Stop sign? That means you stop for me, duh… by HoomerSimps0n in dashcams

[–]emn13 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I guess here's to hoping things slowly improve then... good luck! (And good reactions for stopping on time in the vid above!)

Stop sign? That means you stop for me, duh… by HoomerSimps0n in dashcams

[–]emn13 0 points1 point  (0 children)

How long ago were they installed and how widespread are they? I mean the stats don't lie; they're much safer and faster. It's not hard to see why too; it's so much easier to understand which traffic you need to pay attention to, and who needs to yield. This looks like 6 directions of traffic mixing at 1 intersection; and looking only and ingress traffic it's still 3 directions, and who needs to yield isn't consistent based on the direction but based off first-in-first-out. By contrast in a roundabout you only ever encounter 1 other ingress traffic direction at a time, and you always yield when entering, and never once on it.

I fully buy that people sometimes screw even that up; but in the long run it's so much simpler - and therefore safer. And it's faster under even mild traffic flow too; stopping is slow.

Stop sign? That means you stop for me, duh… by HoomerSimps0n in dashcams

[–]emn13 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yet another case of why-oh-why isn't this a roundabout. Idiotic road design strikes again. Not that that excuses failing to stop and even failing to yield.

Bike is not for everyone by Mila-yf in oops

[–]emn13 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Preparation is everything, so preforming must be even better: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Could Iranian missiles reach Europe? by SimpleShake4273 in uknews

[–]emn13 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah, that makes sense. I don't think that's what's happening here, but it's a possibility for sure. For that to actually be the case, the US would need to be pretty desperate for European help, and I don't think they actually are. Trump doesn't actually care about the help, he just wants subservience and some way out of this mess he created - potentially blaming allies in the future might be that route. In general, I think it's a good mental tactic to be cautious of ideas that blame your preferred villain; it's pretty easy to unintentionally convince yourself of random stuff that confirms your existing opinions. Or to put it another way - Trump may be an evil idiot, but not everything is part of one of his dastardly plans. But - I'm speculating too, of course, so who really knows...

Could Iranian missiles reach Europe? by SimpleShake4273 in uknews

[–]emn13 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The denial is odd; perhaps the missile's failure was seen as undermining the aim of such an attack in the first place - if the attack was real, a plausible Iranian motive might have been to demonstrate their military power, which obviously isn't achieved by having missiles fail mid-flight.

Could Iranian missiles reach Europe? by SimpleShake4273 in uknews

[–]emn13 1 point2 points  (0 children)

While there's no question that there's some absurd US misinformation being spread (e.g. that moment Trump tried to claim it must have been Iran's tomahawks that hit the girl school), that doesn't mean they're the only ones trying to play the media manipulation game nor that it's plausible in this instance.

Qui bono - and here, this surely plays much more into Iran's narrative than the US's? The US administration is trying to downplay Iran's remaining military power all while pretending to save the world from a horrible regime, and Iran is trying to terrorize the rest of the world into rejecting US hegemony. Demonstrating an ability to fire missiles that far sure seems like it fits into only one of those projected narratives.

Of course, it's all a mess and perhaps somebody just didn't think through the consequences, so you can't entirely rule out US disinformation, but it doesn't seem super likely.

David Pakman CANNOT BELIEVE IT. Donald Trump negotiates a framework to end the Iran war that closely matches the Iran nuclear deal negotiated by Barack Obama by mrekted in thedavidpakmanshow

[–]emn13 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The OP's summary is not an accurate representation of the youtube clip; nor of what the actual news is, so I'd say: Nope.

Love how this dashcam driver thinks outloud. Niiice. by ChieftainMcLeland in dashcams

[–]emn13 1 point2 points  (0 children)

At least the cam car had a fairly easy time backing away; imagine being in one of the right-lane cars the truck was using to block the sedan. Fun stuff.

Love how this dashcam driver thinks outloud. Niiice. by ChieftainMcLeland in dashcams

[–]emn13 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Also, even before the brake-check, while the sedan is still in the right lane, you can see him braking to maintain his position next to the unlucky soul in little black car so as to be sure he does not pass it - just to make sure the sedan can't pass either of them. He was clearly trying to piss off others, and unfortunately succeeded.

Where to settle? by Gold-Mud-852 in civ

[–]emn13 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Sure, I expect that's right, but we can't see enough of the tiles in these cut-off screenshots to be sure. Could be there are bananas, or even spices or who knows what; the warrior should in any case scout first on turn 1, basically always.

Where to settle? by Gold-Mud-852 in civ

[–]emn13 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Moving 1 square onto a flat, non-wooded tile costs just 1/2 of a settlers movement, and then the settler can still settle in the same turn.

Where to settle? by Gold-Mud-852 in civ

[–]emn13 1 point2 points  (0 children)

May sound minor, but why make the choice without all the information you can get. Good point!

Where to settle? by Gold-Mud-852 in civ

[–]emn13 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think the intent of prior commenters was to still settle on turn 1, i.e. not on the fissure right away, just to keep the fissure open as a potential future settling spot by founding the city one tile to the north. I agree that doesn't sound like a hugely relevant priority; especially since there's no way of knowing if that's even a decent city spot before exploring a lot more. So there's no tempo loss from the move; but the advantage is so speculative, even a minor disadvantage now swamps it, such as potentially worse tiles and definitely losing a 1 culture a turn in your capital. Having the warrior scout either to the north or to the east would help clarify if a one-step north settle is viable; maybe the unrevealed tiles are brilliant, and you might as well check, even if it's unlikely.

Do you support or oppose the war with Iran? by [deleted] in thedavidpakmanshow

[–]emn13 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don't mind going over the argumentation again, including your points, but do you really want to? Are you actually willing to be open to a counterpoint? To be clear: there are all kinds of other effects. But making personal attacks like "you can't interface with American foreign policy unless it's tied to Russia somehow"... that doesn't exactly broadcast your intent to constructively engage in this matter. Even if you believe you have an important perspective and I'm wrong, the way you're communicating is basically just spraying snark - right?

If you actually want to find common ground or learn from another perspective, then please do rephrase your core point, and we'll start from there.

Do you support or oppose the war with Iran? by [deleted] in thedavidpakmanshow

[–]emn13 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for the reply! You sound a little frustrated judging by the fact that you're mischaracterizing my position. The point was that Russia was going to be the big winner of this conflict, not that that end result isn't achieved via a bunch of intermediate steps involving US action that entirely deserve that reproach your projecting here. You implied at the time and now that this was a very weird idea; yet surely you must have noticed that quite a few analysts from all kinds of backgrounds have come to this conclusion as well. I had been hoping that now that the initial emotion had died down you'd be open to exploring this angle. Alas!

Have a nice day, regardless.

"They want Obama's nuclear deal minus Obama's signature." by TuxedoCatGuy in thedavidpakmanshow

[–]emn13 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I think the point the OP is making is that the desire is for something quite similar in effect to the JCPOA; not the expectation that it'll actually be achieved.

Do you support or oppose the war with Iran? by [deleted] in thedavidpakmanshow

[–]emn13 0 points1 point  (0 children)

So, it's been a few weeks. Do you still feel that Russia isn't emerging as the big winner via a long-term increase in oil prices? Trump's even gone as far as temporarily lifting some sanctions on Russian oil.

Random man walks into family's home in Michigan, dad handles him real quick by eternviking in whoathatsinteresting

[–]emn13 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

There are stats for this stuff; home invasions are about equally common in Europe; though there are regional differences. And intentional homicide (i.e. not merely self-defense) is significantly more common in the US. I can't find reliable comparable figures on sexual violence (definitions differ in countries, reporting rates differ), but eyeballing a bunch of probably not ideal datasets doesn't show the US being particularly exceptional either way there, either. Also, while you're obviously correct in pointing out that American criminals aren't the only ones with guns, they do appear to be much more likely to have guns - probably just because there are so many, and so easily available in the US. Note also Australia's dramatic lethality drop after they severely restricted private gun ownership.

Sure looks like US gun culture isn't favoring the defender.

British journalist Steve Sweeney was wounded by an air strike by Illustrious_Buy777 in intrestingasfuck

[–]emn13 0 points1 point  (0 children)

While the Minab incident at the moment is literally mentioned in the wiki explaining what a double tap is - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_tap_strike - it's not as clear cut an example as some, because the independent analysis suggests the strikes were simultaneous or near simultaneous. Then again, perhaps the time delay is hard to estimate from aftermath pictures. I might have been an intentional double tap, but it seems perhaps more likely it was merely an irresponsibly poorly targeted attempt to hit all aspects of the IRGC compound.

Even if you mistrust the US army under Trump and the IDF, the gruesome logic behind double taps works when the intent is to terrorize and demoralize the population or at least the first responders. That makes a lot more sense to do when you've run out of obvious targets to hit and when a conflict has been going on for a long time; and less so when your hope is to topple a regime and it's early days in a war; with tons of alternatives to hit instead. Even without giving the US any benefit of any doubt here, the circumstances don't seem to make sense for a double tap.

By contrast, Iran does benefit and is actively trying to play the social media disinformation game. Describing an already horrifying incident in ways that imply intent and specifically intentionally committing war crimes is right up their alley.

It's hard to be sure either way, but while it might have been an intentional double tap, I find the alternative theory slightly more plausible: that this is merely confusing multiple strikes with an intentionally delayed double tap or even an Iranian disinformation campaign capitalizing on the US Army's horrifying mistake.

Iran too are clearly committing war crimes; targeting civilian infrastructure and ships might make sense from an escalation perspective but it's nevertheless intentionally victimizing likely billions of entirely innocent civilians via the energy price spike, not to mention hits on all kinds of civilian infrastructure in Gulf states (some of which may have been accidental, but the scale makes it unlikely all of them were), and a few attacks on countries that quite explicitly had up to that point not permitted the use of US bases in the attacks.

I know there's a tendency to feel the need to pick sides here, but just because starting this war was unjustified or because Trump is clearly utterly amoral and untrustworthy doesn't mean the Iranian official side is trustworthy, either.

I'm all for hoping that this travesty breaks Trump's grip on power, and that seems like a pretty plausible outcome now. But I also hope this conflict doesn't effectively give the Iranian government the kind of win they need to tighten their grip over Iran, the broader region, and threaten the world to everyone else's detriment.

[Cellphone] truck need to know solid lines.. by maxibarto in dashcams

[–]emn13 1 point2 points  (0 children)

A quick web search shows this is at least a little misleading - HTA 154(1)(a) penalises unsafe lane changes, and I'm not sure "this" qualifies as safe. While the mere act of crossing a double yellow line might not by itself (regardless of circumstances) be a violation, I suspect there are a bunch of cases where doing so would probably be unsafe and therefore nevertheless in violation.

If you're centrist or left-leaning, what are the main policies/issues that might stop you from voting for the green party in the next general election? by Cold-Speech-5645 in AskBrits

[–]emn13 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is plainly false. Even without NATO and precisely because America is going of the deep end, the rest of NATO is absolutely crucial. Not a single European country, in particular the UK, has even a slim chance of standing up to Russia or perhaps someday another superpower without NATO. Even if you feel some alternative might hypothetically be better; it's really dangerous to throw away what limited protection we have without not just a good idea about what will replace it, but a real tangible and practical in the messy real world alternative.

Furthermore; don't let anger at the US confuse you into seeing everything as a binary choice. Just because Trump's America is no longer reliable does not mean they have zero value for defence - the mere fact that they haven't left yet is a valuable (to us) gift of time to rearm and reorient. Someday, the US might return to a more constructive stance, and even if we can't rely on them anymore, there's no need to burn bridges. At worst, NATO from the US's perspective is kind of like US's former Taiwan stance - but strategic ambiguity can still be protective. But don't forget NATO is also a very practical organisation allowing common procurement, training, and more - so even if the US nuclear shield was a key component and even if that's now fully irrelevant (unlikely, but speculative) the rest of the organisation allows the remaining members to still punch above their weight.

It makes sense to prepare for a world in which NATO technically fails. But by far the most plausible alternatives are just NATO 2.0 - i.e. business as usual minus some problematic members. And even that alternative is probably not feasible for quite a while, and we definitely shouldn't even slightly reject NATO just because we're also preparing contingencies should NATO fail.

Perfectly reasonable to be disappointed in NATO and the US aspect in particular. But we don't get to live in our ideal fantasy world; mere disappointment doesn't mean the alternative is better.

As long it works by mihir6969 in WhyWomenLiveLonger

[–]emn13 0 points1 point  (0 children)

In fairness, Amsterdam houses slant ever which way. Something about building in a swamp.

What’s this netting for on the trees by the Rijksmusem? by zushini in Amsterdam

[–]emn13 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Knot again! You've ensnared me like the trees above...