As someone who works with door hardware, this would be a pretty easy interview.

People are scared that if you acknowledge the fact that Biden is concerning as a presidential candidate in any way, people will be less likely to vote for him; the sad state of the matter is that Biden is the only candidate who has a chance to beat Trump at this late of a stage in the game. The reasoning that we need to avoid criticizing him as a result of that is bullshit though, since if you’re closing your eyes and voting for your default color, then such discussion won’t affect to your vote, and if you’re actually paying attention to the state of our upcoming election, then you’ll already be well aware that being against Trump forces you to vote Biden, so your vote is locked in, regardless of how depressing it is. Nobody’s still hemming and hawing at this point, and even if some are, some random meme on Lemmy isn’t going to be the thing that finally gets them to make up their mind.

There’s no reason we can’t acknowledge the fact that, while being better than Donald Trump should win Biden the presidential election, it’s not an accomplishment, and in a vacuum he’s a terrible candidate. In fact, we specifically need to point out that we knew this scenario was coming for the past 4 years, and have organized no major uprisings, or even major educational movements to try to get people to force out a different Democratic candidate in the primaries; we’ve sat on our asses ever since the last election, and there’s no reason to think we won’t do the same going into the next election unless we start forcing a change in the DNC right now.

These “both sides” discussions aren’t about whether or not to choose to vote for Biden, they’re about getting people to notice the fact that we vote for the “lesser evil” every 4 years, saying that the time to make a change is after we’re solidified our candidate’s victory, but then once we’ve done that we do nothing until we’re in the same “lesser evil” situation again 4 years later. If we want to ever have a situation where we’re voting for a president we’d actually like, we need to start planning out how to force that to happen now, because even 4 whole years isn’t a very long time frame to for us to push such a large change.

I can understand some people are scared that Trump is going to win because too many people chose to vote 3rd party, or choose not to vote, but everyone who’s paying attention enough to be swayed by political discussion is already aware that we specifically need to vote for Biden in order for Trump to lose, so at this point the fanatical drive to quash any criticism of him as a presidential candidate seems nearly tailor-made to sow even more apathy among the voting population, making them feel not only forced into voting for Biden, but forced into liking it as well. In the end I think the efforts to prevent discussion about how neither candidate is an objectively good candidate is going to ultimately cause fewer people to vote at all, since they’ll feel as though they can’t even air out their grievances with the candidate they’d already begrudgingly chosen to vote for.

My wife and I usually plan big vacations about a year in advance so that we can follow flight prices and whatnot to get a good deal. We also book a few days at a cabin for our anniversary every year, so we just book the next year’s reservation while we’re there, since reservations can fill up even several months in advance.

Only planning a week in advance seems stressful to me - we planned a last-minute (for us) road trip vacation earlier this month for the long 4th of July weekend, and it was tough to find cheap places to stay that weren’t super grungy.

I didn’t really see people mentioning that “would” can still be used past-tense outside of “would have,” though it’s not in the same way - you use it when talking about something that happened multiple times in the past. For example, “When I was a kid my friends and I would go to the pool every Saturday,” which means that, as children, my friends and I did visit the pool every Saturday.

While I’m not exactly a fan of AI, it does make sense that the first things we’re able to replicate with AI, however terribly, are intellectual things like art and writing. While AI might be able to understand how to wash dishes, it would need a way of interacting with the physical dishes to do so, which goes beyond something a computer program can do while confined to a computer.

I wouldn’t be surprised if future dishwashers and washing machines end up having little cameras and sensors so that AI can determine how best to wash them, but if anything that feature would be implemented more for collecting your private information than for any real washing benefit. Plus you’d still have to load and unload the machines - if we wanted AI to handle everything, we’d need robots, which would be waaaay more expensive, and likely something only the richest would be able to afford anyway.

I’m definitely in support of A, regardless. I only know complex words from having seen them used correctly in the wild; how could anyone be expected to learn them otherwise?

The ability to find an approximate definition of a new word using context - and slowly whittle it down to the actual definition over subsequent encounters - is invaluable for gaining better language comprehension.

Pretty sure they mean one less account someone could track you with, because yeah, staying on top of sending monthly checks for stuff is something I’m very glad I don’t have to do anymore. My credit took multiple hits in my younger days from bills I forgot to pay on time.

Sweet Home Carolina! No, wait…

As much as I personally disagree with you, given that all you’re thinking about is your own benefit, and not any of the myriad of benefits to the city, the world, the people who can’t afford cars, etc, I understand that your outlook is shared by the vast majority of Americans, and can’t be ignored if we ever hope to have an effective public transport system.

We’re going to need to somehow devise a system so convenient that it actually sounds attractive to the huge amount of people who spend 10%+ of their paycheck on car payments not because they have to, but because they want to.

It fits pretty well for people who are really bad at sex. I mean… maybe it does… who knows? Definitely not me.

Is that loss?

I’m not saying to get overly bright lights. I have no idea why you keep talking about overly bright lights. When I’m not driving for work, I drive a '94 corolla with stock headlights. But even with those, I can see dark obstacles that are way ahead of me on the road. I’ve encountered deer, turtles, pedestrians, and all sorts of random stuff that fell off of people’s cars. There’s so much on the road that needs to be illuminated, even if all the other cars have working lights. The fact that you can so nonchalantly bring up a scenario in which you can’t even see another car, much less all the other stuff that might show up on the roads, makes me highly concerned for the state of your vehicle. That scenario is so insanely rare and dangerous that I can’t understand how you can just throw it out there like it’s no big deal.

It’s NOT NORMAL to be unable to see a car on the road that’s close enough to you where you need to see where their blinker are. Please, if you drive in that scenario often enough to bring it up like it’s a realistic thing that someone could reasonably encounter more than once in a lifetime, bring your car to a mechanic before you cause a huge accident.

You’re absolutely right that circumstances aren’t always perfect… Which is exactly why you need a vehicle that can maximize safety in all situations. A union jack blinker is dumb, but if you’re EVER in a situation where you can’t tell what side of a car a blinker is going off on, you’re in a situation where you need to pull off to the side of the road, turn off your car, and call for someone to pick you up.

I’ve driven for tens of thousands of hours in my lifetime so far, and I’ve never even been close to a situation like what you’ve described. Even in a snow squall or dense fog I’ve always been able to see where other nearby cars on the road are, and where their blinkers are. Not being able to do so goes well beyond “not ideal;” that’s well past the line of too dangerous. And the fact that THAT is how extreme your scenario has to get before the union jack becomes a considerable issue shows how much more concerning your scenario is than that one.

You think that headlights that can illuminate cars ahead of you are the equivalent to those shitty aftermarket LED floodlights? Really? If your car can’t see a dark car on the road with its lights off, you’re a much, MUCH bigger idiot than someone with a union jack blinker…

Dude, if your headlights aren’t enough to illuminate what’s in front of you, then it’s not that an upgrade would be too much, it’s that an upgrade would get you to the bare minimum… You literally NEED to be able to see what else is on the road with you at ALL TIMES. You’re complaining about the risk that a vaguely arrow-shaped blinker causes in the specific case where you literally can’t see the car it’s attached to. There’s a much bigger risk there, and while it’s not your fault, it’s definitely something your vehicle needs to have the tools to deal with.

There have been times where I was driving near someone who forgot to turn their headlights on at night. But that’s the thing - I knew they were there; I could see their car with the light from my headlights, and even in that dangerously-low vision, I could easy tell which side of their car a blinker came on from. Yes, I got off the road and waited a bit to make sure they weren’t near me anymore, but even in the time that I had to drive with them, I had the tools to resolve the situation safely for me.

If you’re driving in the dark with someone whose entire taillight system is out to the point where you can’t immediately tell if his blinker is on the left or the right, you need to hit the brakes and put as much distance between you and them as you can… Then get better headlights, because even in that situation you should still be able to see them pretty well just with your own lights.

Yeah, I could see it being an issue for some less-common type of indicator, but everyone who drives knows what a blinker looks like. Nobody would mistake it for anything other than the right hand turn signal.

Hell, I wouldn’t even notice the shape of the light; all you need to notice while driving is the presence of a flashing light on the right side of the vehicle - if you’re looking intently enough to notice the shape of the light, you’re not paying enough attention to everything else on the road.

It’s amazing how many people I meet who think so highly of the American revolution, but are completely aghast at the idea of fighting against the government now.

I’d listen to that song on repeat as a kid just for the piano section at the end.

Don’t Speak by No Doubt.

It was the first time I actively listened to a sad song, and while I was only 4 or so, and couldn’t really understand what the lyrics were about, I remember the emotion feeling so powerful. The radio station that played it went off air when I was 5, and I cried about it a lot. To this day I gravitate toward sad songs; there’s just something about minor chords that I can’t get enough of.