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alyaza [they/she]
alyaza [they/she] @ alyaza @beehaw.org
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That Dropped Call With Customer Service? It Was on Purpose.

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Australians to face age checks from search engines

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Flint Finishes Lead Pipe Replacement in Historic Milestone

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Ikea begins offering balcony solar kits in Germany

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Wisconsin Supreme Court invalidates the state's strict 1849 abortion law

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Geoff Duncan weighs whether to run for Georgia governor - as a Democrat

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Steam Sale Adventure Game Recommendations

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Oregon has passed a bill to protect school libraries from book bans.

Gaming @beehaw.org

A List Of Games By Trans People Before 2010

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Supreme Court denies Exxon request to get rid of citizen lawsuits

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Transit Passes Are Better But Free Fares Are Good Too.

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Can Zohran Mamdani’s Agenda Survive Albany?: Mamdani’s plans for universal child care, fare-free transit, and affordable housing rely on Albany getting on board.

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The History of Electronic Music in 476 Tracks (1937–2001)

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Ted Chiang on Superintelligence and Its Discontents in J.D. Beresford’s Innovative Work of Early 20th-Century Science Fiction

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Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina won't run in 2026 after opposing Trump's bill

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Somerville's Zohran: Democratic Socialist Willie Burnley, Jr. carries the torch in bid for Somerville Mayor

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Denzel McCampbell for Detroit City Council: An Opportunity for the Local Movement

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  • well, if you don't: maybe this should galvanize you toward having those things? i don't think it ever really hurts to have non-online media at your disposal.

  • he assuredly won't win as an independent given his appalling numbers in the primary so, lol, good riddance

  • maybe you can be skeptical of the data source--but i think it is fairly reasonable to conclude, at this point, that trying to ditch DEI to placate conservatives has at the very least not helped Target

  • What you mean? Have you seen all those articles publisher website just giving out 8-9 on every damn game they get early access to?

    this has been an issue people have complained about in gaming journalism for--and i cannot stress this sufficiently--longer than i've been alive, and i've been alive for 25 years. so if we're going by this metric video gaming has been "ruined" since at least the days of GTA2, Pokemon Gold & Silver, and Silent Hill. obviously, i don't find that a very compelling argument.

    if anything, the median game has gotten better and that explains the majority of review score inflation--most "bad" gaming experiences at this point are just "i didn't enjoy my time with this game" rather than "this game is outright technically incompetent, broken, or incapable of being played to completion".

  • no, obviously not; is this a serious question? because i have no idea how you could possibly sustain it

  • Seems like a pointlessly gendered classification.

    sports bars by default cater to a male clientele, male sports, and male interests and therefore tend to have a "bro"-ey and "masculine" atmosphere that can often be offputting or outright hostile to the presence of women--women's sports bars by contrast don't, and generally have more interest in being inclusive community hubs and/or acting as substitutes to gay bars

    in other words: no, it's not really a pointlessly gendered classification in the current situation. it certainly is not what i'd call the norm (nor has it been my experience) for sports bars to have a code of conduct which tells you being homophobic or chauvinistic or ableist isn't cool and could be grounds for your removal, as one of the women's bars downthread has

  • currently reading:

  • i'm not exactly a fan of gender roles or the nature of "manhood" or "masculinity" or gender expression generally myself and am supportive of their total de-emphasis, so my presumption is that the case for this is something like "manhood as a concept is so toxic and so intrinsic to the worldview that creates patriarchy and men oppressing themselves and others that we cannot create a better form of it, we can only get rid of it."

    the problem is that this is almost exclusively the purview of radical feminism, and this was not productive for them historically (mostly it just took them very weird places, the SCUM manifesto being the most infamous manifestation of this). to say nothing of the fact that most radical feminism--and radical feminists--suck and have bad politics and analysis on queer issues in large part because of how that space of politics developed

  • Manhood ultimately will have to die though

    bizarre take; i don't see why this is true or necessary at all

  • Then we slap a random-ass speed limit sign down and say “job’s done.”

    we don't actually--the basis we derive most speed limits from is actually much worse, if you can believe that. from Killed by a Traffic Engineer:

    Traffic engineers use what we call the 85th percentile speed. The 85th percentile speed is whatever speed 85 percent of drivers are traveling slower than. If we have 100 drivers on the road and rank them in order from fastest to slowest, the 15th fastest driver would give us our 85th percentile speed.

    Traffic engineers will then look 5 mph faster and 5 mph slower to see what percentage of drivers fall into different 10 mph ranges. According to David Solomon and his curves, the magnitude of the speed range doesn’t matter as long as we get as many drivers as possible into that 10 mph range.

    and, as applied to the example of the Legacy Parkway, to show how this invariably spirals out of control:

    North of Salt Lake City, the Legacy Parkway parallels Interstate 15 up to the Wasatch Weave interchange where these highways come together. It’s a four-lane, controlled-access highway with a wide, grassy median and more than its fair share of safety problems.

    So how did the Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) respond?

    It increased the speed limit from 55 mph to 65 mph. It said the speed limit jump will “eliminate the safety risk” on the Legacy Parkway.

    UDOT conducted speed studies up and down the Legacy Parkway. It found that most drivers were going much faster than the 55 mph speed limit. Channeling the ghost of traffic engineers past, the safety director for UDOT said, “We decided to raise the speed limit to a speed that is closer to what drivers are actually driving. In doing so, we hope to eliminate the safety risk of speed discrepancy, which can happen when you have a significant difference between the speed most drivers are actually traveling and those who are driving the posted speed limit.”

    In the case of the Legacy Parkway, the 85th percentile speeds ranged from 65 mph to 75 mph. Based on that and what it deems engineering judgment, UDOT originally proposed raising the speed limit to 70 mph. After community pushback, it settled for 65 mph.

    According to the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD), this slight adjustment is acceptable. The MUTCD specifies that speed limits “should be within 5 mph of the 85th percentile speed of free-flowing traffic.”

  • Other people talked about it here long ago and I actually don’t have much more to add besides the desire to share it with those that are not aware of the tool. So, do I create a new publication or add a mostly empty comment to something old?

    it doesn't seem like people use Lemmy search very often, and comments on super old threads don't bump them to the top of the order, so reposting is fine

  • do you mean a small population on this community, or in life?

    in life. most people in NYC have literally never experienced this one way or the other before NYC implemented it, and certainly aren't seeking out the kinds of spaces that would be partisan on it in some way. their opinions on this are accordingly malleable based on "does this feel good or bad," and you can see this in how there's already been a large change toward supporting congestion pricing as the benefits have become increasingly tangible:

    “A plurality of voters [40-33%] wants to see congestion pricing eliminated, as Trump has called for. Pluralities of New York City voters [42-35%] and Democrats want congestion pricing to remain, Hochul’s position,” Greenberg said. “In June 2024, voters approved of Hochul’s temporary halt of congestion pricing 45-23%. In December, voters opposed Hochul’s announced reimposition of the congestion pricing tolls, 51-29%.

    “Having one-third of voters statewide supporting the continuation of congestion pricing is the best congestion pricing has done in a Siena College poll,” Greenberg said. “Additionally, support currently trails opposition by seven points, when it was 22 points in both December and June 2024.”

  • but I feel like the people who oppose congestion pricing / are pro-car operate on feelings and vibes.

    you're describing a small percentage of the population here--most people have no strong opinions on congestion pricing (because it doesn't really have a prior in the United States), and as such it's extremely important to write articles like this which can show them that it is working and it benefits them in every way

  • congestion pricing has been pretty consistently found to make air quality better for obvious reasons (fewer cars on the roads) so you can safely infer this is also the case here. unfortunately, there are several significant air quality variables outside of NYC's control that are probably going to make reductions less obvious than, say, Stockholm or London. most recently, nearby and unseasonable wildfires caused the city to have several days of terrible air quality. back in 2023, those huge Canadian wildfires caused the same problems on and off for their entire duragion.

  • i'm removing this because it's a completely empty calorie comment with literally no relation to an extremely detailed, well done article. please don't make comments like this, thanks.

  • Aside from the obvious stuff like promoting mutual aid, grassroots agitation efforts are probably your best bet. Organize in workplaces and other places where people meet, get them angry and suggest effective courses of action.

    respectfully: this is just not a serious proposal. and the fact that you think nobody is doing these things—rather than what is actually the case, which is that people do them but they are simply not effective or easy-to-scale acts of political praxis in an American context—is indicative that you should stop making confidently bad tactical prescriptions.

    and i'm not even going to address your fantastical idea of how to build a spontaneous general strike out of "mass protests" when it is evident you have bad tactical prescriptions. you're not even treading new ground here, really. Peter Camejo's speech "Liberalism, ultraleftism, or mass action" is the definitive dunk on your flavor of politically delusional theorycrafting, and that speech turns 55 this year:

    This is the key thing to understand about the ultraleftists. The actions they propose are not aimed at the American people; they’re aimed at those who have already radicalized. They know beforehand that masses of people won’t respond to the tactics they propose.

    They have not only given up on the masses but really have contempt for them. Because on top of all this do you know what else the ultralefts propose? They call for a general strike! They get up and say, “General Strike.” Only they don’t have the slightest hope whatsoever that it will come off.

    Every last one of them who raises his hand to vote for a general strike knows it’s not going to happen. So what the hell do they raise their hands for? Because it’s part of the game. They play games, they play revolution, because they have no hope. Just during the month of May the New Mobe called not one but two general strikes. One for GIs and one for workers.

    Being out for the count before anything actually happens doesn’t seem to be good strategy

    you're right, people have never martyred themselves (and, in a sense "been out for the count before anything happens") for successful political change before. do you realize how ridiculous this sounds? you are the classic person who--even if they are legitimately radical, which i don't think you are--upholds the status quo by, in the words of Martin Luther King, Jr, "lives by a mythical concept of time" and always wants to wait for a more convenient season to do something. but plainly, the more convenient season will never come if nobody does anything because they might be "out for the count".

  • on Chiapas:

    • Autonomy Is in Our Hearts: Zapatista Autonomous Government Through the Lens of the Tsotsil Language (Dylan Eldredge Fitzwater)
    • Zapatista Spring: Anatomy of a Rebel Water Project & the Lessons of International Solidarity (Ramor Ryan)
    • Developing Zapatista autonomy : conflict and NGO involvement in rebel Chiapas (Niels Barmeyer)

    on Rojava:

    • Democratic Autonomy in North Kurdistan (TATORT Kurdistan)
    • Revolution and Cooperatives: Thoughts about my time with the economic committee in Rojava (anonymous)
    • Make Rojava Green Again (Internationalist Commune of Rojava)

    on Revolutionary Catalonia and various aspects of the anarchism there:

    • Collectives in the Spanish Revolution (Gaston Leval)
    • The Anarchist Collectives (ed. Sam Dolgoff)
    • The CNT in the Spanish Revolution (José Peirats Valls)
    • Anarchists in the Spanish Revolution (José Peirats Valls)
    • To Remember Spain (Murray Bookchin)
    • Ready for Revolution (Agustín Guillamón)

    most of these should be findable on Anna's Archive, or by just googling the title. if not, i can track copies down.