Dark Brandon isn’t meant to be serious. It’s meant to mock the Republicans who say, “Let’s go Brandon” (meaning fuck you Biden) and it references the conspiracy theory that he’s a devil-worshipping communist by referring to him as “dark.”
Anytime you see Dark Brandon, it’s the left mocking the extreme right for being idiots.
Can someone please explain this meme to a non-american? Been seeing this everywhere and the us president has posted that pic of himself with red eyes on twitter and I have no idea what’s going on.
Taylor Swift is dating someone who plays for the Kansas City Chiefs, the Chiefs just won the Super Bowl. There were some very smart people online who had a conspiracy theory that the entire relationship was fake and that the Chiefs were going to win the Super Bowl so that Taylor Swift could endorse Joe Biden to all of America after they won.
I mean, Fox News anchors had entire segments about her potentially endorsing Biden if the chiefs win and how she should “stay out of politics”, as if they don’t impact everyone.
It’s only ‘stay out of politics’ when they support the left. If some mouth breather like Gina Carrano opens her stupid mouth about politics in their favor, they’re all for it.
The most marketable person on the planet is dating a dude on the chiefs. She recently asked people in the US to vote. That is bad for Republicans (regressives). Now the idiots say she is working for the “deep state.” You can’t use logic to change someone that believes themselves into it.
Hmm why? Scrubber tech is getting better, the ppm requirements are stricter, and low grade fuel coal and diesel with sulfur in it is become less available. Which makes sense since do you want to move x amount of money to move y amount of weight or do you want to make more than x to move y amount of weight. Shit fuel that causes acid rain weights and takes up the same volume as the same as the stuff that doesn’t cause acid rain.
I mean, in terms of genetics the kid could maybe have a short nose despite being born from Gru and that redhead lady whose name I forgor. However I like to think that it will grow and expand during puberty.
I need to investigate if my town even has a local hotdog shop.
I’m pretty certain we don’t. Actually we lack a lot of proper food places. Sandwich shops are all terrible, no goddamn Phillies worth the money. No hot dog shop or reliable spot for biscuits n gravy. seems sorta like Minnesota just hates good food
Relationships are a two way street, and dynamics like this are pretty common. It’s sometimes called over/under functioning or codependency in substance abuse. It could be the over functioner just tore the other person down, or the under functioner was susceptible already or drew it out of the over functioner. I agree it’s really difficult to know based on limited data, and all we can say is this is strange and comes across as infantilizing but if it works for them then whatever tbh. Not my relationship to care about
Does the word “nagging” really suggest she’s bad when there’s needs to be a transactional economy where he only contributes to the care of his child after trading in his good boy points for a tendies a blowjob?
I hope some of the folks in this thread get the partner they deserve.
Alright, I’m sure the big boy that needs a sticker chart for washing the dishes and taking care of his children is the mature one in the relationship, you right, she’s probably in the wrong here.
You assume he “needs” a sticker chart when just as easily the wife could be trying to get him to do all of it instead of his share. That’s your bias showing.
Plus this inhumane and soul destroying regardless.
Who the fuck makes a sticker chart with BJs and naked hula dances?
Based on the evidence I’ve seen, women do tend to bear more of the cognitive load of running a household in our society. Can you share any evidence that says otherwise? I’d love to learn.
I haven’t done that much research, but a quick Google scholar search suggests that it’s a pretty gendered issue.
We’ve established that the task of maintaining on a household typically falls on women in our society.
We have an example here of a sticker chart being used to encourage a man to take care of his child.
You’re saying I’m biased for thinking that the man needs this chart.
Nah, bruh, I’m just looking at the data and drawing conclusions.
Sure, there are exceptions, but when we lack any other indicators of exceptions, it’s safe to assume societal roles carry over. Making any other assumption is ironically letting YOUR personal biases show.
If I tell you 7/10 balls in a box are red, 3/10 are blue, and ask you to guess the color of a ball I’m grabbing from the box, what’re you going to guess? Red.
I’m pretty sure this sticker chart is fake anyways, but it’s the reaction of folks to this that’s surprising.
Outlawed 3rd party access. Their app is glitchy af and plays audio from the wrong posts and will continue in background until force closed. Overmodded or undermodded like a mf. Bans for stating the obvious in even a gentle manner. I consider them the O’doyles, now, and I have a feeling their whole family is going down. Or they just pivot to a massive business-backed monstrosity to push agendas just like every other damn site thet everyone is addicted to. It’s been a rough week for me.
Mine often become visible to me shortly before experiencing a migraine. Is there a reason for this? I’ve told my doctor, but they didn’t seem to react to this information much, just said it can happen.
Not sure about seeing floaters before migraines, but what you see could be migraine auras. I have them and they affect my field of vision prior to a migraine. I’ll see flashy/persistent “dots” or completely be unable to focus on certain things, like I have a blind spot. Hate it, but it at least gives me time to grab meds before the pain sets in. Usually happens ~20-60 minutes before onset.
They’re little bits of debris and fibrous points in the gel matrix of your eye. They don’t go away ever, but they float to a part of your eye you don’t pay as much attention to. They tend to “go away” in people who consistently sleep on the same side. If you’re a back sleeper, or move around a lot, they tend to stick near your macula (your main focal point).
When I run ocular scans on people I can see them drifting around. They’re not a problem unless they’re dense or dark, then they might be blood due to a retinal tear or diabetic retinopathy.
Jokes aside there’s really some truth in this. I’m not sure if it’s the dopamine or that I just need to disctract my mind away from the things that makes me anxious but I sure as hell don’t do it because I’m horny. I don’t even remember what being horny feels like.
And no, I’m not one of those nofap/pornfree fanatics. For most people there probably is not an issue there. It’s only when you spend 6 hours several times a week doing something like this that you might start to consider this may not be good for you.
Actually, I do believe it’s true, because I went through a phase like this where I wanted nothing else but sex and I masturbated a lot. Nothing else interesred me, everything else was stupid and boring. Turns out I was depressed, got medication for that, still take it and things just got back to normal.
But, I never understood why a depressed person would want to have sex so much and masturbate a lot… until I saw this, and then it clicked. I probably just needed the dopamine fix because that was the only thing that made me feel good.
Depression and anxiety definitely has something to do with it in my case but what’s weird is that I don’t have any desire for sex whatsoever. It’s 100% just a habit/addiction/distraction. I hardly even get any pleasure from it and without an exception feel absolutely shit afterwards. Then I hit rock bottom and stop doing it for few weeks but as the first signs of healing start appearing meaning I can feel the tiniest amount of horniness again I then relapse and the loop starts all over again.
Been without about a week now, again, and I’m about at the point where it starts getting hard again. By it I don’t mean IT.
Yeah, you’re in a loop. You should try and get out more, when the loop starts that is. There is nothing wrong with masturbating IMO, even if it’s a few times a week, or even once a day, but if you start doing it several times a day, yeah, that is somewhat not really healthy. Sure, you’re keeping your prostate in check (this is mainly why I recommend anyone above 30, 35 to do it regularly), but that’s not the reason why you’re doing it, is it.
For me, it was mainly sex. Had a lot of quarels with my partner back then and makeup sex was the only thing I wanted… it felt weird… I’ve always been agressive in bed, but this time, I felt like I wanted to punish her… I really have no idea what was going on with me at that time, it was a weird period, I didn’t feel like myself at all.
Well ofcourse it’s a combination of things but I feel like there something to the theory of how overstimulation like that drains your dopamine reserves (or something) and kind of makes you numb to more mundane positive experiences.
that really just sounds like victim blaming to me, by that logic couples that have sex often should be miserable too but the precise opposite seems to be the case
How does that work, physiologically? We’re talking dopamine in the brain. If what that user said was true and “overstimulation like that drains your dopamine reserves (or something),” then another person being there wouldn’t make a difference.
I mean, it’s because they have a misunderstanding on how brain chemistry works, obviously. Like, it can store it, but it doesn’t get used up from doing things that feel good. That’s what makes dopamine. And while loneliness is a problem in the general population, it’s more likely that longer lasting gratification from sex isn’t from the physical act or even just the physical act with another person, but the joy gained from the relationship as a whole. Pretending that there’s chemically something different happening in the brain just because there is physically another person there is ridiculous. I’ve had plenty of unfulfilling sex with people I didn’t like that didn’t make me happy/content afterwards like masturbating would have.
Well I’m the victim of my own behaviour and I’m definitely not blaming anyone else but myself. Also, there’s a difference between doing something in healthy amounts and being obsessed about it. I don’t know about you but personally I feel like wasting 20+ hours into porn and masturbation in a week doesn’t seem healthy. It my not be the sole cause for ones problems but it’s definitely not helping.
And these things don’t shoot you if you look at them wrong – or are black.
Edit: “No, you can’t just stick a camera worth a couple of thousand [local currency] next to the road, that takes photographic evidence of infractions. You gotta rip out the entire surface, redesign the sides and introduce a few sharp curves by demolishing a few blocks of buildings here and there. In the mean time speed is only enforced by violent cops who feel like you were speeding.
They also can’t testify in court, depriving accused speeders of their constitutional right to due process.
But back to your first claim: “gotta enforce speed limits:” No, we do not. Speeding is a symptom of a street that was designed wrong to begin with. The correct solution is to fix the design, not install a speed camera as some sort of big brother band-aid.
Edit: why do y’all apparently hate the idea of improving street design? As a former traffic engineer, I’m telling you that that’s the only way to truly fix the problem of speeding. I don’t get why that’s controversial.
Sorry, but that is a gross misinterpretation. Drivers are not victims of an intrinsic speed devil that they cannot escape. They still choose to violate the speed limit in most cases.
What was done in these countries is to acknowledge, that physical design is more effective as enforcement, than the cop with a speed-meter.
Still the explicit intent is to enforce speed-limits, knowing that people would violate them if they could, but they can’t because they would wreck their car. Still those people choose to violate and are responsible for their actions.
I gotta be honest; I don’t understand what point you’re trying to make. First you tell me I’m wrong that it’s essential to fix the design of the street to facilitate the correct speed, then you agree with me that “physical design is more effective as enforcement,” then you say that the risk of people wrecking their car effectively deters them from speeding, then you say they choose to speed anyway.
You say that speed limits shouldnt be enforced as they would be a “symptom” of poor road design. This abolishes the speeding drivers from their own responsibility for violating the traffic rules.
You misinterpret the design choices shown in the video as the opposite of “bad road design”, therefore “good road design”, which implies a generality. However these design choices are made solely and explicitly to enforce speed limits. They have disadvantages in other ways e.g. if you make spots where only one car can pass at a time, it makes traffic less efficient. These disadvantages wouldn’t be needed if people would uphold the traffic rules by themselves.
Good design or bad design, many people will speed if they can get away with it. With a proper enforcement through speed cameras, and proper penalties for speeding, e.g. losing your licences for repeated offenses or having your vehicle impounded, could equally serve for enforcement. They are just more expensive, so making design choices is prefered by some countries.
But still people who speed chose to speed. They chose to violate the traffic rules and they chose to endanger other people and themselves. So speeding is never a “symptom” of road design. It is always a “symptom” of selfish assholes that should not be given the right to operate dangerous vehicles.
However these design choices are made solely and explicitly to enforce speed limits.
No, they’re designed to discourage people from exceeding the design speed, which is different.
But still people who speed chose to speed. They chose to violate the traffic rules and they chose to endanger other people and themselves. So speeding is never a “symptom” of road design. It is always a “symptom” of selfish assholes that should not be given the right to operate dangerous vehicles.
Jeez, it’s not as if the vast majority of speeders are mustache-twirling villains doing it for the evulz who are incorrigible short of being punished by the law! They just think it’s safe to be driving that speed because the overly-generous street design misleads them.
Look, here’s the bottom line: the whole concept of a “speed limit” only exists in the first place because of a mismatch between the design speed and the speed people want to drive, which makes it unsafe. If you fix the geometry of the street to eliminate the mismatch such that the speed people want to drive at is safe, you don’t need the limit anymore and can just fall back on “reasonable and prudent.”
Y’all are acting like we need speed limits for their own sake, just to have something to enforce.
And there is disagree. We don’t need speed limits for their own sake. They are the speed that is deemed appropriate in the area for a multitude of reason. Primarily safety, but also things like noise and emission reductions.
It is the same question of whether someone wants to uphold rules like right of way, or red lights. They have been implemented to order traffic in a way that is deemed beneficial. Anyone who deliberately violates speed limits is deliberately violating the rules that have been put in place to provide safety to everyone. subequently it is also people that are more likely to violate right of way and other rules.
Your argument again is to be apologetic for people deliberately violating the rules. Your idea of simply designing streets in such a way that everyone will drive safely doesnt work out. It is still individual actors with a highly subjective idea, of what it safe and what isnt. But traffic as a global system needs reliable actors, who can be predictable for other actors too. That is why we will always need a set of global rules, to which a speed limit belongs just as much.
I am all for designs like speed bumps to additionally discourage reckless driving. But being apologetic of people who are reckless and subsequently often killing or injuring people doesn’t fly. Especially as there is still enough people who are not stopped from driving over chilren in front of schools, despite speed bumps and other measures. The only thing that works for these kind of people is to permanently remove them from operating motorized vehicles and to give them some time in prison to think about what they have done. being apologetic of them instead, encourages lax traffic laws and lax consequences for people who are injuring and killing other people in traffic.
I am particularly aggrevated at that, because in germany drivers who kill pedestrians or cyclists are often given a slap on the wrist and allowed to drive again soon. This includes particularly elderly people who are clearly unfit to drive, but being a car nation and all that, it is apologized by the courts. But how do you design streets in such a way that it is impossible to drive on the wrong side of the road, which one elderly women did, killing two cyclists? How do you design the road in front of a school that an already convicted of traffic offenses mother doesnt slowly roll over a young girl on her way to school, smashing her under her SUV? You can’t. It is simply impossible to design car traffic areas in a way that makes them safe by design.
You can only make them more or less safe. But it will always be necessary to identify and punish reckless drivers. And if necessary that means prison sentences and permanent exemption from driving. Being apologetic of them is in no way helping traffic safety.
And there is disagree. We don’t need speed limits for their own sake. They are the speed that is deemed appropriate in the area for a multitude of reason. Primarily safety, but also things like noise and emission reductions.
No, that’s what the design speed is. Speed limits are just a crutch to enforce the design speed when the engineers screwed up and the design fails to do it itself.
Your argument again is to be apologetic for people deliberately violating the rules.
Your argument again is to be apologetic to incompetent engineers, which is way worse!
I know, from first-hand experience, that traffic engineers in the United States are systemically bad at a lot of what we do. A lot of the industry’s standards of practice are outdated, misguided, or misapplied, and the whole profession needs reform. Often, the goals that we’re trying to accomplish in our designs aren’t even the correct goals to begin with.
And by the way: No. No, I am not, in any way, shape, or form, trying to excuse bad drivers. Never mind that you’ve strawmanned my argument to the point of unrecognizability; even if I did want to abolish speed limits like you seem to think I do, “reasonable and prudent” would still be a thing and it would still be possible to punish dangerous drivers!
Frankly, you’re way the fuck out of line.
The only thing that works for these kind of people is to permanently remove them from operating motorized vehicles and to give them some time in prison to think about what they have done. being apologetic of them instead, encourages lax traffic laws and lax consequences for people who are injuring and killing other people in traffic.
You clearly don’t realize it, but in actual reality, attitudes like yours are part of the problem! Having speed limits divorced from design speeds breeds contempt for the law, which is why consequences are often so lax. Everybody speeds when the speed limit is set too low – that’s human nature whether you like it or not – so of course even judges and juries who speed themselves won’t think speeding is a big deal and will give offenders a slap on the wrist. By prioritizing enforcement of speed limits over fixing street design, you are actively trying to perpetuate that contempt.
I’m starting to think you’re so bloodthirsty to punish people that you’re willing to put more people at risk by accepting bad design just so you can manufacture more violators!
I’m starting to think you’re so bloodthirsty to punish people that you’re willing to put more people at risk by accepting bad design just so you can manufacture more violators!
Now you are just making things up. At every point i said, i think design to enforce the speed limit is a good thing. But you are claiming it is good design by itself, when it is only necessary as design, because people intentionally violate the speed limit, what you are still trying to be apologetic for. You switching cause and effect around and you do that in order to apologize for people who willfully endanger other people.
Sorry but it’s a black and white thing in this case, r either you’re under the speed limit and not breaking the law or you’re over the speed limit and breaking the law.
Also, tons of people object to speed camera tickets and win, the only difference is that there’s no officer there when the event happened to tell them “Say that to the judge if you’re not happy.”, the end result is the same.
Sorry but it’s a black and white thing in this case, r either you’re under the speed limit and not breaking the law or you’re over the speed limit and breaking the law.
This isn’t actually true. It’s entirely possible to be breaking the law while driving under the speed limit: “driving too fast for conditions” is very much a thing.
But that’s beside my point, which really was just that changing the design of the street to make people not want to speed in the first place is way more effective (and frankly, way less totalitarian) than punishing them after-the-fact for doing so.
“Driving too fast for conditions” won’t be enforced by cameras, will still exist if the road is modified and is 100% subjective which is a problem speed cameras don’t have so you should be happy about that.
It might be more effective, it’s still not possible to change all roads as quickly as speed cameras can be deployed.
It’s also a very stupid argument, that’s like saying “If that person didn’t want me to steal from them they shouldn’t have left their car unlocked.” The rule is there, it’s your responsibility to respect it no matter what the road looks like. Both things need to be used in conjunction, roads need to be adapted to their limit but you need something to enforce the limits too.
Never said it was fine, I said the issue lies elsewhere and the solutions we’re currently taking about aren’t the ones that will solve it.
If the speed limit is too high it’s an administrative decision, they won’t change the road design because they decided to have a high speed limit, a speed camera or a police officer won’t charge people who are driving fast unless they’re going over the speed limit that’s already too high.
So you consider the law to be the definition of safety?
My question was intended to get you think about the fact that laws (and speed limits) are made by people, with all their flaws and biases, and they don’t always do a good job.
Sorry but it’s a black and white thing in this case, r either you’re under the speed limit and not breaking the law or you’re over the speed limit and breaking the law.
Your words make it sound like you think the speed limit is some objective truth that cannot be questioned.
It can be questioned, not enforcing them isn’t questioning them and won’t make them change, if people disagree with the speed limit somewhere they can complain to the authorities responsible, in the meantime is still the limit and you’re breaking the law by not respecting it. It’s the same thing with every laws and is the reason why when they change, criminals don’t suddenly get released from prison because the law they broke doesn’t exist anymore.
Ever heard of the social contract theory?
Heck, what if I believe that school zones are bullshit and want to do 50mph in them and it’s the kids responsibility to act safely? Would you defend my right to drive 50mph because you believe I have the right to question the speed limit in school zones this way or would you tell me to address the right people and live with the current limits until they’re changed?
We also need to keep in mind the mechanism it is using to detect speed. If it uses radar it will need regular calibration. Handheld units for example are supposed to be spot checked before and after each shift with tuning forks and sent back to the manufacturer to be recalibrated every 6 months or so.
Lidar and optical flow most likely have different requirements, but I am not as familiar with them.
What would you prefer? That some people drive slightly over the speed limit? Or a spot where people suddenly slam on the brakes to avoid getting a ticket, endangering those who might be behind them with their sudden change of speed?
Because the latter is what these devices tend to do.
Show me evidences that they increase accidents please, I’ve provided two sources showing they work in another comment, surely you can provide one that they cause accidents.
Bullshit. You are allowed to cross examine your accuser which you can’t do for a camera. It is not the same. Random tech should not be judging humans for crimes.
Where I live they install speed cameras in residential areas, school zones, and bus routes. They also only trigger when you are going 12 or more over the limit, and the highest speed limit I've seen with one these was 45mph, 35mph during school times. They also have an officer review and sign the citation, it is a flat fee, and no points. If needed, the officer who reviews will testify in court.
If someone is going 12+ over on school zones, school bus routes, and residential neighborhoods, then they deserve their fine.
I don’t find improving road safety through intelligent engineering controversial, I think blaming the street design instead of the idiot deciding to speed through it is controversial. In the end it is the driver who accelerated, not the road engineer.
In fact I actually like how much attention has been brought over the past years to road design. I’ve always been scared of cars.
why do y’all apparently hate the idea of improving street design? As a former traffic engineer,
I think people are intuitively understanding that it’s not really a possibility in a country as large as America. There are only 139,000 km of public roads in the Netherlands, compared to 6,743,151 km of roads in America. We also have different types of traffic compared to the Netherlands, more large vehicles and people without access to public transportation for daily commutes. Compounding all this with the fact that the federal government has no control of how most of these roads are built… It’s understandable why people don’t see this as realistic option.
I think people are intuitively understanding that it’s not really a possibility in a country as large as America.
Their cynical intuition is wrong, though, and the “large country” argument in particular falls apart at the slightest scrutiny. So what if we have more roads? We have commensurately more traffic engineers, too! There is no excuse not to design properly.
We also have different types of traffic compared to the Netherlands, more large vehicles and people without access to public transportation for daily commutes.
Vehicle size is irrelevant. Lack of access to public transportation is indeed a problem; however, in general “we shouldn’t fix problem A because we also have problem B” is not a valid argument. It just means you should fix problems A and B.
Compounding all this with the fact that the federal government has no control of how most of these roads are built…
Sigh… look, you’re not wrong to argue that that’s a popular perception; however, that’s much more a consequence of the shitty state of civics education than it is an accurate description of reality. There’s a bunch of different ways the Federal government exerts control, including things like taxation and funding (including for state- and local-maintained roads in a lot of cases, not just U.S. Highways) and collaboration between the FHWA (government) and AASHTO (industry) on design standards. It’s more complicated than just a unitary central government dictating things, but rest assured, roads are designed in a relatively standardized way nationwide.
Their cynical intuition is wrong, though, and the “large country” argument in particular falls apart at the slightest scrutiny. So what if we have more roads? We have commensurately more traffic engineers, too! There is no excuse not to design properly.
I think we’re having a problem determining the difference of what is possible and what should be possible. Your argument is ignoring the most important aspect of any public project. There isn’t enough political will in this country to pass universal healthcare, something that would end up saving the country billions of dollars. In what world do you think American politicians are going to replace 4 million miles of working roads?
I don’t have the time ATM to watch this, I’ll give it a try after work. However, I doubt they’re going to be able to explain how they would get through the gridlock of our current government.
Vehicle size is irrelevant. Lack of access to public transportation is indeed a problem; however, in general “we shouldn’t fix problem A because we also have problem B” is not a valid argument. It just means you should fix problems A and B.
Traffic congestion won’t improve unless we improve public transportation. It doesn’t matter how well you build the roads, unless there is an alternative to driving there will be too many people on the roads. My argument is if we have to solve problem B before we work on problem A, there is no real reason to address problem A.
look, you’re not wrong to argue that that’s a popular perception; however, that’s much more a consequence of the shitty state of civics education than it is an accurate description of reality.
I think we’re just just getting into sematics now. Yes there is somewhat of a standardization of roads, but that does not mean they have the power to unilaterally create a new standard in which they could enforce with the power of the purse.
Your argument is ignoring the magnitude of funding and state and federal cooperation that would be required to revamp the entire transportation network of a huge country. Even if you could get a bill passed through our current Congress, how much money would it take, how much time?
Do I think we should be designing walkable cities with ample public transportation, of course. Do I think any politician in America would actually care about that…? No.
There isn’t enough political will in this country to pass universal healthcare, something that would end up saving the country billions of dollars. In what world do you think American politicians are going to replace 4 million miles of working roads?
We do have the political will in this country for universal healthcare, or, at least, most people, a majority, think it would be a good idea. it’s just I guess up to how you define “political will”, because we can have a majority that think we should have it, and then still not be able to get it even with popular support because the american government just straight up sucks and has bad voting systems and gerrymandering and even at the local level most of them are awful and are victims of circumstance of the presiding state and federal government. So that’s just kinda. I dunno. It sucks.
I always find it very strange how this shit comes up, though, right, basically as nihilism. I don’t think that guy’s point was to try and convince you to like, go out an canvas for better road conditions, his point was just to convince you that your arguments and causes were wrong and that you should be thinking about road design differently, mostly in that it’s a deliberate decision, and a bad decision. If you look at NJB, the guy who made that video, he’s an omega doomer that doesn’t really think progress will be made towards good urbanism within like, two generations, so he moved to amsterdam to escape it, basically. He’s also a doomer.
The point wasn’t to convince anyone to be an activist for anything, because that’s a pretty rare person that’s gonna be able to do that, the point is just that, the next time it comes around that the city has to do road maintenance, and they have a couple different options for proposals on how they might improve things, or if they will improve things, or if they’ll just leave things to rot, you can vote to make them better and it will take like 5 minutes cause someone talked about this shit previously.
Which, was the other point I was gonna make. We’ve just had a big new infrastructure bill passed and new passenger rail funding, and new amtrak proposals, and even though it’s not enough we’re seeing progress on that front. And more than that, at the local level, things don’t happen all at once with federal funding projects. They happen by degrees. You change the local standards, zoning regulations, so on, you know, shit you can precisely do because most politicians don’t give a shit about it, or shouldn’t right, if they turn it into a political issue where they’re like “we’re fighting the war on cars” with that mayor of toronto, gerard ford? it kind of becomes a mess. But if you can get it done, then over the next 20 years, things slowly shift in the right direction, as things have to be maintained by the city, and they decide hey maybe we’ll redo some of this in a different way that makes more sense and will legitimately feel better to drive even if suburbanites have been so propagandized to hate everything but a 6 lane totally car centric road.
I also would maybe contest the point about people driving in lieu of anything else, you know, I mean, this is sort of always the problem with urbanist solutions, right, is this chicken or the egg problem. Sometimes it’s easier to get big funding, even venture capital funding, for new development along a newly federally or state funded rail project, right, and that’s obviously a good thing, and then sometimes it’s easier to just change your regulations and then slowly make it so people can actually take their bike some place, right. I mean, you just kind of have to do both at once, whenever they become available as options, whenever prevailing conditions allow, and it takes a while. Hopefully you don’t get shafted with a useless kind of commuter park and ride rail line, but I suppose that’s better than nothing, and you know, hopefully some sort of development could come in and help fill some of the surrounding development with walkable shit so people have actual destinations at the suburban end of that, but then, you know, that requires you change the zoning regulations around that end of the track. I dunno. If you make the neighborhoods more walkable and have more destinations you might actually want to go to, more intracity places to go to, then public transit usually gets better, and if people have good public transit then that’s good for making walkable places because then you can kind of have the ability to expand people’s horizons and let them go places without having to own a car. I dunno, chicken or the egg, but also you just kind of do them both because there’s not really a dichotomy between them, is what I would assume that guy to be getting at.
We do have the political will in this country for universal healthcare, or, at least, most people, a majority, think it would be a good idea. it’s just I guess up to how you define “political will”, because we can have a majority that think we should have it, and then still not be able to get it even with popular support because the american government just straight up sucks and has bad voting systems and gerrymandering and even at the local level most of them are awful and are victims of circumstance of the presiding state and federal government. So that’s just kinda. I dunno. It sucks.
When I referenced political will I mean the politicians.
always find it very strange how this shit comes up, though, right, basically as nihilism. I don’t think that guy’s point was to try and convince you to like, go out an canvas for better road conditions, his point was just to convince you that your arguments and causes were wrong and that you should be thinking about road design differently, mostly in that it’s a deliberate decision, and a bad decision. If you look at NJB, the guy who made that video, he’s an omega doomer that doesn’t really think progress will be made towards good urbanism within like, two generations
My entire point is explaining the diff between what should be and what can be. Yes, we have the tech and the ability, but that doesn’t really matter if it never gets put to law.
His original statement questioned why people weren’t agreeing with his idea, I simply explained why it was an unrealistic goal.
Which, was the other point I was gonna make. We’ve just had a big new infrastructure bill passed and new passenger rail funding, and new amtrak proposals, and even though it’s not enough we’re seeing progress on that front.
I think you have a problem realizing the difference between 550 billion and 7.7 trillion. We have a lot of infrastructure that needs to be addressed, pretty much all of it makesore sense to do than spending trillions of dollars on roads.
Again, I understand roads should be better, but I also understand it’s not really a politically viable option.
I simply explained why it was an unrealistic goal.
See, so this is kind of my problem, right. You’ve said that it’s an unrealistic goal because it’s not politically viable at the federal level, which, you know, other comment, right, I don’t necessarily think that the majority of roads that people interface with on a daily basis have to be dealt with at the federal level, or have to deal with federal budget. I think the feds really only have to deal with like, amtrak and highways, and, again, not as much progress as there should be, right, but, progress on that front. More than we’ve had in the past 50 or 60 years, at least, which is a start.
But all that aside, right, like, this is a problem, a pretty major one at that, looking at death statistics, and even looking at projected problems like climate change, and the negative effect that this has on that. Not even necessarily just on the emissions of cars, which people plan to deal with via electric (booooo), but in terms of the cost of human development in such a fucked up way. Like ecological destabilization, and flooding from runoff, heat islands, shit like that, which, you know, climate change exacerbates. So we can agree, it’s a problem, in general, that we need to deal with. Why is this, what the fuck are we talking about, you know? Like, what is the tradeoff here? What else would you rather spend fake money on? Why can’t we just have healthcare and roads instead of having neither? Why is there this dichotomy, here? Like you’re agreeing with the premise of the argument here but the disagreement is that it’s like, not something you think we should spend political capital on, or just. Not something you think will get done? Like, why not? I dunno it is just kind of boggling my mind that you are agreeing with the core issue here, but you’re disagreeing on the premise that nothing will happen about it.
See, so this is kind of my problem, right. You’ve said that it’s an unrealistic goal because it’s not politically viable at the federal level, which, you know, other comment, right, I don’t necessarily think that the majority of roads that people interface with on a daily basis have to be dealt with at the federal level, or have to deal with federal budget
I don’t think you understand the separation of power between the state and the federal government. The federal government cannot dictate to the states how they build their roads. If you wanted to make overarching changes that require the states to spend money in a way they are not inclined to do, it must be done through Congress.
Why is this, what the fuck are we talking about, you know? Like, what is the tradeoff here? What else would you rather spend fake money on? Why can’t we just have healthcare and roads instead of having neither? Why is there this dichotomy, here?
I think you may want to take a civics course or something? There is a limited supply of funding, while people like you or I would like to spend that money on things like infrastructure and healthcare. There are people out there who would rather siphen that funding into private corporations to make themselves very very wealthy. The people who want to be very very wealthy are already very wealthy and in positions of power to exert their influence over the government.
Our government was created by the wealthy, and has built in protections to ensure that the wealthy stay in charge. It’s literally the entire point of having a bicameral Congress, where the Senate has true control over what bills are signed into action.
Yes you can fix this. The Dutch bicycle culture was started by municipal votes, where resolutions passed municipal governments with margins of single votes. If American politicians can pull their heads out of their asses and even only pass a resolution that:
Disseminates empirical research on road safety to all traffic engineers,
Prioritises safety for all users on roads and streets, with priority given to those without armour (i.e. a car), and maybe
Penalised engineers and politicians who choose to fail to design for safety
Then in the next thirty odd years, I think that the worst offenders can be rebuilt.
Do note that few things are as good at destroying themselves in regular, correct use as car infrastructure.
If American politicians can pull their heads out of their asses and even only pass a resolution that:
This is my entire point… It is unrealistic to believe that American politicians would do something for the good of the people. Especially when a large portion of Americans themselves rarely vote for their own self interest.
What would be the cost of redesigning and paving 4.19 million miles of road? Well let’s do some real conservative napkin math. Let’s choose the cheapest type of road, a rural minor arterial on flat ground. The reconstruction for this single lane would be 915,000 per mile, per lane. Assuming every road is just rural and two lanes the cost would be around 7.7 trillion dollars. Roughly a third of America’s GDP.
Shit like this is why I think the only thing that will save America is a complete purge of state and federal government, and a very clear and specific explanation why the US governments have been forcibly emptied and rebooted.
It should be governments’ jobs to act for the betterment of their subjects. The fact the US doesn’t, and happily marches the troops into places where they do “too well” if you’d ask them and read between the lines of their answers, is a crime against humanity.
I think we’re about 40-50 years too late for that option unfortunately. I think the whole world is going to be a little too busy addressing our rapidly deteriorating climate to do anything meaningfully good anytime soon.
yeah see that’s what I was talking about. you don’t have to ask for 7.7 trillion dollars all at once, because we already spend a pretty ludicrous amount on road maintenance already. you just redesign the road the next time the maintenance schedule comes around, which works out to be like. what you were already gonna spend, + the cost of paint you were already gonna use, + maybe some bollards, - the projected amount you would save by making it so people can take more trips by bikes and walking. which decreases car usage, which decreases the frequency with which you have to do road maintenance and upkeep, because cars weigh a lot and wear down the roads way more than any other use of roads.
yeah see that’s what I was talking about. you don’t have to ask for 7.7 trillion dollars all at once, because we already spend a pretty ludicrous amount on road maintenance already.
That’s how every congressional budget is configured… When they run scare tactics about universal healthcare going to cost trillions of dollars they don’t mean all at once. When they pass something like an infrastructure bill they also have to explain how to pay for it and for how long.
you just redesign the road the next time the maintenance schedule comes around, which works out to be like. what you were already gonna spend, + the cost of paint you were already gonna use, + maybe some bollards, -
That’s not how roads work… The maintenance schedule is just fixing the top layer of paving. The bulk of the cost is in reshaping land and pouring the concrete foundations. If all you’re doing is repaving the top layer it’s not going to make any significant changes.
If all you’re doing is repaving the top layer it’s not going to make any significant changes.
more than you might think, again, even just with paint. a road diet can take a four lane road down to two lanes, and can add bike lanes and a turn lane, which cuts down on traffic accidents from lane changes, and potentially road speed. you can do a lot with on street parking, and then you can increase the width of bike lanes and increase their traffic separation even more, if you really want to encroach on the space cars are taking up. you can focus larger projects on given intersections, you can increase the size of curbs, once foot traffic increases, and it becomes easier to justify. I don’t have solutions for like a six lane fully stroaded out shithole, outside of maybe trying to make it into a boulevard with planters and trees and pedestrian islands in the middle, because the crossings are too long. you can also do that shit they did with covid and just cut off a street for a weekend and then see whatever the increase in foot traffic ends up being, and then present the results of that trial, which is a good way to get the idea across and raise support in the community.
if none of those, combined with changing zoning laws to allow more mixed-use development, and more built up development, if none of that strikes you as “significant changes”, then I don’t really know what to tell you. it takes a while to accomplish, and at this point in most places in america is a multi-generation effort, but I dunno, that’s just kind of the way it is. if you’re really cynical, I guess there’s caltrops? like I dunno, what’s your alternative here?
No. Although they often go hand-in-hand, it is possible to either piss people off without them doing anything in response or to incite people to feel the need to pass you without them getting mad about it.
I’m a big fan of NJB (shout out to !notjustbikes), but I’m not going to argue against speed cameras. That’s ridiculous. Yes, if I have to choose one or the other I’ll take the better road design. But even with good road design, some people will choose to be dicks because they can, or they see it as a challenge or some shit. And speed cameras can be implemented right now, whereas better road design waits (even in the Netherlands!) until that street is next due for repaving.
I can’t believe that people don’t want to see them installed in every school zones at least, if there’s one place where you don’t want people speeding it’s there!
“It’s a road design issue!” Yeah? What’s cheaper and can be done quicker, changing the road design or installing speed cameras?
Where I live they are mostly used in school zones and residential areas, and they only trigger when going 12+ miles over the limit. Seems pretty reasonable.
Yeah people not respecting speed zones around schools is a real problem. I can’t believe how people drive, and I’ve always got some Dodge Ram or Ford F150 riding my ass because I’m driving the proper speed.
Even if there was no posted speed limit, there are children everywhere and children are unpredictable.
I’m not a fan of them because they have been known to cause accidents in the past from people trying to slow down and not get ticketed. TIL this is bupkiss. I’ve read it so many times I took it for granted. That and it only slows people down in that specific area. You slow down, drive past it, then just speed back up.
I think Europe uses a better system, where you post two cameras on either end of the road you want to regulate the speed of. You take pictures of the license plates and time how long they were in the road for, then divide the distance by time to determine average speed. If that speed is above the legal limit, you look up the plate and they get a ticket in the mail. It’s lower tech because it doesn’t need LiDar, it’s harder to ‘cheat’, and it can be pretty cheap for regulating long stretches of road without exits.
No source of that (obviously because it’s bullshit), but there’s sources that show they reduce the number of people speeding this making the roads safer for non driver users by reducing the number of accidents.
While the system you describe does exist a lot in Europe the single cameras are much lower tech. They don’t have to read the license plate (twice!) correctly – they just take a picture. And while the mobile ones (non-descript grey van with blacked out rear windows parked at the side of the road) do use LIDAR, the static ones use just induction coils that are put into the road surface about 2m apart, rivht where the camera is looking. In Germany they’ll often put these coils in both directions of the road and just randomly turn the camera around, though newer ones just work in both directions all the time.
I mean, I agree people hating speed cameras is nonsense, just drive the speed limit! However, traffic calming is legit and makes the road a much safer place for pedestrians, and usually it’s by narrowing the road, not widening it.
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