No, that’s just the objectionable part because that’s the part pretending billionaires are responsible for everything good.

Easy; don’t give credit to billionaires for things they’ve only made worse. I’m not sure why you need my help to not spread misinformation?

No, I’m arguing against direct quotes from you. Unless you yourself are a strawman.

Post about it on the internet built upon tech enabled by the said class

Built by academics to share research, expanded by hobbyists and enthusiasts, and taken over by megacorps. Not “enabled” by billionaires.

, from devices sold to us by the said class

Technically true, but only in that billionaires own the workers.

, in our homes with comforts the existence of which wouldn’t be possible without the said class.

Untrue. People can live in comfort without the existence of billionaires.

Then go to work using infrastructure and means we wouldn’t have without the said class,

Untrue. This is what your taxes pay for. Transit infrastructure exists without billionaires. Even in the US, notoriously a horrible place to travel, public transit infrastructure was good until billionaires lobbied against good infrastructure so they could sell more cars. Car infrastructure costs you more than public transit.

likely doing work we wouldn’t have without the said class.

Possibly true in very specific cases where your work provides value only to billionaires. If your work provides value in any other way (eg providing services or goods), this is likely not true.

Perhaps go buy some food the likes of which we couldn’t dream of having access to without the said class.

I am fully certain you don’t really believe good food only exists because of billionaires. Has there ever been a civilization of any kind which hasn’t had chefs of some description?

Maybe indulge in a hobby - a leisurely distraction, the kind that only exists because the said class engineered a world where you have time and resources to waste on frivolity, while they decide what those resources are.

Hobbies have always existed. You have time and resources to spare because of unions, not billionaires.

You credited all of these things to billionaires. None of these things exist because of billionaires.

There is no paradox. Thing exists. Billionaire takes over thing. Billionaire ruins thing. Billionaire did not cause thing to exist.

You said these things “wouldn’t be possible” and “wouldn’t exist” without billionaires. This is objectively untrue. Without billionaires these things would be significantly better. I specifically pointed out your mention of infrastructure because that one’s so blatantly obvious unless you’ve only ever experienced car-centric infrastructure.

Are you not aware of how, for example, car lobbies destroyed public infrastructure in an attempt to make everything car dependant to sell more cars? Claiming any of these things only exist because of billionaires is absurd. They take over and destroy.

I think the issue you’re having is that you’re treating them as categories and subcategories, like most things it’s never that clean. It makes much more sense if you treat them as unordered tags. Arcade isn’t a subcategory of tennis.

Say for instance you had a multiplayer racing simulator game, you could categorise that as multiplayer > racing > sim, but if you have a similar singleplayer game you have single player > racing > sim so clearly those aren’t just subcategories of single/multiplayer.
You could try sim > racing > multiplayer, but what about your city building sims? Now it’s your middle category that didn’t work right.

If they’re independent tags sim, racing, multiplayer you can change any one of them independently. If any one tag changes that changes how the game is played.

Yes, but only if they’ve moved in together

The 50s were 70 years ago, things that were new and interesting then are not new and interesting now. It’s unremarkable to you because you have 70 years of people building on top of it.

Blind game tournaments are already a thing, you should give them a shot. I’ve never competed but I like Kusogrande, the bad video games tournament.

That’s only the case for digital storefronts. With physical media you’ve always been able to buy a base game from one place and an expansion pack from another.

It’s also potatoes.

A couple of years back I was at a wedding and ended up talking to a cop, they were telling us as if it was a good thing how they send out helicopters to catch people underage drinking in parks. Completely absurd and far more of a nuisance than people having a drink.

They also bragged about how their dog handler sicced a dog on a suspect and just let them get mauled, then everyone pretended they didn’t see anything happen. Straight-up gloating about police brutality. The job just does not attract well-adjusted people.

“Magic system” is a bit of an oxymoron imo. The problem with having hard rules for magic is that that’s not magic, that’s science. You just end up with a world with slightly different physical laws.

Technology can be interesting on its own but a deep understanding of the underlying mechanics kills the magic. A rock that lets you talk with someone over great distance is magic but if you explain it as manipulating imperceptible vibrations in the air you just have a radio.

I think Santa might have overreacted, they just wanted to be able to insure their heath!

This is getting well outside my area but my understanding is that if you were approaching the center of the earth gravity would gradually decrease until you have effectively no net pull at the core. This is because the mass above you is still attracting you too so at the core you’re pulled equally in all directions. Using the same principle you’d essentially be free-floating if you found yourself in a hollow “shell” planet, presumably because the pull from whichever area of the shell is close to you is offset by there being more shell pulling you away.

When I was learning to drive I’d have to go through 2-3 roundabouts just to get out of the residential area I was in so it was hammered in pretty early to always use signals, but there was one roundabout that was always a pain to navigate. Two-lane roundabout, those can always be a pain to navigate but lane markings were good so if you entered the roundabout in the correct lane you’d be naturally guided to your exit.

The problem was that coming in from the nearby motorway you’d have the innermost lane signposted as the 4th exit, practically a U-turn, and the outer lane was “all other traffic”. Even better, that signage was only painted on the road itself so if there was a queue or just a car too close in front of you you’d easily miss it. Inevitably anyone taking a right turn (3rd exit, think left turn in most other places) would only realise at the last second they were being guided to the wrong exit and they’d swerve in front of you, if you were lucky they might signal for half a second first. I commuted to work by car at the time and dreaded that roundabout every trip.

The best part is if you took the next exit which you were being guided to, it led straight into another roundabout so you could make a U-turn with absolutely no risk. If you were in the wrong lane you probably weren’t familiar with the area so you wouldn’t know that was there… But then after that was a retail park so you could clearly see all the parking space and know you could turn around there anyway! Some people would rather crash than take a minute or two to turn safely.

According to this article freefall speed is anywhere from 120mph to 200mph for a human depending on position, that’s roughly 190-320km/h. The radius of Earth is 6,371 km so you’d be traveling one Earth every 40-60 hours. In 80 years you’d cover between 133 and 224 million kilometers (82-139 million miles), traveling an entire Earth 28 to 47 million times. Interestingly this is still only roughly 10% the radius of the solar system, but it would get you to the moon and back 173 - 291 times. Space is big.

With the parachute open obviously you’re a little slower, this article says 16-32 km/h. That’s close enough we can just divide the other estimates by 10, so you’d travel about 13-22 million km (8-14 million miles) or 1% the radius of the solar system.

There’s a very good chance these numbers are a bit off, rough calculations that I didn’t bother to double-check.

Do you really want me to go point by point? Fine.

Let’s break this down. So many unverified, regurgitated strawman arguments.

You literally spent the rest of your comment claiming I said things I very obviously did not.

The arguments work so well because it will take me 20 times as long to respond to your gish gallop.

I made four claims, total:

• Electric cars are heavy and this causes road wear. You made a more specific claim that EVs are 20% heavier than comparable fossil fuel vehicles.
• Car tyres shed microplastics. You literally said the exact same thing in your “rebuttal”.
• It’s not green if your electricity source isn’t green. This shouldn’t be controversial, we’ll cover your attempt at a rebuttal later.
• From a “helping the environment” perspective, non-car transport and infrastructure is superior to electric cars. You ignored this point.

It’s not about “loving cars” when clearly, we’re talking about making a personal choice to do what one can.

An actually reasonable point among the bullshit. You obviously can’t access alternatives that don’t exist.

“EVs are naturally heavy”. Modern cars are “naturally” heavy with safety devices, stronger crash structures, and more luxury devices. EVs are only about 20% heavier when you compare them to something within their actual class. This means not ignoring the Nissan Leaf as an EV. This means comparing a Model S to a Mercedes E450 as a quiet, feature-rich luxury car at a high price point. This means comparing the Hummer to a Ford F-450 as both are hulking slabs that have no reason to be daily driven. While we’re here, may as well dip into the part where EVs are “expensive”. Again, compare them to the proper class competitors and stop pretending the used car market doesn’t exist and doesn’t have EVs for cheaper already.

[Scored out everything irrelevant because, as you said, “regurgitated strawman arguments” and “gish gallop”]

You agree with my claim.

“cause significant road wear”. They don’t. They’re not special. The additional roadwear is not significant because none of these cars, EV or not, are doing anywhere near the damage caused by commercial trucks. I bet your residential roads don’t have rutting unless they haven’t been repaved in 40 years. Rain/snow/UV degrades non-commercial roads faster than any normal personal traffic can.

Partially true. Commercial trucks are heavier than EVs and cause more wear and “intense” freezing cycles can reduce road lifespan by up to 20%, but residential roads are repaved “every 15 to 30 years” (potentially unreliable source, they sell concrete) but cycle/footpaths need repaved so infrequently it’s difficult to find anything more specific than “as needed”/“when damaged” in a 5 minute search.

“shed microplastics” not significantly more than any other car, especially since most EVs come with hard eco tires that last longer. All tires shed microplastics.

This is you agreeing with what I said.

" are only clean if their electricity source is clean". Not only is this false from a “only research as far as I can touch”, […]

No, this is true from a “I have more than one braincell” perspective. Non-clean energy source = non-clean energy use.

[…] this entirely ignores the energy used and pollution created for gasoline production and distribution. 10 years ago, in the US, a Model S charged by the dirtiest coal factory was responsible for emissions per mile comparable to a car that got about 35mpg. That was better than typical highway efficiency. That is still better than current city driving efficiency. Wanna guess what the comparable emissions ate was for if it was charged in the purely hydropower Niagara region? 260mpg equivalent. Grid power generators are far, far more efficient than a gas car. The power company doesn’t enjoy wasting money, so they’re tuned to run at specific generation levels as efficiently as possible for money’s sake. It doesn’t just apply to the grid, either. A personal generator, again, tuned to run a specific output, exceeds the efficiency of a gas engine revving all over the place to shift gears and move the car it’s attached to. That disingenuous meme picture of the ev charging by diesel generator in the Australian outback was completely false in every aspect (wattage, fuel consumption, and obviously resultant mpg). How do we know? Because it was taken by a bunch of EV nerds that were specifically testing it. They netted about 50mpg on diesel with a personal generator. Again, economy of scale will outperform that further.

[Scored out everything irrelevant because, as you said, “regurgitated strawman arguments” and “gish gallop”]

This is absolute nonsense. Saying that non-green energy sources make your end product non-green is the exact opposite of ignoring fossil fuels, fossil fuels are a non-green energy source. If you’re burning fossil fuels you are by definition not using clean energy.

“only clean if … infrastructure is clean”. You’re implying the current petroleum infrastructure is clean.

Here you just outright lied.

Your implying oil wells don’t leak and spill, they they don’t burn off waste products, that the product is shipped without use of energy and fuel for pumps and trucks, that it’s distributed from the pump without energy, and that gas stations are naturally-occurring geological formations. I specifically ignored this part in the prior section because, through and through, with a hands-on-only investigation, EVs were still more efficient on a per-mile basis than a gas car. They only get better when you’d actor in all the expenditure of fuel for petroleum distribution. For another tangent, this applies to the claims about how dirty lithium mines are. That only makes sense if you pretend we don’t have continuous petroleum disasters and “acceptable levels” of spills and runoff.

And now you’re building a narrative around your lie, nice one.

“electric cars are to save car companies”. Great, that’s capitalism. EVs only “save” car companies if people buy them. People are. Any vehicle they make is to “save” the company because if they don’t sell, they don’t profit, they don’t survive. That argument makes no sense. They’re not donating the majority of their gas cars.

I have no idea what point you’re trying to make here but it seems like you’re agreeing with me? Electric cars are to save car companies because their greenwashing gets them sales. People moving away from fossil fuels would use public transport or alternative infrastructure, putting pressure on local governing bodies to improve that infrastructure, making cars less appealing, leading to a death spiral. EVs let the car companies claim to be green so people keep buying their cars. That is, indeed, capitalism.

Your comment is “controversial” because you made baseless claims.

You did not provide a single source and everyone can see just by reading one post up that you’re making shit up.

You pushed the propaganda of conservative groups,

Please point me to any conservative group which promotes public transport and proper pedestrian or cycling infrastructure. I can see “EVs are greenwashing” being an oil lobby talking point but they’d push in the opposite direction. I’m not in the US so the only prominent US-based pro-EV activist I know is Musk, correct me if I’m wrong but I’m fairly certain they’re very right-wing.

notorious for making arguments that affirm feelings, without asking for facts, based on what their group can experience directly. You’re attacking individuals who do not have the power to suddenly rebuild a town into a pedestrian dream. You’re making it a class war between car drivers satisfied with the status quo and car drivers who support change when they’re both the same class. You’re making the argument that since a little change only helps a little, no one should do anything at all. That attitude keeps us in the same place. Forever.

Again, that only happened in your head. My claim, which I for some reason have to have to restate once again, was that public transport and walking/cycling are far better than EVs from an environmental perspective. I did not attack anyone, I did not call anyone out (except people claiming that EVs are helping the environment), I didn’t even say you should never use an EV if your only choice is to use a car. I simply stated the fact that alternative modes of transport are better.

I also believe you’re wrong when you say individuals don’t have the power to pedestrianise a town, though that does seem to be an honest mistake rather than the bullshit you’re spewing in the rest of your comment. A small number of activists is more than enough to push for pedestrianisation, and while it might not be instant (neither was ripping all that infrastructure out, which I believe happened in the US around the 1960s?) it can be done relatively quickly. Paris is the most recent posterchild for this transformation, I think, they’ve been phasing out cars for about a decade and recently voted to pedestrianise 500 streets with a timescale of 3-4 years. Pretty fast for a change in infrastrcture imo, and definitely shorter than EVs have been trying to get a foothold.

Edit: For completeness, here’s a definition for Gish Gallop, everyone can judge for themselves whether that applies more to my single paragraph or your novel you demanded I respond to point-by-point. I literally had to cut out your final paragraph because I hit comment size limits.

Okay, that’s a lot of words but the entire premise of your “argument” is clearly wrong. Where did I say “compared to fossil fuel cars”? Why not at least compare to one of the alternatives I specifically called out? Is it because you’d look stupid claiming cycling pollutes more than electric cars?

It was very clear I was suggesting swapping away from car infrastructure altogether, not staying on fossil fuel powered cars. The only way I’d see any confusion whatsoever on that point is if you’ve only ever experienced very heavily car-centric infrastructure.

How can your reading comprehension be so bad that you think I suggested burning fossil fuels is clean? Jesus fucking christ.

I didn’t object to the concept of electric cars. I objected to claiming it’s “to help the environment”. Stabbing one person is less bad than stabbing two but if you’re going around stabbing people you’re not reducing knife crime.

I have no objections to reserving charging spaces for cars that need charged, but I definitely disagree with framing electric cars as for the environment. They’re naturally heavy vehicles which causes significant road wear, sheds microplastics via tyre wear, and only uses clean fuel if your electricity source + infrastructure is also clean. Electric cars are to save car companies, public transport and walking/cycle infrastructure is to save the environment.

Edit: No idea why this would be controversial, you guys must love your cars. Even if you’re driving having proper non-car infrastructure still helps you out too. If people don’t need to use their cars they won’t, if other people aren’t driving you’re not stuck in traffic.