I think both these things can be true. Maybe warmer winters tick's population grow, and in the same time ticks can be resilient to high temperatures during summer

Extreme temperatures don’t kill ticks in the wild

This surprised me because I thought climate change (specifically warmer winters) were behind the explosion of tick populations in the United States and Canada.

What in Sam Hell is a puma?

https://youtu.be/01qtl7GYw4w?si=knAGCgedZIpNXsiH

pumas

What, like the shoe company?

pumas

Olympic Peninsula of Washington

Come on, people. No one calls them pumas up here. Like, literally no one. They're cougars or mountain lions. Pumas are what they're called in South America.

Good, hard-working kittens ❤️

Researchers found that where mountain lions were active, deer avoided roads. Overall, deer in those areas were 15 percent less likely to be found near roads, which led to a 67 percent drop in the odds of a traffic accident involving deer.

I suppose because they're easier to spot out in the open.

Hopefully with the impending collapse of civilisation they can catch a break, at least for awhile!

It also shows that without a change in the system we are fucked. Watch out because the same people who have lied so far about global warming will try to use this crisis as leverage for their own goals.

The burden of knowledge is great

I've spent wayyy too much time thinking about what I'd do if I won the lottery and the thing I always come back to is building a neighborhood for my friends and family. One thing I'm pretty settled on is having an HOA but with very different rules mainly surrounding land use.

Everyone gets a plot of land but only X% of it can be structure. That's a normal rule to have. But also only Y% can be lawn grass and Z% must be native plants.

(Additionally: no gas lawnmowers/leaf blowers/etc, power must be 80%+ renewable, and no Ring/similar cameras)

An HOA has 3 jobs: keep people safe (or minimize liability), maintain property value, and represent a block of people for shared services. They also come in all shapes, sizes, and price points.

It's easy to see the HOA as the bad guy here (because they are), but the "why" is important. Two things here stand out to me:

Thing 1: This HOA doesn't appear to have a management company--that's a win, they are expensive and overzealous--and if it's like mine it's "live and let live" until someone complains. Here someone did. If you don't like something in your HOA COMPLAIN ABOUT IT in writing and something is likely to happen.

Thing 2: People also don't want to live by things they don't want to look at all the time, and that's why you read the covenants. Do you want to live next to the guy that has a trailer parked in his yard and 4 cars up on cinder blocks? What about someone with literal trash in front of their porch in bags? Construction materials? Dumpsters? The lines are different for everyone, but what strikes me is this line: he only concession they had to make ... was to keep their garden within a six-foot setback from the front property line and three feet from the neighbor's, the latter of which they'd already done. These guys have a cool (but sprawling) pollenator garden in front of their house apparently right up to the sidewalk. If you're the neighbor and you don't like it, I can see how that feels pretty inconsiderate. Use your back yard and then who gives half a shit as long as your yard doesn't drop fruit on your neighbor's yard.

I currently sit on an HOA board, and our active policy is 1) we want to keep the lights on, 2) we don't want to get mixed up in enforcement, and 3) we don't want anyone on the board who WANTS to be on the board. If you live in a neighborhood with an HOA and you don't like it, run for a position. It is absolutely necessary and equally thankless, but if you're just along for the ride you get what you get. Be on the board, change the bylaws and covenants, ???, profit.

And now I will collect my downvotes:

If you want to live in an unkempt meadow, go buy a house in an unkempt meadow. I have a whole area of my back yard that I let do what it wants because I like wildflowers and bees and birds and frogs, and ALSO front garden that is meticulously landscaped. It's really easy to be into "rewilding" because it gives you an excuse to do literally nothing but go inside and doomscroll lemmy. Not caring for your property and complaining when other people don't like it is some entitled bullshit that is not the HOA's fault. It sounds like these people had a pretty well kept garden, your yard that you don't ever mow / weed / maintain is not that.

That's what the bylaws and legal representation are for.

Source: On a laid back board fighting to displace one entitled boomer.

The real problem with HOAs is that sane people don't WANT to be on the board. If you let people who want to fuck with the neighborhood on the board, that is what they do. Everyone here who lives in an HOA, doesn't like it, and hasn't at least tried to sit on the board is a hypocrite IMO. It's not like it's a full time (or even a part time) job.

Yeah, I suppose that's all down to what power has been granted to them. I certainly wouldnt buy a house where the HOA has power over what you do on your own property. That's why you dont buy a house without reading all the documents.

Intimidating someone with your clothing? Hell yeah. put on a suit (and if possible, go on a weekday) next time you have trouble with best buy and watch them bend over backwards for the fabric.

They're one entitled boomer away from being not reasonable

They're reasonable until they're not and then you're stuck.

What about France?

There are reasonable HOAs, you just dont hear about them. Plenty of them are just entities that exist to pay for care of common grounds. I lived in a place with one that just handled trash pickup, and a community pool.

I know multiple people that have them exclusively for road maintenance through their neighborhood. If that gets expensive, it's just direct evidence that your community has sprawled too much.

The US does all the same things you portray China doing as bad as well. Go look at any inspection videos of new construction housing and you would be appalled at the horrific quality. And those workers are largely undocumented migrants who are getting exploited as well. So someone with my job in China is able to own their own apartment in of similar quality to the one I currently rent. The Chinese government has made it clear that they will not bail out housing speculators to ensure that a home's primary purpose is providing shelter instead of increasing net worth.

There are a few main areas where an HOAs tend to pop up:

• A developer wants to build out a neighborhood on what was previously farmland or whatever and there is no municipality that will build out the roads or utility access, or provide trash services (maybe not even emergency services), so the private developer needs to negotiate the build out with all of the services and infrastructure that make modern living possible, and then arrange for everyone in the neighborhood to pay for those services collectively, from road maintenance to the electricity consumption of the streetlights to the trash services picking up people's trash.
• A developer wants to build a large building or complex where each unit is individually owned, but that things like the foundations, roofs, walls, stairwells, and elevators need to be commonly owned.
• A developer wants to build out a neighborhood with certain shared amenities available to the whole neighborhood: neighborhood swimming pool, playgrounds and parks, maybe a gate, maybe access to things like a lake or a beach. I've even seen one with a plane runway for small propeller aircraft that the homeowners could use.

Lots of these are just a replacement for what a city actually should be providing (infrastructure, parks), or designed to be exclusionary (gated communities, private clubs), or just the reality of shared buildings (typical condo association). A lot of the rules, then, start resembling normal municipal zoning laws or nuisance laws, and a lot of the fees pay for things that look a lot like taxes to pay for community-wide benefits.

they don't have a choice. most new homes are constructed under HOA.

65% of new or updated properties, are in a HOA. and 85% of attached housing is.

the only way to not be in one is to buy older freestanding housing, which is the least affordable housing option.

That truly depends on where you live.

I currently have to live in Texas under an HOA. My particular HOA is relatively benign, mostly just an unnecessary monthly expense, but HOAs in Texas have more power than HOAs in most other states.

There is no way that $60k could get you out of an HOA here.

This country sucks so bad.

That is not a comparison.