RunawayFixer
@RunawayFixer@lemmy.world
- Comment on America is fucked 6 days ago:
Yeah, smartphones are a menace as well in traffic, especially when combined with someone as oblivious as in your example :). The government(s) in my country has had several police + information campaigns against smartphone use since a few years. There’s now also a fine of 175 euro + loss of driver’s license for 15 days for using the smartphone while driving in traffic. And waiting in traffic, still counts as driving. If used for navigation, then the destination has to be put in before starting to drive & the smartphone has to be in a holder or connected to the infotainment system.
This heavier punishment is pretty recent and the chance of being caught seems low, so there’s still often people using smartphones inappropriately. Last one I saw this week was an oblivious teenager on a bicycle. It’ll be interesting to see if there’s been a noticable change in a few years.
- Comment on America is fucked 6 days ago:
m.youtube.com/watch?v=hwGd3QWgTLs&pp=0gcJCdgAo7Vq…
For contrast: a video of a more congested street in Paris 17 years ago. The situations aren’t completely comparable: bigger emergency vehicle, smaller other vehicles, smaller street with less options to get out of the way, … One other major difference and the reason I’m posting this, is that 30 seconds into the video, you can see that most drivers have moved to the sides of the road AHEAD of the firetruck and that they are holding still while waiting on the firetruck to pass them. The street + path are less than ideal and there isn’t really enough room, so the truck is still not going very fast, but it’s at least able to keep moving. By moving to the sides, the drivers also blocked in that smaller firetruck that was coming from the side street, so that’s going to cause some confusement after the big one has passed.
The reason that that NYC ambulance is completely stuck I’m traffic, isn’t because of space, because there is plenty compared to that Parisian street, but it’s the drivers who are not creating a path. It’s not an infrastructure problem, it’s something that can be taught + encouraged if there is a political will to make a change.
- Comment on America is fucked 6 days ago:
Yeah, absolutely. Americans making excuses as to why solutions that work in other countries, would not work in the USA, are a scourge on your society. Your lives could be so much better if you lot stopped falling for that American exceptionalism propaganda and stopped inventing reasons to not do anything about known problems. And now that you’ve turned into a banana republic, I’m done being polite about it.
- Comment on America is fucked 6 days ago:
As if the usa is the only country in the world with congested rush hour traffic. I’ve been in streets that were way more tightly packed + chaotic than this and people would still clear a path for vehicles with sirens. The emergency vehicle would only be able to go 20 to 30 kmh without a motorcycle escort, but that’s still significantly faster than what we’re seeing here.
What we’re seeing in this video, is that (some) vehicles that are directly in front of the ambulance move out of the way, but vehicles that are a tiny bit further ahead, don’t even try. If a vehicle that is directly in front of the ambulance can move out of the way, then a vehicle that is 30 places ahead, is also able to move out of the way, but they don’t even try … What should happen is that as soon as drivers hear a siren, they should start looking for where it’s coming from and then clear a path, and drivers should also especially not be driving into the path that others are clearing. Instead it seems like these drivers wait till the siren is right behind them and only then some start to move out of the way.
Looking for excuses in American exceptionalism reads like a case of “we’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas”. This particular problem is something that can be easily improved upon by a public awareness campaign and some light fines for those that keep obstructing after the campaign has been running for some time. But what’s obviously even easier than that, is finding an excuse to continue doing nothing about the problem.
- Comment on Musk shares post that Hitler didn’t kill millions, public workers did. Union rages 4 weeks ago:
I’ve been under the impression that, unlike Reddit, I can upvote posts like this, so I did.
- Comment on Owing your home today is nearly impossible, but even if you did the ever increasing property taxes will bury you 5 weeks ago:
And that man clearly does not live in such a state, nor did I (or anyone else I think) claim that his circumstances apply to the entire usa. You’re wrong in assuming that other people are not aware that different places have varying laws and tax systems.
Your whataboutism defence of regressive tax systems is also very strange to me. That other places have unfair practices in place, is no excuse to put up with an unfair system in any one place. Call them all out on their brokeness, but if you do call them out, you’ll have to be more specific in your example(s), state things that are actually verifiable instead of some vague whataboutism.
Ps, while I did not think your whataboutism defence was relevant, this “Little wonder that property ownership rates are generally so far below american ownership rates.” was easy to verify and it turned out to be false. Home ownership rates are on average slightly higher in Europe than in the usa, here’s statistics: statista.com/…/home-ownership-rate-in-europe/ fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RHORUSQ156N
- Comment on Owing your home today is nearly impossible, but even if you did the ever increasing property taxes will bury you 1 month ago:
If you try to take too many eggs out of 1 basket, the person carrying that basket is likely to try and run away. So it’s easier and less disruptive to take a few eggs out of lots of different baskets.
Taxing accumulated capital without exceptions is also guaranteed to screw people over. The man in the OP is a good example: he’s a modest man who many years ago bought a modest house for a modest sum of money. Due to circumstances, that house has now increased in value, making him a wealthy man on paper. But he’s deriving no income from that wealth, since he can’t rent it out because he lives in it himself. So now he’s a modest man, who is rich on paper, who is expected to pay high taxes on his paper wealth, turning him into a poor man who is barely scraping by.
- Comment on Owing your home today is nearly impossible, but even if you did the ever increasing property taxes will bury you 1 month ago:
That has to be the most regressive tax I’ve heard of in western Europe. Absolutely excessive and I’m sorry it’s happening to you.
Belgium has a home value tax as well, based on fictional rental income + a very convoluted calculation + different % surcharges per council. I find back that it’s on average about 700 to 800 euros per Flemish adult person, but it has large variations. It causes a lot of grumbling, but for most people it’s not considered excessive.
- Comment on Owing your home today is nearly impossible, but even if you did the ever increasing property taxes will bury you 1 month ago:
And this is why in most civilized countries, progressive income taxes make up the majority of the government budget. Basing taxes on non income/investment related metrics screws over the poor + lower middle class. It’s a transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich.
- Comment on The past 18 months have seen the most rapid change in human written communication ever 1 month ago:
Yep, french language class in a too large highschool class. If the class had been smaller, then the teacher would have definitely gone for more presentations by the students.
Keep up the good fight, I’m certain that many of your students appreciate what they learn from you.
- Comment on The past 18 months have seen the most rapid change in human written communication ever 1 month ago:
Students and cheating is always going to be a thing, only the technology evolves. It’s always been an interesting cat and mouse game imo, as long as you’re not too personally affected (sorry).
I was a student when the internet started to spread and some students had internet at home, while most teachers were still oblivious. There was a french book report due and 4 kids had picked the same book because they had found a good summary online. 3 of the kids hand wrote a summary of the summary, 1 kid printed out the original summary and handed that in. 3 kids received a 0, the 4th got a warning to not let others copy his work :D
- Comment on Fucking hell 2 months ago:
Parliamentary democracy with a monarch as non-executive head of state. So being monarch is a mostly ceremonial role, with the seldom used power to temporarily veto or morally object against bad ideas. Juan Carlos saved the Spanish democracy in 1982 for example.
- Comment on The one drawback to walking at night 2 months ago:
What those statistics do not take into account is the different incidence rates of men/women being out alone at night.
Because women feel more afraid going out into the dark alone, they’re less likely to do so, creating less opportunities for them to be robbed/raped/killed.
To make an analogy:
What are my chances to drown in the sea if I never go swimming in the sea? 0% chance.
What if I go swimming once a week, with a risk of drowning of 0.5% each time I do so: then there’s ~23% chance that I’ll drown by the end of the year.
What if go swimming twice a year, but because I’m such an amateur the chance that I drown is 5%: there is ~10% chance that I drown by the end of the year.Conclusion: even though it is 10x more dangerous for the inexperienced swimmer to go swimming in the sea, in a given year the experienced swimmer is still 2.3 times more likely to drown in the sea than the inexperienced one.
- Comment on Yep, you did. 2 months ago:
Animal Farm is the allegoric tale about communism in Russia.
1984 is more general about totalitarianism, still based on stuff that went on in Nazi Germany + Soviet union + wartime England, but it wasn’t a full allegory of things that had already happened. It was more like a science-fiction prediction of the bad things that could happen in any nation if democracy and human rights were not protected.
- Comment on ADL defends Nazi salute 2 months ago:
I still would love to hear your explanation of why he is “waving” at the American flag.
- Comment on ADL defends Nazi salute 2 months ago:
So according to you, Elon Musk has his heart in his upper left side longue, close to his left shoulder. Sounds like one special kind of human.
And if that’s just waving, then why according to you did he wave to the American flag? Is that just how south-africans salute the usa flag, by “waving” at it?
And I also call bullshit on the claim of having watched countless videos. If you had, then you had seen a much greater variety of Nazi salutes. Nazis as they got older and/or higher in the Nazi hierarchy, they became sloppier with the Nazi salutes. Sometimes the mind is willing, but the body says no.
- Comment on ADL defends Nazi salute 2 months ago:
What the hell are you on about?
Elon Musk does an unmistakable Nazi salute, you claim he was just “waving”, despite there not even having been a waving motion, just the one swing from left shoulder to full extended right arm, which is a textbook Nazi salute. And now you come with whataboutism about Hamas and I don’t even know what’s the point of it.
What kind of troll are you?
- Comment on ADL defends Nazi salute 2 months ago:
Have you seen the video? He did an unmistakable Nazi salute to the crowd, then turned around and did the same Nazi salute towards the USA flag. This was as Sieg heil as Nazi salutes come.
- Comment on Anon visits America 3 months ago:
Parks and recreation is a tv show. The clip is satire. Real American soda sized are still ridiculously large, but not this exaggerated “child size”.
- Comment on Funko, BrandShield speak out about itch.io takedown 4 months ago:
And I’m not saying that hat you are. I tried to show with a parabel that they do not need to see their machine’s actions to know that some of it’s actions are illegal. That’s what we were disagreeing on: that they know.
- Comment on Funko, BrandShield speak out about itch.io takedown 4 months ago:
I made an automaton. I set the parameters in such a way that there is a large variability of actions that my automaton can take. My parameters do not pre-empt my automaton from taking certain illegal actions. I set my automaton loose. After some time it turns out that my automaton has taken an illegal action against a specific person. Did I know that my automaton was going to commit a illegal action against that specific person? No, I did not. Did I know that my automaton was sooner or later going to commit certain illegal actions? Yes I did, because those actions are within the parameters of the automaton. I know my automaton is capable of doing illegal actions and given enough incidences there is an absolute certainty that it will do those illegal actions. I do not need to interact with my automaton in any way to know that some of it’s actions will be illegal.
- Comment on Funko, BrandShield speak out about itch.io takedown 4 months ago:
You can’t create an automated machine, let it run loose without supervision and then claim to not be responsible for what the machine does.
Maybe just maybe this was the very first instance of their ai malfunctioning (which I don’t believe for a second), in which case the correct response of Brandshield would have been to announce that they would temporarily suspend the activities of this particular program & promise to implement improvements so that it would not happen again. Brandshield has done neither of these, which tells me that it’s not the first time and also that Brandshield has no intention of preventing it from happening again in the future.
- Comment on Funko, BrandShield speak out about itch.io takedown 4 months ago:
If it had been phishing, then going to the registrar would have been the right call, because you want to take that down asap. But according to itch.io it wasn’t, instead it was a a real fansite that was linking to the real website of funko’s game (according to itch.io). Something which most media companies allow since it’s basically free publicity and goodwill, but if they did want it taken down for copyright reasons, then a DMCA takedown request send to itch.io would have been the correct first action.
In the response statement by Brandshield, Brandshield does not deny having send a takedown request for phishing to the registrar (confirming that they did), nor do they dispute itch.io’s statement that it wasn’t a phishing site (confirming that they know that it wasn’t), instead they only speak about “infringement”.
So now we know that Brandshield is knowingly making false accusations that have potentially serious consequences for their victims. And it’s not going to be the first time that they’ve done this, but even this high publicity case will probably not have any legal consequences for brandshield, so it looks like they will continue getting away with it. Unfortunately they’re not alone, it often seems like the entire DMCA industry is rotten.
- Comment on Funko, BrandShield speak out about itch.io takedown 4 months ago:
Why ask the registrar to take down a subdomain of a website?
Those subdomains are not managed or controlled by the registrar, so all the registrar can do is either take down the entire domain or ask their client to take down the subdomain. In this case they asked their client, who took down the subdomain, after which the registrar took down the domain anyhow :D
For a single isolated offence, Brandshield’s first action should have been to report the copyright infringement to itch.io and ask for a takedown of that content, instead they went directly to the registrar and falsely claimed that itch.io was a fraud & phishing site. I suspect that they falsely claim that it’s about phishing and fraud, because otherwise registrars will not take down the site unless there is systematic copyright infringement (like a torrent site). And I suspect that brandshield goes directly to the registrar with their complaint, since that is easier to automate than finding the right contact info on a website.
So my take is that: The registrar was in the wrong for taking down the domain after itch.io removed the problematic subdomain. Brandshield is scum. And Funko is in the wrong for using brandshield.
No real need for further answers from itch.io, nothing new has come to light.
- Comment on When leftists say "landlord are parasites" or similar dislike of landlords, do they also mean the people that own like a couple of houses as an investment, or only the big landlords? 4 months ago:
Heavily tax buying and owning homes as investments. Also heavily tax vacant homes in regions with a housing shortage.
Basically regulate it so that prospective buyers who are buying a place to live in are significantly advantaged when trying to do so, while at the same time discouraging others from buying up those homes as investments.
- Comment on When leftists say "landlord are parasites" or similar dislike of landlords, do they also mean the people that own like a couple of houses as an investment, or only the big landlords? 4 months ago:
I assume that everyone who wants to own a home wants to own a home and many of those aren’t able to. That’s the current reality.
- Comment on When leftists say "landlord are parasites" or similar dislike of landlords, do they also mean the people that own like a couple of houses as an investment, or only the big landlords? 4 months ago:
Owning your place to live should be a right. Anyone who holds more housing stock than they personally need and who will only let it out if there’s profit on their investment (because if it’s an investment, then there is an expectation that the line must always go up, which is also very inflationary), tightens the market and makes it harder for other people to become a home owner.
The big difference between renting and paying of a mortgage, is that by paying off the mortgage, the home owner has build up equity and secured a financially more secure future. But if someone is too poor to get a mortgage to afford the inflated house prices (inflated because other people treat it like an investment), then in the current system they pay rent to pay off the mortgage/debt of their landlord and after the renter has paid off their landlord’s mortgage, they’ll still be poor and without any equity themselves.
It’s a very antisocial system. And with landlords building up more and more equity on the backs of people who are unable to build up equity themselves, there’s a good reason why landlords are often said to be parasitic.
- Comment on Reddit morals vs Lemmy morals in the greentext community 4 months ago:
What I find annoying about these memes is that it’s always about how Germany killed 6 million Jews during ww2, while they actually killed 17 million ordinary people in ethnically motivated mass killings. That’s 11 miillions victims of ethnic cleansing that seem to be forgotten.
- Comment on Well THAT fucking sucks! 🤬 4 months ago:
It’s been a while since I used chrome, but I used to use incognito to avoid that from happening. You can log into your services in the incognito session and when you’re done and close the incognito session, the temporary folder with your session stuff will get deleted, leaving the normal chrome browser unaffected.
- Comment on Time for a road trip 4 months ago:
The colonists really missed an opportunity imo, the USA could have had such great place names as New Fingringhoe, but instead it seems like only the boring names got copied :(