HaroldWilson
2yr ago
Perhaps there are other norms in the bikes but my first prior as a capitalistic American is the one with the cash is in the right.
I'm not American, but I am in the Anglosphere and this seems entirely alien to me.
And I believe this is one of the benefits of being an adult. Being a kid has a lot of benefits (lack of responsibilities) but the negative is waiting for adults time schedule.
I think this is one reason why it was also rude of the kids not to let a pregnant nurse just have the bike, they are in the wrong too, but if they were breaking a social rule in keeping the bike the answer to that is not break some social rules yourself but to act graciously and move on. You do have an obligation to be, within reason, polite to the impolite.
HaroldWilson
2yr ago
If you have returned something it's not yours it's available to anyone again. If you want to keep it the app has a simple method to do so, you just have to pay for it. He had returned the bike making it available to all and was wrong to prevent someone else from using it.
People keep saying this but what these rules are is completely irrelevant to the discussion of whether it was good form to take the bike anyway. I know it was available to everyone when they docked it, but that has no bearing on questions of manners.
HaroldWilson
2yr ago
I agree they are defecting against the system, but that still doesn't mean it's a mature response to go very far in trying to stop him. In manners if not in politics, 'they go low, we go high' pretty much always applies.
HaroldWilson
2yr ago
If they didn't want to give up that bike (not theirs), then they should have paid for it.
If you believe in this legalistic tripe then the whole edifice of decorum collapses, and I think decorum is good. If someone was standing at a bus stop in the rain, person A asked if they could stand under person B's umbrella would 'if they wanted an umbrella they can pay for their own' be an appropriate response? It's ironic that people complain a lot about low-trust society here but as soon as it's black teens and a white woman it's all 'well technically she paid for the bike so she has zero obligation to act in polite and accommodating manner'.
HaroldWilson
2yr ago
her life ruined
They shouldn't have posted the video, but let's not exaggerate. In a week this falls out of the news cycle, no-one hears about it ever again and she goes back to nursing.
HaroldWilson
2yr ago
Because people who are not petty children don't stoop to that level. They were misbehaving in gaming the system, maybe, but that doesn't make it a mature response to try to take it after they have clearly indicate that they are about to use it again. Much as in a library, if someone was keeping out longer by returning and loaning it again, and if you asked that person whether the book they had placed on the table was going to be taken out and they said yes, it would still be an absurd and unbecoming response to snatch it up and take it to loan it yourself to forestall them.
HaroldWilson
2yr ago
This seems a very bizarre conception of decorum. Ok, they hadn't technically rented it and she in theory was able to, but recognising that good manners require you to refrain from doing things you are 'entitled' to do is the most basic and foundational rule of social grace.
HaroldWilson
2yr ago
you don't really get to "call dibs" on a bike you are not currently renting
Don't you? I don't live in New York, but if someone was doing this I would think extremely bad form to try and take one they were obviously just about to take out, especially if you've already asked and they've said no. Indeed, the very fact that she asked surely implies she recognises they do have some sort of 'dibs' on it.
HaroldWilson
2yr ago
I agree that quite of lot of such people are probably unhappy, but I don't see that it's as gendered a problem as you're making it out to be. It takes two (or more in this case, apparently) to tango, and I see no reason why the men in this situation should be presumed to be any happier than the women. Yet, as you have, whenever anyone discusses these things it's always the women who are accused of wasting away their life; not necessarily an unfair accusation, but one that applies to these men equally, surely. Your gleeful tone is also a bit unbecoming.
HaroldWilson
2yr ago
HRC?
But as it happens yes, I agree one shouldn't be bothered in the reverse case either. Those two certainly don't seem like attacks, and no-one should be personally bothered by them.
HaroldWilson
2yr ago
The company's job is to produce [product]. Keep that central to the mission and avoid making any ad campaigns that are explicitly going to enflame the political sensibilities of your customers. Make [product], sell [product]. End of.
Well OK, but what if pontificating on the issue du jour helps you sell [product]? Indeed, let us imagine that there is a spectrum of throwing one's lot in either side of the culture war, where at one end there is Black Rifle Coffee or whatever it's called and at the other is the left-wing equivalent. Doesn't it seem unlikely that in most cases the position on the spectrum which well sell the most [product] is exactly in the middle, of all the possible stances? Budweiser have made an error here it seems, but there are plenty of past cases of entering into the culture war delivering higher sales, and given that the business of business is business there is no reason why they shouldn't try to exploit those cases. Hence the CNO will have to stand up not just to committed lefties but also the manager or board member asking why X company managed to boost their profile by taking a stances, and why the company is excluding themselves from such opportunities entirely.
HaroldWilson
2yr ago
I suggest you become a little less sensitive if a razor advert constitutes an 'attack' on you. An ad executive ploy should not be able to bother you to that extent
HaroldWilson
2yr ago
And if you were John Paul Jones I would not have quibbled with the comment. You don't get to take some sort of vicarious credit for the actions of your ancestors, and that their actions helped deliver the prosperity you live in that hardly gives you the right to pontificate on the bravery or otherwise of Syrian refugees.
HaroldWilson
2yr ago
Yes, it's true there is no-one at all with sincerely different views to yours, that wouldn't do, they're all traitors and hate the country. This is handy, as it allows the rest of us not to bother with thinking about things.
HaroldWilson
2yr ago
Did this happen in Sweden? Your example is from very recently, Golden Dawn hardly did that well in 2019, a whopping 3% of the vote. Greek solution got another few percent, so still under 7% for the far righters. Can that poor of a performance really be blamed on your imagined unfair electoral terms; what was the unfairness in 2019?
HaroldWilson
2yr ago
I can agree about the goods, that's a lot trickier
Goods has always been the main sticking point really, and it's integral to the border question.
You can have it half automatized by scanning the cars coming in, and then checking for passports.
Maybe? This is what Gove would occasionally to try to square the circle, 'technological solution blah blah blah', but at the current moment it does seem that one does require some physical border presence/infrastructure to keep some people out, so there really is no getting round the Good Friday question. A border must fall somewhere.
How does the regulatory framework require stupid cookie banners, and gender self-ID? These are new / relatively new laws even in the EU itself.
The government did not comb through EU regulations one by one (that is hardly plausible), they just transplanted them all directly into UK law with the view that if they wanted to get rid of any they could just do it later, which they still can do (and the usual suspects keep prattling on about a 'bonfire' etc.), but no-one in Britain actually cares about GDPR so they have no compelling reason to really bother.
What's impossible about letting in the Irish, but not other EU members?
Well because in order to determine which people and goods are Irish, and which are not (which in itself already creates problems given the free flow of EU goods into Ireland, so the distinctions are not entirely clear), one has to have a 'hard' border, with supervised crossing points etc. in order to carry out the necessary checks. No-one supports such a border because it endangers the Good Friday agreement, and the only other possibility if you want a border somewhere it so check goods moving between NI and the UK.
The transplanting of EU law had to happen. One cannot simply abolish a regulatory framework built up over decades overnight.
HaroldWilson
2yr ago
It's long past time we stopped giving a shit about this. We in Europe cannot simply let ourselves be destroyed just because "oooh what will the neighbours think?"
For better or for worse, what the 'neighbours' think does matter. Good luck remaining in the Customs Union/EU and joining NATO, or indeed enjoying Western military support after you deport all your Syrians to an island prison for the crime of being a refugee.
I don't really give a fuck what happens to the kind of scum that joins a criminal gang, to be perfectly honest.
Talk about undermining Western values; I came not to call the righteous, but the sinners to repentance.
I take no pleasure from the death of the wicked, but that they turn from their ways and live.
HaroldWilson
2yr ago
Maybe it's true that 'mass immigration' is deeply unpopular, but deporting second-generation immigrants to Syria over minor offences would definitely be much more unpopular. There was a substantial minority in favour of letting Shamima return and she joined ISIS, the shitstorm over an equivalent case for a minor offence would be extraordinary.
HaroldWilson
2yr ago
This is a very easy comment to make from, one imagines, the comfort of the West.
HaroldWilson
2yr ago
You had to speak English in America, you had to learn to dress like Americans, to like American culture
Really? Could not all sorts of languages be heard on the streets of the large cities (and in some cases elsewhere) for decades and decades after the immigration took off, whether it be Yiddish, German, Polish or something else? Indeed one occasionally reads those stories about the remnants of an immigrant community in some place or other where the old-timers still speak another European language.
HaroldWilson
2yr ago
the ruling party of the UK are fanatical "line go up!" devotees
They are not; NIMBYism, Brexit, lack of government capital investment (see HS2), if anything this government is interested in nothing more than managed decline, letting the economy wither away as long as Linda doesn't have to see any new builds across the street, have a rail line passing in her general vicinity and gets her way over grumbling about Brussels.
HaroldWilson
2yr ago
Isn't it funny how democracy results in erecting barriers they don't want, and abolishing barriers they do want?
The problem though is 'the people' seemed to want no barrier at all, which was incompatible with the Brexit which they also apparently wanted. If they ask for no border in the Irish sea, and no border on the Irish border, but also a border somewhere, you can't blame the politicians for failing to deliver on the impossible wishes of the 'people'.
In practice, it kind of didn't.
How so?
HaroldWilson
2yr ago
At least it can be said that the people didn't oppose with sufficient zeal to bother meting out any electoral consequences. 'The people chose it' is maybe a slight exaggeration but 'the people chose not to stop it' is basically right. And fwiw Hart-Celler polled pretty well.
Two things here. Firstly, I am told by New Yorkers that this is common practice, in which case it seems hard to place much blame on the kids in that regard, if it's a widely accepted norm. Secondly, even if they are wrong in that regard, it doesn't exonerate the woman. Her actions were still petty even if one shouldn't try to 'reserve' bikes in that way.
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