@tom_andraszek@mastodon.social
@tom_andraszek@mastodon.social avatar

tom_andraszek

@tom_andraszek@mastodon.social

A software developer believing in livable cities and livable planet. Not investing in fossil fuels. Vegetarian. No longer flying for pleasure or work. Solar panels, heat pump home. E-bike, bus, train, tram 💚
Gold Coast, Australia. My home's walk score is 4/100: car dependent. We own one small EV, which is used mainly by my wife for commuting to work, shopping, etc.
The time to use sunlight reflection methods (SRM) is now.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

tom_andraszek, to climate
@tom_andraszek@mastodon.social avatar

This chart illustrates misconceptions about individual climate change actions. Recycling helps, but very little, while 59% of respondents thought it helped a lot.

The reduction values probably apply more to countries in the EU with yearly CO2e per person of about 8 tonnes, not Australia (19t), Canada (14t) or the US (15t).

Also, there are heat pump dryers that use 4x less electricity (and don't need vents for hot, humid air).

#ClimateCrisis #Australia

kravietz, to Ukraine
@kravietz@agora.echelon.pl avatar

"Radio NV" interview with Piotr Kulpa, now lecturer at Kyiv university, about the situation on the Poland-Ukraine border. Summary of what he says:

  • The ongoing blockade is disastrous, but it has very concrete origins.
  • It started when Ukraine introduced two electronic queues, one for loaded (slow) and one (fast) for empty trucks. Polish trucks were directed by Ukrainian customs to the slow one and waited for 12 days on average.
  • That is, unless they paid a bribe. Given 100-200 EUR bribe, percentage of drivers willing to pay it and 900'000 trucks crossing per year, Kulpa estimates, profits of the customs go into millions.
  • This is disastrous for Polish truckers, who already lost routes to Russia and Kazakhstan, and it was the last drop that caused the blockade.
  • Polish government inaction has a number of factors: the new coalition government after recent elections hasn't been formed, and the existing (PiS) doesn't want to leave remembered by police pacification of the protesters as its last action.
  • There's also purely human aspect to the PiS inaction here: they're disappointed. In the first months of war Poland went way ahead of the rest of the coalition, risking a lot, quietly passing Ukraine heavy weapon long before anyone did and nearly emptying their ammunition stores. In response, as they feel, they got chilled reaction from Kyiv.
  • Kulpa several times highlights that while the blockade is a disaster for both sides, the root cause is an extreme corruption racket scheme on the Ukrainian side of the border. Any time anyone is asking in Ukraine don't Poles care about the war effort, Kulpa says, they should in the first place direct the question to the corrupt Ukrainian officials on the border, because all cost of bribes was ultimately added to the cost of goods paid by Ukrainians and their army.
  • Of course, Russia is an ultimate beneficent of any conflict between Ukraine and Poland. Russia, and the "old Europe" lobbies who want the return of the pre-war business opportunities with Russia. And it's true that pro-Russian "Konfederacja" party ultimately joined the campaign. But you didn't need even a single Russian hand in this conflict, it all originated in the massive corruption scheme on the Ukrainian border.
  • Kulpa says he talked to drivers who waited for 10 days in the Ukrainian queue only to be pulled out, and sent to the end, making his wait time over 20 days. The treatment of Polish drivers on the Ukrainian border was extremely demeaning, yet nobody on the Ukrainian cared about it while the drivers appealed and protested long before the blockade.
  • Kulpa says the critical and required step to open the border is the removal of the corruption schemes on the Ukrainian side, which in the first place harms Ukrainian society as the recipient of the goods.

Source: https://piped.video/watch?v=Rm8PEJOwpK8 (in Russian)

tom_andraszek,
@tom_andraszek@mastodon.social avatar

@kravietz - and as far as I know there is also the problem of Ukrainian drivers transporting goods inside the EU (cabotage), which they are not allowed to do.

tom_andraszek,
@tom_andraszek@mastodon.social avatar

@kravietz - it gets complicated, as Polish firms also employ Ukrainian drivers living in Poland, who could compete with Ukrainian drivers living in Ukraine, provided they didn't need to wait 12 days to return, but cannot go to Ukraine, because they are not exempt from draft... Also Ukrainians are registering companies in Poland to provide services in the EU... The core of the issue is that one way or another, Polish truckers and freight companies, like Polish farmers, are losing livelihoods.

kravietz, to poland
@kravietz@agora.echelon.pl avatar

truckers blockade of border crossings with is a complex issue in which I have an impression none of the parties involved say the whole truth. The protests were recently joined by transport companies from Slovakia and Hungary.^1 And then they were joined by Polish farmers, who in summer protested against sales of Ukrainian grain in Poland.

Poland truckers demands boil down to restoring system of licenses for Ukrainian transport companies to operate in EU or at least enforcing the existing rules.^2 Currently, as I understand, according to European Commission the licenses for Ukrainian transport companies were removed in the EU-Ukraine association agreement.^1 But the liberalisation had several important limitations, most importantly Ukrainian companies cannot legally move loads between EU countries.^2 Which, Polish truckers argue, they do all the time, ignoring all existing certifications and licenses, which are enforced on Polish companies. And because neither Ukrainians salaries nor technical standards need to satisfy the same EU requirements as Poles, they are much cheaper and as result they took away a lion share in the transports inside EU. In addition, Ukrainian ministry of transport did not mutually liberalise access of EU truckers to Ukrainian market.^2

I checked some Radio NV interviews about the protests, but they’re disappointingly shallow. They say the protest is driven by a “tiny organisation with ties to Russia”, but it’s not - it’s organised by ZMPD, one of the Poland’s largest.^3 They admit Polish truckers are refused access to Ukrainian online system and harassed by road police, and they don’t really refer to the core issues by Poles. At the same time another article calls the Polish truckers “far right”, illustrating this with a post by their spokesman Rafał Mekler who explains the core issues in quite a detail, which is entirely skipped in Ukrainian article. Of course, Mekler also makes a few racist allusions towards Ukraine’s minister of transport who was allegedly born in Kabul.^4

All that is really sad and disappointing, granted that it not only stops strategic goods flowing to Ukraine right now, but also undermines the future cooperation with Ukraine in EU.

tom_andraszek,
@tom_andraszek@mastodon.social avatar

@joaocosta - did you know that Ukrainian railways were blocking the transit of goods to Poland from 30 Nov 2021 until almost the start of the war?

You have zero empathy for Polish farmers and truckers whose livelihood is in danger by illegal import of food to Poland, by illegal blocking of Polish truckers in Ukraine (12 day waits for permit to leave), by illegal activities of Ukrainian truckers in the EU.

Such attitude turns Poles from the most supportive to lukewarm, or hostile.

timrichards, to melbourne
@timrichards@aus.social avatar

New Polish restaurant! Sounds fun.

This hot new Brunswick East restaurant is breaking down stodgy Polish food stereotypes

The slick, contemporary space is out to showcase the country’s cuisine – which is much richer than potatoes, cabbage and borscht.

https://www.theage.com.au/goodfood/melbourne-eating-out/polish-dumpling-stand-pierogi-pierogi-is-now-a-handsome-brunswick-east-restaurant-20231117-p5ektc.html

cc @LifeTimeCooking @sister_ratched

tom_andraszek,
@tom_andraszek@mastodon.social avatar

@timrichards @LifeTimeCooking @sister_ratched - of course, there are also: pierogi, zapiekanki, naleśniki, placki z jabłkami, placki ziemniaczane, kompot, sałatka warzywna, makowiec, pączki,...

tom_andraszek, to goldcoast
@tom_andraszek@mastodon.social avatar

Meanwhile in Australia...

tom_andraszek, to queensland
@tom_andraszek@mastodon.social avatar

7 years of rooftop PV, 6.5kW panels, 5kW inverter: 64,610 kWh of electricity produced, worth A$3,230 at a price I sell it to the grid (5c), or A$15,506 at a price I buy it from the grid (24c). 1 kWh of electricity produced in Queensland, mostly by burning coal, emits 0.80kg (2021-22) of CO2-e, so my rooftop installation so far prevented emission of perhaps 51.7 tons of CO2-e (minus GHG emitted to make the inverter and panels).

https://www.cleanenergyregulator.gov.au/OSR/EERS/eers-current-release

tom_andraszek,
@tom_andraszek@mastodon.social avatar

...and as a way of visualising how much energy that is, at 16 kWh/100km the electricity produced by my rooftop solar over the last 7 years could power a Nissan Leaf for 403,812 kms, or 57,687 kms per year.

A petrol car, for example a Toyota Camry, at 8.6 liter /100 km would burn 34,728 litres of gasoline, costing about A$69,456 ($2/l) and emitting 79.9 tonnes of CO2 (2.3 kg per liter).

capntransit, to random
@capntransit@urbanists.social avatar

Enough! How many big expensive stations do we need? How high does Penn Station's ceiling need to be? How much natural light? Why aren't we spending this money on through-running and electrification?

RT @ndhapple Massive engineering report prepared when Pat Foye ran the MTA reveals the Penn Station overhaul and privatization plan pitched by the former transit honcho and his new employer, a Italian transport conglomerate, would cost $2b+ more than he’s claimed:

https://nypost.com/2023/11/08/metro/penn-station-revamp-plan-to-cost-2b-more-than-first-claimed-records/

tom_andraszek,
@tom_andraszek@mastodon.social avatar

@capntransit @ndhapple - my favourite example of wasting public money is the Queensland Train Manufacturing Program, a A$9.5 billion project to build in Queensland a train factory that will assemble 65 pretty much standard EMUs for Queensland Railways. Any sane government would do a tender and just buy 65 Stadler FLIRT, or whatever, with servicing, for about A$1.4 billion.

tom_andraszek, to Hyundai
@tom_andraszek@mastodon.social avatar

Hyundai Rotem tram in Warsaw:

tom_andraszek, to cycling
@tom_andraszek@mastodon.social avatar

Lots of interesting data in this 2014-2019 German study.

"Cycling rather than driving was positively associated with orientation towards the common good in all models. Cycling was the only variable that was a significant positive predictor for all four facets of orientation towards the common good after controlling for possibly confounding variables (homeownership, personal income, education, sex). "

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0272494423001731

hanse_mina, to Ukraine
@hanse_mina@nafo.uk avatar

The political weather is shifting, too. For the first time since Russia launched a brutal war across the border last year, some corners of Polish society are turning on a new target: Ukraine.

Last year, a Pew Research Center survey found 80% of Poles supported their country taking in refugees fleeing war. When Pew asked the same question last month, support had dropped to 52%.

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/10/13/europe/poland-ukraine-tensions-election-cmd-intl/index.html

tom_andraszek,
@tom_andraszek@mastodon.social avatar

@hanse_mina - Zelensky showed zero empathy towards Polish farmers and decided to treat Polish government as an enemy, not realising how many Poles still have farmers or people living in villages in their families, and that even those who don't vote for PiS appreciated how quickly and strongly the PiS government has been helping Ukrainians. Utterly bizzare behaviour on Zelensky's part.

simon_brooke, to anime_titties
@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot avatar

Campbell and Stewart, on their podcast this morning, talking about a pro-, anti- far right party in called something like Confederation, which they fear may make significant gains in next month's general election.

Can anyone point me to a good briefing on this party?

https://pca.st/episode/50bd659b-9e5b-43e6-b12f-6f9ad95776ed

tom_andraszek,
@tom_andraszek@mastodon.social avatar

@simon_brooke - it's called Konfederacja. It's not a new party, but it may achieve its biggest election win this October.

tom_andraszek,
@tom_andraszek@mastodon.social avatar

@simon_brooke - they resonate with young libertarian minded people: "taxes are stealing", and with patriotic/nationalistic people who feel hurt by the wrongdoings of others towards Poland. I will look for a good analysis later.

tom_andraszek,
@tom_andraszek@mastodon.social avatar

@simon_brooke - The current government is a coalition (Zjednoczona Prawica - United Right) of 2 different parties (used to be 3, but Gowin could not take it anymore): PiS and SP. SP (Suwerenna Polska- used to be Solidarna Polska) is much more anti-EU than PiS. It is the party of Ziobro. Konferencja are smooth talking young men, except the extravagant, old leader Korwin-Mikke.

tom_andraszek, (edited )
@tom_andraszek@mastodon.social avatar

@simon_brooke - long ago I wrote on Quora what the current government was. Calling them far-right was wrong and now leads to "radical far-right" for Konfederacja, which is again wrong. There is no radical (take the government by force) party/organisation in Poland. There is one in Germany.

My answer to "Is the Polish government far-right and populist?" https://www.quora.com/Is-the-Polish-government-far-right-and-populist/answer/Tomek-Andraszek?ch=15&oid=59960423&share=7d4aab01&srid=o0uz&target_type=answer

SocraticEthics, to Ukraine
@SocraticEthics@mastodon.online avatar

⛔️🇵🇱Poland starts to show its true colors as a transactional friend. Says it may cut aid for Ukrainian refugees next year (more) https://kyivindependent.com/poland-says-it-may-cut-aid-for-ukrainian-refugees-next-year/ RussiaUkraineWar

tom_andraszek,
@tom_andraszek@mastodon.social avatar

@SocraticEthics - you don't try to make your friend's farmers go broke, and then sue them when they try to defend themselves against unfair competition...

SocraticEthics, to Ukraine
@SocraticEthics@mastodon.online avatar



⛔️🇵🇱Poland says Ukraine's pressure on grain imports ''exceeds certain limits'' (more)
https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2023/09/8/7418950/

tom_andraszek,
@tom_andraszek@mastodon.social avatar

@SocraticEthics - really? Not wanting to have your agriculture sector destroyed by cheaper imports, means "Poland is not a friend"? Remember when a few months before the invasion Ukrainian railways were blocking Polish trains? Ukrainian government needs to look at this issue from the Polish, Slovak, Romanian, Hungarian, Bulgarian point of view too. Countries further west don't care, because it doesn't affect them as much.

rvaughnmd, to random
@rvaughnmd@med-mastodon.com avatar

What the hell? Midwest madness in the heatdome.

tom_andraszek,
@tom_andraszek@mastodon.social avatar

@rvaughnmd - 44 Celsius with 99% humidity? That's deadly.

AmiW, to art German
@AmiW@mastodon.online avatar

🛎️ Artist: + in City: Iness Hotel, Gen. Walerego Wróblewskiego, Poland 🇵🇱 - Title: "Iness Hotel" -

tom_andraszek,
@tom_andraszek@mastodon.social avatar

@AmiW - I guess Google Maps shows the "before" photo:

dmoser, to random
@dmoser@mastodon.social avatar

“Your Car, My Breath”

Quite a powerful picture 👇👇

By Marta Frej

tom_andraszek,
@tom_andraszek@mastodon.social avatar

@dmoser - underneath it says: leave the car at home.

tom_andraszek, to goldcoast
@tom_andraszek@mastodon.social avatar

#Walking in #GoldCoast, #Australia be like...

tom_andraszek, to goldcoast
@tom_andraszek@mastodon.social avatar

An example of , . I didn't plan my bike ride carefully enough yesterday. I looked at an old map and didn't see footpaths, but I assumed that part of a recent A$25 million redesign of M1 exit 57 in Oxenford was adding some pedestrian infrastructure. I was wrong. There is no way to walk from to here. There is no way to safely ride a bike either. Even the painted lanes end. This is a people-hostile design in the middle of the city.

A zoom in to the view with cars visible. No footpaths.
A zoom out showing the location in relation to Coomera River.

SocraticEthics, to Ukraine
@SocraticEthics@mastodon.online avatar

⛔️🇵🇱How Polish Obstruction of Grain Exports has divided “friends”: The Escalating Row Between Ukraine and Poland Over ‘Ingratitude’ (more) https://www.kyivpost.com/post/20111

tom_andraszek,
@tom_andraszek@mastodon.social avatar

@SocraticEthics - you link a reasonably written article and you comment on it in a false and anti-Polish way. Who are you? Why do you want to put a wedge between Poles and Ukrainians. This is not the first time you did this.

fulelo, to Canada
@fulelo@journa.host avatar

- launches labels on each
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-66364465

tom_andraszek,
@tom_andraszek@mastodon.social avatar

@fulelo - permanent, etched warnings should be on cars too: "This SUV is 8x more likely to kill a kid than a sedan.", "To make this car, the atmosphere was polluted with 6 tonnes of CO2e", "This vehicle damages the road as much as 50,000 people on e-bikes", etc

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • JUstTest
  • kavyap
  • DreamBathrooms
  • InstantRegret
  • magazineikmin
  • osvaldo12
  • mdbf
  • Youngstown
  • cisconetworking
  • slotface
  • rosin
  • thenastyranch
  • ngwrru68w68
  • khanakhh
  • megavids
  • ethstaker
  • tacticalgear
  • modclub
  • cubers
  • Leos
  • everett
  • GTA5RPClips
  • Durango
  • anitta
  • normalnudes
  • provamag3
  • tester
  • lostlight
  • All magazines
    •