• 0 Posts
  • 60 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
cake
Cake day: July 3rd, 2023

help-circle
  • Oh yeah. Cars are bad on like every metric.

    Socially they isolate people. You don’t interact with anyone when you’re driving except to get angry. The micro interactions you have on the train matter. Seeing people that aren’t just like you, also annoyed that the train is delayed, or just having a nice time with their kids, matters. More than makes up for when other people are annoying.

    Economically they hurt. It’s much harder to just pop into an interesting looking shop when you’re cruising along at 40mph. All the space dedicated to parking could be used for other stuff- housing, commerce, communal space, whatever.

    They make spaces less safe. Other than the direct impact (no pun intended) of people getting hit by cars, or crashing into stuff, a space that has steady foot traffic is generally safer. If everyone was in their car instead, you’d probably be alone on foot with no one to help if something happened.

    They’re bad for the environment. Air pollution, micro plastics, whatever.

    Drunk driving is way more dangerous than drunk “riding the train”.

    The more non-car options are built out, the better it will be for people who need to drive for whatever reason.

    Cars culture is trash and if we ever escape from it, it’s going to take years.








  • I think it depends on how often they’re coming up with dubious takes, and how often there are repeats.

    Like if you have to explain that gay people are just trying to live life, and that’s fixing misinformation they got as a youth, fine. Good, even. But if you have that talk and then have to have to again a month later because they “forgot” or picked up more bad ideas? Concerning.

    Friend of a friend was always getting talks to patch up his dicey world view, but then he’d go back to the same YouTube or shitty friends and come back two weeks later with a fresh batch of bad ideas. Really have to get to the root of the problem


  • Try not to think too hard about how most of the evidence points to shorter work weeks being better on pretty much every metric.

    Or that most of the “return to office” mandates are counter productive cruelty.

    I think I saw an article that claimed most office workers in the UK do like 3 hours of work a day, and the rest is puttering and looking busy.

    Our system is stupid and it’s stuck stupid because of people. It’s not physics. It’s not biology. Like there’s not much you can do to fix like humans need to eat and sleep, but the workday is just made up.



  • I kind of hope that will have the bonus effect of making the ownership class ease up on return-to-office. Sure, have your executive meeting in-person. Oh shit, someone flew a drone in and it exploded, shooting nails everywhere and killing half the c-suite? Shit. Anyway. We’ll be working from home until at least they clear the blood out of the carpets.

    (Though realistically, they’d make workers go in physically while being remote themselves. But maybe someone will bomb their house. No mercy for the ultra-rich.)