> Over everything—up through the wreckage of the city, in gutters, along the riverbanks, tangled among tiles and tin roofing, climbing on charred tree trunks—was a blanket of fresh, vivid, lush, optimistic green; the verdancy rose even from the foundations of ruined houses. Weeds already hid the ashes, and wild flowers were in bloom among the city’s bones. The bomb had not only left the underground organs of plants intact; it had stimulated them. Everywhere were bluets and Spanish bayonets, goosefoot, morning glories and day lilies, the hairy-fruited bean, purslane and clotbur and sesame and panic grass and feverfew. Especially in a circle at the center, sickle senna grew in extraordinary regeneration, not only standing among the charred remnants of the same plant but pushing up in new places, among bricks and through cracks in the asphalt. It actually seemed as if a load of sickle-senna seed had been dropped along with the bomb.
Never mind that the rest of the article will probably elicit a few spontaneous sobs from an empathetic reader.
It's only "much harder if not impossible" for lack of trying. And while yes, there are some out there that simply don't have such options, we also have people that need to cut down a tree but can't afford the work, and so simply hope it won't fall on their house the next time it gets windy.
Email lists and chat servers are just Facebook with extra steps. The only difference ends up being the fact that Facebook-like social networks suggest you people and content you might like from a giant pool, whereas the alternatives have rather limited pools and the signal to noise ratio is pathetic because you get literally everything that is posted and have to filter through it manually.
Don't get me wrong, I hate Facebook and only use it on maybe a handful of occasions per year, but you can't tell me that it didn't enable things that weren't possible for many before it was invented.
I do not have any accounts in my real name, and I had no problems finding others via our pseudonym's when I wanted to share them with people in the physical world.
In all discussions I've heard that mention "exclusive value" or a similar concept, the agreed-upon definition was always something like "where all others are orders of magnitude worse".
Why? Why is this socially acceptable? Is this different from the past, or are we just more aware of it?
Second, it's possible to objective demonstrate whether a factual statement is correct or not. But whether a statement is disingenuous or misleading cannot be proven with the same level of certainty (absent evidence of intent). So bad-faith actors can always guarantee that disputing that contention will end in an "agree to disagree" draw at worst.
Yes 1/3 are effected badly but we just say that it can have positive effects. Just omitting the fact that it often has a detrimental effect…