know I have a hole when I see something spammy too.

https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/ always worth a check.

Agreed, now the fun part of coming up with a legal basis to do so and convincing regulators.

Yes… But what rate are they producing? Bloody article.

Guessing it’s lower then the 2000 shot daily. I know the US is ramping up it’s own production of 155.

I don’t think this requires an act of congress. I think you might see more consumer advocation on the part of FTC (although it doesn’t currently regulate online broadcast), or potentially the CFPB.

Admittedly it’s more likely to see the EU do some regulations, but it all depends on the election.

I’d you have android, I recommended newpipe or one of it’s fork like tubular. Or Seal or it’s fork Ytdlnis.

There are several front ends for yt-dlp on Mac and Windows as well.

I miss it all the time. I wish Pixels would get off their internal storage racket, or at least give you extremely large options.

I appreciate the cogent context and solution oriented post.

I’d also say though that from a privacy standpoint self-hosting invidious is still allowing GeoIP info to be attached to downloaded videos, which is a fingerprint which can be used by data mining. Admittedly rather abstract as in this case the primary point of deplatforming might just be to de-ad, or give better video control, etc, and not obfuscate for privacy sake.

As I said though great points!

While I agree, I have a hard time seeing how people will stop using it until the field changes. Maybe in 10 years it will the the MySpace of the sitcom era, but right now it’s still growing. That growth is giving it carte blanche to manipulate the users as it sees fit. Regulation might impact it, but it’s still a bit of a Goliath.

• Compared to 2023, YouTube’s user base has grown by 20 million this year, representing a 0.74% increase. From Global media insights

Also the active user base is 2.7 billion people in 2024 from the same source above.

The alternatives are out there, but just not in the same league.

Yt-DLP and it’s variation (Seal, YTDLnis, etc.), newpipe and it’s variation (Tubular, Newpipe Sponsorblock, etc) already allow you to do this without having to get manual.

Economists at JP Morgan, the largest US bank by assets, published a research paper on de-dollarization in 2023.

In reference to the global economy as a whole, they concluded that, “while marginal de-dollarization is expected, rapid de-dollarization is not on the cards”.

However, they argued that, “Instead, partial de-dollarization — in which the renminbi assumes some of the current functions of the dollar among non-aligned countries and China’s trading partners — is more plausible, especially against a backdrop of strategic competition”.

The JP Morgan economists added, “This could over time give rise to regionalism, creating distinct economic and financial spheres of influence in which different currencies and markets assume central roles”.

This seems inline with the Chinese leadership game of influence, as well as the clown show that the US has become. Even with the interest still there from the US standpoint two decades of GWT, the lack of prioritize spending on following our so called values, the very high debt to GDP ratio we are running, the lack of real legislative ability, plus other challenges, all make the fundamentals seem less fundamental. Although China very much has it’s own issues such as an excess of manufacturing, a housing bubble, and a very steep demographic bubble. So their fundamentals are seemingly similar in question, but they have a marked ability to pivot quickly and do seem to be using their status as the 2nd largest economic to garner the same level of influence.

Whether either has staying power of economics and global influence for the next 50 years is a very interesting question.

I certainly don’t count the US out yet, but even if the election settles things down, there is some real work to do which has little to do with the current hotly discussed policy topics. I’d be curious about your opinions?

True, but worth reading their about page and privacy page. Not saying it’ll stay this way, but the way they are running is something that makes more sense then being sold as a product to Google. And you aren’t getting much of an incognito these days with all the fingerprinting they are doing.

I will admit kagi search isn’t the highest performer, but it’s viable. DDG, Start page, etc. Might give you more privacy, or not (hard to tell with DDG these days), but it might be worth trying a different model for a while.

I miss the days when the internet was truly free, but in lieu of that we have to have something better. Kagi is a start.