Marvelous! This article is one of the rare ones. It doesn’t tell me anything I did l didn’t already know, but explains it in a way that makes the pieces fit together with a satisfying snap.

Like, trans rights. If the moral legitimacy of the trans cause comes from their status as an oppressed group, then advocating for them necessarily means criticizing the American system, which I think is what a lot of people react negatively to. (Think about the appeal of the other guy’s slogan.) As another commentator I read said years ago, we should appeal to traditional leave-us-alone conservatism, and cast it as the American ideal that we protect them because they are citizens deserving freedom like anybody else, and doing so is what makes our country great.

But, bigger picture, the idea of learned helplessness really resonates.

I can’t consciously change my body temperature, but I do find that my thoughts and attitude about the heat or cold do affect it quite a bit.

You’re not the only one! I think it’s worth noting that back then, “social media” was a new model in which the viewers provided the content, a democratizing force which broke the hold of a small priesthood of editors, producers, and owners over the message we hear.

Now, so-called social media is synonymous with The Algorithm. That is, the powerful and connected have figured out how to tame it and gatekeep information again, this time in a far more insidious way. It still has the veneer of populism, but scratch the surface, and the owners largely control what you see.

It’s darkly hilarious to read discussions on here in which people deny that Lemmy is social media at all, rather than an example of the ur-social media, the good kind.

Take a look at the finances of automobile-oriented development. “Highly unsustainable” and “heavy debt” are the bywords there. As long as we’re spending that kind of money, shouldn’t we at least make ourselves happy?

Thanks, I appreciate the thoughtful reply, and I agree that the attitude of the driver has a lot to do with perception of a particular vehicle.

Rep. Seth Moulton is somebody.

Okay, a question: Can you understand why other people—pedestrians and bicyclists especially—might look at that kind of vehicle rolling on city streets and be inspired to say, “fuck cars”?

Hardly. Both sides can say the the prosecution was politically-motivated, but that’s where the similarity ends. One side has a long history of just saying things that sound good to them, and when called on it, falling silent and disengaging from discussion. The other side has evidence, or at least a strong argument that they are able to articulate. It’s not objective justice to ignore that.

With that title, I was expecting that the author could name more than 3 alleged smears from long ago.

One thing that I didn’t realize, as an American, is that having traffic lights on the far side of the intersection isn’t universal. If we only put them on the near side, drivers would have to stop behind the line, or else they’d be unable to see when the light turns green. Another example of better infrastructure being better than enforcement.

The biggest shock for me was Vera Lynn. She recorded her biggest hit song in 1939, and I was most familiar with it from the ending of Dr. Strangelove from 1964, and the Pink Floyd song, “Vera”, from 1982. I guess people in the UK would’ve known better, but the song implied a long-bygone time, so of course she had to be dead by the '90s, right?

Imagine my shock when she released a new compilation album in 2014, while still very much kicking.

And Joe pardoned Hunter for whatever they “find” next on that laptop, so, y’know, both sides.

/s

Liberals (which I’m taking to mean Democrats) didn’t “fix” gay marriage. Right up until the Iowa Supreme Court decision, in the early 2000’s, the argument in Democratic circles was that gay-rights organizations should pipe down, settle for civil unions, and stop making gay marriage an issue. They were afraid of handing the Republicans a weapon. It was the gay-rights organizations that pushed it through the courts, and prominent Democratic politicians like Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden “evolved” their positions to support it. I mean no criticism by the use of quotes. Kudos to them for changing their minds, but it wasn’t liberals that made it happen.

Title: “Quora User Re-invents Trains” 🚲 + 🚆

Can confirm. Never saw the episode, still know the gag.

Oy, here I thought that a “fuck car” was the motor vehicle analogue of a fuck boy.

It’s not insane, even if it’s an unfamiliar concept. @[email protected] is advocating for what is basically the legal concept known as strict liability. It means that a person is held liable for the consequences of an action, even in the absence of negligence or intent. American courts have applied it to things like crop dusting, or use of explosives, but this exact scenario is the law in the Netherlands. A driver hitting a bicyclist there is strictly liable for at least half of the damages in all unintentional crashes. (That is, when the driver can’t prove that bicyclist was trying to get hit.)

Those dead-eyed monstrosities stare deep into my soul and give me a case of the howling fantods, so yes, agree.

Here in the U.S., (and I’m assuming it’s the same elsewhere, but just explaining for simplicity), cars used to have a simple headlight switch, which also lit up the instrument cluster on the dashboard. It was an easy heuristic: If you can’t see the gauges because it’s dark, turn on the headlights.

Now, every car has a marketing-gimmick dashboard lit up all the time with all sorts of multi-color lights. In the cars I’ve been in, the headlight indicator just a small, green light in the corner. Drivers accustomed to the old way think that their headlights are on because the dashboard is lit up. The Toyota Prius was notorious for this when it was new; I used to joke that they didn’t come with headlights as a way to save fuel.

It’s not as bad now, but people just forget o sometimes. It’s worse when cars have day-time running lights, because then the drivers see light coming from the front of the car and think all the marker lights are on.

Is he gonna pardon the persecutors whom Bondi plans to prosecute?