For 5-10 minutes two times a day the lane would be blocked, but both directions of traffic would be obligated to stop. You can wait 5 to 10 minutes

How does this not already apply to cars?

The cars will still have to stop for the bus but it takes the loading and unloading out of direct traffic flow.

As I see it, you want to make it easier for people to illegally pass school busses when they stop to pick kids up. Having the bus move out of the way will just encourage more people to try to pass them.

Natural Gas Liquids. I remember seeing Liquid Natural Gas quite a bit, but I guess we can just shuffle the letters around however we want.

Edit: If you want to know the difference (more details here)

What Is Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG)?

Liquefied Natural Gas is natural gas that has been cooled to approximately -162 degrees Celsius. At this temperature, methane—the primary component of natural gas—transforms into a liquid. The process reduces the volume of the gas by about 600 times, making it easier to store and transport over long distances.

What Are Natural Gas Liquids (NGLs)?

Natural Gas Liquids are a group of hydrocarbons found in natural gas and crude oil. They are extracted as part of natural gas processing or crude oil refining. NGLs include ethane, propane, butane, isobutane, and natural gasoline. Unlike LNG, which is predominantly methane, NGLs are heavier hydrocarbons with distinct chemical and physical properties.

I’ll be waiting, let me know when I can wishlist it

US government scientists tested fish in 291 streams around the country for mercury contamination. They found mercury in every fish tested, according to the study by the U.S. Department of the Interior. They found mercury even in fish of isolated rural waterways. Twenty-five percent of the fish tested had mercury levels above the safety levels determined by EPA for people who eat the fish regularly.

In 2012 the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) reported on chemical contaminants they found in the food of over 20 European countries. They established that fish meat and fish products were primarily responsible for methylmercury in the diet of all age classes. Particularly implicated were swordfish, tuna, cod, pike, whiting and hake. The EFSA recommend a tolerable weekly intake for methylmercury of 1.3 μg/kg body weight.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_in_fish

It’s probably fine.

As always, that depends on the state. Some states actually have mandatory safety/emissions testing every year.

Clean air, safer streets and a stable climate are among the reasons doctors and environmental experts want fewer cars clogging our roads. Reduced dependence on fuel – especially when prices are high and most countries rely on imports – is another.

Yet while some cities with world-class public transport are debating how to tackle the stubborn minority of journeys still made by car, others – particularly in the US – have become so dependent on driving that opting out is almost impossible.

From connecting commuter suburbs to persuading royals to use buses, here are four expert-backed ways for tackling car culture.

1. Expand and improve public transport

The shift from fuel-burning cars to electric ones greatly reduces planet-heating pollution but does not make streets safer. For that, people need reliable options for getting around.

“Making sure public transport can meet the mobility needs of residents is step one,” says Alissa Kendall, the director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Davis. “If travel is prohibitively slow, if it doesn’t get you to where you need to go, it will never encourage those wealthy enough to own and operate a car to stop buying and using them – and it won’t serve the needs of those who are transit dependent.”

Sprawling cities such as those in North America are harder to connect than denser urban areas common in Europe and Asia. Even so, getting people out of cars and into buses could still save money. Free bus travel, for example, became a centrepiece of Zohran Mamdani’s successful New York mayoral campaign, but research suggests lower-cost tickets have only a limited effect on reducing car use.

Matthias Cremer-Schulte, a transport researcher at the Technical University of Dortmund, says: “The people who benefit most are often those who were already using public transport. The ones who really matter for reducing car use – people who drive because they need the flexibility – are rarely tempted by a cheaper bus ticket alone.”

2. Share space with pedestrians and cyclists

As cars came to dominate cities after the second world war, public space was redesigned around them. Pedestrians were relegated to narrow pavements and cyclists had to decide whether riding a bike on the road was worth the risk to their life.

Giving road space back to other forms of transport is one of the most powerful tools that cities have to get people out of cars. By carving out lanes for bikes, converting parking spaces into green areas and pedestrianising streets, mayors can encourage active forms of travel by making it safer and more convenient.

Measures sometimes criticised as a “war on motorists” are often, in reality, attempts to manage limited public space more efficiently, says Hannah Budnitz, a researcher at the transport studies unit of the University of Oxford. Cars are among the least space-efficient ways of moving people from A to B, especially in rush-hour traffic, and spend most of their time parked.

“If you only need a car once a week, you can’t have a seventh of a car,” Budnitz says. “If you only need a large vehicle that can take a trailer for your annual camping trip, you can’t have 4% of that car.”

To avoid the public backlash that comes with reducing road space, some cities, such as Münster in Germany, have run experiments in which streets have been closed to cars for a few months to let residents experience the difference first-hand. A similar approach has been used in Stockholm, which trialled pairing a congestion charge with expanded public transport before putting the policy to a referendum. “Most of the time, once people have lived with it, the opposition softens,” says Cremer-Schulte. “Other cities struggle to do this because local politicians are understandably nervous – nobody wants to lose an election over a bike lane.”

3. Focus on suburbs

Cities such as Copenhagen and Amsterdam have shown it is possible to reduce car use to fewer than one in three journeys by investing in reliable public transport and extensive bike lanes. Yet many of the vehicles that remain on city roads come from outside urban centres.

“This mismatch between where people live and where people work is what entails such big problems,” says Susana López-Aparicio, a deputy director of the urban environment department at NILU, a Norwegian research institute. “We see at eight in the morning all European cities are affected by commuting and heavy traffic.”

Improving public transport in outer suburbs and commuter belts – areas often beyond the direct control of city mayors – can give people viable alternatives to driving. Ensuring more towns have essential amenities within walking distance – a concept known as the “15-minute city” – can also reduce the need for long journeys.

López-Aparicio observed this in a study on urban sprawl in Warsaw, Poland, and experienced it herself when she moved closer to the centre of Oslo from a house on the outskirts. “I have not only more public transport available, but also the supermarket, the post office, the hairdresser – all these things I can do by walking.”

4. Understand why people drive

In rural villages, where frequent public transport can be too costly to provide, or for people with certain disabilities, cars can be a lifeline for accessing work and services. But for many others, car-free options could be prove more attractive with just a few changes.

Understanding why people drive is the first step to reducing car dependence. In many European cities, public transport can look “quite homogeneous” at night because it is mostly used by young men who feel safe enough to travel, says Brian Caulfield, a transportation professor at Trinity College Dublin. “With deeper consultation, you can uncover the barriers that people have to using public transport, walking or cycling. When you better understand that, then you can better design alternative solutions.”

Those fixes can range from extending late-night public transport services and improving street lighting to introducing community car-sharing schemes in villages and small towns, where some drivers rarely need to use their cars.

At the same time, normalising the use of public transport can help challenge social stigma. In North America, for example, buses and trains are often associated with poverty and crime, while in much of Europe and Asia public transport carries far less cultural baggage.

In Norway, the former king Olav V rode the subway during the 1973 oil crisis to encourage people to avoid driving. Today, members of the royal family are still regularly spotted using trams and buses.

“Taking public transport is not something that you do because you are poor,” said López-Aparicio. “It is something that you do for the common wealth of the whole society.”

I’d rather have one steam machine than one million Sega Megadrives, so that checks out.

I’m pretty sure it was revealed a while ago that Epic just gives a big lump sum for their free game giveaways, not any specific amount per copy. Although the finances behind their giveaways aren’t exactly public, so it’s possible they’ve changed their model or made exceptions.

https://www.polygon.com/22417954/epic-games-store-free-games-cost-epic-paid-publishers-developers/