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Miami has the most reckless drivers I've experienced in the US. I don't know if its confirmation bias but man, I was stressed even in a car there.


Not confirmation bias. I have lived in NYC and NJ (right across NYC); Philadelphia; and SF (that was 15 years ago, so maybe things have changed?). I have also driven in Boston, Houston, and LA. The most difficult (nerve-wrecking) places to drive were Miami and LA. At least in LA, you see traffic police cars every now and then, so people are a bit wary of speeding. Here in Miami, it is lawless (literally almost no traffic police car on the highway leading to Miami), which emboldens rule breakers.

I always drive defensively and I am sick of having to pay rising-significantly-faster-than-inflation-rate (part of it is greedflation by insurers, I think, and part of it is because I live in Miami, one of the most natural disaster prone places in the US) premiums for the last two years. It's worse when insurers claim that after COVID, people drive more recklessly and thus, they are paying out more (again, not sure if it is entirely true, but if it's solely based on my Miami driving experience, it likely has some sliver of truth).

I truly wish insurers have better information on driving behaviors to really punish reckless drivers, but I know that the reality would be that insurers will punish both reckless and defensive drivers because more profit.

Sorry about the rant. :)


New Orleans must give it a run for its money.


>but caring about others as people and not as cogs in a machine is important in building a professional career.

You're ignoring power dynamics. It's impossible for a manager and their reports to have real relationships and conversations. Asking them questions they shouldn't answer honestly is just self-serving.

A manager who wants to "care" about their employees as people is just doing a disservice to those employees. They can be understanding, they can provide flexibility for employees to take care of themselves, but they can't and shouldn't try to ask employees about their personal feelings.


>But on the other hand, having a car also has its benefits. Many anti-car people really underestimate the value of having your own means of transportation, going to and fro on your own time, and the inherent privacy being in your own car provides. I love driving because I can listen to a podcast/music or making a call without someone breathing down my neck or hitting me with their bag as often happens on the train/bus.

No one is underestimating the benefits of having a car. The problem with cars is that you receive the positive externalities like coming and going whenever you want, and all the negative externalities are given to other people.

A city that is good for driving is not going to be good for any other mode of transit. Your ability to drive directly takes from others ability to walk or ride a bike. The neighborhoods that need to get bulldozed to build the ever increasing road infrastructure are the cost of your ability to listen to a podcast without being near other people. The people who didn't get bulldozed then have to breath in the pollution from your car lowering their quality of life and life expectancy. Fast roads are terrible for walking, and motorists are killing pedestrians at an ever increasing rate.

I'm not anti-car. I own a car because it's very hard for Americans to get by without one, due to the car lobby. I'm pro-pedestrian and pro-transit.

>I'm sure there's probably some middle ground to be found here.

Low traffic neighborhoods are the middle ground. It's literally just diverting through motorists onto roads that are designed for through motorists.

Car culture is about entitlement. Anything that reduces motorists ability to drive as fast as possible absolutely everywhere they want is going to be seen as an attack in the wAr oN cArS!!!


> But what Fauci is saying about the lab leak evidence and gain of function stuff is misleading.

Would you like to elaborate? I'm interested to see your explanation of how one of the most prominent infectious disease experts in the world is being misleading.

> Some irresponsible people did some bad stuff and covered it up, and Fauci is helping the cover.

Can you offer any explanation why someone who has spent their whole life working on infectious disease would participate in a cover up? Can you point to anything concrete that Dr. Fauci would gain by participating in a cover-up?


He’s a former government official who openly changes his messaging based on polling data, not scientific evidence. It’s not unreasonable to discount his public statements.

> “When polls said only about half of all Americans would take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to 75 percent,” Dr. Fauci said. “Then, when newer surveys said 60 percent or more would take it, I thought, ‘I can nudge this up a bit,’ so I went to 80, 85.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/24/health/herd-immunity-covi...


>He’s a former government official who openly changes his messaging based on polling data, not scientific evidence. It’s not unreasonable to discount his public statements.

What nonsense. OP and you either have actual useful information that contradicts what OP specifically called out as inaccurate or you don;t.

You don't which is why you fixate on something else.


Which is what public officials do because perfect is the enemy of good, but better is still better.

Ideally he probably wanted 100% compliance. And if he could get 70% rather than 60%, so much the better.


Maybe he had the same attitude on covid origins. The origin doesn't matter for mitigating the pandemic and it's better for NIH and international relations if it comes from only a bat and not any lab. This is what public officials do because perfect is the enemy of good. Ideally he probably wanted 100% truth but if he could get 70% truth and everyone is on the same page, so much the better.


We just experienced this though and it wasn't good for their stock price. Low unemployment means they have to pay their workers more to hire or retain them. More expense means they either need accept making less (bad for stocks) or raise prices to make as much money, which could be bad for business.


People aren't scared into not taking 3rd parties seriously, our system is just fundamentally designed to only have two realistic parties. It's just inherent in a first past the post system.


Yeah, fix the voting system to allow ranked choices and you'll find third parties doing a lot better. Until that voting third parties is sadly irrational until one of the top two parties becomes dominant, at which point switching out the party in second becomes potentially feasible.


The UK uses FPTP and has at least three major parties in Parliament (Lab, Con, SNP) and in the past Lib Dems were big enough to enter into coalition. There are also smaller parties in the Parliament too, like the Greens and sometimes independent candidates.

The reason the US only has two parties is because those parties are sufficiently loose and internally democratic enough that there's no need to start a third party, when you can come in as an outsider and take over one of the existing ones. Parties in the UK exercise much tighter control over who can lead them, and so there's more pressure to set up alternatives. If the US big tent parties worked the same way you'd have more than two parties as well.


The person alleged to have owned the mine apparently does not think it's a rumor

"Well, according to Errol Musk, the unsurprisingly eccentric — and in one major way, extremely creepy — father of Elon, the mine definitely exists. And come to think of it, he'll take that Dogecoin, thanks!

"When I read that, I wondered, 'Can I enter, because I can prove it existed," Errol told The Sun in a new interview, referring to his son's Dogecoin tweet. "Elon knows it's true. All the kids know about it."

https://futurism.com/elon-musk-dad-emerald-mine


So what?

From Snopes:

A story about Musk's father once owning an emerald mine evolved into a larger rumor that had no evidence to support its central claim.


So what? The person who is accused of owning the emerald mine says they owned the emerald mine. That's at least some evidence that its true.


We didn't lose to the Taliban for any other reason beside not having a clear picture of what victory would look like.


If you lived next door to a house that had become a drug spot, would you find it acceptable to call the landlord, tell them what's happening, and then ask them to investigate and evict? I sure would.


Why would you call the landlord instead of the police? I'll tell you why you needed to do it for this metaphor - because Kiwi Farms doesn't break any laws and "drug spots" do.

Now, we're deputizing landlords. If that isn't the perfect public-private partnership, I don't know what is.


Who is 'deputizing' a landlord? The police are going to be much slower and ineffective in dealing with the problem than the landlord is, and why shouldn't a landlord take into consideration the effect their renters have on the neighbors in deciding who to rent to.


The landlord, yes. The electric company directly, bypassing the landlord, probably not.


Free speech has never existed. We've always been pushing and pulling against what's acceptable.


Absolutely. Causing a stampede or crush being the obvious example.

I do get baffled by the absolutionist statements about the freedom of speech. Speech is a side-channel into violence.

My country has a censor's office, for example. Some 'speech' is literally illegal to possess. Government ministers aren't free to speak state secrets in public. It's not legal to disclose the names of persons with judicial name suppression. Even parliament representatives can't speak just anything into the parliamentary record.

I live in New Zealand. It's not that bad to have limits and structures that enable the majority of real freedoms for people.


It's part of the American creation myth that's drilled into our heads as children.

The Alien and Sedition Act was passed in 1798 which made it illegal to critique the government. Eugene Debs went to prison for advocating for draft dodging in World War 1.

Part of is a lot of folks either can't or wont see the difference between "free speech" and "consequences for your actions".

As Americans, we've never had more free speech than we have today. Most of our history is filled with censorship from media to actual human beings being arrested for wearing the wrong clothes. Of course, a lot of those free speech absolutist cheer censorship laws when they are targeted at LGBTQ individuals.


> Eugene Debs went to prison for advocating for draft dodging in World War 1.

You're trying to rewrite this into a Whig history, but we're obviously backsliding when we're prosecuting people under the Espionage Act.


>My country has a censor's office, for example. Some 'speech' is literally illegal to possess.

And it's embarrassing. The KiwiFarms exchange with New Zealand after the Brenton Tarrant shooting (are you even allowed to mention his name? Hope I'm not getting you in trouble here) was one of its prouder moments.


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I'm not sure that every country is run by morons who can't understand the concept of per capita, NZ seems pretty special in that regard. I certainly wouldn't want such people having a finger on the censorship button, and for that reason it was very heartening to hear of Ardern's resignation.

> "After all, how do you successfully end a war if people are led to believe the reason for its existence is not only legal but noble? How do you tackle climate change if people do not believe it exists? How do you ensure the human rights of others are upheld, when they are subjected to hateful and dangerous rhetoric and ideology?"

While antipodean advocates of censorship like to reference violence, it's clear that's not actually where they draw the line. Even if they did, their hatred of violence seems to be very selective: Davidson's comments were meant as a distraction from violence against someone she sees as a valid target [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kellie-Jay_Keen-Minshull#New_Z...


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