nah.

None of the busybodies trying to sabotage the local transit system seems to want to recognize the twelve cars behind the bus as the problem, of course.

I feel like I perhaps know who may be driving those cars

The abhorrently large firetrucks which increase the response times before they can get out to fires, because things are more spread out. The abhorrently large firetrucks which siphon away more and more funding, compared to smaller firetrucks, and require more manpower to operate, meaning each fire station individually eats up more funding per unit, meaning we can have less fire stations, further decreasing response times.

An increase in response times which increases the size of fires, requiring more and more abhorrently large firetrucks. The abhorrently large firetrucks which cannot respond quickly enough to wildfires and so will allow them to grow more rapidly out of control, perpetuating more wildfire based ecology, more plants which require fire to grow and will encourage further fire. The abhorrently large firetrucks which are not as cute as small firetrucks.

Those firetrucks? Those are the ones we have to build bigger roads for? some people do legitimately believe this shit, too, hoo lee, kill me

I mean I dunno, even if you switch to some sort of li-on AAs (something which I think would also be good for other reasons, like making recycling potentially easier, being able to swap batteries between devices, making batteries slightly cheaper), I dunno how many people are gonna want to slice open their own batteries and run tests on what comprises them. Since the half-life on any given set of batteries is probably in the range of multiple years, or at least several months, you’d probably be able to set up an attack before any government agency or private battery replacement or analysis would start getting off the ground to sus out what you’re doing.

I think the only reason this might be harder with replaceable batteries, would be that the potential for batteries to get swapped out of devices means that you’re less certain to see any kind of explosion from a given device that you’ve modified, and you’re less certain to hit the particular targets that you want, but it doesn’t seem like either of those would really be a big problem for whoever would want to do this sort of terrorism in the first place, so I’m not sure that’s a major deterrent.

Doesn’t Lyft work sorta like that?

I’ve only ever heard of lyft being a normal taxi service where people just use their own cars they already own. Also, I dunno where you’re getting your numbers for the calculation you’re doing, that would probably be something good to include. You could say the same for everything I write, I guess, but none of my criticisms much have to do with the numbers, except for this: I dunno what “smaller european cars” you’re using. Most cars nowadays are like, 2 tons or so at the least, probably more, and you could maybe get one ton of human body weight, at the most, if you had several 250 pound chucks riding around in one car, which I don’t really imagine to be the case normally at all.

There’s also an efficiency created by the “inefficient” route planning of the bus. By having something that travels in a loop, rather than having every individual travel to every individual point, we’re trading some amount of efficiency in terms of total time spent by everyone (theoretically, but this time is probably eaten up by increased amounts of car traffic in reality), and we’re trading that for a slight increase in the amount of foot traffic that people are collectively engaging in, which is probably a good thing. So that’s a total decrease in curb weight as a factor of total travel time, which is a decrease in road maintenance.

You’re also probably looking at a massive decrease in mechanical maintenance for buses compared to cars, using one big engine, set of brakes, A/C systems, etc, rather than like 15-20 smaller non-standardized sets, and maintenance costs for the specific roads you’re traveling on via bus means you can engineer in less maintenance over time compared to a more spread out system.

Density is also a pretty big consideration, because real estate downtown, i.e. the location most people are going to want to go, is at a high premium, both for people and for the city/state’s tax base. High density has the capacity to provide a sustainable tax base for the cost of providing utilities and maintenance by the city… Unless you park the series of autonomous cars all in some huge superstructure outside of town, and then basically just merge them straight into the highway, where you’d still have to overbuild and deal with a massive amount of car infrastructure (more than just the space you’d save on all this parking, since you could just have a couple pickup and dropoff spaces, if that, compared to all this other parking taken up downtown). I can’t really see it working out, and even at the normal densities we’d be looking at, I’d struggle to come up with a way by which it’s more efficient overall.

There’s also other types of buses, if we’re just talking about emissions efficiency, or energy efficiency. Obviously an overhead electrified bus is probably the most desirable, just behind a tram or a streetcar or whatever. Then you have the weird stupid hybrid battery overhead-electrified buses that I hate, and then probably all your natural gas buses and diesel buses and whatnot, and then your pure battery buses.

If we’re talking about autonomous vehicles, then we’re kind of also sidestepping all these questions about like, the scalability of the AI for this, and the computing power we’d have to use on that, constantly. We’d have to deal with the traveling mailman problem on a near constant basis, something which public transport can mostly sidestep by assuming passengers will come to it, and that public transit will be of a high enough density to create desirable locations simply by stopping there. We have all the pedestrian and cyclist traffic conflicts which we’d encounter, or else have to segregate from these cars entirely (something normal traffic already struggles to do adequately). And if we’re segregating the traffic entirely with a large amount of infrastructure, which definitely makes this much more achievable and easier, if still not easy, I think it makes more sense from a top down maintenance perspective to just go for trams or streetcars, or subways, or something like that.

I think the only real way in which I can cook up a reason this might be done, is because it’s outsourcing costs onto the public, and onto the state. Road maintenance can be done by the city, or state. Probably, this would mean that the autonomous vehicles would not be segregated, which means it’s less of a good idea, which I believe, is the primary reason it hasn’t been done. Then, the taxi service could basically make a bunch of money on their highly necessary transportation, which they have created a large need for, simply by existing and demanding a large amount of infrastructure by existing.

Use bicycles, e-bikes, and walking for individual pedestrian point to point travel. Fuck all the bullshit excuses people give about how, oh no it’s too hot out, too rainy, too hilly, what do I do with this cargo that’s not large or consistently arriving or departing enough to be loaded by a freight train, or by a professional truck, but isn’t so small that I can carry it, what do I do with all my kids, etc… Use cars sparingly enough to fill the very minor amount of gaps that can’t be bridged by bikes, cycling, and public transit, as a method of last resort. Mostly for people that would maybe need to live out in the boonies, like park rangers, maybe. Actual farms, not the stupid rich people playtime “ranches”, and industrial locations, they usually have a large enough cargo haul to justify a small freight train, or a large truck taking a small route to a freight yard.

I just mean that I don’t think they were a good faith interlocutor. Probably if I were to put a specific explanation on it, I’d say that they are probably tired of having the same argument over and over again and being corrected repetitively, to the point where they’re not genuinely engaging anymore, I’ve seen that a lot. Especially with how quickly they backed out but also still left a comment. I dunno if that level of bad faith would be considered trolling in the strictest sense, but I would probably still classify it as such.

I mean arguably we could’ve done all of that with nasa if nasa had received a similar level of funding to SpaceX, but that’s kind of getting into alt-history.

Depends on the writer. You get a superman DC writer, homelander probably gets treated like every other fascist superman beats up. If it’s a “the boys” writer, homelander probably uses kryptonite to rip superman in half in a graphic full-page spread or some shit. You’re also gonna be dealing with, are we dropping superman into the relatively hopeless universe of the boys, are we dropping homelander into the DC universe, where he’ll probably be right st home with like 30 different characters almost exactly like him, will we come up with some portal stuff, what’s going on there

So I dunno, depends on the writer. Ke personally I’d prefer if superman won, cause it’s more hopeful and less garth ennis-y.

I believe they are what is known as a “low effort troll”

I mean we do have a pretty good indication of a quite large impending factor which may cause a lot of them to collapse in the coming years, and which could collectively be attributed to them pretty well, especially within the last 50 years.

Do you want to give me any real material or are we done here? You have class in like two hours dude you’re gonna be late

MLK did advocate for pacifism for all but the last few months of his life

I mean this is sort of reframed with the context that he was assassinated for making that turn away from pacifism. I’m not saying that it was the wrong decision even given the hindsight we have now, but it does recontextualize it.

So, people can make the whole like, oh, this is a different context, kyle is joking, whatever whatever, right, and that’s both true and a fine argument to make. But I also think when we make this like, freedom as a principle argument, right, free speech as a principle, argument, it isn’t necessarily hypocritical.

We’re just not prioritizing freedom, prioritizing free speech, as the highest possible value that trumps all other values. I think kind of by necessity, it can’t be. The idea of free speech is logically incoherent if you take it to the extreme, because you could just define speech as being anything. Harmful acts, smearing poop on the bathroom walls, whatever. So you have to put a limit on it, and then those external values are going to be what places the limit on it.

Those external values of “I agree with kyle gass” vs “I agree with dave chapelle”. Agreeing with either argument, beyond that, thinking either argument, had in the public sphere, is worthwhile, that’s what has to define the limits of speech and freedom and what has to drive the outlook on it. I might oppose the poop swastika in the rec center bathroom, but I might think the ACAB poop smear in the nazi bar bathroom is maybe okay, even if it’s a little misguided or kind of just stupid or whatever.

There has to be a core value there. It’s not necessarily hypocritical to believe that political violence can be called for, or justified against your foes necessarily, and then think that the same thing shouldn’t be done to you on the nature of your ideology strictly being better. If my foes are basically just evil, straight up, yeah, probably at the very least stop them from like, having undue economic influence, which depending on who you ask, is gonna be some form of economic violence by nature of stripping away their agency or property or whatever. That doesn’t necessarily strike me as hypocritical, or not believing in equal rights or anything, it just strikes me as pragmatic.

Look up the definitions of both of those words and then get back to me.

Rapport means like, a reputation between two people. report is a word that can have a bunch of different meanings, one of them, as a noun, listed third on google’s listed definitions, because I did look it up because I thought I might be wrong when you pointed this out, is “a sudden loud noise of or like an explosion or gunfire.”. Me personally, I kind of thought and still perhaps think that it stems from the idea that, you are hearing the report of the gunshot itself, when you hear the sound. Sort of like how thunder is a way to describe the sound of lightning rather than lightning itself. And it’s a “report” because it tells you about the thing from which it originated based on the nature of the sound.

So, I dunno, fuck off before you decide to start questioning me on the basis of my misspellings rather than on the basis of my proposed information. Sure, I’m an armchair guy making armchair statements, that’s everyone on basically any website on the internet. Go ask for credentials from anyone else making statements about this shit, you probably won’t get any. Did you attempt to dispute any of the shit I actually said? Nope, instead you decided to question my ability to distinguish one word from another. Maybe I was using text to speech, maybe I’m ESL, maybe I’m just stupid, who knows, but apparently you were just as easily able to understand what I said so I guess it doesn’t really matter in the end, huh? Go ad hominem yourself in the mirror, you costco ball ass removed aaaaand post

Also, why can’t you just take your friend, friend’s guns, in your car, to the range, store them there? is there any real problem with that, or any real reason why you specifically need to have the guns rather than the range, which might be a better long term storage solution? I’m not opposed to your solution, I think it’s workable, I think it has potential to, maybe not get passed federally since the gun lobby is insanely powerful, but maybe work on a state-by-state basis, right, and build up from there. But if you do have an actual counterargument for what the guy’s saying, then you should give it instead of just kind of deflecting, because right now he does seem to have basically refuted all of the hypotheticals you were able to give about why requiring some kind of record every time a gun is transferred is a bad idea, and why universal background checks and the state as an active third party rather than a retroactive third party might be a good idea.

The only counterargument I can really see against it is maybe that it would result in state overreach or people being prevented from having access to guns if we start to see disproportionate enforcement of crimes and certain crimes being reclassified as felonies or something, but that’s also a problem with the current system that wouldn’t really get solved by your proposal at all, so yeah, I dunno.

Ayaaa, we had a conversation a while ago about this same topic. I do think you are still correct in your proposal to make NICS public, but I do also think that the other guy is perhaps partially right. I think such a law would probably be well-accompanied by requirements to own a gun safe (which might be seen as increasing the cost of ownership and thus discriminating and yadda yadda yadda shit I don’t care about), and to keep guns in said gun safe when perhaps they’re not being kept immediately on your person barring extraneous circumstances. I can’t quite recall, but I do believe we also talked about that last time, that there was a kind of need for common sense pertaining to the handling of guns, more than there is, considering how many guns are overwhelmingly passed into illegal uses through relatively simple theft.

I’m also not sure I agree that a violation of the background check, being a fine, is going to have much of an effect. If the fine is cheap enough, that might well enough be just free license to pass guns into an illegal domain and then pay the fine and go about your day. It may increase the costs of illegal firearms well enough which might have knock-on effects in decreasing illegal access to and usage of guns, and what have you, but I think it would probably require a more severe punishment than a fine a la a traffic ticket.

But then, maybe if that’s the metaphor we’re using, then along the lines of traffic tickets, maybe we should just be, uhh, designing the roads differently, whatever that equivalent might look like for guns, but I think that might be stretching the metaphor a little too much.

I mean I think I’d say it was more the result of poor preparation than anything. I think most places are saying he had like, 3 shots or somewhere around there, and apparently his rifle had no optic on it at all, which is kind of an insane idea at that distance. Which I think also maybe lends credence to the idea that this was just some impulse decision rather than a prepared kind of thing. I don’t think it’s that hard of a shot to make in general, even given the single opportunity that you’re going to be working with, I’ve hit soda cans with .22s at similar ranges. You barely have to take into account windage or holdover and I haven’t seen any evidence of heavy wind on the day of, really.

So, I dunno, I think it’s probably just an idiot kid killing himself in like, some elaborate suicide by cop or something. or just a dumb groyper, jury’s still out.

I think it’s probably that your anecdote and experience is kind of out of left field considering this guy was only dealing with a couple coyotes, and honestly you probably don’t even need a gun in that circumstance, and I don’t think you’d much need anything larger than pistol-caliber.

Hmm, I don’t understand the downvotes but okay lmao I’m sorry that the AR platform is actually fine in close quarters?

As far as I understand it, the main problem people have with it, which they also have with pretty much every gun larger than a foot or so, so most guns, is that you can’t really cross a threshold horizontally. About the only thing that could qualify against that maybe is like, a pistol or one of those shotguns with a bird’s head grip, or like, some smaller pdw or something. I also dunno how much of a problem that is, of, oh it’s gonna snag on something, or whatever, right, I guess it’s just the idea it’s going to present a higher snag risk or something when turning around, or, when getting up to a ready position? I dunno I’m not a gun nut.

I think it probably also isn’t helped by the increasing consumerist trend to load up their guns with more and more extraneous shit and go for longer and longer rifles on their AR platforms to try and increase accuracy on the range, which means they tend to conceptualize of them as being unsuitable for close quarters despite that kind of being the idea of an intermediate cartridge and all that. It also doesn’t really help to cite our military engagements with it considering over the last like 3 decades of the rifle’s service we’ve mostly only fought like, random middle eastern terrorist organizations that don’t have a great reputation for good training or good equipment or anything like that. You could maybe look at uses of the rifle by other organizations like the IRA or whatever, but I don’t think they had any close quarters engagements.

we’ll add that one to the “impulse killing with a truck gun” theory, then

I don’t know why we’re still having this conversation because people made ironic jokes about trump being in the wwe and knowing how to blade. If you listen to the extremely peaked out audio, you can hear the report of the gunshots, which would not be possible with blanks. They have a different sound signature, different sound profile. You can likewise hear the difference in caliber and therefore sound profile when the secret service fires back. This guy fully shot in the direction of the president. There’s not really any plausible way this was fake.