xapr [he/him] @ xapr @lemmy.sdf.org

Posts

5

Comments

420

Joined

2 yr. ago

SUVs

I agree with all you said, 100%!

I agree with a lot of what you say and have experienced and done some of that myself. There are just a couple of minor terms of degree that I don't quite agree with:

Cyclists break laws to reduce exposure to cars and their drivers.

I think that's true some of the time, but not anywhere near all the time. A few of the things I listed that I've seen don't reduce their exposure.

So yeah, all the things that make using a light vehicle safer tend to make heavy vehicle users pissed off.

Again, I generally agree, except that I think "all" is excessive. Plenty of things that cyclists do that piss off car drivers don't make them safer.

Yeah, that was poorly worded on my part. What I meant was that the combination of direction AND speed was what was wrong. I was turning from a stop sign and didn't expect someone coming at speed against the direction of traffic that they were closest to and that I was looking out for.

If they had been going that speed on the sidewalk going the same direction as the car lane closest to them I would have noticed them. If they had come from the opposite direction at pedestrian speed I would have noticed them. It was the combination of both speed and direction that almost resulted in a collision. I hope that clarifies.

Sure, I recognize that what I'm saying is anecdotal, obviously, and I recognize the need for real studies, but it was still surprising that what they seem to be saying in the article (again, I didn't read the paper in detail) doesn't match what I've seen in my city. I can assure you that I see more of the other things I listed than cyclists running stop signs. But maybe you're right and I notice stop sign running less because I do it myself (edit: when I'm cycling, not when I'm driving).

Sure, I realize that. Maybe I wasn't clear or perhaps overly verbose in my previous post, but my point is that running stop signs and red lights is the mildest form of "illegal" (in most places but not all) and like you said, arguably could be said to improve cycling safety. I just thought it was a weird thing to focus on. There seemed to be no mention of either why running stop lights or stop signs can improve cycling safety, or the myriad other ways that cyclists frequently break the law and make things more dangerous for themselves. Maybe there was mention in the paper itself, I didn't read it in detail, but the article didn't mention it.

PS: I upvoted you, by the way. Not sure who downvoted you or why.

I'm sticking to Mastodon because I don't want to give into yet another corporate platform to eventually end up with the same results as Twitter and Reddit. Most people are on Twitter/Reddit/Bluesky? Who cares? Enough people are on Mastodon and Lemmy.

Let me start by saying that I fully believe in fuck cars and instead having bike lanes and public transportation everywhere.

I alternate between commuting to work by car and bicycle, and I tend to observe other cyclists when I'm driving. What I notice is that a lot of cyclists place themselves in extremely dangerous situations, considering that there are careless drivers on our roads. Running red lights and stop signs is the least of it (I haven't had a need to run red lights, but run stop signs regularly). Most of what I have observed where I live (an urban area) is not cyclists breaking the law to protect themselves, but the opposite: sometimes breaking the law and sometimes obeying the law, both in a way that makes things more dangerous for themselves and for drivers.

Some examples I've seen (more frequently than running stop signs - I very rarely if ever have seen a bicyclist running a red light and would completely understand if they had to do it because of stoplight sensors not detecting them):

Breaking the law (sometimes a combination of several of these):

• Riding on the sidewalk (arguably improves their safety in some ways, and worsens it in others)
• Riding the wrong way, against traffic (worsens their safety)
• Riding the wrong way, against traffic, on the sidewalk (greatly worsens their safety - I almost ran into someone doing this once because I just did not expect someone coming from the wrong direction at high speed in a completely unexpected place when I was turning into a driveway/side street)
• Riding on crosswalks when pedestrian walking lights are on (worsens their safety)
• Riding wearing headphones (not sure if illegal - it is for drivers - but worsens their safety)
• Riding on busy streets not wearing a helmet (not sure if illegal, but worsens their safety)
• Riding on the street at night with no bike lights (worsens their safety)

Obeying the law:

• Riding in just about the busiest, fastest street possible, when there's a much safer, parallel, designated "bicycle" street to ride a block away. While this is legal, it makes things more dangerous for themselves and for drivers when they have a perfectly reasonable alternative. I personally go out of my way (literally) to find the least busy streets for my commuting route.

So I guess I'm saying that I'm surprised by the results of this study. I only scanned the actual paper, but one thing that comes to mind is that perhaps some/many cyclists have a greater disconnect between what they think improves their safety vs. what would actually improve their safety?

Ah, yes, I forgot about game jams! They sound like they would really help you spend some concentrated time on game dev and design and progress quickly. Thanks.

You're welcome. Maybe you don't have to make all 20, but I think the idea is just to get your feet wet with game development with simple stuff first (baby steps), rather than diving into the deep end of the pool without knowing how to swim. Maybe you'll feel you have the hang of it after making a handful of them.

Apparently, the navy is still using Windows XP on (some?) ships: https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2024/2/5/navy-looks-to-industry-to-digitize-ships

Then there's this old classic when a navy "smart" ship was adrift for 2 hours after a Windows NT crash: https://www.wired.com/1998/07/sunk-by-windows-nt/

It's essentially the "how do you eat an elephant?" question, isn't it? Hint, if you're not familiar with the reference, the answer is "one bite at a time."

I'm not a game developer (yet), but would like to try it, so I've done a little reading about the topic. There are a couple things I've seen advocated that have made a lot of sense to me:

1. Don't start with your dream game. Start with either tiny games to test specific aspects of your bigger game, or first practice developing clones of many relatively simple classic games, like pac-man, etc. This is a good resource I've found to help guide the latter approach: https://20_games_challenge.gitlab.io/challenge/
2. Don't spend a lot of time on either programming or creating art before you playtest the heck out of your game, preferably with many people. This is what I've seen advocated in a popular game design textbook: https://www.gamedesignworkshop.com/ - this makes sense since the same kind of advice applies to any kind of software development and design - verify that your potential audience is actually interested in what you are trying to make before spending a ton of effort making it. I've seen very similar advice given in the context of solo app development and even business startups.

Good luck and have fun!

Hmmm, not sure why you're getting the downvotes, but your idea is not far-fetched. There have been multiple studies showing things like viruses living longer and traveling farther in cold dry air than in warm humid air, and also about the cold having immediate negative effects on certain aspects of immunity. The studies I've seen have usually been about the flu virus instead of cold virus, but some of it would transfer over, like the ones about immunity.

What's weird is that for years (decades?) doctors / public health / scientists etc swore up and down that it was a myth that cold temperatures had anything to do with cold infections. It doesn't surprise me now, after seeing the uphill battle it was to get the scientific community to finally, grudgingly accept that COVID is transmitted by floating around the air, sometimes over long distances. Many so-called "scientists" still don't seem to accept this, despite having aerosol engineers break it down for them.

You do have good points, but even with it going endemic, measures could still be taken to reduce infection, with masks, ventilation, UV lights. I guess what bothers me is that the attitude all of a sudden became "whatever you wanna do". Not even even a recommendation or requirements for healthcare settings. The healthcare settings in particular bother me.

Once it was determined that it was airborne and had become endemic, the mask requirements in those places should have become indefinite. That would also help reduce the spread of various other airborne diseases. As it is now, I keep hearing of doctors and nurses actually harassing patients to take their masks off. Completely batshit insane.

There is no longer any leadership or appropriate guidance from CDC or any other government entity. Sure, China and New Zealand gave up on it too, but as old folks are sometimes fond of saying, you wouldn't jump from a bridge if everyone else did it.

The "California Earthquake Authority" provides the earthquake insurance for California: https://www.earthquakeauthority.com/about-cea/frequently-asked-questions

I had not realized before reading that now that it's actually not state-funded. It sounds like it's a pool of all insurers together.

I think that's still too charitable of an interpretation. The CDC under Biden has been a disaster. They completely dropped any recommendations for masking, requirements for masking in high-risk environments (such as healthcare facilities), or even trying to model good behavior. The CDC director doesn't even wear a mask in crowded environments or photos, and dismisses criticism for this, for crying out loud.

Agreed about Trump's mishandling, but I'm not talking eradication. That was bound to be difficult. I'm talking about mitigation, harm reduction. This was essentially completely abandoned by the Biden administration.

A lot of that is fair, except that it wasn't just Biden's early days. The mishandling of the COVID pandemic continues to this day. It's been a clusterfuck from the beginning under Trump to the present under Biden. The US doesn't seem to be that unique in that regard though. It seems like it's been a clusterfuck around most of the world.

I see, that makes sense. Thanks!

Top comment here. I was thinking along very similar lines in my commute to work this morning. The polarization that never ends or decreases seems to me to be purely a tool for rich elites to divide and conquer the general population.

The only minor asterisk I would add to your post is that I have personally been trying to avoid the term "cabal" because it can be accused of being an antisemitic dogwhistle. I don't think you meant it this way, but wanted to alert you to that possible interpretation. In fact, I heard something a little while back that some people even claim that decrying "elites" in general is antisemitic. I don't agree with this, but I think it's a good idea to keep this in mind to try to prevent that line of attack.