That’s 0.9% more than the last time I checked. I know those are still really low odds, but we can hope…

This lady who had to resign from her town council after doing it. I thought there was at least one other, but I can’t find it now.

I’m sure most of them just believed they could get away with it and then abruptly realized they did not have the same power and influence as the richest man on Earth.

It is very funny that there are so many examples of people basically saying, “It wasn’t a Nazi salute, watch I’ll show you,” and then immediately ruining their lives by doing it.

I don’t know what you’re talking about, I play three of these systems regularly.

They call this design philosophy, “Lateral Thinking with Withered Technology.” Basically, “using old tech we understand very well in new and innovative ways.” For example, they were slower to get their 16-bit console to market, but while working on it, they used their expertise in 8-bit consoles to release the first cartridge-based handheld system.

True, although I met a girl with celiac early in the gluten-free fad who claimed that she couldn’t trust a lot of restaurants’ gluten-free options because a lot of them weren’t actually gluten-free. Restaurants were just chasing a trend that they didn’t fully understand. Things are much better now, but I think early on a lot of restaurants were treating gluten-free like the Atkins or Paleo diet, not an allergy.

Peter Gibson, the guy who discovered non-celiac gluten sensitivity, retracted his own study a few years later, but it had already become a fad diet, so it just stuck. That being said, there have been some studies that seem to confirm its existence, but the evidence is pretty thin. (To be clear, celiac disease and wheat allergies are 100% proven and can be reliably tested for).

If you could explain more about the difficulty of driving in hills, maybe that would help me understand what you’re getting at. I drive stick but also automatic.

I only drive automatic. When I was in Vermont, I found it tricky to make some of the sharper turn-offs going uphill, having to gun it a little more than I wanted on a turn just to keep moving, then having more momentum on the turn than I intended. Coming downhill, it made me very nervous to try and turn off some of those side roads; I’d pull out as far as I could to get as much visibility as possible, but the crest of a hill would mean I couldn’t see traffic more than 20 or 30 feet. I’d find myself wanting to turn as quickly as possible for fear of getting hit by someone with right of way, but accidentally giving it a little too much and turning too fast and hard.

I also just generally found myself constantly needing to monitor my speed downhill, to the point where it was a little distracting. I’ve never driven stick, but my friend does, and after listening to her break it down a bit, it seems even more stressful; accidentally rolling downhill because you’re not properly maintaining momentum seems insane to me.

A lot of us routinely drive too fast for the conditions, but it’s still our responsibility as operator of the vehicle.

I agree that the driver is responsible for maintaining safe speeds, and I know my biases lie way more with pedestrians than drivers. I grew up in New York City, and I think there’s nothing wrong with crossing against the light or outside of a crosswalk if you’re paying attention. However, whenever I see someone going 5 miles over the speed limit or not using their blinker, I can’t help but think they’re an irresponsible asshole.

Honestly, I’m in my late thirties, and I didn’t even have a license or car until 2 years ago, when my wife and I had a kid. Public transit where I live now (Boston) is not great, and the two ER visits we’ve had to make with my son alone have made the car worth it to me. If we never had kids, though, I don’t think we’d ever own a car.

In fog, weather, or low light conditions, it makes sense to be a defensive driver or pedestrian, in case the other driver is being irresponsible, but the responsibility is still on the driver to drive safely.

I mean, what you’re saying about being a defensive pedestrian is basically what I’m getting at. There are cities I’ve been to (mostly in the South) where drivers are just pieces of shit. In New Orleans, no one yielded to pedestrians, and I almost got hit by some asshole at 40 mph because the giant SUV parked in front of the crosswalk meant I couldn’t see them coming. I don’t think there’s any reason pedestrians need to be the ones behaving defensively in the flattest city I’ve ever seen in my life.

But to me, half of the intersections in San Francisco felt like a hazardous condition. While I think that all safety regulations should be aimed at cars, and I normally get annoyed at safety campaigns that focus on pedestrians’ behavior instead of drivers’, I do think encouraging cautious pedestrian habits is justified there.

I mean, that’s the dream for every city. But, on the off chance that we can’t immediately reverse a century of car-centric urban design, maybe we should look at some alternatives?

I mean, I agree it’s a safety issue, I just don’t think it’s as simple to say, “go slower.” As I’ve said, I’ve never driven in San Francisco, but I have driven in Vermont, and trying to make a turn at the top of one of those mountain hills is tough, and keeping your momentum going down them is equally tricky. I can only imagine doing that in the middle of a city, and I don’t know how I would stop on one of those hills when driving stick.

I think this is like any other hazardous road condition; yes, the driver has the responsibility to slow down and be cautious, but pedestrians also need to be more alert. Like, I expect drivers to stop at crosswalks. I’ll take my right of way and won’t take shit if they honk or get pissy. But if I’m crossing the street in the middle of a snowstorm, I’m not going act that way; I’m going to acknowledge that, even if the driver is going slow, low visibility and bad conditions means he might not stop in time, and I’m going to wait to make sure he’s coming to a stop before I start crossing.

To be clear, I’m not saying that San Fran drivers are all responsible and that the pedestrians are being reckless. It’s very possible (likely, even) that these traffic deaths are mostly the fault of bad driving. I’m just saying that I get what people are saying when they say that pedestrians need to be responsible too. I’m someone who jay walks all the time, and I don’t do that in that city.

Yeah, but those hills are so steep that you’ve got to give it a ton of gas just to get up them. Like, imagine laying on the gas super hard just to keep yourself going above 20. As you crest the hill, the sun hits your eyes, blinding you to the person that was invisible to you until a millisecond ago, who is crossing against the light at exactly the time you’re trying to lay off the gas so you don’t start accelerating.

Don’t get me wrong, I support every measure listed in the article, and I think the people who want them repealed because they find them inconvenient are assholes. If Daylighting makes it too hard to park, well, maybe don’t drive; it’s an extremely walkable city with a good public transit system anyway. But this is the only city I’ve ever been to where, when I hear drivers say, “pedestrians need do better,” I think, “well, that’s not just entitlement, everyone really does need act responsibly here, even pedestrians.”

Normally, I’m 100% on the pedestrian’s side, and I think drivers bear the responsibility in basically all urban traffic situation. However, after visiting San Francisco, I can see why it’s a bit different. Those hills severely limit visibility on so many of those crosswalks, and if you’re driving up one of them, and the sun is in your eyes, I don’t know how you would approach an intersection safely. After less than a week in that city, I realized that pedestrians really do have to cross responsibly (and also I would never, ever drive there).

That being said, I’ve never seen less people jay walking in an American city than I did in San Francisco. Also, all of the measures laid out in this article seem like good, common sense ideas. If drivers think that the pedestrians need to be more responsible, fine, but that’s no reason to demand the rollback of potentially lifesaving safety measures.

• It is instantly familiar in operation to anyone who has used Twitter. It looks and feels almost the same to use in a way that Mastadon doesn’t (arguable whether that’s a good thing or not, but it makes for a comfortable transition).

Yup, pretty much. I tried Mastodon and found it very unintuitive, but BlueSky was immediately understandable as a former Twitter user. I don’t really use either that much, but I’ve spent way more time with BlueSky.

Honestly, it’s the same with Lemmy. I tried a lot of Reddit alternatives, both federated and centralized, and I landed on Lemmy because A) It has the only decently-sized user base and B) my preferred Reddit app, Sync, moved to Lemmy. Lemmy is similar enough to Reddit on it’s own that transitioning over wouldn’t have been difficult, but having Sync just made it that much easier.

It also can’t be understated how much private corporations benefit from technology this research yields. We spent $25 billion ($175 billion in today’s money) on the Apollo programs alone, and NASA research has led to everything from cell phones and laptops to the rubber molding process used for sneakers. The DoD wasted a ton of money in the 80s on this new technology that involved getting computers to communicate with each other, and now we have the internet.

The government spends money in ways that could never be justified by cooperations, then the cooperations enrich themselves with that research and use the profits to lobby Congress for lower taxes and limited spending. It’s absolutely infuriating.

Yeah, sports is a great analogy. Just because you don’t like basketball, doesn’t mean you won’t like soccer, and just cause you don’t like turn-based RPGs, doesn’t mean you won’t like 2D platformers. It’s all about finding what you vibe with.

Lots of good advice here, but I would just add, start with your interests and work out from there. You like puzzle games? Portal is a great physics puzzle game, so you might like that. It’s also a 3D platformer, so you’ll find out if you like games with a lot of running and jumping. It’s also technically a first-person shooter (not in the sense that you shoot enemies, but you do shoot a portal gun at walls), so if you don’t like that aspect of the game, you’ll know that FPSs aren’t for you.

Doesn’t have to be the type of gameplay either. You like designing things? Maybe try the Sims or Animal Crossing. Like horror movies? Maybe start with something simple but creepy, like Limbo. Detective stories? Something like Strange Horticulture might be up your alley.

The most important thing is to look around and see what catches your interest. Read some reviews, watch some gameplay footage, and find something that’s right for you. Don’t just say, “I’m going to do video games now,” and buy a Call of Duty or Dark Souls because, “gamers,” like them.

Hayden Christensen? Yeah, I agree. It’s not his fault Lucas can’t write normal human interactions.

I think so. I remember Anakin delivering the line, “I killed them all. Not just the men, but the women! And the children!” in such a ham-fisted way that I actually LOLed in the theater. But I also haven’t seen those movies in at least 10 years.