All of these people responding that they prefer auto so they can eat or otherwise not pay attention in the car are the best (only?) argument for why everyone should drive manual.

Whatever your transmission preference is, if you're not engaged in driving you shouldn't be on the road!

You mean that what appeared to be a meticulously planned and masterfully executed assassination, such that there was little to no usable camera footage wasn't likely to be undone the perp wandering around with a written confession and the murder weapon days later?

I'm shocked there haven't been more conspiracy theories on this.

It's claiming that pushing men out of civilized communities, spaces and conversations ultimately leads to them embracing more accepting alt-right ideologies and movements.

Nothing screams safe like a solid unibody chassis with no crumple zones, a high center of gravity, terrible visibility and an ride height that forces pedestrians under the wheels in an impact. safe

I am shocked that a market based healthcare system that prioritizes profits manages to lock people into lucrative consumer cycles where they're conditioned to rely on medications or treatments that don't cure them. I am shocked.

Completely unrelated, it's very noticeable how everyone is medicated and has mental health problems since I've moved to the US, weirdly back in Australia where the health system is different it's less common. What are the odds of that...

This is" true" for a (tiny) subset of the Australian population. I know that I straight up sacrificed my 20s to an engineering degree and fifo job and now, at 35 I have comparable material wealth to my dad when he was my age (who was a sheet metal worker in a major city). But even still, the tiny population who did what I did will never get another run at what should've been the best 15 years of their life.

I'm unconvinced that my decision was better than the ones my (much poorer) friends who now have families made....

The two differences you listed improve traffic flow and safety massively!

Driver education is often more strict depending on country (I'm thinking Scandinavian countries and Germany), unsurprisingly this makes a big difference.

Traveling faster is a bit of a moot point. If people drive faster and rate of incidents and road toll are lower, surely that proves that travel speed isn't the problem in the US.

But really, the drink driving culture in America is terrifying. The state of Texas has a similar population to Australia (where I'm from), 9,560 people died on the road in Q1 2022 in texas. Australia had just under 2000 FOR THE WHOLE YEAR! Both places have similar speed limits that are considerably slower than Europe, so I don't think it would be honest to try and say the low speed limits cause deaths. My best guess would be that drink driving is enforced at 0.05 in Australia compared to 0.08 in Texas. On top of this, Texas only enforces if officers have a cause for lawful detainment, which is a high threshold to cross compared to random breath tests common where I'm from.

Right, why would commercial media want to underhandedly support the candidate who generates constant outrage and hate porn, which directly increases their bottom line. Why would they lie

Suggesting that the CCP is open to letting lesbians live their life seems pretty surreal after what happened to Naomi Wu. It's shocking how quickly the dust settled on that.

Though to anyone trying to encourage discontent to westerners with socially liberal beliefs, it's a pretty helpful narrative to push.

Because by running a red light you endanger other road users because you're acting unpredictability and you disrupt the flow of traffic which ultimately creates congestion (more hazardous plus wastes time and resources).

Atheist is literally "not theist" which would include nothing, none, agnostic (the belief that it's impossible to determine the existence or absence of, in this context, God). It could even be argued that people who believe in God but do not participate in theistic practices (eg lapsed Catholics) are atheists. It does not require or even imply some position against religion.

I assume that most deliveries in NYC are by push bike couriers and vesper type scooters. Thats more typical than yank tanks for this sort of thing in most densely populated cities I've seen.

So a less efficient and more complicated land tax? Is there any benefit to this compared to just taxing based on the value?

Norway having a small military and being easy to bully sounds familiar, perhaps the Russians remember how that goes and can explain.

Yeah when you use literal slaves instead of union labour, costs are down. I'm not willing to trade my humanity to save a few dollars and a debatable improvement to the climate disaster (I doubt the manufacture and extraction practices in China are anything approaching clean).

IMO this is a rare case of Washington doing the right thing.

Edit For the benefit of anyone at risk of being fooled by authoritarian propaganda, there is a plethora of evidence of slave labour used throughout the Chinese economy, from uyghur muslims to foxcons indentured workers. It's prevelent through the supply chain for many, many industries, and that alone warrants discentives on imports until such time as these practices end.

To suggest that individual businesses, who are built within this system, may be somehow operating outside of it is clearly absurd, however it's simply not possible for a layman to unpack and debate the supply chains and business practices hidden behind the bamboo curtain.

The discourse below is an example of how bad faith arguments can create doubt, by employing strawman arguments and ignoring actual points raised to create the appearance of being reasonable by hiding behind "citation needed" type arguments. If you read through it, you'll see that the propagandist doesn't once engage in anything I've actually said - this is intentional, they do not want to be in a position where any claim they make can be contested, nor do they actually want to directly contest any claim I've made. Rather they only want to sow doubt in what I'm saying, which takes considerably more effort to discredit than any actual claim.

A few years ago the Australian government spent an enormous amount of money on a proposed firewall to protect the children. After years of development they were ready to pilot test their white elephant, and discovered that, on average, the Australian 12 year old could bypass it in ten minutes.

It's unlikely that the government could even enforce an obstacle as robust as the "are you 18+" checkbox that porn sites opt in to. This new law will not have any influence on under 16s online presence.

Any motoring organisation that proposed speed humps should be ignored, as they clearly aren't competent. Proper road design slows drivers without needing to impede emergency services or add wear to vehicles. Adding bike lanes or planter boxes to the road center brings the desired behavior (slows drivers) with literally no negatives.

Speed bumps are the worst possible solution, they often mean if you're in a conventional car you have to come to a near complete stop and if you're in a large SUV you can cross at 20mph. This reinforces the trend away from conventional cars to higher ride height vehicles which is a disaster for road safety (especially pedestrian and cyclist safety).

They do successfully slow down the flow of traffic (and also cause traffic to follow alternative paths, at least until speed bumps are saturated in the area) but it fucks up emergency vehicle access and damages cars (increases wear and tear). The other road design solutions (more narrow roads, inclusion of roundabouts, addition of choke points etc) all are equally as effective as humps at reducing speeders and diverting traffic away from roads (in some cases they are better) and have none of the negative consequences, speed humps should never be used imo.

Money has value insofar as governments use it to collect tax - so long as there's a tax obligation, there's a mandated demand for that currency and it has some value. Between different currencies, the value is determined based upon the demand for that currency, which is essentially tied to how much business is done in that currency (eg if a country sells goods in its own currency, demand for that currency goes up and so does it's value).

This is not the same for crypto, there are no governments collecting tax with it so it does not have induced demand. The value of crypto is 100% speculative, which is fine for something that is used as currency, but imo a terrible vehicle for investment.

In that scenario I'm not sure if Ukraine allies are as significant as Russians allies. I very much doubt China has any tolerance for nuclear eacalation, that sets a precedent that will change how the West behaves in Taiwan. I imagine Xi's fury at being undermined this way would manifest in ways that meaningfully hurt Russia without any actual violence.