I’ve never seen any of them cause problems; they simply ride the trains all day.

Maybe this is dependent on country or region, because I see wildly different behavior between the unhoused in NYC and Manchester, in the UK, for example. In NYC, I’ve personally seen them pull a knife on random people, masturbating in the middle of the day on the train, two blind guys panhandling try to beat each other with their canes, each accusing the other of faking it to invade the other’s territory, smoking crack in the middle of crowded cars and plenty of other problematic behavior.

When I’ve been in Manchester, they’ve always been pretty reserved, just trying to do their own thing and get through the day without doing anything to draw unwanted attention to themselves. You wouldn’t even know a lot of them are there, unless you’re out after the shops close, and then there’s suddenly a bunch of people in sleeping bags in the doorways, just trying to sleep out of the wind and rain in a spot that might be marginally warmer.

Too many people just view scientifically sound treatment as drug addicts getting stuff for free, and get pissed off that someone else gets a “benefit” that they aren’t entitled to. They completely ignore the knock on effects that drug addiction has to those around someone going through it and just focus on what they perceive as unearned rewards for bad behavior.

I kind of think that a lot of people would be in favor of the same programs if they were pitched without being centered on the person getting treated for their addiction. Like, instead of saying, “This plan represents the best method we have to get people off drugs,” some of those same people that are totally lacking in empathy would be in favor of it if it were put forward as, “This is a way to get all those druggies off the streets and trains where they bother you, and it’s actually way cheaper than putting them all in prison, so it works out that we spend less of your tax money and save you in the long term.” Which is a pretty damning indictment of those people.

It may have a large part to do with where in the UK you were coming from, and where in the US you wound up, in fairness. Bog-standard eggs are $8/dozen just outside a major metro on the East Coast, while less than half that for posters in other regions. Last week, I was in Manchester, and a 15-pack of eggs at the Lidl on Piccadily Gardens was about £3 or so, which would probably make $8/dozen seem pretty crazy in comparison. I think the lowest I saw while there, further from the city center, was £2.15 for 15 eggs.

Since folks have left me the easy ones, a fair number of things ending in “wurst,” like Weißwurst.

No, because I don’t see any point to it. If they manage to catch him, they may as well just kill him on the spot when they get him, as I have no faith that his trial would be anything more than a farce to try and present some sense of following process and norms, while guaranteeing he gets some insane sentence, only to be found mysteriously to have hung himself. I’m sure that, somehow, a jury of his peers will be comprised solely of the 12 most ghoulish residents of NYC one could find, and they’ll probably try to shop around for the worst judge they can to hear the whole thing.

MPD and whatever front end you like for what’s the best music player going, imo. You can tweak your player to your liking, MPD will play any format supported by ffmpeg, has some forks for further functionality, handles big libraries like a champ (I’m sitting at 54,758 files in mine without issue), can serve music streams online and be remotely controlled, and even has ridiculous features like the ability to handle gopher urls for media/streaming.

It’s also as lightweight as you want it to be. MPD+ncmpcpp for playback use a whopping 66MB of ram for me.

It depends on why they’re laughing for me. Lots of terribly unfunny people essentially provide their own real time laugh track to signal “This is the funny part, laugh please,” which gets old real quick. They also tend to laugh incredibly hard at their own jokes, far more than is merited by the actual joke. Unfunny people trying to force a joke like that get old fast.

On the other hand, I don’t take issue with having a bit of a laugh with everyone else when you land a good one. On rare occasion, there are even jokes that wind up funnier because they’re just so hilarious that the person telling them can hardly get them out without busting up themselves.

The mainline SMT games all take place in post-apocalyptic Japan

Almost all, except for the oddball that is Strange Journey, taking place in post-apocalyptic Antarctica, instead. It has a lot of elements that differ from other Mainline entries, but Atlus treated it as such and acknowledged it with the recent Mainline 25th anniversary celebrations. I really enjoyed it and think it’s worth a playthrough, but it may not be the best starting point. I also don’t know how the remake holds up, I’ve read complaints about changes online, but SMT fans can be a bit touchy about their favorite games.

SMT 4 is… odd. It starts out looking like a much more generic fantasy setting, but it most assuredly is not. It’s good, but it also very clearly is straining against the limits of the system it’s on. SMT 4 Apocalypse is also extremely good, and I would suggest playing SMT 4 just to play SMT 4 Apocalypse. I won’t say too much about SMT 5 except to note that it’s also good and I recommend it strongly.

I’ll disagree on this one and just add that not everyone who enjoyed 4 found Apocalypse to be that good. From what I saw, people that really just love the battle system and doing things like building out the perfect team for tackling boss rushes and insanely challenging super bosses really enjoyed it. If you go in expecting more of SMT IV’s world and story, you may well be disappointed by it. I found the characters to be unlikeable, personally, and it seemed like an unnecessary rehashing of the story. I also recall some unavoidable boss rushes in the main story that made certain areas really grindy and killed my enjoyment for a good while.

Otherwise, I would say a pretty decent write up here.

My first OS was whatever ran on a Commodore 64. I guess the Commodore kernel and Basic?

My first distro was whatever version of Fedora was current in the fall of 2008. I’d gone to university that year and my laptop crapped out. Couldn’t afford a legit Windows license at the time to replace it, and I’m pretty sure I just remembered that Red Hat was a thing and found Fedora that way. One thumb drive and 16 years later, still using linux, so I guess that was about the only good thing to come from my abortive first attempt at higher education.

There’s a reason these schemes are being run in developing countries, and it’s not because Putin wants to diversify the Russian workforce. I could see it being an appealing offer for someone looking to get out of Nepal or most African nations, especially for someone who hasn’t had luck with getting visas to go elsewhere or that hasn’t been able to get a position that didn’t involve leaving their family behind. It’s not as though they’ll be doing this recruiting in all parts of these countries, either, just as I’m sure they’re only showing them the nicest parts of Russia to make it look more developed than et really is in many places.

The article the screenshot is from links directly to a case of an elderly woman being hit and killed by someone on an ebike. It also links to a story of another woman has suffered brain damage and lasting effects after being hit by someone riding a moped.

They don’t really go that fast.

You really can’t say that, categorically. Part of the issue is that when people speak about e-bikes, there is a huge range of vehicles that fall under that category. You have ebikes that hit 80mph these days, yet generally are sold no differently in terms of registration or licensing than a pedal assist bike that cuts out the engine at 20mph or if the rider stops pedaling. A lot of these delivery drivers in NYC are riding illegal electric mopeds that go at high speeds and weigh much more than a normal bike, but are sold as though they were equal to an e-bike that goes much slower.

Even a lighter e-bike, like a Citi Bike, weighs about 45lbs. That’s 15lbs heavier than my regular bike, which will make a difference if you get hit at higher speeds. Something like the Surron bike mentioned in that video is advertized as street legal, but according to their specs page, their bikes clock in at 47 kg, or 103.6 lbs! Sure, that guy could be riding a slightly different model, but there is an absolutely massive difference for a pedestrian between getting hit by a 150 lbs rider on a 30 lbs bike doing 20 mph, and getting hit by the same rider on a bike that’s three times as heavy and going at four times the speed. Heck, there’s a big difference for the rider themselves if they just eat it on their own.

Sure, all other factors being equal, it would be less severe with everyone on bikes, but your initial post read rather dismissively to me. Rather than, “Well at least it wasn’t a car and they didn’t die,” it came across to me like “Nobody was in a car and it was unlikely to kill them, so it’s not a problem.” Perhaps that wasn’t your intent, but it’s certainly how I interpreted it. We can advocate for a safer mode of transit while also calling out dangerous behavior by people using our preferred mode.

Unsafe behavior isn’t made okay just because the risk of death is minimal. The mother could have been concussed or had a broken bone, for all we know. If things go pear shaped and the trailer tips over, you could have the kids dumped out into traffic on one side, or down a ditch on the other, for all we know. This line of thinking, that it’s okay as long as it’s not equally dangerous as it would be in a car, makes no sense.

Yeah, some of the e-bike circlejerk sounds like it’s from people who have never been in a major city where they get used by people with no regard for others. I’ve nearly been run down by app delivery drivers on ebikes and mopeds turning onto the sidewalk going the wrong way down one way streets at 30+ mph, people riding both acting crazy in the bike lanes, running red lights and cutting through traffic with no regard for their own safety or anyone else’s. You’ll have to excuse me when I lack sympathy for the guys on souped-up ebikes doing 30mph over a blind hill with no lights or helmet that get mad and start threatening me because they had to swerve to dodge since they were riding in the wrong lane.

Some of it could be app delivery drivers struggling to make ends meet while being subject to unreasonable and dangerous metrics, along with unlivable pay. I feel for them, but their struggle to earn a living doesn’t give them carte blanche to put other people’s lives at risk. On the other hand, a lot of people I see riding these tricked out ebikes and mopeds are the same people I know that were riding dirt bikes on NYC streets a few years back and moaning about how misunderstood they were and how the cops are picking on them just because they want to ride 40 deep down Third Ave and do wheelies while the streets and sidewalks are full of other vehicles, cyclists and pedestrians.

I’m all for encouraging people to use other modes of transportation, but people are being assholes and demonstrating why there’s going to be a need to regulate the ebike and moped industry more rigorously, and probably introduce some sort of licensing requirement to enable tracking dangerous riders and enforcing safety rules. You have people riding devices rigged up to go at highway speeds, being careless while riding and disregarding pedestrians, riding the wrong way, and just generally being reckless and putting other people at risk. This is also ignoring the issue of people being cheap and buying aftermarket batteries that cause some nasty fires.

If you’re on an ebike, scooter or moped that exceeds 25mph, I don’t think you have any business being in the bike lane. Yes, it’s riskier for those riders to be in vehicular traffic, but even ignoring the mass of the bike, just a person’s body hitting you at 30mph or more can do some serious damage. If you’re riding at a massively higher speed than those around you in the same lane, you’re a safety hazard to others in your lane, whether you’re on a moped doing 40mph in a 15-20mph zone, or in a car doing 70mph in a 45mph zone. People still need to be held accountable for putting others at risk with dangerous behavior, too, whether it’s a car driving erratically, ebikes going down one way streets the wrong way, cyclists taking blind corners at speeds that don’t let them stop for pedestrians, or even just pedestrians doing stupid shit like insisting on walking in the bike lane, rather than using a perfectly good sidewalk or pedestrian path right next to them. That said, they need to be enforced across the board, not just singling out people on ebikes or cyclists, while ignoring others.

Lack of legal recognition and protections? I’m not really aware of any states that have provisions to recognize a union that only comprises a quarter or a third of employees doing a specific job for an employer. Closest I’ve seen was places where different jobs were unionized and non-union positions, like one job where all the drivers got a union, but not any of the warehouse staff.

It is a true statement that roads are used to transport goods and services.

They then simply ask who in the video is carrying goods and products into stores/homes, and how workers move goods from ports to the stores.

It’s a very simplistic and reductive view of roads, though, in response to a post that specifically mentions another function of roads, namely, facilitating people’s travels as individuals for their own purposes. It’s like you telling someone you like using lemmy because you’ve found communities you enjoy participating in and individuals you like talking to, and they go, “But the internet is for commerce, the buying and selling of goods! Who is selling and who is buying in these instances?”

Your example is overly charitable, in my opinion. Not everyone is being malicious with these sorts of questions, but the person is ignoring some pretty clear context explaining other uses of roads to go attach a strawman. At the very least, it seems like a bad faith argument.

I feel as though I missed the heyday of youtube, and only really started using it within the last few years, so perhaps my perspective is a bit skewed, but I don’t really get the point of a lot of content on there. A lot of the content I consume could easily be replicated elsewhere, or in a different format. A good deal of tech content I consume would be improved, in my view, if it were just a website with an associated discussion forum for clarifying or expanding upon any points people don’t fully get. Plenty of food channels would be better if they were just a cookbook, because they waste so much time on stuff nobody cares about in order to hit a magic length for the algorithm. Most of the long form stuff I come across could just be podcasts without losing anything of value for me.

I’m entirely willing to say this may well be my “old man yells at clouds” moment, but I just don’t get the majority of youtube content. The appeal of things like Lets Plays (outside of seeing exactly how to beat a spot you’re stuck on) and Vtubers is completely alien to me. I do enjoy travel content, but I find a lot of the stuff uploaded by independent youtube creators to be pretty exploitative and don’t enjoy watching it. I don’t think BBC or Arte or the like willl disappear with youtube. I doubt I’ll miss it very much when it eventually gets killed and Google launches a worse video site one of these days.