to be honest if I was the representative of moldova WHICH I’M NOT and it was the 32nd consecutive year in a row that the same shit had happened and nothing had changed then I might also take a day off

federated platform splits userbase into a million little fiefdoms, only somewhat interconnected, all differently starved for interaction

Yup, checks out

Probably would be better off with relatively minor adjustments to overarching standards over time, much akin to parking requirements, but probably that would look more like parking-protected bike lanes downtown, mixed-use zoning, making missing middle housing more available by getting rid of lots of zoning requirements on housing, or, like japan, making them much more comprehensive. None of that costs you anything economically. Parking protected bike lanes just require paint, and you can do that when you need to repave and repaint the main high traffic roads downtown. Eventually you may be able to justify an upgrade to a totally separated bike lane, or you might be able to justify shutting down main street to through traffic and routing things around.

Then you don’t really have to shell out for anything in terms of city transit, you’re just changing some regulations around, and people can walk or bike 2 to 3 minutes to the grocery store on their street corner, from their apartment, which is above a pizza place or whatever the fuck. Bike 3 minutes from the edge of downtown in their rowhome into main downtown where they can pick up groceries. Those people can also have jobs and be economically productive with the higher job density that such a development provides, and this all provides a much healthier and more stable tax base for the city since the utilities cost per person and per business is going to be much less. Course, you’re not gonna get heavy industry like that, but I haven’t really cooked up a solid approach to that sort of commute to a factory or industrial district that doesn’t involve a bus or passenger rail line that just heads straight there, like the USSR did.

The more significant problem with this isn’t so much that it’s some sort of like, totally impossible thing, it’s that any city doing that shit will probably be overrun by a shit ton of annoying gentrifiers, which is a harder problem to solve.

I feel like it’s pretty obvious that the main problem here is with the local NIMBY voters which might not like such a thing, and a significant lack of federal funding. There isn’t really a solid argument against any of the fundamental and somewhat universal planning principles which increase density, walkability, public accessibility, economic efficiency and productivity.

basically, the US is a one party system, but it has two parties

You could still probably blow with your mouth if you didn’t have your lungs connected, I imagine it would involve a kind of burping type of action. I think the bigger problem would be that if your nostrils closed up, you wouldn’t be able to breathe, and probably also talking would be a lot harder if your vocal chords and mouth were separate from your main air sacs.

I think the solution is probably just an easily opened and closed internal valve that separates the stomach and the lungs, rather than this bullshit we currently have with two separate valves that lead into both and open for one and then close for the other whenever it’s required. It’s still good to be able to close both when you want to, but you can already close your mouth on command, and another valve with the nose is a notable upgrade in that it keeps everyone from smelling bad smells they don’t wanna smell, and it also doesn’t take any more valves than we already have.

There’s probably some way you could fix this all with enough surgical intervention, I bet…

this is THE first time I’ve seen a link to a mastodon page anywhere on my lemmy feed. insane

All of those things can be done outside of my house, so I don’t really see any reason why not to. Beard trim, blam, here’s a razor, sandwich, here’s that shit, here’s a bottle of water, the hose is over there, here’s some soap, blam. Even if I’m cooking up the most diabolical and insane homeless person of all time, I can still fulfill all of those requests while also keeping them outside, doing very little, and maybe telling them to also fuck off after if I’m a psycho.

The rest of this is gonna mostly be venting, so you can safely ignore it if you don’t care.

People in america are totally cooked on homelessness, even though they’re, on average, metaphorically inches away from it at any given time. Homeless shelters in america mostly are horrible places to go where your shit will be stolen and they will do nothing. They’re bad for children, they’re full of drugs, and very frequently they have curfews, rules against having animals or pets, rules requiring that you go to religious ceremonies, etc. Homeless people aren’t just like, insane illogical transients. I mean they kind of are, but there’s also a reason for why they do the things that they do, that includes maybe knocking on the door of a random suburb.

I would actually find it more likely in this situation that this random person would probably want to use my toilet since there are no fucking public toilets in america, especially as private businesses will deny use of their restrooms to people who look homeless. Then people get arrested for public defecation, urination, or nudity because there’s nowhere else to go, obviously there’s also mental health, and then all you see is how some guy on the street on fent gets arrested with his pants around his ankles and his asscheeks covered in shit and you think “wow that guy’s crazy” and have no further thoughts. Context is eradicated.

Give someone in america the slightest advantage over the homeless, a shitty suburban flat, with a lower rent, that they spend two thirds or more of their income on, including roommates, and they will still somehow find a way to spit on the homeless after riding the bus into town every day cause they can’t afford a car. They will still live their lives in fear and they will still come to hate the homeless because somehow the person basically making negative income is not able to afford soap or a high-fiber diet.

It’s the “Oh, well, it’s not my problem, that sucks for them, but I’m still allowed to be offended by it.” sort of mentality. You can give them every reason under the sun why hating the homeless doesn’t make any sense, why hating the homeless is immoral, why they don’t deserve it, how they are products of their environment. Still people will desperately cling to it. It makes me understand how racism occurs, I suppose, because it’s the same phenomena. “Ah, well, I understand all of the stats about racism, but this particular member of this particular racial minority, I still hate them personally for acting in line with the statistical average of their group.”. Insanity. It’s as though it’s all just abstract thought goop that has no bearing on anyone’s life, or that somehow I should be the exception to it.

I think it’s gotta be a functional adaptation, or something. Maybe they can prevent themselves from going insane and becoming nihilists if they just suddenly become individualists and objectivists as soon as it becomes convenient, or something. It is not that hard to conceive of a reality in which the person cutting you off in traffic is rushing to the hospital, or, a reality in which they, maybe naively but understandably want to enjoy their expensive car while they still can, or, maybe a reality in which they’re just panicking because they’re late to work or something.

I am an introvert, I am awkward, I hate hanging around people and talking to people. Even I can talk to the homeless when they need someone to talk to, and reluctantly give them money, and rides to places when they ask, since it would otherwise be like two hours and twelve dollars of travel, bus stops, a transfer station, travel, more bus stops, before they get across town to do a fairly basic errand. The social fabric is falling apart. Please be nice, it is not that hard, it costs very little, it happens infrequently, and very possibly if some of you extroverted assholes picked up some slack instead of making things harder for the most maligned, I could go back to my cave.

Mostly I find them annoying. I mildly understand the need for human meaning as it kind of, tends to come up later at night, or for the elderly, or when life really sucks or you tend to even just be really really bored right.

I also understand some of the benefits, right, like. As much as people will despise to admit it, you don’t get, say, the number zero without the Muslim science guys, and you don’t get science without the enlightenment which stemmed out of some weirdass Catholic Christian theory guys. and then everyone’s all like, oh no well you can’t attribute that to the Catholics and if anything they hampered progress, and I’d say, well, maybe, maybe, but also maybe science sucks as we commonly understand it and maybe also you can’t really divorce any part of things from their cultural context, or else things get fucky.

On the other hand I find them annoying and I find that all to be totally null and void because the vast majority of people are just using it as an opiate to placate literally all of their anxieties about the world with a bunch of meaningless thought terminating cliche style statements, and even actively reinforce their own participation in some of the worst aspects of their own culture and society even at points in which they really don’t want to or know that it’s horrible and is causing them pain.

So I dunno, mostly it sucks.