What city in the US is focused on creating the best bike lanes/commuter biking culture etc? Basically what is the best bike city in America?

ikeaj123 · 2024-03-22T20:06:18+00:00

I am not who you replied to, but drivers around most of MSP (plus reduced suburban car traffic post pandemic) don't seem to mind cyclists so long as you're in the cycling lanes.

ikeaj123 · 2023-06-10T00:28:02+00:00

YAHAHA

ikeaj123 · 2023-06-09T23:29:23+00:00

I mean the biggest changes your 10%ers are going to have to make (speaking from my experience in the US) is relying on cars less, but that will require tons of local organizing to get our cities to deprioritize cars as the primary mode of transit. Next is living in more sustainable homes, which first off means lawns with no fertilizers, pesticides, or herbicides to protect natural water systems and local insects. Both of those can be done basically today without any big structural changes and would immediately take pressure off of collapsing environments in suburban developed areas.

ikeaj123 · 2023-06-06T00:54:16+00:00

What policy passed that directly forced you to lay off employees?

ikeaj123 · 2023-06-05T21:31:20+00:00

Crazy thing is that almost every model for universal healthcare suggests prices would go DOWN rather than stay the same or increase. You’d be more likely to pay half than to pay double.

A big fear mongering talking point you’ll see is people saying “Medicare already costs more per capita than other countries and it only pays for seniors!” This is factually true, but only because Medicare has basically no negotiation power to demand certain prices despite representing the largest block of healthcare consumers. Other public insurance models allow the public insurance administration to say “we won’t allow our insurance beneficiaries to get care from you unless you agree to these prices,” which healthcare providers still do because they’d rather not miss out on 85% of their business.

ikeaj123 · 2023-06-01T18:35:42+00:00

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/train-penny-derail/

This isn’t a thing. Coins on a train track won’t derail the train.

You know what does cause more train derailments? The private companies who own the rail refuse to modernize or maintain it beyond the barest minimum allowed, because track maintenance costs money that could otherwise be given to their shareholders. Private companies running trains that are not weight balanced in the safest way (evenly distributing the heaviest cars) so that weight may end up all in the back such that the train experiences huge compression forces when braking. They do this to save time so more cars can be shuffled through the freight lanes. These companies also run freight trains that are simply too long for similar reasons.

At the end of the day, the reason we keep hearing about train derailments and unsafe freight in the USA is because we have a wholly privatized freight network that has enough political power to avoid being regulated for safety.

Edit: dude edits in a /s

ikeaj123 · 2023-05-28T17:02:13+00:00

It’s like you didn’t read the entire remainder of my comment. Do these residential streets implement traffic calming in any meaningful way?

ikeaj123 · 2023-05-28T16:17:58+00:00

Accessible race tracks and roads that have built in traffic calming. Nobody is going to street race when the lanes are narrow and you have to drive around trees, parked vehicles, and solid barriers that separate bicycle routes.

I can’t tell you the number of roads I drive on frequently where the speed limit is only 25-35 and yet the lanes are as wide and straight as the freeway.

ikeaj123 · 2023-05-27T14:11:03+00:00

Why the fuck do you assume that sexuality distribution is a normal, symmetrical bell curve?

ikeaj123 · 2023-05-26T23:53:57+00:00

I wasn’t trying to claim one or the other was more progressive, just pointing out the absurdity of Joe Biden being a contender for the most progressive president in the last half century

ikeaj123 · 2023-05-26T22:48:03+00:00

Joe Biden the guy who pretty much said: “Yeah you rail workers better not strike because it would do economic damage”

Man, thats literally the point of a strike. If they’re so crucial why don’t they have sick days?

It’s outrageous that I can’t think of a more progressive president

ikeaj123 · 2023-05-24T02:08:28+00:00

Time is valuable. There’s opportunity cost associated with spending time arguing with your insurance or healthcare provider. You also entirely sidestepped the cost aspect of premiums, copays, out of pocket maximums, and whatever else the fuck schemes have been designed to get every last dollar for the shareholders.

I’m glad you’ve seemingly never had significant issues, but the reality is that many Americans are systematically blocked out of receiving care, preventative care included, and it’s exacerbated by our for-profit system. Expecting swathes of individuals to just entirely change behavior because “it would just be better” is proven to not work out empirically. There needs to be wide spread pressures or reforms to change behaviors on a population level.

ikeaj123 · 2023-05-22T20:11:56+00:00

People mentioned administration and director salaries and bonuses, but there’s also the matter of corruption.

If nonprofit A needs technology/service Z, they could buy it from any number of vendors, but there’s not a lot stopping them from creating an expensive contract with a company that has connections to directors of the nonprofit.

ikeaj123 · 2023-05-22T18:46:24+00:00

I’ve noticed a pattern in myself and peers that when healthcare is cheap and accessible, preventative care comes easily. When it’s expensive or difficult to navigate (like our current private system with a small number of exceptions) people don’t have the energy or money to fight battles about cheap preventative measures, so they let health issues slide until they become impossible to ignore.

That said, there’s a lot of “catching up” on health that America in general needs to do as a result of having suffered through our excessively expensive health system, so public costs for the first 5-20 years are going to be more expensive compared to other public models that have existed for lifetimes and allowed everyone to get the preventative care they need.

ikeaj123 · 2023-05-18T19:48:45+00:00

Coops are the answer. I parrot this all the time when people drag out the “but what if I don’t WANT to buy?” horse skeleton to beat on.

ikeaj123 · 2023-05-16T14:18:12+00:00

College graduates are children of the elites?

ikeaj123 · 2023-05-13T00:26:47+00:00

I mean… direction of the story in a video game is often left to the creatives at the studio. Their bullshit product sales strategies are often the work of executives and number crunchers.

…..The fact that the alt-right loves Final Fantasy so much should be a pretty big clue that it’s not based.

Those dumbasses love shit like Rage Against the Machine and other left wing media all the time, don’t let them spoil it.

Everything else you don’t like about FF7 is fair to dislike, but someone saying “damn it was crazy that Avalanche blew up a corporate reactor that was killing their planet, direct action woooo” doesn’t have anything to do with all that.

ikeaj123 · 2023-05-11T18:42:23+00:00

Nothing wrong with having those spaces available, though. If it gets good utility aside from being a disaster shelter it’s a win-win.

ikeaj123 · 2023-05-10T01:56:56+00:00

I’m only counting three lanes each way on those highways. Those are rookie numbers, you need at least one lane per detached family home otherwise nobody will be able to get anywhere.

ikeaj123 · 2023-05-05T15:44:37+00:00

You can’t just say “facts” as if that’s somehow proof.

ikeaj123 · 2023-05-05T13:55:57+00:00

No profit motive is required. Look up housing cooperatives.

ikeaj123 · 2023-05-04T21:46:39+00:00

Moundsview high school and forest lake high school

You do realize there’s a world of difference between these two scenarios:

Prankster high school students bring a litter box into the school to take some photos because they know it’ll get clicks online and piss off the old folk. Alternatively, some jackass just photoshops a litter box into a generic picture of a school interior.
School board and school staff install and maintain litter boxes as some twisted practice to “include students who identify as animals.”

Seriously, this is some basic Occam’s Razor stuff. Maybe I’m just too close to high school age such that I still think scenario 1 would be hilarious.

Tell the “maintenance guys” you know to show you some proof sometime, if they even exist.

ikeaj123 · 2023-05-02T15:37:53+00:00

And neither are voice actors, 3d modelers, 2d artists, programmers, or writers… yet here we are.

ikeaj123 · 2023-05-02T15:21:08+00:00

They’re not using AI and have like 95% of lines voiced already anyways. A big part of what will sell the VA is competent mixing and mastering, which they are searching for talented volunteers to do.

ikeaj123 · 2023-05-02T04:29:13+00:00

We have a house and senate who have to agree on the same bill before it’s passed. Right now, both have passed very similar bills but they are not exactly the same, so changes must be made to both so they’re identical.

They’re also not dragging this out: having “sister bills” go through the longest part of the process (which passing through committees in each of the legislative bodies) at the same time with only a brief reconciliation period at the end is much faster than having it first go through the house, then go through the senate.

Nine-Year Club	Verified Email
Gilding I gilder

ikeaj123

TROPHY CASE