Here’s the crux of the difference of opinion: No, Pres. Harris would not have been talking about luxury hotels on the rubble of Gaza. Israel, however, has been talking about it for years. The U.S. President has very little influence over Israeli intentions, and whether the U.S. President talks about it sounds like an objection based on style rather than substance.

You are correct. I forgot to qualify my statement to say that it applies on city streets. Apologies, I can’t find the YouTube video that discussed the study right now.

Hi-viz doesn’t do anything. There’s no statistical difference in casualty rates between people wearing it and people not. Consider that drivers routinely plow into the back of emergency vehicles stopped by the side of the highway, completely wrapped in hi-viz, reflective material, and with million-lumen flashing lights. This is victim-blaming nonsense.

How DARE people move around the landscape in the traditional way that humans have been locomoting for tens of thousands of years without considering YOUR needs!

(That is, if you can’t see what’s in front of your car, you need to slow down.)

e: typo

Because the rest of us have a right to life, too. Ever heard the saying, “Your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins”? That’s colorful, but it’s not even true; people have an expectation of a certain reasonable amount of space around their bodies, and even entering it with your fist might be considered assault. The concept that one’s actions and choices affect other people is what’s important here.

That’s the problem with giant pickup trucks: They affect other people on the road, and the problem with giant pickup truck drivers is that they either refuse to recognize this fact, or they enjoy infringing on the rights of other people to enjoy life. Either way, it’s bad for society, where we all have to live together somehow. Mullets and man-buns, by contrast, don’t materially affect anybody else in the slightest.

I have to, take issue with this, one. The rules of commas are, pretty, easy actually: Use a, comma where you’d, pause when speaking. If, you read it out, loud and sound like Captain, Kirk then you put, a comma in the, wrong spot.

I appreciate the gamer aesthetic when scientists need to buy gear with the power to run scientific calculations for relatively cheap. The RGB lights under the case windows bring a bit of pizzazz to the laboratory.

The Milgram experiment. The Zimbardo prison experiment. The bystander effect. At the end of the day, humans are just monkeys with smart watches. As social primates, it’s really hard to be the one to stand up against the crowd. Our brains decide how to act based largely on the reactions of other humans around us.

It’s disheartening.

Best President since Jimmy Carter is a low, low bar. We forget that Carter was a neo-liberal who threw labor under the bus. Because the Presidents since have been so right-wing, he looks like a leftist in the rear view. And throwing the working classes under the bus is one of the major reasons we’re here now.

Can we start delivering those 2,000lb. bombs that the U.S. gives to Israel one by one, to Netanyahu’s house, by airmail?

Fascinating how the subtext is always that we should feel comforted because a mass-casualty event that’s a normal part of the system that kills and injuries people every day isn’t terrorism.

“Oh, that’s just the machine crushing orphans. It’s supposed to be doing that.”

All logic breaks down at the grocery store.

One of life’s profound truths!

I used to think that as well. But what if it turned out that over-showering was actually the thing that makes you stinky?

I’m picturing testicles wearing a cowboy hat.

Simple: Visibility and speed. You look at a parking spot, and if it’s empty, it’s definitely empty. It’s virtually guaranteed to stay that way as you back in, so you don’t need to monitor what’s in it. No cars, cyclists, pedestrians, emergency vehicles, et cetera, are going to enter the parking stall as you back in. That’s not true of a street or lane when you back out into it. It’s often difficult to even see traffic coming, as backup cameras don’t have the wide-angle coverage, and there’s always the possibility that you didn’t see somebody.

As a result of both of those factors, with practice, backing in can be done in seconds, and pulling out is a breeze. Pulling in forward is a breeze, but for most people, backing out is a slower, more nerve-wracking maneuver. (At least that’s my assumption from watching how long it takes.) On the other hand, the people who just YOLO it back out into traffic are psychopaths.

You can use UTC, right now. Nothing’s stopping you.

I would go further. Most cars don’t belong in places where people live. They injure and kill people on the regular, the noise pollution causes mental and physical health problems, the light pollution disrupts sleep, the particulate pollution causes cardiovascular disease and dementia, as well as damaging ecosystems, driving adds to obesity and issues related to a sedentary lifestyle, the physical space they take leads to sprawl and ecosystem destruction, and the sprawl also bankrupts cities and towns. As well, driving in traffic just plain sucks as an activity, and makes people angry and miserable.

And you should back in.

It’s a good question, though people tend to treat it as a thought-terminating cliché rather than exploring the implications. Why should murderers be punished, actually? Enacting punishment is an external incentive, a stimulus, supposedly structured to make the cost to the potential murderer higher than the benefit they hope to get by killing. Belief in punishment, therefore, is consistent with the non-free will position. But if there’s no free will, then why not instead try to “solve” murder, and not have murderers anymore, by discovering the root causes that drive people to murder, and mitigating them? We’d all be better off!

On the other hand, free will implies that the mechanism of punishment may or may not be punishing to the murderer. We don’t know what they feel in response to stimulus; they have free will! Like in the story of Br’er Rabbit, trying to determine a foolproof method of punishment that’s hateful to the murderer is an exercise in futility, since we can’t know their mind.

There are multiple meanings of “support.” There’s an endorsement meaning, which can be explicit or tacit, and there’s an aiding meaning. The Democrats may not explicitly endorse it, but the Biden administration certainly did tacitly endorse it by directly aiding it. And most of the party has been tacitly endorsing and aiding it for decades.