I'm a huge self checkout fan, but I think we need more perspective on how shitty ours is sometimes. Loblaws and all of them are way behind on how it should work. Look at the Netherlands and how it's often done there, you walk around with a scanner so you can scan as you go and quickly pay at the end.
Or even better, look at how Uniqlo is doing it. It's all RFID, so you just drop your basket on the checkout, and it scans it all for you basically instantly.
The problem isn't self checkout, it's that the grocery stores are using it to purely cut costs and don't actually care if it's better for the consumer in any way. But hey, at least it's easy to "accidentally" not scan something right now.
I'm so tired of the provincial and federal governments doing this dance. Sure it's a provincial responsibility, just like healthcare. But we have several provinces who are actively making things worse. If the feds are going to stand around and let it happen, they might as well be complicit in it.
They used to fund public housing. Ban corporate home ownership, and introduce taxes to make owning multiple homes unprofitable. Then fix our tax brackets so I don't pay basically the same rate as someone making 10x what I do.
I wasn't talking about the feds, I was talking about provincial governments in Canada, which municipalities and local governments are fully controlled by. So that small change also can't happen, because a premiere can just decide they want to override what the local government wants to do, and there's nothing you can do about that except wait for an election. And even then, our electoral system is so screwed up that the Conservatives have a majority government (allowing them to do whatever they want) with only 18% of eligible voters casting a ballot for them.
Change is possible, but there's a lotta steps we have to get through before urbanist advocacy is even going to be considered. Electorial reform bringing in MMPR is the first step.
There's ways to position them in LEO that are sustainable. Geostationary for internet means they're going to be about as useful as dialup for any modern usage. Far too much latency to do even a Zoom call.
I got in a fight with somebody on Instagram who decided to do a whole reel on how this is NJB "hurting urbanism". I disagreed with them entirely, but I'm glad to not be seeing his awful points repeated here.
Are there problems with Jason's view? Absolutely, but he's also not speaking on behalf of anyone other than himself. There straight up are massive amounts of the US and Canada that I don't think are ever fixable, short of razing them and restarting. And the problem with advocacy to fix them is that there's so many issues that compound to make them horrible places, that no advocacy group will be able to win anything. Putting in bike lanes only works when there are places to bike to (and we can't even seem to get good bike lanes right here).
He literally closes with "it can get better, but it cannot be fixed within your children's lifetimes". Specifically referring to the US there. He isn't discouraging anyone from advocating, just explaining why he himself does not for NA.
It's not phrased the best it could be here, but he isn't talking about all of NA, but he is talking about a majority of it. There are pockets here that will get better, and are doing so, but there's also massive amounts that just can't get better without razing them. The exurbs being built on top of prime farm land in Ontario is a perfect example of this. Those places can never, and will never be fixed, at least not within my lifetime. And it is a waste of energy and time to try to fix those places.
It is not. Car infrastructure is some of the most expensive there is. It's cheap because it's heavily subsidized. It's popular because car manufacturers made it popular, with propaganda and lobbying for making cars the default form of transportation.
If your opinion is the obviously correct one where driving is the only thing accomodated for, why does the actual data show that the model for walkable cities with good transit have happier, healthier, more comfortable people, and are economically stronger than car dependent cities?
Right but the instance I'm on could get taken over by an asshole, and get defederated by, or defederates from, my favourite subs. Then I've got to abandon that account and start a whole new one, same as I did leaving Reddit. I'm really not sold on this model until I can transfer my account somehow.
This is a fools errand. It's like antivirus companies, no matter how well you make your product, the hackers are always going to be one step ahead. If they manage to obscure ads so well they can't be detected the way we do them now, ad blockers will find a new way to go about it. Especially when the way Google wants to do it involves pushing shitty web DRM that other browsers have actively said they won't play ball with.
These tech megacorps seem to think they're invincible. Like people have always used their services, and will always use them. That just isn't true. Youtube, for example, is impossible for me to use without adblock these days. It's just a horrendous experience without it. And when your product is awful to use, that opens the door for someone to come in with something that isn't awful. Yes video hosting is difficult and costly, but it's not nearly as bad as it once was. I really feel like they're digging their own grave here. At least I hope they are.
I mean in Toronto the joke is that every year it's not legal is just another year of illegally drinking in parks. It's happening anyway in basically every park, so just make it legal already.
FYI to anyone here, you don't have to show them your receipt or let them check your bag. Just refuse and leave.
Any before anyone says "they'll ban you from the store", they very likely won't. And even if you are added to the ban list, it's not really possible for them to enforce. I worked at a very high traffic Loblaws for a while as a self checkout attendant, and I would regularly have my friends in customer service point out people that had been banned checking out with no problems.
I'm a huge self checkout fan, but I think we need more perspective on how shitty ours is sometimes. Loblaws and all of them are way behind on how it should work. Look at the Netherlands and how it's often done there, you walk around with a scanner so you can scan as you go and quickly pay at the end.
Or even better, look at how Uniqlo is doing it. It's all RFID, so you just drop your basket on the checkout, and it scans it all for you basically instantly.
The problem isn't self checkout, it's that the grocery stores are using it to purely cut costs and don't actually care if it's better for the consumer in any way. But hey, at least it's easy to "accidentally" not scan something right now.