traingang

Walgreens Unveils New Line Of Shrink-Wrapped Sandwiches To Grab When Something Has Gone Horribly, Horribly Wrong

Japan has entered the chat

When it gets unremarkable, you can entertain yourself with a book, or a show, or just zone out completely, which is nice from time to time. Doing any of these in a car is deadly.

I will take unremarkable over necessarily stressful

Everytime I get a beer and a vegan currywurst at 200kp/h I start believing in good things again. Ya gotta use the amenities. Have a piss at breakneck speed. Just walk a bit to stretch your legs while doing either. Get a nice nap in for a bit. Shit rules.

Getting on a lowspeed train in a super old carriage with a load of friends in one room feeling like you're in murder on the orient express mogs though

How long would it take because I fucking hate driving and I fucking loved being on trains.

The destruction of rail infrastructure in the US is a deliberate political project, just as it's a deliberate political project in Germany to at least make sure that trains aren't competitive with cars for most situations.

I was going to say that Hungary probably has a higher highway density than most of the US too but no that's mostly on par

With ebikes taking off, at least the local police have adapted using electric mountain bikes. I'd prefer they not exist at all but if they exist it's nice that they aren't driving illegally in a heavy vehicle reinforced to ram other ones. Right now high speed chases are the American equivalent of gladiator fights and the cop cars do whatever they want on the road and across greenspace. My ambient safety goes up if they're just crashing bicycles.

However they don't care at all about bike theft or crime against cyclists. We have organised chop shops sending the parts out of state, but even the open ones are ignored for weeks. It's our local boomers who lose their shit over ebikes and cyclists more generally. Nextdoor is just a million Martin Luthers listing 95 reasons why they're mad and why they should get to kill cyclists for making them mad.

Back when I commuted by bike, I got harassed by cops all the time. But more because where I live, non-car transport is considered "poor and therefore probably criminal" rather than "radical and gay".

"Riding a bike" has become a reliable enough social marker for someone cops would love to harass, that I'm surprised that it doesn't already happen constantly. Especially if they want to just make up laws-of-the-road on the fly to justify it.

Not to mention that trolley cars were ubiquitous in nearly every city in America prior to car hegemony.

Truth nuke! I live the boonies and roads are almost always packed. And seeing some boomer scoff at hsr in the northeast or California as literally impossible pisses me off.

If every other country can pull something like this off except for burgerland, then just admit burgerland sucks in comparison.

it's true. for 20 years i have made personal/professional sacrifices to move toward less dependence on a car. this seemed to me the most logical and clever choice by far, and it has generally been treated as an amusing eccentricity. also bizarrely unmasculine by the really indoctrinated.

paying more for a shittier place, moving across country for the lower paying job in the medium COL area where the shittier, but convenient places aren't all snapped up. it's been a whole set of major life decisions that run counter to the prevailing ideology of bigger, bolder, and better.

along the way i meet people of the same mind as me. older, committed bike commuters and all-in pedestrians, but they are maybe 10-15% at most. many are still "i love my car, my commute is my relaxation", which is so wild to me.

or, more understandable (but completely fragile), people who wanted something nicer with more space to have a family and all they could afford was something that only works with a personal conveyance to carry them to work / material needs on a daily basis.

i am rapidly closing in on a permanent situation where i can get to everything i need (except like a twice yearly appointment) with a little baby electric scooter/e-bike in less than 10 minutes. its just barely in my affordability range, it is going to require some major investment of money and my own sweat to get right. but I'm here for it, and i feel like im just barely making it in time since ill be reliant on shipping to get the various building and household infrastructure materials to make it right (safe/potable water, electrification, serious kitchen garden, etc). so really im like a few years yet from some kind of resiliency. i have been talking to my family about this for over a decade, and it never seems to pierce the veil.

i don't know what to say to people who are behaving like oil/fossil energy shocks weren't on the menu for the foreseeable future. i know many people are actively lied to by the media apparatus in the US, and many have never seen how other people, outside the US, live without cars. hell, shitloads of people can't even afford to live anywhere and are stuck living wherever they can find shelter.

but i just don't get how so many people of means haven't noticed that this is always where things were going to take us... expensive fuel is just the beginning.

maybe if fossil capital wasn't such a powerful political project, we could have transitioned more calmly into a transitional arrangement like electric cars and electric freight. but the decision makers have foreclosed on that and locked us all into possibly the most difficult and uncertain future.