So I promise I'm not trying to be a dick here. While what you're saying is essentially reasonable, it's actually not true.
The amount of emissions in these small, wildly inefficient engines is considerably worse than even a large pickup truck. The reason is because emissions standards, including the introduction of catalytic converters, etc. don't apply to lawn equipment. The result is that these don't actually burn fuel correctly, and spew out lots of harmful pollutants in a way that even large ICE vehicles don't.
Like sure, there are larger sources of emissions, but I'm kinda in favor of making changes that would offer a large benefit proportionate to the amount of lifestyle change needed to make the switch. As in, making this switch would be easier than not. These emissions produce no benefit to us, and they cost us a weird amount of money to produce.
Fuck leaf blowers. I don't care if they're quieter. The term here is "polishing a turd." They don't really solve any problems. They're not good at removing debris, but just blowing it to a place where someone else will deal with it.
Also... removing debris on its own is a dubious pursuit, since "debris" could also be termed "stuff that holds moisture longer and slows the effect of drying soil during drought conditions."
It is an unfortunate thing, because tankies are actually a problem. And I do mean the real term, as in the folks who identify with dictatorships that are so-called communist.
The reason it's a problem is that the folks who are left-leaning but uneducated sometimes get swept up in pro-authoritarian rhetoric that happens to oppose the west. I'm anticapitalist, leftist, etc. I see tankies and fascists having a lot in common. That seems dangerous in the sense that fascism is a real threat. Also, then, our ranks are being thinned out and co-opted by specific bad-faith actors. At the same time, when people buy into tankie (pro-Russia, pro-China, pro-North Korea) propaganda, this more or less consolidates some of the power that opposes actual leftists (as in, people who support human rights, equitable societies, environmental protection, etc).
Not really any argument against what you're saying. Just kind of adding that the term tankie is actually useful to describe a specific viewpoint, but obviously not in the way that the previous commenter used it.
So this is a horrific stereotype, and it has an even more sinister historical precedent.
Back in the era of slavery (that is specifically in the US, the slavery of Africans abducted from their home countries), there were specifically slave "breeding farms" where slavers would commit massive amounts of sexual assault of captive slaves in order to produce slaves they selected by their own arbitrary metric for specific physical qualities... and to save on what can, again horrifically, be referred to as "import costs."
I'm not saying this "worked" or produced the results that slavers wanted. What I am saying is that this specific way of subjugating and dehumanizing people has had lasting effects in both perception of black folks and in the ways that systemic racism works.
The fact that generative AI is being used as a means of large corporations consolidating even more wealth rather than attempting to free the working class from shitty, menial jobs shows that we're way the fuck off with how we conceptualize of "work".
This should be a good thing, but for lots of people this will suck.
Fwiw I fully support your reasoning that TikTok in particular should be viewed as a source of particularly insidious propaganda at this moment. I've been tracking this for years and it seems very obvious to me.
However... when you're talking about Instagram you're talking about the company that offered the tools used in the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
So I promise I'm not trying to be a dick here. While what you're saying is essentially reasonable, it's actually not true.
The amount of emissions in these small, wildly inefficient engines is considerably worse than even a large pickup truck. The reason is because emissions standards, including the introduction of catalytic converters, etc. don't apply to lawn equipment. The result is that these don't actually burn fuel correctly, and spew out lots of harmful pollutants in a way that even large ICE vehicles don't.
https://www.edmunds.com/car-reviews/features/emissions-test-car-vs-truck-vs-leaf-blower.html#:~:text=Distilling%20the%20above%20results%2C%20the,than%20the%20crew%20cab%20pickup.
https://grist.org/technology/lawn-equipment-pollution-report/
Like sure, there are larger sources of emissions, but I'm kinda in favor of making changes that would offer a large benefit proportionate to the amount of lifestyle change needed to make the switch. As in, making this switch would be easier than not. These emissions produce no benefit to us, and they cost us a weird amount of money to produce.