teuast @ teuast @lemmy.ca

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2 yr. ago

I mean, to answer their question, yes.

I suspect they were well aware of that and were being tongue-in-cheek.

Well, I'm glad you at least recognize that your solution to bigotry is not practical. I agree that it's a moral ideal, but morality to my mind depends at least as much on effect as intention, which is where practicality comes in, and the fact that showing "unearned compassion" to bigots, at least in the way I typically seem to see that interpreted, just emboldens them and makes life worse for everyone else. The most extreme example of this is, as alluded to, Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler, but we see the same thing play out on a smaller scale frequently.

Most people who discuss morality with any frequency will probably tell you that whether or not you know the outcome of an action ahead of time does impact its morality. So I would argue, because we know that showing bigots "unearned compassion" rather than societally refusing to tolerate their behavior invariably has a net negative impact on those who are the targets of their bigotry, that would render it not the moral ideal we might like it to be.

Please observe the paradox of tolerance.

Wait, did I misunderstand you the whole time? Are you actually saying that the problem with puberty blockers is that they block puberty? Did you somehow miss where that's literally the entire point of them?

Also, repeating the same claim you just made again while ignoring the authoritative source I just provided that contradicts it is some shit I see creationists doing. Not a good look. If you support trans people, like you say in your next comment, then why are you arguing this in the same way someone who doesn't support trans people would?

They're more reversible than suicide.

But sure, I hear you, that doesn't actually answer the question. So here's an authoritative source on the matter. To drastically hyper-over-simplify, they basically are.

Well, I'm no medical professional, but medical professionals have been prescribing puberty blockers for other things for decades, and if they were as dangerous as all that, then you'd think the FDA would have banned that by now.

Besides which, access to treatments like those ones are documented to reduce rates of self-harm, including suicide, among kids with gender dysphoria. And if your metric is the body turning out like it would have without these treatments, well, I hope I don't need to fill in the blank for you.

I can find no sources on this that aren't just Elon tweeting about it, and Elon's tweets are about as reliable as a gingerbread space station. If his tweets are enough for you to believe it, then no wonder you're also wrong about everything else you've said.

Fuckin do it, Elon. Double dog dare ya.

It's not Chrome, and it does everything I want.

If their jobs were that easy to automate, do you really think the automakers would just be threatening it? Do you know literally a single thing about economics?

Then don't start shit you can't finish.

I have up to 4 kids at a time in my vehicle along with an often substantial amount of their stuff ( school backpacks / sports equipment ). It is not uncommon to stop for groceries already loaded with passengers and gear. What model of eBike should I get?

That's a valid question, and it's one that anybody who advocates for better urbanism, like I do, needs to be able to address. Fortunately, there are multiple answers.

The most direct answer to your question on its face is that you could get a bakfiets, or what the English-speaking world calls a cargo bike/cargo ebike. These are available from brands like Orbea, Aventon, Tern, Co-Op, Specialized (that's Specialized with a big S), and more, they have been showcased as potential car replacements capable of carrying people and large amounts of stuff on Youtube channels like GCN, Not Just Bikes, Oh The Urbanity, Propel, Shifter, and others, and some specialized (that's specialized with a small S) models have even been deployed as low-footprint urban delivery vehicles in so far highly successful trials by companies like UPS and FedEx.

However, to address the frankly incredibly frustrating assumption underlying your question, neither I nor the vast majority of other urbanism advocates will actually try to take away your car, even if we were given dictator-like control, because I for one am not interested in controlling people, I'm interested in having multiple viable choices for how to get around. You would still be able to have your car. Driving it in the city center would be inconvenient and expensive enough that you wouldn't want to do it, but it'd be trivially easy to get there by transit or cargo bike instead. Plus, while the drive to your work would be largely unaffected, that road wouldn't be the only way to get there, either. Speaking of which,

Also, I work 50 km from home and commute on a road that was made primarily to provide large trucks faster access to the port. It is a road along the river. In addition to the huge, fast moving vehicles, it has no artificial lighting and is away from building that might help with that ( so pitch black at times and also prone to significant fog ). Please recommend something safe.

This is a systemic problem, not a you problem. As such, you shouldn't be expected to take responsibility for solving it, least of all by just protecting yourself. You mention a port: most ports have existed for longer than cars have been the dominant urban species, and as such, that road you describe might have either replaced or run parallel to a railway that would have also gotten you there. The fact that that railway is no longer a viable option for you means that an option has been taken away from you, and that's what you should actually be angry about. That, and the lack of artificial lighting on said road. Allow me to refer you to the second half of my earlier comment:

Of course, this does also require development patterns to support it, i.e. roads that aren’t fucking death traps for anyone outside a car and stuff being close enough together that you can actually get to it in a reasonable amount of time, but hey, there are also non-car-related reasons we should be doing those things too.

Emphasis added. Anyway:

Now, not everyone has my situation.

Yes. Hi, it's me.

That said, I am sure MANY people ( in North America at least ) have needs that require cars today. Our culture and infrastructure has been designed around it and changing that is a bigger problem than migrating to electric vehicles.

That is exactly the problem I'm talking about. They have those needs because our infrastructure has been built to create them, and that causes far more harm than just switching to EVs will ever solve. EVs are like trying to wallpaper over the hole in the Titanic: better than doing literally nothing, but won't actually fix anything.

Shared ownership or shared fleets is one middle ground.

Sounds like communism to me.

Autonomous cars would help but that timeline is uncertain.

Adam Something has a thing he does where he takes some kind of pie-in-the-sky techbro gadgetbahn idea, like AVs, and gradually addresses all the design flaws with it until he's invented trains again, then ends with his catchphrase "just build a regular fucking train." And I think that's where I'm going to leave off.

You know that song "Think About It" by Flight Of The Conchords? "They're turning kids into slaves just to make cheaper sneakers, but what's the real cause? 'Cause the sneakers don't seem that much cheaper. Why are we still paying so much for sneakers when you got 'em made by little slave kids? What are your overheads?"

Funnily enough, I used to work in a running shoe store, and Jemaine is actually 100% right. Nike, Asics, Brooks, Adidas, most of them mostly manufacture in southeast Asia, or at least did at the time and probably still do. Nike has famously had their name attached to the word "sweatshop" on multiple occasions. Meanwhile, New Balance manufactures in the US. Prices are similar, quality is basically the same, personally I don't get on with either of them as well as I get on with Altra but that's beside the point. Nike's CEO makes like 100x what NB's does, which means NB manages to match Nike on price and quality with a much more equitable pay structure and manufacturing in the US.

If your metric for the economy is anything other than how much money the CEO makes, then New Balance is the clear winner. And I just want to note how fucked it is that I'm looking at a CEO making almost 300k a year, who also happens to be kind of a right wing dipshit, and saying "yeah, he seems equitable" just because I have to compare him to one making 32 mil.

Another example is that Orbea bicycles, which are literally made by a worker-owned co-op in Mondragon in Spain, with a lot (though admittedly not all) of their manufacturing either in house or just over the border in Portugal, compete and win in top-level racing, so the quality is obviously there, with prices that match or beat ones set by giants like Trek, Specialized, Cannondale, or, well, Giant, all of whom do most of their manufacturing in Taiwan (to be fair, Giant is a Taiwanese company, but Trek, Spesh, and 'Dale are all American and, weirdly, Giant handles a lot of their manufacturing).

If you can't show me that I'm wrong, then sure, pivot to something else again. But the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting something to change. Vaas from Far Cry 3 taught me that.

Amen. Don't have to worry about the house, neighborhood, or city infrastructures supporting your EV if your EV is an ebike that can plug into a standard outlet in your living room, or wherever you keep it. Or if you can just walk a quarter mile and hop on a light rail. Or if instead of driving a Ford, you just use your Chevrolegs. Of course, this does also require development patterns to support it, i.e. roads that aren't fucking death traps for anyone outside a car and stuff being close enough together that you can actually get to it in a reasonable amount of time, but hey, there are also non-car-related reasons we should be doing those things too.

My guy, your source proves my point, not yours, even by your own summary of it. If you were capable of feeling ashamed of yourself, now would be a great time to do so.

Well, if you had heard the things Elon says, seen the people he signal boosts, or heard of the people and groups he associates with, then you would understand why people are accusing him of spouting far right nonsense. It's because the things he says are frequently far right nonsense, the people he signal boosts are frequently people who spout far right nonsense, and the people and groups he associates with are frequently significant sources of far right nonsense. And I'm not a Democrat in any sense other than thinking they're not as bad for the world as Republicans are, but I can think of at least one good reason to throw rocks at "the other color," that being when they're propagating harmful far-right nonsense. I'd have thought this logic would be bulletproof, but I find myself cowed by the counterargument that "I have no idea what you're talking about but you seem mean."

Paying attention to the world around you is a great way to avoid making yourself look silly, if you're interested in stopping it from happening again.

Then why does a Big Mac cost almost the same at a unionized McDonald's in Denmark as it does at a non-unionized one in Tennessee? I mean, I guess anything is possible when you just lie, but a lot of things become a lot clearer once you acknowledge reality.

what exactly is the left's batshit insanity in this instance? literally that the game lets you pick your pronouns?

did you know that fallout: a post-nuclear role playing game (1997) also allowed you to do this? a few other games that have let you do this are fallout 2 (1998), mass effect (2007), fallout 3 (2008), mass effect 2 (2010), skate 3 (2010), the elder scrolls 5: skyrim (2011 and also every year since), mass effect 3 (2013), fallout 4 (2015), sonic forces (2017), mass effect andromeda (2017), cyberpunk 2077 (2020), trackmania 2020 (2020), and literally every other game ever to feature a character creator. if this is batshit insanity, then i can't wait to find out what you think of unions.

stupid pronouns

which is stupider, "he" or "she"

Have you heard the things Elon says, or seen the people he signal boosts, or heard of the people and groups he associates with? It's about as big of a leap as me getting out of bed in the morning, specifically back when I lived in a treehouse and slept on the floor.

Yeah, but you know what he's talking about, right? Why be so pedantic about it?