SwingingTheLamp

I dunno, when was the last time Japan dismembered a reporter at one of its consulates?

Same! Also a good opportunity to check out different Threadiverse clients.

In my mind, I can’t checkout, because it’s a noun or an adjective. I always do verbs, so I check out.

I’ve settled on [REDACTED]. Everybody knows who I’m talking about, because everybody knows that they redacted him from the Epstein files.

On climate change, I gotta disagree. We have two major drivers of climate change: Greenhouse gas emissions, and land-use changes. The land-use changes go way back. We’re in the geological epoch called the Anthropocene, one in which humanity is the dominant force in shaping the biosphere. There’s some debate about it, but some scientists place the beginning of the Anthropocene as much as 15,000 years ago, driven by habitat destruction and resource extraction to support growing human populations. It takes a lot of natural resources to support each human to the standard to which we’ve become accustomed, and even the poor people in Western countries live a lifestyle that the Earth cannot sustain. It’s not just billionaires, it’s all of us.

Similarly with fossil fuels. We know that a handful of mega-corporations produce the fossil fuels responsible for the majority of greenhouse gas releases, but they’re not the ones releasing the gases. We can’t just abolish them and expect nothing to change about our daily lives. We’ve reached a point at which even working class people in the United States can order up a taxi for their beef burrito.

Instead, we can say that this wanton shredding of our natural inheritance enables flows of wealth that allow unscrupulous hands to skim criminal quantities off the top for their hoards. Even if we depose them, though, we’d still have the climate change problem to tackle.

I took the Amtrak Empire Builder to Glacier National Park, which was supposed to arrive around six o’clock in the evening. The train was already late to Columbus, where I got on, which was not a good sign given the proximity to Chicago. Then, the train had to dramatically decrease speed across North Dakota (85MPH down to 60MPH, IIRC), because record-high temperatures in July were causing the rails to expand too much, making them uneven. I got to the station at the park 8 hours late.

It was way too late to find accommodations. Luckily, I had my camping gear, so I just camped on a bench at the station until morning.

Seriously, though, Trix ads were a great example of psychological manipulation. They don’t try to convince you that Trix is desirable—because of course everybody wants Trix—instead they frame the question: Does the rabbit get any? It was an example of the Thinking Past The Sale technique.

But, as the article says, the idea is not to mimic the form of Paris as it is, but to take lessons from the incredible, ongoing transformation into a bike-friendly city.

A lot of people park their cars on the “bicycle boulevard” that I live on, in order to visit businesses on the street a block over. Then they get out wearing all black and cross the street, and they’re very-nearly invisible. I think we should have a law that drivers must wear hi-viz at all times, in case they need to get out of their cars.

(And helmets. Drivers should wear helmets. Head injuries from car crashes are still a serious problem.)

Is this the same Ireland where a TD couldn’t get into Dublin to propose a congestion-mitigation policy to the Dáil Éireann because he was stuck in a traffic jam for THREE AND A HALF HOURS? But, yeah, go ahead, discourage bicycling with punitive laws. What could go wrong?

Since it’s a heavy rail project with one stop, and it’s L.A., I would expect a giant parking lot at the station on the San Fernando side.

That’s realistically the only fix for gerrymandering. It’s a powerful weapon, and I don’t foresee the two parties honoring any agreement not to use it.

While I agree with using government policy to allow flexible work schedules and more work-from-home, it’s not going to do jack-squat to help with traffic congestion. It’s not that hard to understand once you know why: The insane level of congestion on the M50 suppresses demand for travel on it; anybody who doesn’t need to be on the highway at that time either stays home, or goes at a different time. That means that there are many car trips that aren’t happening under current conditions.

The latent demand means that If flexible scheduling or WFH does free up room on the M50, it becomes attractive to drive on it again for those people who previously stayed away due to congestion. And they will, as long as driving on the M50 provides them some marginal benefit. It won’t be until the congestion reaches a level that caused them to stay off the motorway in the first place that they’ll stay off the motorway again.

So, uh, crazy suggestion, I know, but unless the cars themselves have some business in Dublin, maybe provide a fast, convenient way for people to get in and out of the city? It’d be way more efficient, because gosh do cars take up a lot of space.

There’s no shortage of unlikable cunts in the GQP. I have this pet theory that he was chosen specifically because of his fake name. Short, punchy, strong: Vance. Just like Pence.

Seriously, the fascists are all about projecting an image of strength and power.

Turns out that the movie Don’t Look Up may have been intended to satirize our response to climate change, but the portrayal of the media response is evergreen.

I don’t think that those people waiting in line to go swimming wanted to be grabbed.

Look up “Humbert College LRT Station” on Google Maps, and you can see it for yourself. Unfortunately, the Street View imagery is out-of-date, and shows the station under construction, but the aerial view shows that this door opens onto literally just a 4- or 7-lane highway/stroad a few meters away. No bus stops, and no passenger loading zones. There’s at least a sidewalk.

Where did I imply it’s bad?

Shouldn’t official government websites be only concerned about the people actually employed at them and decision makers?

based on their collective actions for centuries, don’t deserve it.

Found the war criminal.

The War Prayer, a prose poem by Mark Twain.