A hospital spokeswoman has urged Berliners to attach spikes to their shoes and try "walking like penguins" to avoid falling in the treacherous conditions that have plagued the city for weeks.
My sister lives in New Brunswick - my goodness the winters are brutal, lots and lots of snow, ice, icy rain - as an English woman I wouldn’t live there for any amount of money. (And the summers just mean lots and lots of biting flies…) Bears in the woods surrounding her house, moose on the roads causing accidents. Anyways - her house is surrounded by trees and she salts and sands and salts and sands all winter long. The trees flourish.
Old timer here - go to the nearest feed store and purchase a 50 lb bag of barn grit (pulverized limestone). Transfer to a number of heavy walled plastic jugs (laundry detergent bottles). Put one in your vehicle and put one at your entry door, give one to an elderly neighbor. Scatter this stuff as needed on ice to give a gritty surface to walk on. Doesn’t take much. Used in local barns so you don’t have to butcher that cow because of a broken leg.
Did you refer to a Squirrel as a “tree rat”? Since the martyrdom of P-Nut the squirrel is 2nd only to the Eagle as the creature most representative of American liberty. They are also highly entertaining and, to paraphrase Bret Weinstein, more fun than watching most anything on TV.
I was being facetious. Besides the hundreds of golden finches we also feed the multitudes of squirrels in our area. My wife even bought a bulk 50lb bag of almonds for them last year.
Yea I know. We’ve recently even started feeding the rabbits that show up. And when she read carrots are too high in sugar, she bought hay (today in fact)
If Germany doesn’t seem to care if residents may not have heat why would protecting them from injuries matter. To quote one of our famous political females here in the US, “At this point, what difference does it make?”
When the ruling cabal actually thinks about the humanity they think are beneath them exactly what Agent Smith says to Morpheus in The Matrix it all makes sense.
Because they do. They believe it. And temper themselves the best they can to indulge our needs until they think they have us right where they want us. Then they'll treat us the same. Unless we do something to change their plans.
Yes, since the earth is warming up at such a tempo, we all of a sudden have massive snowfall in Moscow and ice all over the place. Where are the climate nerds now? are we heading for an ice age?
Recently I read an article that debunked all of Gore's points. I remember the Time magazine cover! (I am 68, so not so far behind you). I also remember the panicky too many people slogans, which have been doing the rounds for what? 200 years? I consider all that, stuff for people with too much time on their hands. Let them plough the ground with horse and plough shears, harvest by hand, sterilize veggies and make gellies and jams. They will drop in their beds tired with no time to start a panic attack.
Don’t forget nuclear war, Nostradamus, deforestation leaving the world with no oxygen, fire ants, killer bees, the year 2000, alien body snatchers, forest fires, and our weekly dose of Leonard Nimoy’s In Search Of. Growing up in the 1970s was stressful!
I keep looking for that damn global warming as I sit here in single digit Fahrenheit temperatures around NYC. those climate folks assured me that was the future
An even better one is vancouver international airport, built decades ago on reclaimed land in the ocean. Still there, planes don't need water wings to land even today.
Several years ago, I sent a letter to our Gov. Jay "Carbon" Inslee here in Washington state. I said that since he was going to stop the Climate from changing would he please stop it sometime in mid-June? I told him that the climate here at that time if year is really nice and it would be great to have it all year round.
In our next episode, the German government wrestles with the societal implications of average Berliners in hobnail-adjacent boots stomping around with bird-adjacent gaits. Many are worried it sends the wrong message…
In Germany there has evolved a very strange kind of political establishment, that does not care for its people at all. It breeds and tries to execute fragments of strange ideologies that are mostly associated with the so called globalist agenda pushed by UN, WHO, WEF etc.
But Germans would not be Germans if they wouldn't follow such agendas with painstakingly scrutiny, no matter what costs.
But it is not even very cold here in Germany, it is mostly about 0 degrees and only moderately freezing in the night. It is just a normal winter, as it used to be 30 years ago.
that was my first idea, too. Or ashes. They could also use a sled and put these smart politians in front, with their spikes on they should have no problem at all.
When I was a child in Cambridgeshire in England ashes were routinely used by householders.
I feel it is appropriate to expect medics to "work into the night" when there are a lot of injured people. Although only a finance guy (and IT, HR, risk management, litigation) I often worked late when nthe business needed me to do so.
Isn't that what responsible people do. Was I a shmuck?
No, you can't use ashes! To get ashes, you'd have to burn wood or coal, and that would contribute to more global warming! Don't you care about the planet?
</sarc>
We had a hard freeze here in Florida last night. Many of the plants in my yard are will die right down to the ground as a result. I actually wouldn't mind a bit more of that global warming right now. Neither would my kids, who are up in Pennsylvania, where the temperature hasn't been above freezing for quite some time.
Indeed, Road, And add Michael "Hockey Stick" Mann and Dr.'s Paul Erlich, James Hansen, and pseudo-scientist Rachel Carson to the long list of charlatans who have harmed humanity via their propaganda.
It could be as simple as different way of handling the budget for snow/ice removal.
Here, it used to be that the city paid the costs and those costs depended on the amount of snow each Winter, meaning the budget for snow-removal was kind of open-ended.
Nowadays, a city council alots a specific amount in advance that is to be spent on its own equipment and staff, and also to pay for temporary hires (most firms and farmers et c that owns tractors and such sign up for the extra money), and if it snows more than their estimate - read: guess - then removal lags until they can hold a meeting and allocate more money.
Yes, I think people generally care much less about real life today in society. They probably call it "tolerance", but it looks more like absolute helplessness, made palatable by constant propaganda that it is the right way to behave.
Cleaning the streets never was really a civic duty issue, because it was done by public servants, paid by taxes. 30 years ago there was more the feeling: you pay your taxes, you get a working bureaucracy.
Today there are much fewer tax payers, and no one really expects much anymore. But at the same time public media propagandizes that so much money is spent on migrants, NGOs, or even just thrown away.
There is a feeling of great passivity. Made easier by being couched in conformist morality, and being on the right side of history.
We tried to kill an out of control shrub once using rock salt because the internet said it would work. We cut the shrub down to almost nothing and then put rock salt in holes we drilled into the stump. The shrub now looks amazing. I swear they just like to be in control no matter who gets hurt.
I am sure the salt prohibition is for ‘our collective safety and good’, indeed the greater good. Yes it’s unfortunate about the collateral damage but one must always think about the greater good and not be selfish and honestly speaking be prepared to die to save the trees from a potential but not proven threat. In any case who knows the pain a salted tree must feel. We should all feel deeply for the trees and stop being selfish and expect to stay upright all the time. It’s a ridiculous expectation especially in this era of climate boiling which I am sure we will soon understand is also responsible for this sudden pandemic of ice because ‘The Science (TM) is infinitely flexible to provide explanations. Please also remember that trees also fall down in sometimes dramatic and painful ways.I would like to see more ‘equity’ between people and trees.
Obviously, it's not really about the trees, because eugy mentions they salt the roads and bike paths liberally.
Or maybe it's really about the trees but only for the bureaucracy in charge of sidewalks; the wheeled-vehicle bureaucracy apparently has different ideas.
> Berlin hospitals struggle to treat hundreds of slip-and-falls after repeated snow and ice storms because environmental laws forbid the use of melting agents on stairs and sidewalks
> A hospital spokeswoman has urged Berliners to attach spikes to their shoes and try "walking like penguins" to avoid falling in the treacherous conditions that have plagued the city for weeks.
Two things
1)You know, you wouldn't have the problem in Berlin if the globe warmed. I'm really thinking that Germany is on the wrong side of that issue
2) This is not a joke, I injured myself like that 3 weeks ago and I'm still not healed.
We had a freakishly warm start to January, where it went from -25C to -2C outside for a week. All the snow melted and the refroze into ice. And the stairs up to my apartment complex iced over. I slipped, fell down a third of the flight of stairs, and slammed down to a stop on my outer thigh.
I didn't seek medical attention beyond calling my dad (a doctor) and asking if I needed to. It took almost a week before I could walk around at all without a cane, and another week before it stopped hurting. It is still noticeably swollen although it doesn't really hurt anymore and my thigh no longer looks purple.
As soon as I recovered, I dumped ten litres of salt on those stairs (yeah, a bit of an overkill. The stairs are wrought iron; 48 hours after the salting, they visibly rusted. I don't care, I'm slipping and dying in the winter. I reported this to the landlord like, hey, I know this is probably bad for the stairs, and I'm happy to do something else, but someone's gonna die if this keeps happening, what should we do? Landlord had a bucket of salt-sand dropped off the following Monday. We're salting those steps now
----
I know using road salt sucks for a whole host of legitimate reasons beyond environmental bullshit, but, like, people are going to die. Weird, wasn't Germany the country that was the *most* obsessive about "saving lives" during covid?
Seriously, American readers, if you don't live in a winter part of your country, this might sound silly or ridiculous, but, icey roads and stairs are deathtraps. Salt melts the ice. Salt's really bad for the local environment, causing road damage, car damage, and runoff damage to nearby plants. But it melts the ice and stops cars from crashing and people from falling and cracking their skulls open. Banning rock salt is *insane*
Thanks for the tip. Those of us here in the northern states are very much aware of the injuries you describe. A fall on the head can be fatal. (Look up the story on Natasha Richardson, Liam Neeson's deceased wife.)
Yeah, I'm in Canada too, I'm talking from experience. Part of the reason why Winnipeg roads are so shitty and full of potholes is because of how much salt we dump on the road. Salt is corrosive, it damages steel and concrete. That's why everyone's vehicles are super rusty, too.
But like, this isn't a catastrophic environmental problem. This is a "yeah, winter sucks, there's costs to doing things. How do we balance these costs?"
From my perspective, which seems to be Canada's perspective, the costs are, on the one hand, increased financial cost of vehicle maintenance, and on the other hand, people die. In this case, we're just like, yeah, I guess you'll have to buy a new vehicle sooner. If you don't like it, move somewhere else
Growing up in Buffalo, it was basically just understood that you needed new cars every 4, 5 years or so due to winter deterioration. Bumpers rusted through, floor mats covering holes through which the road could be seen 😆
Now cars are all plastic, salt is illegal, and cars can be accessed remotely by just about any entity that makes a safety claim for doing so!
We're on like Day 9 of single digits where I live now, and it would be amazing if a pair of crampons appeared in my closet. It's like an Antarctic Station here, 4" of fused ice covering everything but the footprints I made on Day 1 of our storm. I can't get out to buy salt even if it were available!
My county in Wyoming didn't used to salt the roads. At most they would add like 10% salt to the sand so it would stick better. Nobody's car was rusting out – that was how we recognized Midwesterners.
Then, as a result of a fatal accident and subsequent lawsuit by a stupid Californian, they started salting everything.
On my first move to California from the midwest, I lost a whole bunch of my household stuff that fell out of a rust hole in the trunk of our '75 Nova. I still wonder if people occasionally come across my flatware in Wyoming or Nevada and wonder WTF?
Not for some environmental reason (and I doubt that is the real reason in Berlin), but because of how it aids corrosion of pipes and sewer-systems, causing costs to run higher.
Also, because it messes up your shoes.
And, because in conditions when the temperature moves from right below to right above freezing over the day and night, it helps to create ice, not remove it.
But: Berlin has how many unemployed migrants on welfare?
Order them out, shovels and scrapers in hand, to remove ice and snow. Or no welfare for you, Achmed.
Besides, there's this invention called "sand" the city can buy and pour onto the sidewalks. Might clog the sewers a bit, mind.
Tell you what, file a suggestion for a study-trip to Sweden. You can go to Stockholm to see even more retarded policies in action, then on to Gävle for the opposite, and to the Ice Hotel and surrounding towns for the real deal when it comes to handling ice and snow.
Thank you. That's a great idea, putting all those migrants to work.
I'm a little torn on this. People do slip and fall and hurt themselves—I'm not minimizing that. On the other hand, expecting the government or the sidewalk-adjacent businesses to deice everything, especially in an unusual weather pattern, smacks of nanny state safetyism, which tends to make people more dependent, not to mention less careful for themselves.
The rule up here is, the owner of a property has sole responsibility to remove snow and ice from any public path or road passing through that property (I'm simplifying it).
So if I want the mail delivered, it's on me to remove the snow down by the main road so the mailman can get to my post box.
This rule is also in effect in the towns and cities, and a property-owner will be fined quite heavily if they don't have snow removal services up to spec.
It also includes removal of icetaps and snow overhanging from properties: if you're the landlord of a six-storey building in a city and an ice tap falls and injures or kills someone, you may face manslaughter charges.
It's a bit weird, really. Snow/ice-removal is something all parties and factions takes really seriously here, barring the feminist-socialist-islamist-green alliance ruling Stockholm.
What's been causing trouble now is old rules from the 1970s about dumping snow - since petrol and such was leaded back then, plowed snow couldn't be dumped anywhere near a water reservoir. Despite petrol et c now being much different, those rules are still in effect.
Illustrating that Europe is a lot more regulation-heavy than Wyoming. Living there for so long gave me more of a rugged individualist attitude.
We did have some rules, mind. In town, property owners were supposed to shovel the sidewalk in front of their house. This was not really enforced much; indeed, in some conditions, it was practically impossible, requiring heavy equipment—such as when the passing snow plow piled wet snow across your driveway, which then froze overnight.
Then again, we didn't have home mail delivery anyway.
Hehe, that's a common problem in some places here too - every town on either coast has that problem if the weather decides to be a total bitch.
Heavy-duty snow-throwers capable of handling up to three feet of snow is very common sight, even amongst most home-owners.
One Winter, I had to break out the chainsaw. During the day the Sun had warmed the snow on the roof so much it had slid off during the night, and had frozen rock solid came morning. Same thing down by the road, thanks to the snowplow.
You can imagine the looks on the faces of people in passing cars when they see a man cutting snow using a chainsaw.
Now I'm curious: what do they actually do in Gävle? I've seen enough of Roslagen (though never as far north as Gävle) to know that de-icing isn't exactly a solved problem there, though not half as bad as what I'm hearing from Berlin.
I'm also skeptical that normal homeowners in suburban Sweden can reliably keep the streets around them free of snow and ice. Germans are failing at it with a lot less snow and a lot less street (and that's the snow part; almost no one does anything about the ice, as salt is illegal). Richer municipalities might solve the problem through professional services, but I have yet to see a systematic approach.
I picked Gävle because it was the first that came to mind. It's nothing unique to their handling of snow and ice, really - but the farther south you go, the worse a locality is at handling it, is a good rule of thumb.
In the countryside, virtually every village has people that owns tractors and other heavy vehicles, and they get paid from county coffers to aid in snow removal, so the only time there's a real problem is when one or more of the following happens at the same time:
A lot of snow in a short time (happened two weeks ago, it took almost 24 hours to get traffic conditions back to normal, which is considered long here - Älvdalen in middle Sweden got 80-90 cm over one night and day)
Wet and heavy snow from the Baltic meeting cold Arctic winds from the north, resulting in severe icing
Holiday, esp. around Jul/New Year and the Sportlov in February, when southerners and city people clog the roads, many being poorly prepared for the conditions that may occur (such as not being able to re-charge their EV before it runs out, causing road congestion while the tow truck tries to get them out of the way)
That's about it.
Also, snow throwers are almost more common than shovels nowadays, and most people are intelligent enough to throw the snow onto a pile that's not in the way of traffic.
Stockholm, with its "feminist snow removal policy" is of course a standing joke in these parts.
Ah, so the places that get it done are those that do it municipally, as opposed to shifting the responsibility on every single landowner or renter.
I thought "feminist snow removal policy" was a quip, but apparently they really called it that way. Supposedly "feminist" as in "not just the driveways but also the sidewalks". The idea is not even bad, but of course the fancy words are not there to describe the thing but to substitute for it.
Thing is, when they started calling it that a few years ago, the order was to do bike lanes and sidewalks /first/, moving the snow into the street or around and on parked cars.
That was in 2018, which was a Winter with more than average amounts of snow, so it went down like a led zeppelin.
Wasn't until police, fire dep. and ambulance-services protested loudly enough that the Greens, Reds and feminists relented a little.
Where I live (rural, fewer than 1 person/sq. km statistically) the main road is clear, but the sides are a good meter of densely packed snow. At least when people slide off from going to fast, they get a soft landing.
Bringing back fond memories of the day many decades ago my friend Bonnie and I tried to walk up an icy sloped Queens NY sidewalk on our perhaps unnecessary quest to reach an IHOP. We were a live-action Loony Tunes tableau, arm in arm and sliding backwards almost as far as we moved forward. Worked up quite an appetite for them pancakes to be sure.
Where I live now the city council gets surly when pressed on their failures to keep sidewalks clear in winter (which we have ferociously almost every year) in a neighborhood with a heavily-senior-aged demographic and many heavily sloped streets. So I'm grateful whenever we get heavy snowfall that effectively covers the ice and deeply dread any sunny above-freezing days that cause the melt-'n-slick-freeze cycle. The day I moved into this apt. I had to navigate an Arctic glacier and arrived at my new doorstep with a badly-sprained ankle and relied for a week on the kindness of my son's friends who drove him to the supermarket to keep me provisioned (he got his own car the following year).
All this to say I have the greatest most understanding sympathy and commiseration for Berliners right now.
'she also amazingly suggested that residents try “walking like penguins” to avoid slipping.'
As a former resident of the Wyoming mountains, where we used to have 4 to 6 weeks of ice-like-you-put-in-your-drink on roads and sidewalks, I view this as actually good advice.
On the other hand, maybe these are unusual conditions for Berlin and people don't know how to walk or drive on slippery surfaces.
This winter unusually cold, at most you have a few days like this in a normal year. It's been weeks and weeks of ice and snow. I get that the advice might be helpful, but what any hospital or health spokesperson should be doing, is appealing to politicians to make walkways safe.
But they absolutely did buy into all the utter, utter evil nonsense and lies - how many did you ever see not wearing a mask? I was always the only one in a supermarket without one, a child even asked her mother why that lady isn’t wearing a mask…I have come to the conclusion that if they pulled the same stunt again almost everyone would comply. I can’t get over my loathing of most people to this day for their sheep-like foolishness.
Yes, I think, unfortunately, that you are right. It’s very easy to forget how normies think when one reads blogs/substacks such as this and the comments below. Difficult to imagine that most don’t understand the massive scale of the fraud, the evil, how they truly want most of us dead or too demoralised to care.
You kinda have to watch Werner Herzog a bit for fakery. He made a film that you can see on youtube about a Russian church at the bottom of a man made lake (Deep Red Bells) and the legend that the bells in the submerged church would ring occasionally. He couldn't find anyone to interview about this phenomenon/legend so he hired some town drunks to crawl across the ice with their ears glued to it as if they were hearing the bells. He did, however, start the whole genre of psychogeography with his book, Walking on Ice (relevant today to this post!), about his taking off on foot to get to his dying mentor. But I wouldn't assume the whole penguin thing w/o first getting it validated. I do love him, though, fakery or not.
I don't know exactly how penguins walk; it seems more like a short-legged waddle. But the dirt road to my house includes about 100 yards of 20-30% slope, and taking short steps, with each step planted vertically, not heel first, makes a difference. I remember slipping only once and sliding 10-20 feet. Actually kind of fun, if you remember to sit down as fast as possible once you feel yourself losing control. It's just wet. No road rash from gravel or asphalt or concrete.
I can recommend YakTrax. Not the spikes, just the round spring things. They clip over shoes and have kept me upright in similar conditions in the UK (pedestrians don’t really count outside of the city centres, our residential pavements are often like ice rinks despite there being no ban on salt, it just isn’t a priority).
I was going to recommend those too. Here in Detroit, they don't plow the sidestreets, though one great aspect of ruin and abandonment is that nature flourishes, and there are deer and foxes in the neighborhoods, but you could truly die on the ice, or break a hip, which happened to someone we know who waited an hour for EMTs, but yaktrax have saved me quite often. What I hate is that you don't really get to walk as you have to watch every step and stare at the ground in winter, so it is a slog, but I've never lost my footing with those spirals encasing my feet. Cheap too. Salt is really hard on pets' feet, though that may not be an issue in Germany since the encroachment of migrants brings the shibboleth that dogs are haram. No environmental jive here, though, just a low budget.
Welcome to California. It a race to the bottom . As of January 1 ,plastic is forbidden . So every market can only give you paper bags . I have seen 2 scenes already where the bags tore open and glass broke on the floor by the bagger . The checkers hate it , the bagger hates it and the customers hate it . But we all must live like this . We cannot vote . in 1994 when you, COULD vote ,60% voted for” no more Mexicans “ ..prop 187:..35% of Hispanics voted for it . We got 3 million more Mexicans . Illegal immigrants can vote and while they could care less , the Libs “ harvest “ their vote . They go to the home and get 7 people to sign ballots then drop them in “ drop boxes “ . SF voted to pay 5 million dollars via reparations to black people in a Free State where 50% are Mexican and 5.8% black . After 17 years and 30 Billion dollars the Hi speed rail has not one foot of rail ( maybe 2035 now ) but we have an overpass in ….Fresno . In Santa Barbara they voted to paint a blue line through the city to show what neighborhoods would soon be submerged….a race to the bottom Eugyppius!
The Mayor of LA is a restarted “ woman of color “ . I think so was the fire chief but she was definitely a Lesbian . The entire city council are woke women .
So when a fire destroyed 13,000 homes they did …nothing .
Today there is only one home under construction in Malibu
"Open-air insane asylum" is apt. I gather this was first written by George Bernard Shaw, speaking of Ireland more than a century ago. The number and size of such asylums has grown quickly ever since.
Canadian here. We use salt on roads and sidewalks like we're seasoning steaks, and the trees are just fine.
My sister lives in New Brunswick - my goodness the winters are brutal, lots and lots of snow, ice, icy rain - as an English woman I wouldn’t live there for any amount of money. (And the summers just mean lots and lots of biting flies…) Bears in the woods surrounding her house, moose on the roads causing accidents. Anyways - her house is surrounded by trees and she salts and sands and salts and sands all winter long. The trees flourish.
Old timer here - go to the nearest feed store and purchase a 50 lb bag of barn grit (pulverized limestone). Transfer to a number of heavy walled plastic jugs (laundry detergent bottles). Put one in your vehicle and put one at your entry door, give one to an elderly neighbor. Scatter this stuff as needed on ice to give a gritty surface to walk on. Doesn’t take much. Used in local barns so you don’t have to butcher that cow because of a broken leg.
I did see a squirrel fall from a tree in Ottawa after an ice rain when we lived there. it is hard to salt the branches!
The squirrel did suffer a grievous injury unfortunately.
If it's one thing the world isn't short of it's tree rats and insane environmentalists
Did you refer to a Squirrel as a “tree rat”? Since the martyrdom of P-Nut the squirrel is 2nd only to the Eagle as the creature most representative of American liberty. They are also highly entertaining and, to paraphrase Bret Weinstein, more fun than watching most anything on TV.
I was being facetious. Besides the hundreds of golden finches we also feed the multitudes of squirrels in our area. My wife even bought a bulk 50lb bag of almonds for them last year.
Yea I know. We’ve recently even started feeding the rabbits that show up. And when she read carrots are too high in sugar, she bought hay (today in fact)
I loved the term "tree rat". They are quite tasty; tastes like chicken.
Just not the pine tree ones, or so I’ve heard
Another thing we aren't short of: the innumerate ;-)
Mindless comments don’t help
Yes they do.
If Germany doesn’t seem to care if residents may not have heat why would protecting them from injuries matter. To quote one of our famous political females here in the US, “At this point, what difference does it make?”
Yeah but how’s that assisted murder machine you have there ? 16,000 last year ? Non terminal ? You’ve got your share of nut jobs as well
Yep.
Not good for grass, but it bounces back mid-May.
I don't like using salt, but will always use if freezing rain.
But think of the trees!
Just like here in Sweden!
Who`d have thought eh...
In fairness, it's not as though Berlin has ever seen snow before given its tropical climate. why would anybody expect them to do something sensible?
Salt is particularly hurtful to the palm trees for which Berlin is famous.
well said!
When the ruling cabal actually thinks about the humanity they think are beneath them exactly what Agent Smith says to Morpheus in The Matrix it all makes sense.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rit45cxTPpo
Because they do. They believe it. And temper themselves the best they can to indulge our needs until they think they have us right where they want us. Then they'll treat us the same. Unless we do something to change their plans.
And easily replaceable.
Yes, since the earth is warming up at such a tempo, we all of a sudden have massive snowfall in Moscow and ice all over the place. Where are the climate nerds now? are we heading for an ice age?
So to your point . I am 79 . In 1975 Time magazine cover was “ The Coming Ice Age “
In 1969 we all read “ The population bomb “ ..mass starvation and declining population ..we now have 3 billion more people .
It’s been 20 years since Al Gore scare porn “ documentary “ and not ONE prediction has happened. It gets so tedious
Recently I read an article that debunked all of Gore's points. I remember the Time magazine cover! (I am 68, so not so far behind you). I also remember the panicky too many people slogans, which have been doing the rounds for what? 200 years? I consider all that, stuff for people with too much time on their hands. Let them plough the ground with horse and plough shears, harvest by hand, sterilize veggies and make gellies and jams. They will drop in their beds tired with no time to start a panic attack.
Don’t forget nuclear war, Nostradamus, deforestation leaving the world with no oxygen, fire ants, killer bees, the year 2000, alien body snatchers, forest fires, and our weekly dose of Leonard Nimoy’s In Search Of. Growing up in the 1970s was stressful!
They actually sold YK 2 survival kits .
Wow .thnaks for the memories
My old stomping ground! I worked at CEI when Al Gore's documentary came out.
I keep looking for that damn global warming as I sit here in single digit Fahrenheit temperatures around NYC. those climate folks assured me that was the future
Al Gore ,in 2005 stood in Battery Park and said it would soon be under water .
Is it gone yet ?
No change, of course.
An even better one is vancouver international airport, built decades ago on reclaimed land in the ocean. Still there, planes don't need water wings to land even today.
A miracle, Obama stopped it.
Several years ago, I sent a letter to our Gov. Jay "Carbon" Inslee here in Washington state. I said that since he was going to stop the Climate from changing would he please stop it sometime in mid-June? I told him that the climate here at that time if year is really nice and it would be great to have it all year round.
I never did hear back from him.
In our next episode, the German government wrestles with the societal implications of average Berliners in hobnail-adjacent boots stomping around with bird-adjacent gaits. Many are worried it sends the wrong message…
😁😂😂😂😂😂
Boy, Germany is really not reaching its potential... Can't they use sand, even?
I could think of a lot of alternatives to NaCl for dealing with ice and snow.
And of course there is the issue of priorities. Do people count at all?
These politicians have mush for brains. Maybe they don’t even have brains at all. My labradoodle is smarter than this.
In Germany there has evolved a very strange kind of political establishment, that does not care for its people at all. It breeds and tries to execute fragments of strange ideologies that are mostly associated with the so called globalist agenda pushed by UN, WHO, WEF etc.
But Germans would not be Germans if they wouldn't follow such agendas with painstakingly scrutiny, no matter what costs.
Doesn't sound like people count unless you're a politician or wealthy person. They want the rest to eat table scraps.
No, they want us to eat crickets. For protein, because they care. 😂
Several decades ago we lived in ND. They used sand only at the time. I think it was more effective in the extreme cold.
It is .
NaCl doesn't work well if colder than -15°C
But it is not even very cold here in Germany, it is mostly about 0 degrees and only moderately freezing in the night. It is just a normal winter, as it used to be 30 years ago.
Yeah, it works great. It makes the down ugly in the spring and you have to sweep it up is the only downside.
that was my first idea, too. Or ashes. They could also use a sled and put these smart politians in front, with their spikes on they should have no problem at all.
When I was a child in Cambridgeshire in England ashes were routinely used by householders.
I feel it is appropriate to expect medics to "work into the night" when there are a lot of injured people. Although only a finance guy (and IT, HR, risk management, litigation) I often worked late when nthe business needed me to do so.
Isn't that what responsible people do. Was I a shmuck?
It’s what honest people do.
The ash being dark can absorb sunlight and melt the snow more quickly.
No, you can't use ashes! To get ashes, you'd have to burn wood or coal, and that would contribute to more global warming! Don't you care about the planet?
</sarc>
We had a hard freeze here in Florida last night. Many of the plants in my yard are will die right down to the ground as a result. I actually wouldn't mind a bit more of that global warming right now. Neither would my kids, who are up in Pennsylvania, where the temperature hasn't been above freezing for quite some time.
Ima just leave this right here:
‘Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past’
“Children just aren’t going to know what snow is.”
– David Viner, Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia (2000)
The whole climate hoax is a religion. The congregants are willing to let you die to save the planet. Earth Equity or something.
The woke left are eager to sacrifice you, your family, and your entire society on the bloody altar of their Holy Narrative.
Yeah, another dire prediction...
From 26 years ago.
Yep, and like most of their oh-so-dire predictions, it failed miserably.
Take a look at how Al Gore's "Inconvenient Truth" prediction fared now that it's 20 years old for an extra good laugh!
Yet only 25 years earlier Time magazine ran “ the coming ICE age “
B... B... But "Settled Science".....
Making extreme climate predictions that never occur is the path to upward mobility in the climate scientist milieu.
Viner has appropriately moved up to director of some climate department, somewhere.
I cannot recall exactly where, and it doesn’t matter.
Just know that there’s never a price to pay for publishing false predictions of climate calamities.
Again, it’s a prerequisite for success as a climate scientist.
Indeed, Road, And add Michael "Hockey Stick" Mann and Dr.'s Paul Erlich, James Hansen, and pseudo-scientist Rachel Carson to the long list of charlatans who have harmed humanity via their propaganda.
A pox on all their houses...
Ima just take that …
Since I live in Berlin, it doesn't seem to be only the salt, but also there seems to be much less clearing of snow and ice in general.
We always had days with very icy, slippery streets, but these lasted no more than a day. It was cleared quickly by public and private clearing teams.
When I was a student 25 years ago, this was a good additional income in the winter (though tough when it snowed and you had to get up at 2 am).
This is the first winter when it seems to me the roads are almost not cleared at all.
Possibly I am so blackpilled that I only notice it now. But if fits with the genral decline of the infrastructure and the service of it.
Yes, these things happens gradually and then suddenly. Before you know it, you might as well live in South Africa
But with snow! 😏
It could be as simple as different way of handling the budget for snow/ice removal.
Here, it used to be that the city paid the costs and those costs depended on the amount of snow each Winter, meaning the budget for snow-removal was kind of open-ended.
Nowadays, a city council alots a specific amount in advance that is to be spent on its own equipment and staff, and also to pay for temporary hires (most firms and farmers et c that owns tractors and such sign up for the extra money), and if it snows more than their estimate - read: guess - then removal lags until they can hold a meeting and allocate more money.
New Public Managment has a lot to answer for.
Anything to do with the changing population over time?? i.e. less of a sense of civic duty, or 'let's just help each other out'?
Yes, I think people generally care much less about real life today in society. They probably call it "tolerance", but it looks more like absolute helplessness, made palatable by constant propaganda that it is the right way to behave.
Cleaning the streets never was really a civic duty issue, because it was done by public servants, paid by taxes. 30 years ago there was more the feeling: you pay your taxes, you get a working bureaucracy.
Today there are much fewer tax payers, and no one really expects much anymore. But at the same time public media propagandizes that so much money is spent on migrants, NGOs, or even just thrown away.
There is a feeling of great passivity. Made easier by being couched in conformist morality, and being on the right side of history.
It is strange to see, and really sad.
Be careful?
As in, "Be careful you don't slide off the platform and onto the tracks in front of a train?" 😶
We tried to kill an out of control shrub once using rock salt because the internet said it would work. We cut the shrub down to almost nothing and then put rock salt in holes we drilled into the stump. The shrub now looks amazing. I swear they just like to be in control no matter who gets hurt.
I am going to try that on the bushes that won't grow in my yard LOL. Thanks for the tip BBSky
Salt is actually a fertilizer for certain plants species or when the plant needs minerals and gets them from sea salt.
I am sure the salt prohibition is for ‘our collective safety and good’, indeed the greater good. Yes it’s unfortunate about the collateral damage but one must always think about the greater good and not be selfish and honestly speaking be prepared to die to save the trees from a potential but not proven threat. In any case who knows the pain a salted tree must feel. We should all feel deeply for the trees and stop being selfish and expect to stay upright all the time. It’s a ridiculous expectation especially in this era of climate boiling which I am sure we will soon understand is also responsible for this sudden pandemic of ice because ‘The Science (TM) is infinitely flexible to provide explanations. Please also remember that trees also fall down in sometimes dramatic and painful ways.I would like to see more ‘equity’ between people and trees.
Obviously, it's not really about the trees, because eugy mentions they salt the roads and bike paths liberally.
Or maybe it's really about the trees but only for the bureaucracy in charge of sidewalks; the wheeled-vehicle bureaucracy apparently has different ideas.
That is hysterical! ‘Cannot expect to stay upright all the time’ 😂😂😂
Tongue firmly in cheek?
Commenting before reading
> Berlin hospitals struggle to treat hundreds of slip-and-falls after repeated snow and ice storms because environmental laws forbid the use of melting agents on stairs and sidewalks
> A hospital spokeswoman has urged Berliners to attach spikes to their shoes and try "walking like penguins" to avoid falling in the treacherous conditions that have plagued the city for weeks.
Two things
1)You know, you wouldn't have the problem in Berlin if the globe warmed. I'm really thinking that Germany is on the wrong side of that issue
2) This is not a joke, I injured myself like that 3 weeks ago and I'm still not healed.
We had a freakishly warm start to January, where it went from -25C to -2C outside for a week. All the snow melted and the refroze into ice. And the stairs up to my apartment complex iced over. I slipped, fell down a third of the flight of stairs, and slammed down to a stop on my outer thigh.
I didn't seek medical attention beyond calling my dad (a doctor) and asking if I needed to. It took almost a week before I could walk around at all without a cane, and another week before it stopped hurting. It is still noticeably swollen although it doesn't really hurt anymore and my thigh no longer looks purple.
As soon as I recovered, I dumped ten litres of salt on those stairs (yeah, a bit of an overkill. The stairs are wrought iron; 48 hours after the salting, they visibly rusted. I don't care, I'm slipping and dying in the winter. I reported this to the landlord like, hey, I know this is probably bad for the stairs, and I'm happy to do something else, but someone's gonna die if this keeps happening, what should we do? Landlord had a bucket of salt-sand dropped off the following Monday. We're salting those steps now
----
I know using road salt sucks for a whole host of legitimate reasons beyond environmental bullshit, but, like, people are going to die. Weird, wasn't Germany the country that was the *most* obsessive about "saving lives" during covid?
Seriously, American readers, if you don't live in a winter part of your country, this might sound silly or ridiculous, but, icey roads and stairs are deathtraps. Salt melts the ice. Salt's really bad for the local environment, causing road damage, car damage, and runoff damage to nearby plants. But it melts the ice and stops cars from crashing and people from falling and cracking their skulls open. Banning rock salt is *insane*
I'm glad you're on the mend.
Physically, anyway
I hope it's because you've decided to spend more quality time with the chooks, and not because of something we said. I've always enjoyed your input.
Well, we do have chickens in common :-)
You could continue subscribing to eugy and just read his posts in email. There are no comments to get in the way there.
obviously it does not hurt anything in Belgium, I still hear they use salt.
Thanks for the tip. Those of us here in the northern states are very much aware of the injuries you describe. A fall on the head can be fatal. (Look up the story on Natasha Richardson, Liam Neeson's deceased wife.)
We salt/sand everything in Canada. Never lost a bush or tree.
Yeah, I'm in Canada too, I'm talking from experience. Part of the reason why Winnipeg roads are so shitty and full of potholes is because of how much salt we dump on the road. Salt is corrosive, it damages steel and concrete. That's why everyone's vehicles are super rusty, too.
But like, this isn't a catastrophic environmental problem. This is a "yeah, winter sucks, there's costs to doing things. How do we balance these costs?"
From my perspective, which seems to be Canada's perspective, the costs are, on the one hand, increased financial cost of vehicle maintenance, and on the other hand, people die. In this case, we're just like, yeah, I guess you'll have to buy a new vehicle sooner. If you don't like it, move somewhere else
Growing up in Buffalo, it was basically just understood that you needed new cars every 4, 5 years or so due to winter deterioration. Bumpers rusted through, floor mats covering holes through which the road could be seen 😆
Now cars are all plastic, salt is illegal, and cars can be accessed remotely by just about any entity that makes a safety claim for doing so!
We're on like Day 9 of single digits where I live now, and it would be amazing if a pair of crampons appeared in my closet. It's like an Antarctic Station here, 4" of fused ice covering everything but the footprints I made on Day 1 of our storm. I can't get out to buy salt even if it were available!
My county in Wyoming didn't used to salt the roads. At most they would add like 10% salt to the sand so it would stick better. Nobody's car was rusting out – that was how we recognized Midwesterners.
Then, as a result of a fatal accident and subsequent lawsuit by a stupid Californian, they started salting everything.
On my first move to California from the midwest, I lost a whole bunch of my household stuff that fell out of a rust hole in the trunk of our '75 Nova. I still wonder if people occasionally come across my flatware in Wyoming or Nevada and wonder WTF?
I once came across a fork in the road. Maybe it was yours.
I'm no fan of using salt on roads and such.
Not for some environmental reason (and I doubt that is the real reason in Berlin), but because of how it aids corrosion of pipes and sewer-systems, causing costs to run higher.
Also, because it messes up your shoes.
And, because in conditions when the temperature moves from right below to right above freezing over the day and night, it helps to create ice, not remove it.
But: Berlin has how many unemployed migrants on welfare?
Order them out, shovels and scrapers in hand, to remove ice and snow. Or no welfare for you, Achmed.
Besides, there's this invention called "sand" the city can buy and pour onto the sidewalks. Might clog the sewers a bit, mind.
Tell you what, file a suggestion for a study-trip to Sweden. You can go to Stockholm to see even more retarded policies in action, then on to Gävle for the opposite, and to the Ice Hotel and surrounding towns for the real deal when it comes to handling ice and snow.
Thank you. That's a great idea, putting all those migrants to work.
I'm a little torn on this. People do slip and fall and hurt themselves—I'm not minimizing that. On the other hand, expecting the government or the sidewalk-adjacent businesses to deice everything, especially in an unusual weather pattern, smacks of nanny state safetyism, which tends to make people more dependent, not to mention less careful for themselves.
The rule up here is, the owner of a property has sole responsibility to remove snow and ice from any public path or road passing through that property (I'm simplifying it).
So if I want the mail delivered, it's on me to remove the snow down by the main road so the mailman can get to my post box.
This rule is also in effect in the towns and cities, and a property-owner will be fined quite heavily if they don't have snow removal services up to spec.
It also includes removal of icetaps and snow overhanging from properties: if you're the landlord of a six-storey building in a city and an ice tap falls and injures or kills someone, you may face manslaughter charges.
It's a bit weird, really. Snow/ice-removal is something all parties and factions takes really seriously here, barring the feminist-socialist-islamist-green alliance ruling Stockholm.
What's been causing trouble now is old rules from the 1970s about dumping snow - since petrol and such was leaded back then, plowed snow couldn't be dumped anywhere near a water reservoir. Despite petrol et c now being much different, those rules are still in effect.
Illustrating that Europe is a lot more regulation-heavy than Wyoming. Living there for so long gave me more of a rugged individualist attitude.
We did have some rules, mind. In town, property owners were supposed to shovel the sidewalk in front of their house. This was not really enforced much; indeed, in some conditions, it was practically impossible, requiring heavy equipment—such as when the passing snow plow piled wet snow across your driveway, which then froze overnight.
Then again, we didn't have home mail delivery anyway.
Hehe, that's a common problem in some places here too - every town on either coast has that problem if the weather decides to be a total bitch.
Heavy-duty snow-throwers capable of handling up to three feet of snow is very common sight, even amongst most home-owners.
One Winter, I had to break out the chainsaw. During the day the Sun had warmed the snow on the roof so much it had slid off during the night, and had frozen rock solid came morning. Same thing down by the road, thanks to the snowplow.
You can imagine the looks on the faces of people in passing cars when they see a man cutting snow using a chainsaw.
Now I'm curious: what do they actually do in Gävle? I've seen enough of Roslagen (though never as far north as Gävle) to know that de-icing isn't exactly a solved problem there, though not half as bad as what I'm hearing from Berlin.
I'm also skeptical that normal homeowners in suburban Sweden can reliably keep the streets around them free of snow and ice. Germans are failing at it with a lot less snow and a lot less street (and that's the snow part; almost no one does anything about the ice, as salt is illegal). Richer municipalities might solve the problem through professional services, but I have yet to see a systematic approach.
I picked Gävle because it was the first that came to mind. It's nothing unique to their handling of snow and ice, really - but the farther south you go, the worse a locality is at handling it, is a good rule of thumb.
In the countryside, virtually every village has people that owns tractors and other heavy vehicles, and they get paid from county coffers to aid in snow removal, so the only time there's a real problem is when one or more of the following happens at the same time:
A lot of snow in a short time (happened two weeks ago, it took almost 24 hours to get traffic conditions back to normal, which is considered long here - Älvdalen in middle Sweden got 80-90 cm over one night and day)
Wet and heavy snow from the Baltic meeting cold Arctic winds from the north, resulting in severe icing
Holiday, esp. around Jul/New Year and the Sportlov in February, when southerners and city people clog the roads, many being poorly prepared for the conditions that may occur (such as not being able to re-charge their EV before it runs out, causing road congestion while the tow truck tries to get them out of the way)
That's about it.
Also, snow throwers are almost more common than shovels nowadays, and most people are intelligent enough to throw the snow onto a pile that's not in the way of traffic.
Stockholm, with its "feminist snow removal policy" is of course a standing joke in these parts.
Ah, so the places that get it done are those that do it municipally, as opposed to shifting the responsibility on every single landowner or renter.
I thought "feminist snow removal policy" was a quip, but apparently they really called it that way. Supposedly "feminist" as in "not just the driveways but also the sidewalks". The idea is not even bad, but of course the fancy words are not there to describe the thing but to substitute for it.
Thing is, when they started calling it that a few years ago, the order was to do bike lanes and sidewalks /first/, moving the snow into the street or around and on parked cars.
That was in 2018, which was a Winter with more than average amounts of snow, so it went down like a led zeppelin.
Wasn't until police, fire dep. and ambulance-services protested loudly enough that the Greens, Reds and feminists relented a little.
Where I live (rural, fewer than 1 person/sq. km statistically) the main road is clear, but the sides are a good meter of densely packed snow. At least when people slide off from going to fast, they get a soft landing.
Best of to you, Chixbythesea, and hope to see you back on the Stacks in the future.
Bringing back fond memories of the day many decades ago my friend Bonnie and I tried to walk up an icy sloped Queens NY sidewalk on our perhaps unnecessary quest to reach an IHOP. We were a live-action Loony Tunes tableau, arm in arm and sliding backwards almost as far as we moved forward. Worked up quite an appetite for them pancakes to be sure.
Where I live now the city council gets surly when pressed on their failures to keep sidewalks clear in winter (which we have ferociously almost every year) in a neighborhood with a heavily-senior-aged demographic and many heavily sloped streets. So I'm grateful whenever we get heavy snowfall that effectively covers the ice and deeply dread any sunny above-freezing days that cause the melt-'n-slick-freeze cycle. The day I moved into this apt. I had to navigate an Arctic glacier and arrived at my new doorstep with a badly-sprained ankle and relied for a week on the kindness of my son's friends who drove him to the supermarket to keep me provisioned (he got his own car the following year).
All this to say I have the greatest most understanding sympathy and commiseration for Berliners right now.
'she also amazingly suggested that residents try “walking like penguins” to avoid slipping.'
As a former resident of the Wyoming mountains, where we used to have 4 to 6 weeks of ice-like-you-put-in-your-drink on roads and sidewalks, I view this as actually good advice.
On the other hand, maybe these are unusual conditions for Berlin and people don't know how to walk or drive on slippery surfaces.
This winter unusually cold, at most you have a few days like this in a normal year. It's been weeks and weeks of ice and snow. I get that the advice might be helpful, but what any hospital or health spokesperson should be doing, is appealing to politicians to make walkways safe.
Maybe they should also fire up a few more coal power plants to enhance global warming.
And restart the nukes.
Lucky they still have the coal stations. Ours were physically destroyed with images on TV of Cameron and Clegg so hapopy to see the end of them.
I remember "if it saves one life"... maybe a climate lockdown is in order?
I can't believe anyone ever bought into those Covid-era slogans. A case study in propaganda, fraud, corruption, thievery, and unspeakable evils.
But they absolutely did buy into all the utter, utter evil nonsense and lies - how many did you ever see not wearing a mask? I was always the only one in a supermarket without one, a child even asked her mother why that lady isn’t wearing a mask…I have come to the conclusion that if they pulled the same stunt again almost everyone would comply. I can’t get over my loathing of most people to this day for their sheep-like foolishness.
If you talk with most normie people you will find they still consider the masks and lockdowns as necessary, and the vax as very successfull.
It is their faith in the government that would be shattered, and they are not ready for that. (if they ever will be).
Nothing you can really do about it.
Yes, I think, unfortunately, that you are right. It’s very easy to forget how normies think when one reads blogs/substacks such as this and the comments below. Difficult to imagine that most don’t understand the massive scale of the fraud, the evil, how they truly want most of us dead or too demoralised to care.
"It is their faith in the government that would be shattered, and they are not ready for that."
I think you have gotten right to the heart of the matter here.
Where is our promised global warming when we need it???
I had a balmy -25c this morning 🥶
Currently on X the W.Herzog meme is much en vogue with the Penguine walking off into the mountains to die.
Possibly that is what she really means and wants.
https://x.com/priyant_J/status/2014294188037402939
You kinda have to watch Werner Herzog a bit for fakery. He made a film that you can see on youtube about a Russian church at the bottom of a man made lake (Deep Red Bells) and the legend that the bells in the submerged church would ring occasionally. He couldn't find anyone to interview about this phenomenon/legend so he hired some town drunks to crawl across the ice with their ears glued to it as if they were hearing the bells. He did, however, start the whole genre of psychogeography with his book, Walking on Ice (relevant today to this post!), about his taking off on foot to get to his dying mentor. But I wouldn't assume the whole penguin thing w/o first getting it validated. I do love him, though, fakery or not.
First time I've seen this clip.
It sounds like mystical mummery.
Maybe Herzog has never heard of this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavior-altering_parasite
I was thinking of that, too, very weird…very sad.
I don't know exactly how penguins walk; it seems more like a short-legged waddle. But the dirt road to my house includes about 100 yards of 20-30% slope, and taking short steps, with each step planted vertically, not heel first, makes a difference. I remember slipping only once and sliding 10-20 feet. Actually kind of fun, if you remember to sit down as fast as possible once you feel yourself losing control. It's just wet. No road rash from gravel or asphalt or concrete.
I can recommend YakTrax. Not the spikes, just the round spring things. They clip over shoes and have kept me upright in similar conditions in the UK (pedestrians don’t really count outside of the city centres, our residential pavements are often like ice rinks despite there being no ban on salt, it just isn’t a priority).
And for the indigent, Harbor Freight has just the solution:
https://tinyurl.com/57s3hayu
I was going to recommend those too. Here in Detroit, they don't plow the sidestreets, though one great aspect of ruin and abandonment is that nature flourishes, and there are deer and foxes in the neighborhoods, but you could truly die on the ice, or break a hip, which happened to someone we know who waited an hour for EMTs, but yaktrax have saved me quite often. What I hate is that you don't really get to walk as you have to watch every step and stare at the ground in winter, so it is a slog, but I've never lost my footing with those spirals encasing my feet. Cheap too. Salt is really hard on pets' feet, though that may not be an issue in Germany since the encroachment of migrants brings the shibboleth that dogs are haram. No environmental jive here, though, just a low budget.
Are the Berlin doctors and nurses using dance numbers on TikTok to promote crampons, so slip and falls don’t continue to overwhelm the hospitals?
Not all heroes wear capes.
Welcome to California. It a race to the bottom . As of January 1 ,plastic is forbidden . So every market can only give you paper bags . I have seen 2 scenes already where the bags tore open and glass broke on the floor by the bagger . The checkers hate it , the bagger hates it and the customers hate it . But we all must live like this . We cannot vote . in 1994 when you, COULD vote ,60% voted for” no more Mexicans “ ..prop 187:..35% of Hispanics voted for it . We got 3 million more Mexicans . Illegal immigrants can vote and while they could care less , the Libs “ harvest “ their vote . They go to the home and get 7 people to sign ballots then drop them in “ drop boxes “ . SF voted to pay 5 million dollars via reparations to black people in a Free State where 50% are Mexican and 5.8% black . After 17 years and 30 Billion dollars the Hi speed rail has not one foot of rail ( maybe 2035 now ) but we have an overpass in ….Fresno . In Santa Barbara they voted to paint a blue line through the city to show what neighborhoods would soon be submerged….a race to the bottom Eugyppius!
California is an exception case because it is not just reflective of retarded people generally, but retarded progressive women specifically.
The Mayor of LA is a restarted “ woman of color “ . I think so was the fire chief but she was definitely a Lesbian . The entire city council are woke women .
So when a fire destroyed 13,000 homes they did …nothing .
Today there is only one home under construction in Malibu
"Open-air insane asylum" is apt. I gather this was first written by George Bernard Shaw, speaking of Ireland more than a century ago. The number and size of such asylums has grown quickly ever since.