pigeonberry

pigeonberry, 9 months ago (edited 9 months ago)

An easier way to reach the app in Android is the Google Play store. It’s named Austin 311 from City of Austin. Some negative reviews, though, like (20 Jan 2023) “You can’t report when your trash doesn’t get picked up - easily 99% of the reason I ever call 311” and (9 June 2022) “App sucks. The categories are very limited and hard to locate. I should be able to search on a keyword and your app suggests appropriate categories. Where do i report a malfunctioning pedestrian cross signal, for example. Very disappointing!”

I just checked out the Web page. That has a search capability (I don’t see one in the app), both built in via a Search text box, and the browser’s own facility (except there are not many items per page). I think I prefer it, even on my phone.

But the Android app at least has a map of recent reports, which is a nice feature; I don’t see it in the web page. It also has one central place to enter the reporter’s info; it looks like the Web page has it on each request.

pigeonberry, 11 months ago

Austin was another name for Augustine (as in missionary to the English), so San Austin works theologically.

pigeonberry, 11 months ago

As an analogy, I go to r/spacex, see important things that are being mentioned, and post it in !spacex with a link to the original tweets or articles or whatever. Wikipedia may say

the name “Reddit” is a play-on-words with the phrase “read it”, i.e., “I read it on Reddit.”

but for a good number of posts, you could describe them as “I read it somewhere and decided to post it here”.

pigeonberry, 11 months ago

And this couldn’t have been predicted because …?

pigeonberry, 11 months ago

Controlled burns, which are another alternative to controlling invasive plants in the area, often lead to reduced air quality and can compact the soil, Anderson said

That’s kind of slanderous against controlled burns. There is reduced air quality while it’s burning, but the benefits can last years where the time of burning can last hours. I have not heard of compacting the soil as a drawback: a bit of Googling suggests that that’s a drawback of cutting with machinery instead. Furthermore, there are ecosystems that are adapted to having burns from time to time, so they can be useful if done right.

However, the article mentions poison ivy. Goats can not only eat it, they actively like it, and their bodies destroy the urushiol (the irritant) so their milk is safe. Furthermore, for a burn of poison ivy: some people did that upwind of my sister and a lot of other people on a military base, and the results were Not Good.

pigeonberry, 1 year ago

(For those who don't know, Cameron County is around Brownsville, at the southern tip of Texas. I happen to know that off the top of my head because there's a rocket research center there.)