[NNagain] water infrastructure and much more

[Dave Taht]

I have not had much time to write anything long form, but I enjoy
reading long, thoughtful pieces on Sundays, and this one might
ultimately yield analogies for internet infrastructure also.

https://comment.org/care-at-scale/

"In the late nineteenth century, the wealthy taxpayers of Boston were
convinced to build out water and sewage systems by a straightforward
logic: every person in the city, rich or poor, needed clean water to
drink every day. Without it, they would be at risk of contracting
water-borne diseases like cholera. And with so many people in
proximity, wealth alone couldn’t provide protection from contagious
disease."

While otherwise a wonderful read - go read it!! -

Me being me, I  disagree that "the wealthy taxpayers of boston
recognized the need for common water infrastructure"  because the germ
theory of disease was not well accepted, and the organism behind the
epidemic was first described in 1854 and not again until 1884. I
imagine there was great - AGW-esq - sturm und drang - and attempts to
shift the blame for cholera to merely "being poor", or "foreign", or
"the will of the gods", or rats - and  attempts to shift the costs
onto various other parties before safer water distribution systems
were built, but! I freely admit, I have not done the research into the
controversies that IMHO, must have existed back then. I think that
practical problems, like enough city water in the first place to
support the population density therein, also were a factor.

The need for sound water and septic systems was recognized by many
cities two millenia prior to this... and not by many others. I
remember when the Delaware river and Boston Harbor were sewers, and
have lived many places  around the world where that was still the case
for many rivers.

>From some history (that I already knew) see this:

https://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/snow/firstdiscoveredcholera.html

(It is remarkable how many expired SSL certificates there are in the
world, also.)

The Boston river caught fire many times before 1969, and until then,
no-body cared:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/cuyahoga-river-caught-fire-least-dozen-times-no-one-cared-until-1969-180972444/



-- 
:( My old R&D campus is up for sale: https://tinyurl.com/yurtlab
Dave Täht CSO, LibreQos