Ahh, I misinterpreted your post as a complaint. I’m not a hypermiler, but I do find the efficient routes are often the lowest stress routes as well.

That’s in your trip options “prefer fuel efficient route”. You can turn it off.

An alternate view for you, politicians can’t possibly be expected to know about everything, care about every cause, meet with every person. One of lobbyists roles is to educate and motivate where otherwise politicians may be complacent. The reason that education is currently problematic is because powerful people control much of the “education”. I think a well regulated lobbying system could remove some of the downsides while keeping the upsides. I’ve also worked in and around politics, that reality doesn’t make either one of us more or less correct.

I think you’re misattributing my intent. If you want to make corporate lobbying illegal or highly regulated I’m all for it. But lobbying overall is an inherently good and important part of politics. If you merely talk to a politician about a bill you want to pass you are lobbying. But you are likely very bad at it compared to a professional, so you pay an organization to do it on your behalf. Do you expect politicians to live in a black box completely disconnected from constituent issues as long as they are in office? Because that’s how you get laws passed that have nothing to do with human need. If I donate to the ACLU, HRC, or an environmental group, I expect that some of my money will be spent on lobbying congress. That is not bad or evil.

I absolutely read the question, accusing me of reading comprehension problems while having serious reading comprehension problems is some reddit level stupidity. Reread what I wrote, you read the first half and ignored the second half. I was merely illustrating that many paid lobbyist do very worthwhile things. From labor rights, to environmental justice, to human rights. The issue isn’t lobbyists, the issue is corporate lobbyists…

Let’s say you lose your job because a company lays you off without notice amid record profits. With your new found free time, you get so angry you go to your state senators and representatives and try to convince them to make a law limiting layoffs to a 6 month notice period for profitable companies. You are now a lobbyist. You are saying not to lobby the government full time. But for the sake of clarity let’s say your coworkers also got laid off and pooled their money to send you to lobby on their behalf, you are now a paid lobbyist.

I feel like most people that complain about lobbyists are really just complaining about corporate lobbyists or lobbying groups paid by corporations. Lobbyists are a good and necessary part of any democracy.

Absolutely, North America has a special level of stupidity. To clarify yes, the suburbs in the US mostly don’t even have a real town center, many are just residential, malls, and big box stores. The average property size and spread is also often much less dense than nearly any suburb in the UK. So the infrastructure and environmental cost is much much higher.

Most people suggesting we should densify are targeting suburbs, not rural areas. Suburbs are incredibly expensive and environmentally wasteful per square inch. They have all the utility of a city but spread out with more asphalt, cement, power, sewer, water, gas, cheap inefficient homes that leach heat/ac at an alarming rate, etc.

In rural areas the infrastructure isn’t always as expensive because some residents have their own septic and well, live on a dirt road, heat with a wood furnace, etc. A few of those things are also more renewable. Additionally, rural areas are still required for our way of living (farming, logging, mining, fishing), while suburbs have negative societal value (they take more than they put back into the system).

Geopolitics isn’t a on/off switch with simple choices, every decision you make has lasting impacts all over the world and is also predicated on whether the political capital exists for change. If any US president tried to strip Israel of funding the house and Senate would react to counter that within a week. I’m skeptical that a president can shift Israel policy as quickly as people want, even though I agree that our Israel policy needs to change. People are also not appreciating the fact that she has to become president first either way. No person can realistically become president of the USA on a defund Israel platform.

Kamala Harris is as left as she can be on every issue that politics allows, that signals to me that she is pragmatic, and but would probably move left once elected if she has the political capital to do so. Politicians represent the interests of the country, if she is a leftish authoritarian pragmatist, that’s only because ~51% of people are.

She is to the left of every president in my lifetime, which I get isn’t saying much, but she was the forth most left politician in the senate… Fascism is an inherently right wing ideology, the worst you could call her is moderately authoritarian about a small number of personal freedoms and a ruthless pragmatist about military.

When he was in front of the Senate confirmation hearing he was absolutely embarrassed. He knew everyone was watching while he was accused of sexual harassment. He basically stopped interacting with the media because he was so furious with how he was portrayed publicly. Dude hates being publicly shamed. Doesn’t mean he’s wise enough to stop doing shitty things.

The only thing Thomas likes more than money is respect. He would never take Oliver money because it would publicly embarrass him. He hates embarrassment more than anything.

Most of these places have numerous warnings to trucks to turn back. Anyone looking at several warnings and continuing on, or worse too distracted to notice, sorta deserves the chiding.

That bridge 11’ 8" that always gets posted, has an over height sensor that stops the light to red, a sign warning you that you are over height, hazard lights, and the height bar is in bright yellow. People still hit it regularly.

What I think is funny about this is that food is most often (or probably always) used, and then you’re still allowed to cook and eat it. Basically anyone that eats meat complaining about animal sacrifice is completely lacking in self awareness.

Animal sacrifice does seem to exist in Haitian culture, but not in the way racists are portraying it. I see no evidence that cats and dogs have ever been used. From what I understand, more common in some pockets of their culture would be sacrificing a chicken, and then cooking it and eating it. Which is the same thing anyone can do, just with extra religious steps…

All prediction models only give you odds, not flawless accuracy. He has been closer in every election than most everyone else in the prediction market.

He’s not polling, he is aggregating all of the polls into a prediction model. Either way it is just a snapshot in time.

Hopefully you mean ones still in construction… No need to cause an unprecedented environmental disaster after all.

Yeah I’m only 10 lbs more than my wife and she is 5’ tall. I was the last in a long line of tall, usually thin, men for her. It’s definitely a type for some.

I am 6’ 6" and most of my life I’ve been between 145 to 165. So incredibly skinny, always under weight. I never struggled with women as an adult, but I also didn’t chase too many shallow women. When I was young i certainly got told by a few that they weren’t into skinny guys, but it was almost always by people that were incredibly socially controlled people, the type to “keep up with the Joneses” so to speak. Once I stopped chasing after people for the wrong reasons things improved dramatically.

Do you have close friends that are women? I wonder if there is a communication aspect to this if not. Do you date outside your culture? I grew up around mostly white rural Christians and they were more judgy about being skinny than other cultural groups, in my experience. Maybe something about rural people doing a lot more hard labor and it being culturally homogeneous.