Imagine everything being in walking distance and clean too. China needs to be nuked.
I used to sit in the backseat of my parents car as we drove downtown, and I looked out the window and pitied all the people walking. I felt lucky to have a car, and felt bad they had to walk.
Now I'm older and moved to South East Asia, and I walk and take public transportation all around. I see people in cars and I pity them, as walking these narrow roads is faster than driving, and they miss the whole experience.
I don't want to go back to being in a car. I like being able to relax on my phone and take the subway - no need to worry about DUIs, insurance, gas, repairs, or parking.
Anyways, that's my little story. Cars suck, but it took going somewhere better to realize that. Hope you can all relate!
after driving as little as possible for a while, when I get back in a car, all the close calls get to me way more than they ever did before. Every time I get in one of those things in the city, there's guaranteed to be some dipshit not paying attention almost causing an accident that could injure me, cost me hundreds or thousands of dollars, etc. Sometimes I'm the dipshit, despite my best efforts.
Cars suck, and they take a toll you don't even really feel until you've tried living without one for a while
I feel this. For some reason lately I'm the only one who consistently ends up driving folks into different sporting events which happen to be in cities and denser areas. I would love to use the train more but everyone complains you have to walk a little bit to the stadiums and whatnot.
I've been seeing so much crazy stuff lately because of that I've started dreading driving anywhere.
assuming the stadiums aren't built out in east bumfuck nowhere like the one in phoenix that's like 10-15 miles from downtown and not even really served by buses let alone a train, they should suck it up
in my city one of the major stadiums has a train station built into it and the rest are more or less directly adjacent to rail transit (one you have to walk across the parking lot but its not bad at all). People still try to drive to everything. it's not the transit, its just carbrain
Yeah it's definitely massive carbrain. The dilemma is the stadiums we've gone to are probably ~10 - 15 minutes walk from the station. You can use a combination of busses and stuff to get right to the stadium but I always thought it was just easier to walk. Obviously when you can park right next to the stadium and then sit in traffic on the way out which is clearly amazing.
I hated game day traffic at my high school, no way in hell am I driving out of a professional stadium.
Cars delenda est
As someone who has had car culture forced upon me by being poor and unable to afford city life. I can confirm that cars are dystopian af.
My favorite part of living in America is that I get to sit in traffic for an hour and a half twice a day 5 days a week so that I can go to and from my job. It gives me time to catch up on my favorite Joe Rogan podcast and listen to fun bands like Kid Rock. I really enjoy the time it gives me to stare out over vast seas of cornfields as I sit in my lifted F-350 and hear the rumble of my big truck engine. If I didn't have this time, when would I enjoy my ride? When would I see the corn? When would I hear Joe Rogan's poignant thoughts on the world? I don't understand how anyone could live without those things to be honest.
Kid Rock: yeeeeow I flew on Epstein's Jet with Bill Clinton!
Imagine being a stuck in a commie 15min hellhole and having no reason to get on a highway and drive like a maniac and shoot other drivers for being in your way and slowing down your commute by 30 seconds.
I feel uniquely lucky to live in a spot where my work and all amenities are within 15min of cycling. Catch my ass absolutely beaming on my bike as I cruise leisurely down the path.
Every experience I have with drivers makes me more
Sidenote, I want to carry something for when cagers attempt to murder me, any thoughts? I was thinking a pouch with paintballs I could throw, idfk
The good ol' U-lock, mayhaps. I really wish the term cager was floating around a decade ago, because it really is apt for ablebodied folks that can't even fathom walking an extra block instead of hopping in your car for each individual errand. I used to get shit for biking to work by people driving half my distance on an expired license.
I should really upgrade my lock, now that you mention it.
The cager phenomenon is really sad. It truly is scary to be amongst the cars when when you aren't in one yourself - you are literally putting your life in their jacked up, oversized, smoking, texting, hands.
Not to mention the ones who intentionally fuck with you.
But then again, most will hop in the Tahoe (my sworn enemy) even when there's a perfectly good path for them to take to the spot 1km away
Sidenote, I want to carry something for when cagers attempt to murder me, any thoughts? I was thinking a pouch with paintballs I could throw, idfk
I’ve been thinking about ways to have some recourse for aggro cagers. I feel like there are two options, carry something obvious that encourages them to leave you alone, or carry something that wouldn’t trigger a violent reaction. Smashing a car with my u-lock would feel amazing, but that’s asking for a fight that I’m not really interested in.
I’ve been thinking about carrying stickers to slap on cars, most people won’t notice till I’m long gone, and it’s not a huge deal to remove. And I’m petty enough to feel good about knowing I’ve slightly inconvenienced them.
I literally think about this every day. How can I inconvenience these shit heads who block the sidewalk, nearly murder me, etc. All I wanna do is get home safe ffs.
I was thinking some sort of paintball delivery device would do nice (not shaped like a gun I don't want to die), or maybe something that would subtly wack their car as I drive by? I'm not sure if I wanna get within sticker applicating reach
Well there are many other democratic countries like that, Japan is one that jumps to mind. I'd love to live in Japan if their work culture wasn't so horrible. I think Chinas work culture is just as bad or worse though.
Is it just as bad? or is it worse? You gotta pick one and provide evidence, otherwise it's just vibes based.
I don't really have a point. I just wanted to interact here because y'all still confuse me. Evidence of what?
What are you confused about? (This is in good faith)
We're just kind of normal communists with an insular sarcastic meme culture
I'm confused because I disagree with you guys on a lot, and I don't understand how you've come to believe in what you believe. Also you guys use a lot of slang I don't understand lol.
So anyway I've just been commenting on hexbear posts occasionally to interact
Lots of use come from disaffected backgrounds, like we grew up poor, or we're LGBTQ, maybe we simply had nerdy interests, or general loneliness. I'm also summarizing people I've met at local communist groups, lots of people with a great deal of frustration where the promise of western liberal capitalist society didn't reach us. So we looked for other answers.
That's how anyone comes to their beliefs. They either fit into the society they're from and believe in the standard ideology, or they're different somehow and search out alternate ideology. Trans people I've met have been the most consistently leftist people I've known (with some exceptions) and that's reflected in the userbase here. Trans people experience one of the most profound breaks from the world they're instructed about and the world they experience, and it starts at that structural critique of gender, which leads into structural criticism of all society.
So that's where we ended up, we all have something that lead us to make broad structural criticisms. And then we found Marx, or Kropotkin, or maybe just a random socialist person in our lives who helped focus how we feel. We also very distrustful of western imperialism. And this website sometimes has a pessimistic attitude, but not always. Lots of people are here from all sorts of backgrounds.
The slang stuff I can sympathize with, although most of it is rearranged leftist Twitter jargon honestly. I see leftist Facebook and TikTok etc using similar slang. Other parts of the slang surprisingly come from one specific guy, the speaking habits of Chapo host Matt Christman (treats, free real estate, chuds, just wanna grill)
tldr: we experienced being poor/gay/trans/oppressed or we sympathized with that oppression, we tried to figure out where that comes from, and that led us to believe communism/anarchism is the way out of it
Thanks for the detailed summarization, it definitely answered a number of my questions. I suppose you also explained why I feel different from you all on the subject, given I'm your standard straight white guy in middle class America. The system hasn't treated me poorly yet.
I think Chinas work culture is just as bad or worse though.
What makes you think you know what you're talking about on this topic?
Death to America
Well maybe I'm wrong but I thought they had a saying "996" which refers to working 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week. Japan has "Karōshi" which is death by overwork.
I think if a culture comes up with a word or saying on how terrible the work culture is it is usually a bad sign. There's plenty of evidence for both being true as well. For instance bytedance was on 996 until 2021. Now bytedance in particular has moved away from that working model but the point still stands, I think China and Japan have terrible work cultures in general.
Both countries have a lot of work to do in this category.
996 is a fairly recent system implemented by companies - it's not part of chinese culture, it's capitalists attempting to exploit their workers, and has been deemed illegal by the Supreme People's Court.
Do any of you rubes even think that much about election day? For all your worrying over "democracy" you never seem to get as excited as you claim when talking about real votes or your choice of candidates. Wonder why
is among us!