Tar_Alcaran

75th percentile in weight for the US

Seeing how 30% of the US is morbidly obese, I’m rather shocked you’re were in a size L at all.

Or you’re using an outdated chart.

Ok, let me rephrase that: even small hobby lathes are pretty big machines.

Yeah, I don’t really consider that small. They’re not really a “put it away until I need it” tool.

Fair. I guess you could read my reply as “they don’t flee to Europe at all”, but I intended it as “they don’t flee to Europe all that often”.

I guess I could have been more clear there, but in my defense, I did elaborate.

I am not interested in a political discussion nor in the overly-common mud-slinging that desperately attempts to label everyone either a hateful nazi or a moronic lefty.

Aren’t you in luck then, because I did neither. Your reaction is pretty over the top though.

Also, seeing how Ukraine is already in Europe, it would take a lot of effort for them not to flee to (elsewhere in) Europe.

Since people from war-torn nations often flee to Europe where they tend to get all kinds of help and support

They don’t do that at all. That’s a deceitful right-wing talking point meant to create xenophobic reactions.

People from war torn nations move to non-war torn parts of their own county, or their direct neighbors. Only a tiny fraction go further, and only a fraction of those go all the way to Europe.

I want a lathe too. But there really isn’t such a thing as a small hobby lathe.

I took a year of civil engineering in uni, then decided I didn’t like it, switched to chemistry.

When I finished my PhD I decided I never wanted to be in a lab ever again, and that academia is absolutely not for me. But it was in the middle of the housing bubble collapse, so my first job was in QA for a factory.

That taught me a LOT of “how things actually work”, completely unrelated to anything in chemistry. It was also fucking shit.

Second job was a major contractor, doing asphalt and concrete development. I started to quickly accumulate side jobs, in quality, safety, compliance etc etc. And since I was still in a damned lab, I jumped at the opportunity to not be. Leaned into the safety and regulation aspects, and they paid for all the certifications and educations. And when I was done, then they reorganized and didn’t need me anymore, which was fine by me because I was off the hook for all the education costs.

So I started my own consulting company in safety and compliance, mostly workplace safety, waste handling, soil remediation etc etc. I do audits from either end of the table and get to handle a lot of tricky problems with a lot of variation, it’s pretty fun. And being self employed in an in-demand field is great!

All of them are spammy shit that they post far too many times. Good thing an easy block fixes that.

I grew up on Sonic the Hedgehog and Battletoads. The former is OK, the latter is absolutely impossible now even though I finished it on the Mega Drive when I was like… 12.

All the platformers I used to think were easy are now super hard, and all the RPG and RTS games are now much easier.

Well yeah, but that one is actually optional though.

Even if you can absorb it your still required by law to have it.

But the coverage you’re required to have isn’t for damages to YOUR car, it for you damaging MY car. YOU are required to have insurance so that when you total my car and cripple me for life, you’re able to pay that. That’s entirely different from a house.

New towns are areas are ALSO designed poorly. It’s not just existing areas that have been made wrong, new areas are still being designed by idiots with blinders on.

Because of how so many American towns and cities are built, you’d have to bulldoze entire cities to do things like eliminate small traffic lights from residential neighborhoods.

Weird how other countries manage just fine without bulldozing. What they actually do is switch up road lanes and on-street parking, and it fits just fine.

Having multiple lanes in between level intersections adds pretty much nothing to the capacity anyway, so you may as well use it for something useful.

We’re not going to tear down the entire fucking nation for some retards on bicycles.

Terminal carbrain: not realizing that getting more people on bikes means fewer cars, less traffic and a nicer trip for literally everyone, including cars.

Your parents didn’t even try to educate you, did they?

I have a bachelor’s in civil engineering, and that’s part of the reason why I’m able to pierce through the deep coating of carbrain induced status-quo thinking.

You’re making all the wrong assumptions right from the start.

At a small stop-go light, like you might find in a residential neighborhood

These shouldn’t even exist. A residential neighborhood shouldn’t have traffic lights, and it should have a low enough speed and low enough volume of cars (only the people who live there should be driving there) that accidents should be rare and low risk.

The fact that you assume there’s a traffic light here starts from the basic assumption that there is so much car traffic that it needs managing. You’ve already designed your residential street wrong then.

A more medium size intersection

Skipping this, because these intersections shouldn’t have ANY bicycle interactions at all. If bikes are crossing your 4-lane divided highway, you’ve already designed your roads wrong. I would argue if you’re putting a full streetlevel crossing in, you’re also not doing great unless you get paid per traffic jam.

Note that these are two different environments; at an intersection in a city center, the speed limits are often 20mph, and frankly, bicycles should not have their own lanes there. By law they’re vehicles, they should be in traffic behaving the same as cars and have the right of way that cars do. Where they get themselves killed is trying to weave in and out of traffic, or insisting on putting in a parallel bike lane pretending it turns off friendly fire. “Just add to every driver’s cognitive load and make them responsible for my safety.” Fuck off.

A protected bike path and protected intersection REDUCE everyone’s mental load because it makes it practically impossible to hit a bike. And it separates bikes from traffic too, so they can’t weave.

The problem with American bike gutters with painted lines is that cars enter them constantly, by design. Cars cross the bike lane to park, they cross it to turn right, and something they just drive in it because the drivers are idiots. Or cars park in it because they’re idiots. And every time a car enters the bike path, the bike needs to move or die. So they move, creating more risks.

All of those problems go away with a raised barrier between the bikes and the cars. You can just stop thinking about them, because they’re in an entirely different lane that you physically can’t even get to. And if you turn right, you can treat them like any other vehicle again, where they’ll have the right of way or there’s a traffic light.

Meanwhile, back out on Some Road and Another Street, these have 45 and 55 mph speed limits, you’re traveling from town to town here, and these places pretty much should not see bicycle traffic.

Depends. A 20km bike ride is totally fine, an 80km one isn’t. But if there’s cars going 55mph right next to me, I won’t be taking a bike because that’s super dangerous. There should be a seperate bike path there as well, removing all risks.

Of course, only if it’s actually inhabited in that distance.

Bike lanes as I have seen them implemented are a lot like sidewalks; slower traffic is placed to the right of traffic lanes…except they do not expect to treat every intersection as a stop sign, and they interpret green lights for straight through as for them, even in conflict with right turning traffic.

Why the fuck would you have right turns on the same signal as straight? Why the shit wouldn’t you make protected intersections.

Your argument is basically “poorly designed roads are dangerous”. Yeah, they are, stop making them

Edit: Also, Dutch pedestrians have the right of way over cars in the same road. If you’re turning right, and someone is walking there, the car stops. This works fine, because we actually know how to design roads.

All of those are policy choices though. None of that (except the old cities) happened by accident

I didn’t say I agreed with his sense of right or wrong. But it’s very solid.

Details?

Again