In May this year, France extended its smoking ban to include outdoor spaces such as beaches, parks, bus stops and outside schools (although café terraces are not included in the ban). It went a bit under the radar at the time - because there's not much skiing in May - but the ban also includes ski resorts. Smoking is now banned in ski lifts, the queues for the ski lifts and on the piste, on pain of a €135 fine. Smoking is still allowed while skiing off-piste or in the streets of the ski resorts. Smoking in indoor spaces such as bars, restaurants or hotels has been banned since 2007.
According to the U.S. National Park Service, tourists account for over 300 million visits to national parks each year . But even more staggering is the 70 million tons of trash that is left behind . While a majority of this waste ends up in garbage cans and recycling bins, hundreds of thousands of pieces of trash still end up scattered in the wilderness.
Yeah, I'd say it's just them being physically in the way a lot. Especially in Tokyo, where things work because everyone is moving smoothly along. Then you have tourists getting confused standing in front of ticket gates, or in front of doors, walking slowly side by side, stopping suddenly in a smoothly moving group of people to take photos, or dragging large luggage onto rush hour trains. Honestly, a lot of it is unavoidable, and I don't really blame them for it. But it's hard not to think I'd have a smoother time getting to and from if they weren't there. Especially since I lived here during COVID, when they weren't here, and I know it to be true.
Ash-brown tatters lofted on pheromones, gypsy moths flutter among boughs and across the meadow like confetti. Beyond hunger. Only sex drives the males. The females wait folded within crevices in bark. They've lost their mouths. Admirable to be so single-minded. Just days ago, as creepy adolescents they chewed the branches bare, littered the path with skeleton leaf-stalks, tore new craters out of the canopy so the sky fell through: we, too, could strip a forest, strip a continent, but not so lacily.
