<story><title>Paris to bring back swimming in Seine after 100 years</title><url>https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-66238618</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>zx2c4</author><text>I love the initiative, of course. How could I not? The idea of folks casually taking a dip in this city is really nice. I spend a lot of time beside the Seine - writing code on my laptop, even! - and being able to dangle my legs in sounds nice.&lt;p&gt;But... No matter what they say about bacteria measurements and other high quality quantitative indicators, there will still be swimming bags of potato chips and cigarette cartons and beer cans and receipts, and all the other junk Parisians tend to toss in there, even the occasional Vélib&amp;#x27; bicycle. The thought of going for a nice swim only to whack my foot on a rusted underwater bicycle gear and then leave the water with a sandwich wrapper clinging to my back isn&amp;#x27;t very appealing. So I wonder how this will be managed, and how separated the three proposed swimming spots will be.&lt;p&gt;With that said, I went swimming in the Ohio River as a child, and I guess I&amp;#x27;m still alive, so ¯ \ _ ( ツ ) _ &amp;#x2F; ¯</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>insanitybit</author><text>Hopefully this introduces pressure to actually get littering taken more seriously. If there are communities who want to swim, but feel uncomfortable about it, those communities can begin to pressure the government to deal with those problems.&lt;p&gt;Given that the article mentions that there will be officially held races&amp;#x2F; marathons, I suspect that there will be a lot of money being put into keeping the water clean and safe. It seems like the city has been very invested in improving the water quality of the Seine and I expect that to continue with the additional pressure of human swimmers.</text></comment>
<story><title>Paris to bring back swimming in Seine after 100 years</title><url>https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-66238618</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>zx2c4</author><text>I love the initiative, of course. How could I not? The idea of folks casually taking a dip in this city is really nice. I spend a lot of time beside the Seine - writing code on my laptop, even! - and being able to dangle my legs in sounds nice.&lt;p&gt;But... No matter what they say about bacteria measurements and other high quality quantitative indicators, there will still be swimming bags of potato chips and cigarette cartons and beer cans and receipts, and all the other junk Parisians tend to toss in there, even the occasional Vélib&amp;#x27; bicycle. The thought of going for a nice swim only to whack my foot on a rusted underwater bicycle gear and then leave the water with a sandwich wrapper clinging to my back isn&amp;#x27;t very appealing. So I wonder how this will be managed, and how separated the three proposed swimming spots will be.&lt;p&gt;With that said, I went swimming in the Ohio River as a child, and I guess I&amp;#x27;m still alive, so ¯ \ _ ( ツ ) _ &amp;#x2F; ¯</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>scrollaway</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;there will still be swimming bags of potato chips and cigarette cartons and beer cans and receipts, and all the other junk Parisians tend to toss in there&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Time to enforce littering fines.&lt;p&gt;Seriously, as a French person living in Belgium, I am disgusted with how little of a shit people give about keeping &lt;i&gt;their own city&lt;/i&gt; clean.&lt;p&gt;If we start enforcing littering fines a bit more in western europe, this shit will stop within a couple of years. It&amp;#x27;s 100% cultural and this is something we absolutely have to change in our culture.</text></comment>