Not_mikey

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Not_mikey,
  1. Ban cars
  2. Legalize drugs
  3. Basic income for unhoused and impoverished funded by said drug taxes
Not_mikey,

Some drugs (alcohol, opiates, meth) do fuck up your brain with long term consistent use associated with addiction, but most people don’t fall into that unless they have some sort of severe external stress or genetic predisposition. You can see this with alcohol which despite its acceptance by society is one of the most harmful drugs out there, but most people who consume it do so in relative moderation.

Drug prohibition fucks ups society way more than drugs can fuck up your brain. It creates a police state that targets the poor and minorities. It gives money to cartels and gangs that cause violence. It doesn’t even stop drug use, those who want it can still get it, it just makes drugs less safe as theirs no quality control leading to adulterants and an incentive to make overly concentrated substances like fentanyl, which probably wouldn’t exist without prohibition.

Not_mikey,

Agree mostly but I don’t think unions are the solution to over-consumption. They’re good for income inequality worker safety and a bunch of other things, but they’re just as incentivized to increase consumption as corporations. Consumption is good for workers since it guarantees job security and possible increases to wages. To counteract these interests you need something representing the interests of everyone that will be negatively effected by over-consumption and the climate change it causes, such as a truly representative democratic state.

Syndicalism is great for organizing a community and handling it’s problems but it can’t handle large scale problems that require self sacrifice like war and climate change, for that you need larger organizations.

Not_mikey,

There are 2 problems with not having enough diversity in training data:

  1. The AI will be worse at depicting diversity when prompted, eg. If the AI hasn’t seen enough pictures of black people it may not be able to depict black hair properly as it doesn’t “know what it looks like”
  2. The AI will not show as much diversity when not prompted. The AI is working off statistics so if you tell it to depict a person and most of the people it’s “seen” are white men it will almost always depict a white man because that’s statistically what a person is according to its data.

This method combats the second problem, but not the first. The first can mostly be solved by generally scaling the training data though, which is mostly what these companies have been doing. Even if only 1% of your images are of POC, if you have 1b images 10mil will be of POC which may be enough to train it. The second problem would remain unsolved though since the AI will always go with the statistically safe 99%.

Not_mikey,

It’s for rental scooters, not all scooters. My guess is two reasons:

  1. They’re left everywhere and can hog probably already crowded Paris sidewalks and bike racks.
  2. They’re mostly used by inexperienced people who don’t know what they’re doing and will ride on sidewalks with little regard for pedestrians, especially in Paris with the large amount of tourists, who the parisians already hate.
Not_mikey,

Get ready for even more “apps” that are just glorified web views of their mobel site.

Not_mikey,

Your right it is a childish problem because a child could think of the solutions you seem to be unable to, instead of cars we could use trains or bicycles, or just walk. Solutions from that fantastical world you lived in before you could drive.

Not_mikey,

I didn’t say we could just flip a switch, like you said it will be a long and difficult process, but it will take even longer if we continue to focus on evs as the solution. We could do both at once with unlimited funds and will but we don’t have that, there’s opportunity cost, each dollar we spend on ev subsidies is one not going to projects that can reduce emissions by a lot more like high speed rail and electric bus infrastructure, and currently were spending hundreds of billions of public and private money on evs while almost completely ignoring the other more sustainable solutions. The sustainability movement in the u.s. has very limited funds and public will, and to spend most of that on halfway solutions is short sighted. We need to focus all the resources we can into this because like you said, even with that it would take decades and were running out of time.

I do live in America and have for almost all my life. I have traveled all around this country and know that most of it is extremely car dependent. But my reaction to that is not the problem is so big, we should just do small incremental changes, it’s the problem is so big and were running out of time, we need to do a full 180 right now if I want future generations to not live in a hellscape.

All of this is also just about sustainability, cars are bad for a myriad of other reasons, like the comic says, along with discouraging exercise and exasperating income inequality, and anything that helps people realize how bad they are and denormalizes them is a good thing.

Not_mikey,

and possibly elsewhere, I’m not informed about the housing market all over the world

It depends on how hierarchical and stratified the society is. A lot of indigenous societies were very unhierarchical, maybe they had a chief and a council of elders but nothing like the deep hierarchy of Europe or East Asia. In those societies the land was either held in common by the tribe and families owned the home on the land or each family held it’s own plot of land and house. You only see renting in societies with deep entrenched hierarchies as you need some sort of power and justification to say the Lord on the hill owns the land, not the tenants or slaves actually living and working on it.

Generally the more hierarchical and stratified the society is the more people rent. Post-war America was an anomaly in this regard as it was the most egalitarian it had been since the industrial revolution.

Not_mikey,

It’s not as if the u.s. doesn’t have anti-bds laws. Also if the conservatives/Republicans were in power in the u.s. like in the u.k. they definitely would be trying something similar to this

Tlaib's defense of Palestinian chant prompts Jewish Democrats to call for retraction (www.detroitnews.com)

U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s defense of a phrase used by Palestinians in connection with the war between Israel and Hamas is drawing condemnation from critics, including two prominent fellow Democrats — Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel and U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin.

Not_mikey,

Sounds closer to “from sea to shining sea, let freedom ring” but no one calls America the beautiful a call for genocide.

Not_mikey,

Palestine doesn’t have any oil. There’s some offshore deposits in the Mediterranean but Israel already has full access to those.

Not_mikey,

If your paying 550k for a 1 bedroom you better be living in a walkable city.

Not_mikey,

Offering examples of the threat faced by the Jewish community, Mr Wray cited a man who was arrested in Texas last week for trying to build a bomb and posting about his support for killing Jews, and another man who was arrested in Illinois for killing a six-year-old Muslim boy.

Was him being arrested antisemitic?

Not saying antisemitism isn’t on the rise, the bomb story sounds horrific, but it seems like islamaphobia also is and the article seems to gloss over it completely until it tries to pass off an example of it as antisemitism.

Not_mikey,

What’s your definition of poor? Because by the 70s most Soviet citizens had access to modern necessities like food, water, electricity, housing and healthcare, things which some Americans still don’t have. Their standard of living was significantly higher than it was in the early 1900s and better than actual poor countries in the global south. They weren’t as rich as the western nations, but those countries had a 50-100 year headstart on development so that’s to be expected.

People will often compare the Soviet Union to the United States and point to how much less they have and blame it on communism, but that’s not a fair comparison. A fair comparison would be to a mexico that also had everything north of Mexico city bombed out in the 1940s. With that in mind the soviets don’t seem so poor.

Not_mikey,

Socialism isn’t necessarily about taking away economic freedom, there are versions of market socialism that may be considered economically free. Socialism is ,theoretically , the transition state between capitalism and communism, so capitalists might still exist in a socialist state, but not a communist state where they are completely abolished. Socialism therefore is about disempowering capitalists and empowering workers until one day the workers hold all the power and cast off the capitalist. This can be done in many ways from a revolution to sieze the means of production to a progressive tax that takes away capitalist wealth.

Most modern socialists in the west realize without a large scale crisis the likes of the great depression, the people won’t support a revolution. The best they can do is to disempower the capitalists with tactics allowed in the current system. These tactics, trade unionism, welfare states, progressive taxes, nationalization of industries are all in heavy use in the Nordic countries, and imo contribute significantly to their happiness.

Socialism is measured by the power of the workers, not the control of the market.

Not_mikey,

Nordic countries are socialist, unless you have a very narrow view of socialism in that it’s basically a synonym for communism. Socialism is the transition state between capitalism and communism, and therefore exists on a large spectrum. On one end of the spectrum is pure capitalism where capitalists have complete control and autonomy over production, and on the other end is pure communism where workers have complete control over production. Socialism stands ambiguously on the communist end of the spectrum, but theirs a large gray area. Government policies and institutions like progressive taxes, trade unions, welfare states, regulations and nationalized industries serve to empower workers and move the system towards the communist side of the spectrum into the socialist territory.

Not_mikey,

Non-midwesterners: surprised

Midwesterners who’ve had a fear of bull sharks since their friend told them about them when they were 5: see I knew it could happen

Not_mikey,

It wasn’t about breaking, it was about people pushing it past its speed/torque limit. Previously if you were getting close to the limit it would push the board back to tell you to slow down, because if you kept leaning forward the board wouldn’t have enough power to self balance you back and you could fall over the board. A couple people died pushing past this limit so they added a buzz that will happen when you do to really make it clear, stop you fucking idiot or your gonna die.

I’ve had the update for a couple weeks now and haven’t felt the buzz yet because I never try to go fast on it cause I value my life, haven’t even gotten pushback in a long time.

Not_mikey,

This is why we wear a neck guard kids, the pro leagues really need to start mandating them.

Not_mikey,

If you use them within their limits and wear a helmet there sort of fine , like a motorcycle. The recall was because people were pushing them past there limits , which can cause problems. They’re like the motorcycles going 90 on the freeway weaving through traffic, in which case the Darwin award is well deserved.

Not_mikey,

That’s only if you are crossing through a roundabout, which I’ve never seen for pedestrians. Pedestrians have to walk around the roundabout as well, crossing the two way streets that leads up to it and still having to look both ways for cars leaving and entering the roundabout. This is usually helped by a median but a regular intersection can have a median as well to accomplish the same thing. These medians will also usually create a slip though like the author says in the video, which allows cars to take right turns at speed, if the roundabout is empty, without checking for the crosswalk they’re turning into.

Not_mikey,

If these need to be taken off the streets then all cars need to be, which I’m not totally opposed to. These ones have been on the streets in SF for a while and Im more afraid of human drivers then these, they are very cautious and more often then not they’ll err on the side of just stopping. That’s what most of the incidents have been, it just stopping and holding up traffic. Even in this scenario it was a human who did the actual hit and run. I’ve been in them a couple times now and feel safer in them then an Uber most times, they never try and blow through a yellow light cause they want to get to their next ride, they wont even speed.

These also aren’t comparable to Tesla auto pilot. They have way more sensors while Tesla seems to be focused purely on cameras. Teslas are also trying to make a general solution for the whole country whereas these were specifically trained and work in SF. There’s a reason they got approved for full self driving in the city while Tesla hasn’t even applied yet.

Not_mikey,

The question isn’t whether they’re infallible, just whether they’re less fallible then humans, which is a far lower bar when it comes to driving.

Not_mikey,

Yeah but you don’t have to look far to see humans doing way worse with cars. Even in this case the most reckless, irresponsible actor wasn’t the AV, or the company but the person who did the initial hit and run in the first place.

Ideally we’d get all cars off the streets, there use is dangerous in and of itself. But after being around these things for 3 years now I’d take them over the human drivers who I repeatedly see speeding through intersections.

Not_mikey,

Your comparing two very different systems. That’s like going to a gas station grabbing some sushi that gets you sick then saying all sushi is dangerous. Teslas have less sensors then the cruise cars and aren’t trained on a contained specific dataset (just San Francisco) like cruise cars have been for over 2 years. For these reasons they are at least even with humans if not safer already and have been approved for self driving in the city while Teslas are far off from even applying.

Not_mikey,

Still better than the hit and run driver who caused all this and hasn’t reported anything.

Not_mikey,

That article was written over a year ago and since then a lot has changed. Both waymo and cruise have now been approved for av taxis in San Francisco. This decision seems to not have been motivated by hype but a good track record with less incidents then a human driver. Cruise claims it’s greater than 50% better then a comparable human driver and while that may be just their own flawed study this article also agrees that they’re about even if not better then human drivers.

You’ll probably have to wait a while to buy one though as these are decked out with a larger assortment of sensors compared to a Tesla and probably cost a couple hundred thousand all said and done. They are also specifically trained on the surface streets of San Francisco, so they probably won’t be able to take you on your commute any time soon. Hell id give it another 5 years before their even able to take you to the airport 10 miles south of the city since it would have to get on the freeway. But in this relatively limited problem space they do quite well.

Not_mikey,

The second one relies on it for the number of incidents, which cruise is required to report to the police and in my opinion can be taken as fact. You can try to hide who was at fault for the incident, like they’re doing in the original story, but it’s very unlikely you’ll get away with hiding that an incident happened. If cruise doesn’t report it then the driver or pedestrian that got hit sure as shit will, and they’ve got their branding all over it so they know who to report to. If they report it and cruise gets caught trying to cover it up, they’ll be in deep shit, enough to not make it worth trying to do so. They just lost their license for omitting some footage after a report, imagine what would’ve happened if they didn’t report at all.

Not_mikey,

Your thinking too long term, gotta think how will this effect this quarters earnings?

Not_mikey,

If you can’t actually play it with the new graphics what’s it’s advantage over original cities skylines?

Not_mikey,

The worst are podcast ads. It’s like 30% “you can win $100 on a $10 bet with promo code xyz” and 70% disclaimers and gambling addiction hotline numbers.

Not_mikey,

Maybe on a purely east west dichotomy, but if we’re using the typical 4 regions of the u.s. : Northeast, south, Midwest and west, then that is not right.

Not_mikey,

roaming the streets and causing havoc

What is havoc to you? I live in San Francisco and the homeless and addicts don’t really bother people outside of them existing , which does seem to bother a lot of people. They do shoplift and car break ins are pretty common but it’s not like they’re running around brandishing knives. Most of them are opiate addicts, and you aren’t aggressive or chaotic on heroine.

I agree we need more mental health and addiction treatment but you can’t force people into it. If someone is in pain and don’t see a reason to live outside of drugs, locking them up won’t fix that. Either you keep them there forever or they’ll relapse as soon as they get out. We need to address the societal issues causing this instead of the band aid solution of detainment.

Not_mikey,

Maybe not capitalism in name but some vague idea of “the system”. The system that raised rents and lowered their wages and forced them into homelessness, and continually punishes them for being so. Addiction and other anti-social behaviors could be an act of rebellion against the pressures of this system. Not all of those pressures are capitalistic, some are just basic requirements for any society, but a large chunk of them are.

Not_mikey,

This is from a year ago, did you have this saved?

It’s a city of 10 million people , crazy fucked up shit is bound to happen, homeless people or not. Here in SF a tech CEO stabbed another CEO multiple times and left them in the streets, you don’t see us trying to detain CEOs.

Not_mikey,

We could argue anecdotes and experiences back and forth and get nowhere, or we could look at the data. According to the LAPD 8% of crimes involved homeless people. This includes cases where either the victim or the suspect is homeless. The article also states that they are more likely the victim then the perpetrator so we can cut that down to ~3% are the suspects of crime. Also considering that homeless are often falsely accused or scapegoated that is still probably a high guess for actual perpetrators.

That’s ~3% of crime, considering your also in general not likely to be a victim of crime the odds you are a victim of a crime committed by a homeless person is very low. Not 0 so you’ll get lurid stories like the one you posted on the local news, but still low.

The tactic of citing the most horrific news story about an individual in a group of people has long been used to demonize people of color. Some news agencies realize they can’t do this anymore so they’re shifting to a new marginalized group that just so happens to be composed of mostly people of color.

Not_mikey,

You can use it on yourself to see what pictures are out there of you, and get notified if something new is posted that you may not know about without your consent. Don’t see many legitimate reasons to use it on other people, but if it had some sort of identity verification so that only you could look up yourself I think it could be very useful.

Not_mikey,

In that scenario electric or hydrogen cars would probably be better for global food supplies. Especially in a world of increasing food scarcity due to climate change, having poor people starve while rich people turn food into fuel for their cars doesn’t seem fair. You can put solar panels or wind turbines on barren land and not take up valuable arable land.

It’d be better then releasing more carbon and further exasperating the problems, but I think there are better solutions.

Not_mikey, (edited )

I think their might be a naming issue here. I was going by the wikipedia article for biodiesel which says it’s made directly from crops and it’s

Unlike the vegetable and waste oils used to fuel converted diesel engines

Which seems like what your talking about. It doesn’t seem to point to a name for that though, maybe just biofuel. It does say some biodiesel is made from waste oil but also that:

the available supply is drastically less than the amount of petroleum-based fuel that is burned for transportation and home heating in the world, this local solution could not scale to the current rate of consumption.

And that about half of current U.S production is from virgin oil feedstock. 10% of all grain is already used for biofuel, and that’s just to cover the bit of ethanol used for petrol, if we transitioned even a fraction of cars to full biofuel that number would go up by a lot.

There’s also still an opportunity cost with even the waste oil. If we have the capacity to collect and refine waste oils into fuel, then we can probably also just recycle it and refine it back to food standards.

Not_mikey,

Is this like the heart points in the Google fit app?

Not_mikey,

Deep down I don’t think he wanted it anymore. Trying to wrangle this shitshow of a party for 8 months has probably taken a decade off his life.

Every single Onewheel is being recalled after four deaths (www.theverge.com)

Future Motion, the maker of the Onewheel electric skateboard, is recalling every one of them, including 300,000 Onewheel self-balancing vehicles in the US. Alongside the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), the company now seeks to remedy the products after four known death cases — three without a helmet — between...

Not_mikey,

Depends, as a toy, yes, as a means of transportation, not really. I live in a dense city so it’s my main means of transport, cheaper than a car, and even bikes once you consider how often they get stolen, at least in my city. With a one wheel you can just carry it inside and not have to worry about some guy taking it.

Not worth my life though, hopefully this update fixes things.

Not_mikey,

They didn’t have the ability for haptic feedback at the beginning, they had to create it. There’s no haptic motor in the board, they have to use the main motor to make vibrations without effecting the ride or balance. Should they have looked into it at the beginning, yes, is it as irresponsible as not turning on a system that already exists, no.

Not_mikey,

Has anyone got the update and know the version number? Can’t seem to find it and don’t know if mines updated. I’m on version gemini 5076.

Not_mikey,

The answer to this is also the answer to where they were created, San Francisco. They’re perfect there because:

  1. Cars are a hassle to deal with for traffic and parking. It’s dense enough and public transit is good enough that you only really need to walk/ride the last half mile.
  2. The hills are no joke, I’m pretty in shape and even I have to walk a bike up most of the hills. This can be helped by an electric bike but that brings us to
  3. Bikes get stolen fairly often. Especially if you have an ebike this will cost a lot in the long run. With a one wheel you can just carry it in the storeand not have to worry.

For most other American cities that are less dense, more flat and have less thefts they start to make less sense.

Not_mikey,

Yeah, they are definitely safer and easier to ride. It’s just what do you do when you get to the destination? For a one wheel or skateboard you can just bring it inside the store and carry it around, or stash it under the table at a restaurant or the seat on a bus/train. Sometimes I’ll even hide it in some bushes at the park since it’s so small and unnoticeable. For a scooter they usually won’t let you bring it inside a store or onto a bus/train, and I don’t trust locking it up outside since I’m in a city with a lot of bike theft. If that’s less of a problem then a scooter might be the way to go.

Not_mikey, (edited )

Would you rather that source be providing clean drugs and the money going towards drug education and addiction prevention programs, or filled with God knows what and the money going towards guns for a gang or cartel.

The demand is and will always be there. Better the supply come from an organ we can regulate then a crime syndicate.

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