So I have a theory that the carrying capacity of a car has nothing to do with the size of the car and everything to do with how much the owner cares about the car and the comfort tolerance of the passengers. Out of all the loads I’ve observed carried with a car(pickups count as cars but not vans or trailers) the biggest are always in a small beat-up old car full of tolerant and poor young people. I can’t think of a time when I’ve tried loading a car and stopped because the car is too small, it’s always because the owner objects.

Because US “cities” are sparsely populated suburban wastelands that take hours to drive across. The model of exclusively cars and suburbs just doesn’t scale.

Private cars in general are not useless, but private cars in the center of cities should be useless if the city is designed well. The space-transportation trade off does not make sense.

Yes, of course delivery trucks need access to cities, some goods are not practical to move by cargo bike. As do emergency services and buses. Nobody disagrees with this. The problem in many cities is that streets are clogged with useless private cars. So the obvious solution is to ban private cars.

In what scenario would you bring photo albums when evacuating? If it’s non-serious then you can come back, it’s serious then you should have higher priorities.

No, the less than 20% of people who are forced to use a car sometimes are irrelevant to this discussion.

Stroads suck for driving especially. You are going far too fast and have to be constantly paying attention to everything because a hazard might appear at any moment. It’s exhausting.

Across most high-income countries – across Western Europe, the Americas, Australia, Japan, and the Middle East – more than 80% of the population lives in urban areas.

Yes, even for them, the information they can get through a phone is lifesaving. They can learn how to build water supply and sanitation systems and shelter. They can learn how to farm and forage for food. They can find the best way to cross international borders and become a refugee. And so on, they can improve every aspect of their lives. Information is power, and with a smartphone they have access to the entire world, rather than just word of mouth knowledge in their local community.

Obviously, places without any form of electricity are screwed, but satellite internet is rapidly becoming cheaper and more accessible so soon they won’t even need cell coverage.

2. Those in extreme poverty need access to more important things than access to these gadgets.

We’re going down a sidetrack here but this is just false. A smartphone these days is a ticket to many things required to live. Applying for jobs, applying for government services, buying essential items cheaply, cheap/free education.

2FA is entirely offline. So it’s not really the same service and there’s nothing to breach.

Don’t buy a Windows key. If Windows was installed initially it should remember your hardware and activate. If it doesn’t, there’s numerous ways to pirate Windows.

Why would you hand your browsing data to the VPN company? It’s just moving the problem.

The vast majority of Australians live in a densely populated strip on the east coast. It should have high speed rail from Melbourne to Brisbane decades ago.

Traditional Australian utes were just passenger cars with the back chopped off. So they had the same footprint as passenger cars with the same safe front style and efficient practical design. Then the American pickup trucks arrived, stole the term “ute”, and now proper utes are extremely rare.

The implication that before modern religions there were no preachers or prophets has got to be wrong. People making up nonsense and other people believing it is as old as people.

Unlike Google Maps, OSM is just as useful if you don’t drive. I love it for walking and cycling, it’s got all the little paths, categorized correctly.

Third party servers aren’t always enough. Microsoft managed to ruin 3rd party Minecraft servers.

You’re the person that suggested removing a bus lane to “reduce traffic”. And now you’re suggesting that because the buses suck we should make the buses even worse. Something about that cause seems a little… dumb.

Why would smaller mean less collisions?

Easier to dodge. Less physical area to hit.

I’m not arguing that people shouldn’t wear hi-viz, lights, ect. Of course they should. But we need to stop blaming cyclists when cars are the thing actually causing the harm. I’m trying to find a link to statistics on numbers of deadly crashes not involving a car, I recall seeing it somewhere and it was less than 1%.