scarabic
@scarabic@lemmy.world
- Comment on The City of Encinitas, California is removing a protected bike lane to replace it with a painted bike lane. Cost? More than $3 million. 1 day ago:
I think this is a good point. While you are “protected” behind those parking spaces and shrubbery, you are also less visible. But you are still very much a part of that road system when you come to the end of the block
Where I live there are water canals carrying runoff from the nearby foothills into the county water system. These canals do not follow the roads at all and criss cross through our entire city. Some smart person decided to add multi-use trails all along them, so we have a bike lane network that’s off the roads entirely. There are even a couple of elevated bridges built entirely to get the bike trails over major thoroughfares. That’s protected.
- Comment on (serious) What would we be losing in a world where most people didn't own a car? Please read the OP before posting. 1 day ago:
So for example, last night I went to see a play with my wife in the big city we live outside. 8pm show. Our location has better options than most in the US for public transit, but still not enough to fully rely upon and it’s hard to envision that changing.
We have a regional transit rail system we could have taken. It would drop us off close enough to the theater, perhaps 2 city blocks.
But the station is 6km from our house so the problem is on this end. We live in an area that’s not quite rural, more suburban, but it is out on the open countryside a bit and this natural beauty is what we love about living here.
We do have excellent bike lanes and even a network of bike trails that are separated from the roads. Our local station is about a 20 minute ride. We can do it but we’re in our 50s and it’s not our first choice when getting dressed up for a date night to begin with 20 minutes of vigorous exercise. And we would have had to repeat that ride at 11pm on the way home, tired, with a glass of wine in our bellies.
So the problem I guess is our home location. We live in a medium-to-small sized town that’s nestled up against a state park. The only public transit I can really imagine would be a bus system and it would have to cover a very wide area with many vehicles to serve this region. And even then I can’t imagine it would be quick.
I would still prefer a world without cars. I guess I’m just telling you why cars still fit into our needs and why our options are.
In the future I’m pretty optimistic that we can change the math on busses. Autonomous vehicles would allow us to move away from large busses piloted by a human driver to many smaller ones with more comprehensive coverage and better approximation of point-to-point transit.
The appeal of this path is that it’s something car-centric areas can transition to smoothly. We can get mass autonomous bus service going without banning cars and building rail lines or other large projects.
A small country that was laid out centuries ago, before cars, has a different layout and distribution of people that makes things like rail work better. The problem is that the US is huge and was built on cars, which are excellent for spreading individuals out with no regard for central planning.
Today’s generation of Americans are stuck with cars and not always in love with them. The way our population is distributed, it’s hard for mass transit to replace them, so it really doesn’t matter how great civic rail works in Lisbon.
We might address the topic of whether it’s responsible for people to be so spread out. I would certainly have a hard time saying goodbye to my beautiful natural surroundings.
- Comment on Americans: How the hell do you meet new people or get into relationships after college? 1 day ago:
I didn’t say it above but I completely agree. He sounds about half an inch from using the word “females” at some point.
- Comment on Americans: How the hell do you meet new people or get into relationships after college? 1 day ago:
I think you’re confused. Neither OP nor the commenter immediately above are limiting their remarks to friends only.
- Comment on Americans: How the hell do you meet new people or get into relationships after college? 1 day ago:
I was responding to OP asking about friends and relationships, so not just “young single women.” But I did also say try a dating app. Singles is pretty much all those are for.
Obviously no one can give you town-specific suggestions but are bars and restaurants the only things women do you where you live? I’d be very surprised if that’s true.
- Comment on Americans: How the hell do you meet new people or get into relationships after college? 2 days ago:
OP did say “get into relationships.”
- Comment on Americans: How the hell do you meet new people or get into relationships after college? 2 days ago:
Volunteer. Audition for community theater. Get a job. Join a hiking group. Take an adult learning class. Download a dating app. Get yourself out there.
- Comment on Can a reasonable person genuinely believe in ghosts? 1 week ago:
I hear coyotes outside my bedroom window every night and I’m so glad I know what they are. The first time I ever heard them, I was alone in a tent surrounded by them. Absolute Blair Witch horror for about 5 minutes until my brain was awake enough to realize what I was hearing.
- Comment on Can a reasonable person genuinely believe in ghosts? 1 week ago:
The bar for “convincing” is very low when you want to believe.
- Comment on NBC Interview abruptly ends after New Yorker blames private equity and landlords for the city's issues 1 week ago:
I used to have this NYT lifestyle reporter in my Facebook and they were constantly posting hyper-specific quote requests. “If you are a bartender who has seen more business from upscale clientele since Covid ended and think this is because affluent people have less empathy, I’d like to interview you for an upcoming article!”
It’s fucking embracing how the News already knows exactly what they want to say before they even go to people, and they just want people to repeat their line like a good little drone and then go away. And most people will for the mere chance to have their face or name in the news.
- Comment on Active duty members of the United States, How are you feeling in regards of being under the service of the Amerinazis? 1 week ago:
True. Think about this though. I could probably come up with a question like this one for the professions of 90% of people here.
“Waiters of Reddit: how do you feel about working in an industry with its own special slave wage exception, an industry where the bosses expect you to dance for cruel patrons who have control over your compensation?”
“Medical researchers of Reddit; how do you feel about working for an industry that puts profits before people, whose CEOs are being gunned down in the streets?”
“Software engineers of Reddit, how do you feel about working for the evil tech bros who have sold the self esteem and mental health of a whole generation to make a buck?”
The answer to all of these is that while they have some truth, the people who work there believe they are also doing some good with their work, and earning a living, and not just selling their soul to enrich the demon at the top of the corporation.
- Comment on The Internet Didn't Fail. It Was Taken. 2 weeks ago:
I don’t mind him being on YT. He should just get involved with Nebula too because it’s a significant project with real momentum that’s designed to take the video format back from YT, a big algorithm driven tech company the likes of which he’s complaining about in the video. In essence, he could be practicing AND preaching, but he’s just preaching.
- Comment on The Internet Didn't Fail. It Was Taken. 2 weeks ago:
If Johnny Harris wants to help take the Internet back, why is he on YouTube and NOT on Nebula?
- Comment on How long and how hard would it be to get a star removed on The Hollywood Walk of Fame? Asking for a friend. 2 weeks ago:
I don’t know of any plasma torches that can come along in a backpack but you can get a lot of good work done fast with a battery powered angle grinder. Occasionally I take mine out in my neighborhood when some asshole has padlocked their sandwich-board ad to a lamppost.
- Comment on Is Reddit banning posts with "join-lemmy.org"? 2 weeks ago:
This kind of thing goes way back. I mean you’ll get a lot of content deleted on most web forums, but the one universally verboten thing, above all, priority zero, until the end of time, is: no. fucking. recruitment. to. competing. forums!
If you ask a lot of web forum owners how their site got started, more than half of them will tell you “well there was this other forum but their server went down for 3 days and people needed a place to go.”
Communities are portable. Reddit knows this. Every site manager knows this.
- Comment on Beyond fucked up 3 weeks ago:
She played the role of a prostitute in a movie and instead of the article being like “whoa this movie is pretty heavy - trigger warning” it’s all “damn she’s hot.”
- Comment on Japan cancels cherry blossom festival over complaints of tourists littering and ‘defecating’ in yards 3 weeks ago:
Strangers making claims on the internet is all this place is. There’s no “proof” needed or available here.
- Comment on Japan cancels cherry blossom festival over complaints of tourists littering and ‘defecating’ in yards 3 weeks ago:
Someone shits in your yard and you’re going to set a porta potty out by the curb? No you’re not.
- Comment on How would you spell the sound Transformers make when they transform? 5 weeks ago:
(spit)
- Comment on ICE Supreme Commander spotted in Minneapolis 5 weeks ago:
Slowly normalizing it…
- Comment on ICE Supreme Commander spotted in Minneapolis 5 weeks ago:
In his defense, ICE attracts a lot of stumpy motherfuckers who have something to compensate for.
- Comment on I'm about to get fired. How do I make sure my next job is a better place to work? 1 month ago:
We used to have a print news sheet for job listings in the non profit sector, which is very large in my home city. It would have one or two articles as well but was mostly job classifieds. Wish I could give you a specific recommendation, but I guess I’m saying just find another job?
It sounds like you want to be in that job sector, but you experienced a disastrous turnover in management at one organization. To be candid it’s a mild story compared to many I have heard. Tyrannical EDs or crazy founders with too much authority, big funding swings, politics up the wazoo… the non profit sector seems to be particularly drama-laden. I’m not sure why. But take the hit and move on. It doesn’t sound like it was about you personally.
- Comment on If you're a parent, how do you prevent your kid from watching AI slop? 1 month ago:
If you don’t show them better content, they can’t know the difference. Watch YT with them, but put on good stuff made by humans. There’s plenty of that. Also consider accounts - once they have their own account they will tumble down the shit hole that is the algorithm. If you let them use your account, they will have a better established base, and you will easily see what they are watching. If this doesn’t work for you, created a moderated, shared account that you use and populate with good algorithm juju.
- Comment on I CAN'T go outside without permission - is there any way I can help fight for a better world from the comfort of my bedroom? 1 month ago:
When I was in college there was a big hike in fees as the university system started having financial problems. Naturally, students protested this. There was a general air of unrest on the campus. One day I was in Poetry class and outside the windows we could hear a lot of commotion and see a protest gathering. One of the students raised his hand and asked the professor if we could have permission to go out and join. He said “I don’t recall asking authorities for permission to protest when I was a college kid in the 1960s. You can go, or not, it’s up to you.”
- Comment on How do you think a socialist President would win the 2028 election? Would they use the exact methods used by Zohran Mamdani which earned him the office of Mayor of NYC? 1 month ago:
Since even the world’s worst dictators still hold sham elections, I conclude that there will be an election, and they will focus on how to cheat to win. If they even need to that is. This is way easier to do and conceal than canceling the election.
- Comment on Is there anything like a Beholder monster before 1975? 1 month ago:
Did Wikipedia mention that what it sees, Lo Pan knows?
- Comment on no eggs were harmed in the making of this video 1 month ago:
I’m certain it’s possible to obscure your face beyond the ability of any machine to recognize it. At that point your enemy is gait analysis, but there are countermeasures for that as well. As for utterly pervasive surveillance that is so redundant and automated that the government can know anything about anyone, anywhere, retroactively…. I don’t know if we are there yet. I’m not going to spend too much energy worrying about the prospects of Chinese pirates.
- Comment on no eggs were harmed in the making of this video 1 month ago:
Wear a mask?
- Comment on no eggs were harmed in the making of this video 1 month ago:
Oh… clip 1 it’s climbing a curb… optical illusion - I thought that was a long ditch cut in the pavement, as for pipework, etc.
- Comment on no eggs were harmed in the making of this video 1 month ago:
In the first clip there is a tuktuk in the foreground and a passenger car in the background so I don’t know how you got to “clearly somewhere cars should not be.
In clip 4 there’s some pavement but it falls away into a large hole that has filled with water… call it what you will. “Trench” is one word for it.