stabby_cicada

This kind of feels like a solution in search of a problem.

I mean, it's neat that it's possible to wirelessly charge a bicycle through its kickstand, but I don't see many people being willing to pay $300 for it.

There should be multiple independent steps of verifying if someone should get banned and in what way. And probably integrate a good test for joining the community so that it's more likely for people to be rational from the start (that way you don't even have to look at so many potential flags).

How much would you pay to join a community with that level of protection for user rights? Like the old subscription based forums, some of which are still floating around the internet?

Because "multiple independent steps of verifying" is, frankly, going to be a lot of frustrating, thankless, and redundant work for moderators. I mean, we know how to safeguard people's rights through legalistic processes. Courts do it all the time. It's called due process. And due process is frequently a slow, complicated, and expensive pain in the ass for everyone involved. And I think very few people would want to do that work for free.

(Conveniently, this would also serve as a good test for joining such a community - people are more likely to follow the rules and act like decent human beings if a subscription they paid for is riding on it, and it would price out AI and spambots in the process.)

I think there might be a silver lining to this. One of the reasons American cars have been getting bigger and bigger and bigger is that CAFE fuel economy standards are more generous for bigger cars - so instead of building more efficient engines, manufacturers built cars with bigger footprints.

In the long run, I'd certainly want internal combustion engines phased out. But in the short term, we might get actual small pickups again 😆

This has always been one of those, “why the fuck don’t we do this already?” things.

Because the black roof lobby has spent a ton of money to keep roofs black.

Not kidding.

You know, this is a systemic issue, not a "stupid politicians being stupid" issue.

You've got a population of seniors, people who are getting older and losing their physical mobility, who are less able to walk or bicycle or take public transit than younger and healthier people are - many of whom live in car-dependent subdivisions or in areas with poor public transit, like, say, rural Illinois.

These are people who rely on their cars for grocery shopping and medical appointments and socializing.

These are people, often on fixed incomes, often close to the poverty line, who struggle to afford the fees for rideshares or grocery deliveries.

And you can say "if they can't pass the test they're not safe to be on the road" - but from the article:

According to the Illinois Department of Transportation, in 2023 the crash rate for drivers 75 years and older in Illinois was lower than any other age group of legal drivers.

This bill is not about leaving unsafe drivers on the road - it's about not adding unwarranted scrutiny and not making it harder for an especially car-dependent group of people to continue driving.

And it adds a provision that lets a senior's family members report them if they believe the senior is no longer safe to drive.

This bill is a response to seniors who are genuinely frightened of losing their right to drive and becoming unable to meet their basic needs - and they have a right to be frightened of that, because we've built a system where a lot of people can't meet their basic needs without driving.

In other words, if you build a system that makes driving necessary, you can't really blame people for not wanting to lose the right to drive.

Toronto has restricted development in the ravines and other low-lying areas since 1954, when a freak hurricane caused severe flooding that killed dozens of people and washed away homes and bridges. 

Today, the ravines include restored and artificial wetlands that soak up rainfall and mitigate flood risk.

There's the most important part of the article, I think. It's a lot easier to get buy-in for urban green spaces when the land involved is "useless" (from a capitalist standpoint) for development.

On an individual level, doing the right thing for the environment generally saves you money.

On a collective level, policies that are good for the environment generally save everyone money.

This should have been a no brainer for Democrat pols, but they couldn't resist the temptation to give green-colored pork giveaways to big business and the 1% instead.

How can you say "be careful what you wish for, violent revolution never ends well for anarchists no matter who wins." ? What about the outcome of the american revolutionary war ? What was it's outcome. Was the outcome not good ?

The Revolutionary War is an excellent example of the winners of a violent revolution turning around and wielding state power against their former supporters - look up Shays' Rebellion.

More generally, the outcome of the Revolutionary War was good for America's landowning oligarchy. Not so good for ordinary white Americans. Definitely not good for slaves, nonwhites, and the Native Americans of the continent - particularly since one of the biggest reasons for revolution was that the colonists wanted to break their treaties with Native American tribes, kill them all and steal their land, and Britain wouldn't let them.

As usual when it comes to climate impact, the US will be fine. Three out of every four calories of corn is used to make ethanol or feed animals, both of which are ridiculously inefficient uses. Hell, corn syrup is in everything because the US grows so much more corn than it needs that we practically give away the corn syrup.

Soybeans are even less efficient - less than 3% of the American soybean crop is actually eaten by human beings, despite soybeans being a complete vegetable protein and one of the healthiest foods out there.

In other words, the United States could lose 9/10ths of the land growing corn and soybeans and still feed itself with plenty to spare.

All that land is only under cultivation at all because the United States can't stand the idea of giving up one foot of the land it stole in the name of manifest destiny. Because if we weren't using land for corn and beans in the Midwest or grazing cattle in the Great Plains, people might start asking why not give it back to the indigenous peoples we stole it from.

So yeah, America will be fine.

It's the rest of the world that's going to suffer for America's climate crimes.

Of course it's satire. I'm kind of shocked how many people don't recognize it as satire.

Most of the public opinion on this isn't former through personal conversations with climate activists. It's formed through mass consumption of the media, and the information environment currently maintained by the corporate media environment will never allow for that much context.

I agree. But this mass consumption trickles down. Alex Jones or whoever spews climate bullshit, and your conservative relatives internalize it, and then repeat it to other family members and spread it further.

If you're a climate activist, maybe you have a big enough platform to challenge media directly - the left has been absolute shit at mainstream social media and if they don't mount a successful challenge to alt right dominance of the Internet we're fucked.

But even as just an ordinary person who cares about climate, you're going to hear people in your family or community repeat the propaganda. And that's your chance to push back.

This is true for all conservative propaganda, not just climate.

But specifically regarding hypocrisy, I think the most effective response is to, in fact, engage in individual actions that live your climate values. Reduce your carbon footprint. Eat more plants. Take public transit instead of driving.

These are examples of possible actions, not specific mandates. If you can't take public transit for whatever reason, don't. But do something. And be prepared to talk about it.

You should do that so that if you are accused of hypocrisy you can push back and say "no, I live my moral values, and here's how." And climate activists should do the same, and publicize it, so when they are attacked by bad faith conservatives with false accusations of hypocrisy they can push back. And you can speak up in their defense when people around you attack them.

Even if they understand it, they certainly don't care about it enough to vote based on it.

One of the ugliest victories of modern conservatism is rooted in the fact that this is wrong.

Because Americans do care about hypocrisy and morality.

And conservative media has convinced half of America that all politicians are corrupt, and liberal politicians are more corrupt than conservative politicians, so that the left has no moral basis to accuse the right of corruption.

American conservatives ignore the left when the left accuses the right of corruption, because they've been convinced the left is thoroughly corrupt and it's hypocritical of them to call out corruption in others.

So when Trump is accused, rightfully, of nepotism and bribery and an overwhelming amount of obvious public corruption, American conservatives ignore it. Because American conservatives believe Trump is only doing, openly, what every politician has done secretly. I mean, how the fuck can Chuck Schumer accuse Trump of, say, insider training, for swinging the stock market with ridiculous tariff announcements and retractions, when Chuck has been insider trading on secret Senate information for decades?

And because American conservatives see left-wing politicians as corrupt and hypocritical and dishonest, they happily ignore every accusation they make her against Trump.

That's why Bernie and AOC are so popular right now, because they have reputations for living their values, so when they go out and flip their shit about economic injustice, people listen.

Harris, during her campaign, tried to publicize a coalition of "good billionaires" support her to challenge Trump's bad billionaires. Which, I'll admit, is Harris living her values. But her values are shit and she lost for it.

Anyway, yeah. It's because the American people care about hypocrisy that conservatives feel free to ignore criticism of Trump's corruption. They think the liberal politicians accusing Trump are just as corrupt, if not more.

And the only solution to this is restoring honor to the American political system - getting a left-wing politician, or a coalition of politicians, that are widely seen as trustworthy and incorruptible, to lead the American left, instead of the usual DNC corruption and fuckery. And after the shitshow that was 2024 I'm not sure where someone like that will come from.