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Startup Plans To Clean Up Cigarette Butts Using Crows (popularmechanics.com)
AmiMoJo writes: A startup in the Netherlands is developing the "Crowbar," a bird feeder that takes discarded cigarette butts as payment for dispensing food. A camera recognises cigarette filters and rejects any other objects placed in the Crowbar. The idea isn't entirely original, a gentleman in the US has already built a similar device and trained crows to deposit coins. The hope is that crows will be able to keep cities clean, sort through refuse and perform other tasks for our mutual benefit.
Popular Mechanics notes that crows "are some of the smartest animals in the world," suggesting this means "we could harness their abilities for the greater good of our planet."
Popular Mechanics notes that crows "are some of the smartest animals in the world," suggesting this means "we could harness their abilities for the greater good of our planet."
Let's hope the crows don't pick any bad habits themselves.. who knows, they may end up dying of beak cancer!
To crows smoking marijuana.
Next thing you know they will be robbing liquor stores and pirating music!
"it's okay for me to throw my butts into the street, because a crow will pick it up and get fed. I'm thinking of the crows"
how about robots that pick up smoldering butts and use them to burn the faces of the smokers that throw them. I think this kind of negative reinforcement is a better solution and doesn't involve enslaving animals.
Crows are smart, but I'm not sure about being smartest. I found an injured crow when I was a kid and took it home to nurse it back to health. It eventually got better, but didn't seem to have any interest in being returned to the wild. Whenever I would take it outside it would flop around like it still had a broken wing. It got to the point that it would start flopping around in the house anytime my mom would start bitching about it. She eventually threw it out the third story window, and it tried to fly back in. As soon as I opened the door to the house, it flew back in. It learned to ring the doorbell to get someone to open the door after a couple of days. I think my mom was happy when we moved, in part, to get rid of my pet crow.
I wonder what the unintended consiquences of rewarding a bunch of crows could be? They may start raiding public trash and ashtrays for food.
It's too bad some humans can't be trained not to litter in the first place.
There was a college experiment several years ago where people put on masks, some of which then messing with the crows. It became clear that they remember faces. https://www.popsci.com/science...
If you want to get your creep on, it's easier to just buy a drone.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Until the crows get beak cancer and PETA finds out.
You know, maybe, just maybe, we could convince municipalities that it's THEIR job to keep a city clean, by, you know, HIRING people to sweep streets?
Not everything needs to be a magical unicorn tech-incubator 3D printed private space asteroid-mined facebook-enabled startup.
Just saying.
Mostly random stuff.
Can you train birds NOT to shit on my car? 'Kay, thanks...
The solution is similar: find an animal that can get rid of the problem.
Some kittehs are afraid of anything bigger than a fly or spider. My current one has dragged in a couple of jackdaws hardly smaller than himself. No poop bombs from these two anymore!
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
At least it's not another Kickstarter.
#DeleteChrome
These things are cheeky fuckers and a bit feral and fearless in the cities. They rummage bins in populated car parks right in front of people making a massive mess, because they know there is food there. They don't care about humans/cars/etc there.
Once they learn that cigarette = reward, I reckon they will start trying to steal them right out of smokers mouths/hands etc.
Simple answer: because they can get away with it.
The only way you could actually enforce the laws prohibiting it (and there are actual laws against it in every city I've ever lived in), is if you had cameras *EVERYWHERE*... and advanced image recognition software to instantly recognize when a person was breaking the law, and be able to make them accountable.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
... why should you bother to keep anything less vital to you clean?
If cigarette butts are that big of a problem why not just hire some bylaw enforcement officers to patrol the areas and give out tickets for littering for anyone throwing the butts on the sidewalk/street. After people get a large fine, or two, for littering they will change their ways.
We are a part of nature. It doesn't exist for use to use as raw materials. Until we change this attitude that everything is here for us to exploit then we will continue to seeing nature "fight back".
I don't know what it is, but even nice respectable people who smoke don't seem to have any issue pitching their butts out the window when finished, often not even making sure they are out. Not just a few wildfires have been started by this behavior.
Bizarre.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Let's have our minute of hate for those who grew up when smoking was cool and haven't been able to quit, despite a lot of hassle and hate. Then get real. Glad I didn't grow up around the hateful people posting on this (or the week older hackaday thread...and it looks like about the same dumb, intolerant crowd here). I smoked 44 years, then quit. It was EXTREMELY HARD to do. But I managed - and years later, it still tugs on me just about every day. When you've pulled that off, you can talk hateful about people who didn't do as well as you, maybe...but only maybe.
But you jerks grew up when it was already uncool and never got addicted. Proud of yourself for just going with the flow? You got lucky, you weren't smarter or more disciplined. Don't feel so superior just because you had situation luck...
Why not try actually being superior first. It's hard, it's why everyone can't be above average - or won't. Which are you? Most seem like they could, but won't. Lazy.
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
There used to be a crow that turned up where I lived at the time who would take the bread thrown out for him and dunk it in a puddle before eating it. Kind of like dunking a doughnut in your coffee. Another time there were a bunch of crows flying around, they looked younger, and one of them did a barrel roll. It was very impressive.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
#DeleteFacebook
It's even easier to type something in a search engine.
#DeleteFacebook
...why train them to pick cigarette butts? Why can't you train them to poop on the smokers?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
...opens up for organized labor.
Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
We have a large pack of livestock working dogs on our farm. I taught one to pickup trash for treats. Others observed this and picked up the behavior. One of them figured out how to increase the price by breaking trash up into pieces and getting treats for each piece. Doganomics.
http://sugarmtnfarm.com/2011/0...
It's quite successful.
to simply make the cigarettes out of biodegradable materials ? Dissolves / decays when exposed to sunlight or water for X amount of time.
I'm not a smoker so dunno how plausible it would be, but beats having animals picking up our trash.
I was on vacation once, and there was this crow-like bird outside my vacation cabin. I'd thrown him bits of banana, and he'd gobbled them down.
At some point, he must have gotten full, but he knows there's more banana available. All of a sudden, he regurgitates other food he'd eaten earlier (you could tell it was a different color), and carries on with the banana pieces.
I think almost everybody is raised by their parents to throw garbage in the bin, instead of on the street. So why do smokers discard their cigarettes on the ground?
Do you want them to toss it on the ground, or toss it in a bin where there's paper and other flammables? Think about it.
If there's an ashtray around (and not one of those pole-with-a-hole designed by non-smokers with no clue how stubbing out a cigarette works), smokers will generally use it. But the anti-smokers don't want ashtrays.
(And yes, I'm a non-smoker.)
No, carrying around some bulky, fireproof container is not a viable solution.
Back when I smoked I carried around a little latched tin container, it ain't hard.
This level of nonsense is part of the reason I keep an e-cigarette always handy; you can use them just about anywhere which is a big upside on days when the weather is terrible.
Oh you're one of them...
The solution is actually much simpler: make a "CrowBar" where the crows can go have a dump and get food in exchange.
A friend of mine trained his parrot to shit in ashtrays so crows should be able to learn that, maybe other birds too.
To refine the system, add bird facial recognition across stations and keep track of the intake versus the outtake and refuse to dispense food if the bird is not "clean".
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
... and would we ever know?
Do you want them to toss it on the ground, or toss it in a bin where there's paper and other flammables? Think about it.
Part of the problem is the viewpoint that those are the only two options. It's your (or their) trash, dispose of it properly. Why is there an expectation that ashtrays should be provided at any random spot that someone might finish smoking? Like any other trash, hold onto it until there is a proper place to dispose of it. Throwing your trash on the ground should never be viewed as an acceptable option.
Why is there an expectation that ashtrays should be provided at any random spot that someone might finish smoking? Like any other trash, hold onto it until there is a proper place to dispose of it.
Unless there's a chance to stub it out, a typical cigarette will continue burning and melt the filter, and create a stench that's far worse than the tobacco smell, or burn the person's fingers. Or did you want them to stub it out on the nearest wall? Some do, and I think that's a far worse solution than dropping it and stepping on it.
Best would be if smokers didn't smoke, but they do, and I personally prefer to (a) provide usable ashtrays, and when ashtrays aren't available, (b) for the smoker to dispose of the fire hazard on a patch of fire-proof ground, not a container of flammables, and (c) any other solution.
Nah, random reinforcement actually works better. You catch one chucking a butt, you fine them. Yes, you miss 99% of the times. But you make the one time hurt enough, and they stop doing it.
When I was a kid people tossed all kinds of litter. You'd be driving along and see McDonalds cups go flying out car windows pretty routinely. Now? Very rarely.
There are lots of other options. Carry your own ashtray with a lid. I've even seen nice leather cases that do that duty. They're stylish and everything.
Smokers are and have always been irresponsible and entitled regarding their habit. Many of them still deny the problems with second hand smoke and think it's terribly unfair that they can't just smoke anywhere they want.
I very occasionally enjoy a cigar. I definitely do not chuck it on the ground when I'm done. I dispose of it responsibly, like an adult, not like a smoker.
Yup.
"I'm so courteous I don't understand why non-smokers think I'm disgusting. Yes, I throw burning litter on the ground, but it would be mildly inconvenient for me to carry it with me and dispose if it properly."
I'm not sure when I last saw a bin that didn't include an ashtray in its design. Do people violently oppose installing them where you live?
How often do you see people smoking in areas near buildings where there are clearly labelled no-smoking signs. I see it all the time where I live. I have known countless people that smoke, but only know of one person I've met in my entire life that ever actually got a fine for doing this. They do it because the enforcement is so random and infrequent that nobody takes it seriously until it happens to them... (and if it does, they feel unjustly persecuted, because so many others are getting away with it).
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
The mental image this paints feels more like something Salvador Dali would paint.
Not my idea, and I can't find the original, but I like the suggestion of feeding gulls from a car with a ghetto blaster going at full volume.
Yes, there's a certain threshold, but it doesn't have to be particularly frequent, so long as the fine hurts enough. If you have a 0.001% chance of getting caught and the fine is $50, who cares? If you have a 0.01% chance of getting caught and the fine is $5000... somebody you know is going to have gotten stomped. And that's going to make you think twice.
There was a news story about a guy tossing a lit cigarette out of his car in an area that's had a lot of bad forest fires. A cop saw him and threw the book: a multi-thousand dollar fine. Then the guy got roasted in the national media after complaining. Want to bet he doesn't chuck butts out his window anymore?
I agree with ramping up enforcement, and fines. Make the fines pay for the extra enforcement. When the problem goes away, you can reduce things again.
There are lots of other options. Carry your own ashtray with a lid. I've even seen nice leather cases that do that duty. They're stylish and everything.
Yeah, and you can trade them in for a Mogwai.
But they require both hands, and from what I can tell, smokers a much as anyone else often carry stuff. Any solution expected to work has to be convenient. Perhaps the greatest convenience is to ban smoking altogether and subsidize personal mist devices for ex-smokers.
A problem I see as bigger is bottlecaps. They harm nature more than cigarette butts which dissolve within months.
I'm not sure when I last saw a bin that didn't include an ashtray in its design. Do people violently oppose installing them where you live?
No, but they're either designed by someone who has never been around smokers and lack a way to extinguish or de-ember cigarettes, they are waterlogged due to bad placement or lack of awning, or if by a miracle they are actual usable ashtrays, they're full of paper waste that others have tossed there, being too lazy to even aim for the hole a few inches lower, making it hazardous to use them as an ashtray.
Egotism and laziness isn't something that smokers have a monopoly on. I remember my old place of work, where the smoking room had a sign saying "If you don't put teabags in my ashtray, I won't put cigarette butts in your tea".
I don't see cigarette butts as more of a problem than leaves or dead insects. Since the 60s, filters are made to dissolve, and the tobacco, well that's leaves. Chewing gum and bottle caps is a much bigger menace in my opinion.
Too bad that won't work for pigeons. I used to take light rail from a station near downtown -- and a grain elevator.
There were pigeons all over, and a lot of pigeon crap -- despite those spiky anti-roosting strips all over the bridge and platform.
Even if only a tiny fraction of 1% of the grain hauled to the grain elevator falls off, that's still enough to keep hundreds of pigeons fed.
I'm surprised some hawks don't take advantage of the easy pickings.
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
What's a Mogwai? The first few pages of Google say it's a Scottish rock band.
That's an option. Short of banning it entirely, have a license to buy cigarettes. If you get caught littering you lose your license, but you can apply again in six months. Applications require submission of 100 cigarette butts.
I see very few bottle caps around. None at all on city streets, and very rarely in parks. People in the park who have caps take them along, or throw them away. Yet the very same people think nothing of tossing a cigarette butt on the ground.
Currently there are people paid to do the work of tidying the streets. For every crow "employed" through payment in form of feed, a community service worker will miss out on a role. Community service could become more akin to helping the aged, but there are qualified people doing these roles. So there is a knock on effect. It's great to train the crows to do something that appears worthwhile, but why not have them do something that humans can't currently do?
Why UNIX?
Driving cars from one place to another has a number of uses and benefits. Littering butts is considered the same? Where is ANY benefit? You keep telling yourself that, but you're still a piece of shit.