There’s a heavy CO2 cost to making batteries so even if you convert an ICE vehicle to electric, you’ll have to drive it quite far to break even on the CO2 emissions from the factory.
He’s not an idiot because he’s a capitalist. It’s that capitalism encourages the idiotic type to try shit out, because those are the ones with most self-confidence. They’re mostly also the least likely to really consider the responsibilities such as: your employees depend on you now, if you fuck up majorly, you’ll screw over all your employees’ lives, potentially their families too, potentially irreversibly
So yea, the function of “CEO” naturally attracts cretins.
And God forbid such a moron’s business becomes even slightly successful, because guess who suddenly feels smarter, less accountable for his terrible character flaws and toxic behavior? That’s right. Usually, businesses which make it are mostly just lucky. But you can’t explain this to cpt douchebag, he thinks he’s magically smarter and better at life than anyone.
And the better the company does, the more the Boss will indulge in his dysfunction and craziness.
That’s why, statistically bosses are highly probable to be the scourge of humanity. It’s not just capitalism. it’s just the toxic mix of luck, power and stupidity - all three combined with whichever the boss’ character flaws and weaknesses are. Only in capitalism, power usually takes the form of money, that’s all. But the issue is even deeper with people.
(i hate capitalism too, but I think blaming it all on capitalism and calling it a day isn’t gonna address such a fundamental issue with people. I come from an ex communist country and that shit is just equally toxic if brought to it’s extreme version - and for the same reasons to do with the human psyche too.)
Dead, buried, brought back to life, shot, brought back to life again and grafted to AI, beaten with a shovel, and currently laying in its own piss hoping 2024 is better to it.
Oh and Swift is apparently using chainlink for bank transactions, although most are wondering why on earth this would make chainlink holders any richer instead of the dev team and Sergey himself.
Lol yeah, who would want their own personal vehicle they can use to go where they want and on what route they want without having to share with total strangers who can and will hurt you when you can ride the filthy, bedbug-ridden, urine-soaked train next to the crazy homeless guy jacking off right in front of you?
You’re not going to sway anyone into giving up their autonomy just because you don’t like the way they live. If you’re so butthurt about it, why wouldn’t you just band together with the other NPCs, put a pot of money together, buy a shitload of land out in the boonies, incorporate it into a separate county and just build a walkable city of your own?
But you won’t, because you’re too lazy, selfish, and lack initiative, and that’s why you’ll never get the world you want.
You know the issues you’re bringing up aren’t caused by public transit, right? You’re so emotional over this and tear down the idea of public transit instead of giving a shit about mental healthcare in your country.
So now neither issue is solved, interesting perspective. You ever consider that traffic might be better for people like you who are deathly afraid of interacting with others if more people use public transportation?
Because no one’s talked about forcing you on a bus or flatly banning the existence of cars. You’re latching onto a hyper exaggerated scenario so you can act hysterical while feeling justified. You aren’t, you just have a small mind that’s easily manipulated into being against your own best interests.
As it stands now everyone needs to invest thousands of dollars to acquire and maintain something that is essentially required to participate in modern society. If you like doing that then more power to you, but everyone else just wants to have a choice.
No, they do, you just didn’t read the article and you don’t care to because the only one getting emotional about this – and trying once again to derail the conversation because you think this about winning – is you.
You are never going to solve sexism and you certainly can’t do it overnight, and if I can’t convince you to put your feelings to the side and stick only to facts in a simple forum conversation, how the hell do you think people are going to undo millennia of toxic sexist ideas in time to implement car bans and avoid needlessly jeopardizing other people?
That’s right, you won’t, because ultimately, you don’t care about the safety or well-being of others. You just want to get rid of eyesores.
total strangers who can and will hurt you when you can ride the filthy, bedbug-ridden, urine-soaked train next to the crazy homeless guy jacking off right in front of you?
What post-apocalyptic hellscape do you live in? And here I was, thinking I live in a third-world country.
I live in a major city and frequently travel by bus and metro. I go to my hometown once a month or so, by train. Haven’t experienced these horrors (yet).
At this stage that’s kind of the point. It’s an intentional demand-curbing measure. The number of people trying to switch to BlueSky outstrips hosting infrastructure. They’re scaling up slowly and carefully.
I presume once it’s out of open beta and they have the infra they need to launch properly, it will stop being invite ony.
Understandable, but at that point it may be too late as people will have cemented themselves with some of the competition such as Mastodon or wherever it may be. At least for me I am very unlikely to use BlueSky at this point or in the future because I was unable to go to the site when I had heard of it and sign up.
I think those of us that treat social media services this way are a minority in the grand picture. If BlueSky continues to be effective, network effect will pull in a steady stream of users, including ones that may have balked before.
It is poising itself to be a 1:1 drop-in replacement for Twitter. Federated services like Mastodon aren’t that (and aren’t trying to be).
I wholly believe that the majority of Twitter users have no interest in federated platforms as alternatives. By comparison, platforms like Mastodon feel vaguely like Twitter but more fractured and isolated. Everyone was on Twitter. Comparatively no one is on Mastodon. Discovery is awful and micromanaging instances and subscriptions is tedious busywork. “Why can’t it just be all in one convenient place, like on Twitter? This is so stupid and complicated,” I expect most would complain.
Federated platforms are loved by us because we value the fine control and we like putting in effort to curate our feeds. The complexity is the appeal. But I think it’s negative appeal to the type of person who has gotten accustomed to an algorithm doing all of that for them, and I think that’s most people. You can use federated platforms out of the box and they’ll “just work” without all the tinkering, but it will be very bland and vapid. It only becomes great when you put in work to make it great for yourself.
The thing BlueSky seems to be promising is that big, monolithic platform that Twitter was and most people want. And I think they’re the only notable player in that game, so they’ll completely corner that market. As long as they don’t trip over any footguns (and I don’t believe making the beta invite-only is one of them), I believe they’re going to succeed greatly.
If only public transport was actually a usable replacement for using a car. Hint: It isn’t.
In the next town, the mayoress claims to like bikes, and “reforms” the city. So far all she managed were some cheap fixes like painting bike paths on roads and making some key connections useless for non-bike traffic. Which led to - more car-traffic, as now many cars have to drive nearly once around the city to reach their destination. What it didn’t lead to - a significant move to use of bikes and public transport, as the bike paths are not really safe and mostly patchwork, anyway, and public transport is too expensive and basically useless to anyone from outside the city.
I’m not against a bike-friendly city. But you can have good implementations and seriously bad ones.
And asking people to “stop driving cars” is a very narrow-minded and stupid idea from the start. There are a lot of reasons to drive a car. I mean, do you expect that they stock the supermarkets with cargo bikes? Do you want to force old people who cannot use the tram as it has high and steep stairs for entries to, what, walk into the city? Do you think the plumber or electrician will come to fix your flat with all the tools on a bike?
This “stop driving cars” is an idea cooked up by young and able people who live in the city and usually don’t leave it. Who maybe use a bike to ride to the next shop two roads over, or to university. And who actually can go on even longer rides occasionally, if they must. They have nothing better to do. Those who bear not much responsibility and drive, well, like bikers in a city, feeling overconfident and ignorant of the risk of dangerous driving behavior.
Their comment is missing the point. It essentially boils down to “the current infrastructure is bad” which is entirely what people advocating for less car centric design have been saying for a long time, but instead of using that as a reason to advocate for better they’re using it as a reason not to do anything
No. The reason why they don’t do anything is simply: Doing it right costs money. That cities either don’t have, or don’t want to invest. Turning a car-centric city into a bike and public transport friendly one is very expensive.
That’s changing the subject again. I was saying the commentor was effectively advocating for doing nothing because current infrastructure is poor.
It’s worth noting that car centric infrastructure is extremely expensive as well and requires constant upkeep. Bike infrastructure can often be made incrementally by simplying just requiring new/updated road to have bike lanes for instance
That is part of how the Netherlands got really good bike infrastructure and how a number of cities are getting better at it
EDIT: I should also mention that the car centric deisgn of many suburbs in particular is a large contributer to why they don’t have much money to begin with. The upkeep costs start to pile up and make the regions net negative for the local government’s income
The more a place is car centric, the higher these costs for upkeep will be (more traffic causing more damage in more places)
It’s worth noting that car centric infrastructure is extremely expensive as well and requires constant upkeep. Bike infrastructure can often be made incrementally by simplying just requiring new/updated road to have bike lanes for instance
Well, try that in a city environment. It might work with some of the main roads, but we are not in Cities:Skylines here where houses move or are automatically replaced when you install a wider road. I may have to add that here is not the US where many roads are so wide that you need a car to get to the other side ;-)
More than 80% (give or take) of the roads in cities here are so narrow that two (small) car lanes plus the pedestrian sidewalks are basically “it”. The road in front of my house is, IIRC, between 5.4 and 5.8m wide - without having a sidewalk. Try adding a bike path here. And if you turn basically each and every side road into one-way roads in order to add bike paths might lead to serious acceptance problems.
The more a place is car centric, the higher these costs for upkeep will be (more traffic causing more damage in more places)
Well, while I won’t contradict your notion that more traffic causes more damage, I’d ask you to keep in mind that one truck does as much damage to a road as 40000 cars (yes, it is that much, the damage factor is x^4^, with x being the relative mass, and the calculation base being a normal European car, not a six ton American pickup). So, as long as you want to have your supermarket stocked and your amazon order delivered, the damage created by private cars is simply irrelevant.
For the first part, yes that will vary place to place. That’s why I said “often”, but it’s a viable method in quite a large number of locations. Especially in those which are currently some of the worst places for walkabilty/biking/public transit at the moment. Places with narrow streets are generally speaking more walkable to begin with. There are still other ways to make improvements anyhow
For the second, I am also talking about the quantity of roads (the more places part). More car centric places are going to have more roads to maintain in general.
But it’s still worth mentioning that car centric design can still can lead to trucks being used in places where there are viable transportation methods like trains (this applies more so for longer distances than just delivery to houses but a number of cities do have highways that run through them).
I don’t live in that car-centric shithole. So much for assumptions.
And I take calling me “rightwinger” as a serious insult.
There are cities in my country that managed to strike a good balance between cars and bikes. E.g. with continuous bike paths and stuff like that. But most cities here have two problems: They simply jump short with bike paths and leave safe bike access as a crazy patchwork on the city map, making it more or less useless. And they keep public transport back because it actually costs money.
I’ve nothing against bikes. Occasionally I rant against stupid and irresponsible bikers, of which there are too many, and that give normal bikers a bad name. I would love to see bike-friendly cities, but I also see cities stumbling around like a beheaded chicken when it comes to implementation.
So, as long as public transport is no usable alternative, a city has to deal with cars as a means of people coming into a city as workers and customers. The alternative would be a city that completely relies on local people. Might be environment friendly, but simply not realistic. They just don’t have the purchase power to keep a cities businesses alive.
The pedestrian-friendly cities I know often allow vans and trucks to resupply stores on the walking streets, even if normal traffic is disallowed. They’re also encouraged to deliver in the morning.
Trying to point the issue to disabilities is often extremely counter-intuitive; it’s often hard for disabled people to use a car for everything (picture wheelchair transfers every time), as well as walking across huge parking lots or inside megastores. It’s often far better if they can just make it to a small store directly without excessive worry about high-traffic crosswalks. Public transit is often wheelchair accessible by default.
The mindset of completely banning cars is not one I’ve joined up with; as you say, contractors or the slim minority of workers transporting heavy goods should likely still be using cars. But that experience of driving is often terrible when every single person (on their own with no heavy cargo) is using a car for every trip.
But that experience of driving is often terrible when every single person (on their own with no heavy cargo) is using a car for every trip.
OK, but what would be the alternative? Especially for those living outside and entering the city either for work of for shopping?
When I was young, I went basically everywhere by bike, as I neither has a car, nor could I afford public transport (which would have cost me about 60% of available money). So I went to work and back on my bike (15km each way), and then to university and back in the evening (another 20km each way). Well, that was when I was young. Nowadays, this is no longer an option.
I don’t expect people to commute 20+km a day by bike. A safe bike garage at a P+R place would be nice and reduce at least part of the way by bike, but it does not exist. And public transport, well, at this P+R, there are good connections into the cities, but they have a low frequency and take quite some time, apart from costing a shitload of money for what they offer.
My bicycle commute is 22km each way, and after riding for a few weeks, I was up for riding that plus a loop around the local lake (with a friend), then back home all on a Saturday, after doing that commute every day of the week before
Now e-bikes exist that’s even achievable by quite unfit people
Putting aside that I’ve seen some relatively old people continue to stay healthy on bikes (often as leisure, not utility), generally the hope would be that public transit would cover the needs for longer distances. As you said, many current forms are pretty bad, but that’s because our money is spent (that is KEY - we SPEND the money either way!!) on road maintenance and new parking garages, and of course individually on car maintenance.
We also have these long distances to cover to stores in part because of the big wide roads and parking lots that elongate our trips. As it turns out, civic centers don’t have to be so spread out.
I’d also expect most people not to need to go into the city for all forms of shopping. If you just need groceries for the week, but your town has nothing to offer in walking distance, it almost sounds like there’s a business begging to be built there, even if it’s a two-room local affair.
When I go to the city for shopping or attending a meeting, it is maybe once per month. I’m not stupid enough to do everyday shopping in the city when I have five supermarkets within 10 minutes walking distance. No, when I go to the city, it is usually to visit a few selected highly specialized shops that can only survive in an urban center with an appropriate environment. And I go there to see, touch, feel the goods I purchase in contrast to those who buy online and return every other piece because it either does not fit or whatever. Saves me a lot time, and protects the environment, as less returns are needlessly destroyed.
With our next city, well… spending money on road maintenance basically does not happen. They only repair what would otherwise fall apart, and this only adds to the chaos in this city. And as I said, money to properly reconfigure the city to make it bike friendly is simply not there.
If you just need groceries for the week, but your town has nothing to offer in walking distance, it almost sounds like there’s a business begging to be built there, even if it’s a two-room local affair.
While this sounds a good idea at first, literally tens of thousands of shops of this kind have died in my country in the last years, because there is simply no money to be made. There are a few shops that are run by local groups of volunteers because such a shop would not make enough money to survive otherwise.
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