There’s a whole Wikipedia article on that phrase: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thank_God_for_Mississippi

Google is run my by assholes and idiots. Break it apart.

Edit: fixed silly typo

Conservatives are often nice to people they know. The in-group. The problem is when it’s a scary other. So they’ll let Jose couch surf for a week while he sorts out his housing situation, because he’s a good guy down on his luck, but they’ll rage against Those People getting anything.

I feel like we should run honeypots like this, and anyone who falls for it goes right to, like, therapy and “how not to be scammed” training.

More people from more walks of life (pun intended) on the street probably does reduce some types of crime, though. You’re not going to be mugged on the street outside two busy restaurants and a record shop with a bunch of other people walking around.

Yes. The American suburb model is probably the worst of all options. And people who haven’t really lived other ways might not even realize how bad it is.

I never want to live somewhere car-first.

Remember that comic that shows two people riding bikes through a nice area, and one of them says like “if anyone proposed building this where I live I would kill them”?

WhatsApp, sms, and Google chat (hangouts? Meet? The thing built into Gmail)

None of them are great.

One of my friends is some sort of neurodivergent and just… won’t install signal. It’s “too much”. I don’t understand this. It’s 30 seconds of “click this link I sent you, then click install”.

The “american dream” has always had a problematic contradiction. You should work hard. Working hard is good. You should work hard so you don’t have to work anymore. Working sucks and you don’t want to do it. You want to be the guy on a golf course getting money while those hard working people assemble widgets for you.

Well, which is it then?

The freedom was always kind of dicey. Sedition act of 1798, for example.

Women also historically had a bad time of it. And the native peoples. Queer folks, too. Religious freedom is hit or miss.

It’s been pretty good for wealthy people, historically. They’ve been pretty free.

I’ve seen some funny comments, but the ones that are like “ur so hot” are baffling.

You can take it up with Jane Jacobs, I guess.

I don’t think anyone’s saying car dominance is the only factor, but it’s a big one.

Jane Jacobs wrote about this in like the 1960s. More regular people on the street makes people feel safer. It probably actually makes people safer, too.

So, yes, car-first culture makes crime and fear worse. A local neighborhood with people walking about doing their business is safer than one where people just drive, park, and leave.

“”“We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings. Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.”“”

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/3238058-we-live-in-capitalism-its-power-seems-inescapable-so-did

Unionize. Organize.

Did you know if you run over someone, even a VP responsible for making big decisions like to use AI at a company, you probably won’t even get a manslaughter charge? If they’re on a bike or crossing the street, it’s just a whoopsie.

Sorry for the tangent.

I feel like in the olden days, when stuff like this happened people would form up into a miltia shaped mob, march down to the rich person’s house, and deal with the problem.

You can’t just kill them. You need to deal with the forces that enabled them. But getting rid of them would be a good start.

Conservatives are fundamentally incapable of good government. They don’t believe in it. They don’t believe in fairness applied to all. They believe in hierarchy. In-groups to protect and out-groups to bind. They don’t have good empathy.

I don’t know how to grade myself on clarity of communication, but I’ll share some things I think have helped.

Avoid long sentences. Many people don’t read well, and even those that do will get lost in a long block of text.

Read back what you wrote out loud.

Do not neglect the emotional front. Conversations and convincing are about emotions more than facts. Acknowledge their position. Make them feel heard.

Read more. Read a variety of things. Op-eds in newspapers. Books of various genres. Old stuff. New stuff. Feed your brain more than word junk food.

Ask questions. Sincere questions. Don’t try to trick them. People are usually happy to talk about themselves and their beliefs. Use this to find common ground and shared experience.

It seems like their calculations always return high prices. I can’t think of any service that has had the price drop significantly.