Any petroleum used in their production is subsidized by the petrodollar economy, though

Electric is definitely about as bad as gas for mowing a lawn. The gas you’re not using is just being used by someone else, if not more, because you’re helping subsidize the petrodollar economy by paying orders of magnitude higher cost for batteries+motors+solar power than you would pay for a push mower or probably even a gas-powered mower. But you also have to factor in the other environmental damage from manufacturing and shipping the batteries and solar panels which you make it really difficult to avoid by demanding the mower be electrified, whereas if the mower was push-powered it would be up to suppliers whether they feel like wasting their fuel shipping it across the planet or just manufacturing it with materials found closer to you

I don’t think I trust the studies saying human power is worse tbh. Cultivating food uses CO2, cows eat plants before we eat them, the plants drink CO2 from the air. Lawnmower takes power out of the ground and injects pollution in the air. Scythe has to be better

I thought a push mower might help but some studies say it might be worse. I guess the recommendation is to plant something other than grass that naturally stays good to walk on, maybe? I’m still learning about this myself

It’s wasteful

Pretty sure the mowing is the exact problem. Can’t remember if it’s solved by using an old school push-powered mower or something

Edit - after looking into it, seems like push mowers don’t help because Americans eating meat will cause as much pollution pushing a mower as using gas? Not sure

The sources are just people who know saying it, like me. The designers wouldn’t publicly admit it or anything.

Cell phone range is impacted by ground obstruction, the curvature of the earth itself getting in the way, atmospheric effects

The closest satellites are about 160km up, where a 3G transmitter can reach when it’s looking straight up with no Earth and less air in the way

The companies that designed the 3G standard and manufactured some of the phones also do military contracts for stuff like the radios in spy satellites, they knew what they were doing

It also stands out as intentional because making the range go beyond the curvature of the earth is just crippling infrastructure, wasting battery and putting millions of people in danger (can’t call 911 with a dead phone)

Lower-power devices with mesh networking would have made more sense with the powerful processors and high usage phones were getting by the middle of the 3G era, but the “cellular” design is much more convenient to monitor

It’s definitely designed to be able to send signals to satellites, and there are satellites designed to pick up signals from devices that aren’t designed to reach them.

But, they can also just see where your car is going visually, and get any audio/video from inside with your phone that connects directly to cell towers, so you might be right that no satellite is actually ever spying on your car’s 3G modem.

There is a tiny number of cars available (mainly certain years of Nissan Leaf afaik) from right when batteries were getting kinda good but this stuff wasn’t all added yet

I bet the authorities can still pick up the telemetry with satellites. Of course, they can also just see the car.