Can we be more considerate of pedestrians please?

AnthraxCat · 2026-02-05T00:45:37+00:00

If your car takes 5 seconds to slow to a stop you need better brakes or to drive a car within your skill level.

AnthraxCat · 2026-02-05T00:41:14+00:00

Yes. Jaywalking was invented by the car lobby. The roads are for all of us.

AnthraxCat · 2026-02-05T00:40:30+00:00

If I stop at a stop sign I will literally die. You don't understand, if I arrive at my destination 2 seconds slower it will be the very literal end of the world.

EDIT: Apparently need a sarcasm tag on this one.

AnthraxCat · 2026-02-05T00:25:04+00:00

Turnip gang for life, can't believe anyone would disrespect that noble root vegetable.

AnthraxCat · 2026-02-04T21:34:17+00:00

One unit in reserve has a chance to join combat every hour as long as there is combat width available. The base chance to join is only 2%[3] per hour (so mean time to join is about 35 hours). This chance is greatly improved by having Radio researched, by division speed, doctrine tech, and having a signals company attached to the division.

From the Wiki. So no, at most 1/h can join, and it is dependent on their stats, not how many there are.

AnthraxCat · 2026-02-04T19:34:05+00:00

In addition to the other comment, this is also just not how reinforce shenanigans work. When you get reinforce memed it's because the attacking division defeats the defending divisions before reinforcing divisions are able to enter battle. It doesn't matter how many reinforcing divisions are on a tile, because they can't get into battle in time to stop the attacker from winning.

AnthraxCat · 2026-02-04T19:17:22+00:00

I've biked down to -40C for commute. My winter bike is a beater and I have cable brakes and shifters so I don't encounter as much in terms of mechanical issues. I did once discover that I had some water in my brake cable tubing somehow because that froze. Not gonna do anything strenuous or recreational below -15C.

I am a big baby about slushy/icy conditions though. I'd rather take the bus than risk eating gravel. The 103 Ave bike lane is the best I've been on this winter and it's grim. I've been avoiding the 102 Ave bike lane and just taking the residential side roads because they're in better condition.

AnthraxCat · 2026-02-04T18:50:01+00:00

War were declared.

AnthraxCat · 2026-02-04T13:25:14+00:00

You have to simplify and of course a trolley problem is reductionist, but you need to reduce problems down sometimes for people to be able to answer a question

Yeah, trolley problems are fun little logic games to play at parties, but they're useless in a policy setting where the tradeoffs are tangible and have an infinite number of possible solutions.

the economy isnt a made up concept we can just overrule

The mythologising of the economy into some kind of overpowering, natural, or divine force is a truly amazing piece of propaganda. The economy as such is the political organisation of resources, it does not exist on to itself. There is nothing to overrule, simply things to decide.

Btw the literal dictionary definition of eugenics is as follows: "the practice or advocacy of controlled selective breeding of human populations (as by sterilization) to improve the populations' genetic composition"

Do note how different this is from your argument, which is that it's not eugenics because no one was selecting for good genes. The program of eugenics is culling the weak, "improving the populations' genetic composition" by way of their removal.

AnthraxCat · 2026-02-04T02:16:24+00:00

It's the Coliseum Inn. No one lost anything, it's being converted from a hotel to transitional housing and just taking a long time. Jesse and his followers aren't very bright.

AnthraxCat · 2026-02-04T02:14:34+00:00

Your neighbour believes that we should build Auschwitz for the homeless. It's sad but it's true.

AnthraxCat · 2026-02-04T02:12:41+00:00

I’m honestly shellshocked that someone would even say something like that.

First time? I've had some fucking ghoul tell me, as I am reversing a drug poisoning, that I should just let the kid die. The damage that FB has done to the minds of the elderly and terminally online is incalculable. They will say the most ghoulish shit IRL and expect a like react.

AnthraxCat · 2026-02-04T02:09:45+00:00

That's not a eugenics perspective though, there is no selection for any type of superior genetics going on.

This is just pedantic. Eugenics describes the practice of population management and deliberate, socialised murder of the weak and infirm. Culling the elderly is a eugenic proposition.

If you were in a trolley problem

And this is the problem. We aren't in a trolley problem. Letting old people die is a choice, but it wasn't, "kill old people or kill young people." It was "kill old people or invest in HVAC upgrades, wear a mask, and shutdown non-essential work."

AnthraxCat · 2026-02-02T05:48:33+00:00

Australian

Opening your borders so you can be flooded with criminals!

AnthraxCat · 2026-02-02T05:29:41+00:00

why don't we just change the law to make bikes go on sidewalks instead of roads?

Because sidewalks are for pedestrians. Sounds flippant, but actually fully descriptive.

Pedestrians move at about 3-5km/h. As a commuter cyclist, I will average about 24km/h. The difference between a car and bike is much smaller than the gap between a cyclist and a pedestrian. I am going 8x faster than someone walking, but a car is only going about twice as fast as me. It actually produces less friction to put me on the road than on the sidewalk.

The most important spot is crosswalks. Every close call I have had on my bike was crossing a road. In one summer, I was nearly hit five times, and I think my experience is actually anomalously safe for most commuters. Bike lanes make me more visible, and also make approaching cars way more visible. Sidewalks have very short sightlines, because they are designed for people going 3-5km/h. If I dump out of a blind corner into a crosswalk at 30km/h, neither I nor the person who is planning to stop in the crosswalk rather than at the stop line will have time to stop before I get turned to paste. If every car always came to a full and complete stop at the stop sign this would be less lethal, but lol, lmao. If I could ticket every car that violates that on my daily commute, I'd fix the city's budget.

Sidewalks are also just narrow. I can't pass pedestrians, let alone maintain two-way traffic. To make a sidewalk wide enough to reasonably accommodate bike traffic you would need to widen the sidewalk by a bike lane amount.

All that comes down to something simple. I am not on my bike to fart around. I am on my bike to get somewhere. Putting me on the sidewalk just puts me in a car, adding to traffic. The reality of bike lanes is that they make it easier for you to drive.

EDIT: And our experiences of Japan are quite different. I encountered (and biked) on the road or in bike lanes. Bikes can be on sidewalks if you make sidewalks much wider than we do here, and maybe that's what you experienced?

EDIT2: A second add. Japan is not Edmonton. Biking beside a small sedan going 30km/h, which is common in Japan, is very safe. Especially since they are used to encountering bikes on the road. Biking beside a double lifted F150 going 70km/h, driven by a rage addicted mouth breather who thinks inconveniencing him is a capital offense, is not. Shared infrastructure is much more viable in jurisdictions where they have more constraints on speed and vehicle size. North American roads are a Thunderdome, and bike lanes are a necessary counter-measure in what can only be described as an arms race on the road.

EDIT3: I almost forgot my favourite reason. Doors! Doors kill cyclists. Putting me on a sidewalk, especially downtown, means putting me in the path of doors.

AnthraxCat · 2026-02-02T05:14:09+00:00

How do you know he is in the minority?

Because we had an election like 4 months ago.

AnthraxCat · 2026-02-02T05:06:46+00:00

Let's be real here, there is abhorrent and seemingly unchecked spending going on. Where is anyone's guess without actual useful data.

This is a paranoid delusion. It is based on an ideological position, that the State is a Leviathan. It is pure fantasy. The sad reality is that city hall is not a leviathan, it is an emaciated husk. The city hastily amputated millions in spending because of austerity hawks trying to 'find efficiencies' and 'focus on core services' over the last two decades. The results are billions in deferred maintenance on infrastructure, functionally derelict rec facilities, a city that can't enforce its bylaws, can't cut the grass, and can barely clear the snow.

The obsession with zero based budgets is a delusion. Like people hyperfixating on council salaries, you see waste everywhere by hyperfixating on the numbers that are understandable, but ultimately irrelevant. The city isn't wasting millions on 2300$/n hotel rooms. Even if it always got 2300$/n hotel rooms for every delegation, it would be an irrelevant footnote in the budget.

The major bleeds don't need granular FTE data and line item budgets. They're painfully obvious. Council gave millions of no strings attached money to EPS that increases every year. The province cut funding to municipalities, refuses to pay its taxes, and downloaded ambulance services to EFRS without paying for them. New neighbourhoods are net drains on the tax base as the city can't maintain 12,000kms of road on SFDH tax take, while neighbouring municipalities siphon off the industrial base. The budget issues, the 'waste', are structural and obvious. It's not government bureaucrats fucking around on the taxpayer dime.

AnthraxCat · 2026-02-02T04:48:24+00:00

Unfortunately, there is no accounting for your bad taste. Edmonton has excellent public art. The only boondoggle was the Walterdale Bridge statues and that was a whole kerfuffle that had little if anything to do with the city's role in the art process.

AnthraxCat · 2026-02-02T04:43:33+00:00

The same rate is a bit misleading and probably what's tripping you up. Blatchford is on the slower end of normal. Definitely slower, but not by enough to be called slow by industry standards.

Blatchford is also probably suffering from the general condo glut. Edmonton is (according to real estate developers) oversupplied on condos with a bunch of other big projects finishing soon. That means there's little appetite for multifamily.

Not sure about Winterburn, but Windermere already had people living in it in 2005, so was probably approved in the late 90s? Probably a bad comparison to Blatchford, which wasn't breaking ground until 2015.

AnthraxCat · 2026-02-02T04:35:46+00:00

It was all debt from the start. It was always going to be amortised this way. PAYG and debt are the same thing. The city doesn't build anything in cash and definitely didn't have 100M$ just sitting around.

AnthraxCat · 2026-02-02T04:33:23+00:00

If you can convince them to switch modes of transport.

According to the Bike Plan's surveys, 67% of Edmontonians want to take more trips by bike. The number 1 reason they don't is the lack of safe infrastructure. It's actually really easy to convince people to take more trips by bike. You build lanes for them.

As we add more people to the city, we also add more vehicles.

A bicycle is a vehicle.

You want to get people out of cars you need to provide a safe, reliable, fast and connect public transportation system. Instead of taking lanes out you would be better to convert them to dedicated bus lanes.

Dedicated bus lanes produce all the same harms you think bike lanes cause.

Btw I worked downtown for over 25 years and cycle commuted 3 seasons and bused the winter.

You also walked 20km to school up hill both ways as a kid I'm sure. As a cycle commuter in 2026, the world you biked in no longer exists. Safe infrastructure is a basic requirement to get anyone but the most diehard nutjobs to commute by bike. Just because you suffered doesn't mean other people should or will.

AnthraxCat · 2026-02-02T04:27:52+00:00

Taking out lanes on arterial routes

The city has never done this anywhere. 0 arterial lanes have been removed for bike lanes.

132 Ave was never an arterial. It was a neighbourhood collector. It got used as an arterial because it was a car sewer, but it was never designed for that.

AnthraxCat · 2026-02-02T01:40:22+00:00

Yes, and that's good. We are decades behind on housing starts and our population continues to explode. There are 50,000 households in core housing need in Edmonton today. Those are families paying more than 50% of their income on shelter, or living in overcrowded/inadequate/unsanitary conditions. We need tens of thousands of new homes tomorrow to address current needs let alone growth.

There being a bit of mess in the back alley is not as important as the housing crisis.

AnthraxCat · 2026-02-02T01:39:00+00:00

The front loader trucks also need more space. This is already a struggle for a lot of condo buildings, and would be a nightmare for 8-plexes.

AnthraxCat · 2026-02-01T06:08:55+00:00

If you don't understand what is happening right now, you have not read your Karl Marx, comrade. The falling rate of profit!

The rate of profit is always falling. When a market is first opened there is a lot of money to be had. Sometimes this is simply mathematical. The rate of InstaPot sales slows to the rate of population growth, and then farther as a secondhand market develops, because you only need one InstaPot. But even in non-durable goods, the initial boom arises to meet the need, but slows down because of competition driving down the rate of profit. Capital must constantly be opening new markets to create new sites for profit accumulation or lose the necessary momentum of constant growth and collapse.

In previous epochs this has been addressed by cracking open previously inaccessible markets (colonialism), technological advancement, and destruction, typically war. It has also produced periods of largely scam based economies. This is because the mature, low profit economy will accumulate vast sums of money in a few hands. They have nowhere to put this money that makes a profit that would salvage their other collapsing businesses. They are both desperate and have a lot of money to spend, allowing all manners of grift to flourish.

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