yofuckreddit
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User ID: 646
Owned
- 2005 Nissan Sentra for $5k - really awful little car but didn't have any major problems with it. Shared with my sister who has the unfortunate proclivity of leaving trash in the car, which soured me forever on sharing vehicles with family members. Had my first and only crash of my life which ended in a smashed passenger window.
- 1997 Ford Ranger for $3k - Had absolutely beat-to-shit paint but was a really cool green. Would vibrate over 70. Despite being totally antithetical to my personality, it ended up being a sufficient panty-dropper because I kept it spotless inside and could help people move. I bought it with literally 3,000 miles on it from a grandma who used it for groceries. I sold it for more than I paid for it. I still have a core memory of meeting at a gas station with a guy who could barely keep his tongue inside his mouth he wanted it so bad while trying to negotiate for a couple hundred bucks off. Nice dude, but it felt amazing to say "You can hand me the cash now, or I have 6 other people lined up to meet today". I see why truck guys loved em.
- 2002 BMW 525i for $6k - I graduated college, paid off my student loan debt, and had a couple thousand left over. I have always loved these cars from afar, and this was my first car purchase as an individual. The example I bought was.... fine. I can't help but wonder how much more fun I would have had with the manual 530i that was 45 minutes away I should have bought. I learned how to do my own mechanic work on this car. Sold it for $2900 after 5 years.
- 2001 Honda Accord for $3k - Holy shit I hated this car. Ugly, poorly maintained, slow, un-fun to drive. I spent almost as much keeping it on the road as I did the BMW. Atypical, I know! Worse in every way. A lot of good memories associated with it but when I got rid of it i was happy. Had a bidding war to sell it which shows the power of the brand and just vacuuming cloth seats before posting on FBM.
- 2017 Mazda CX5 for $23k - The replacement for the Accord. I had to push a bit for "us" to spring for leather and nicer speakers, and I was totally right. Useful car, no reliability issues at all, and this was pre-kid so I could keep it kind of clean. Some people think this is "fun to drive". No, not really. No CUV is going to be able to do that as well as a sedan or coupe even if they're trying. I believe the latest generation tightened up pretty much every complaint I had with the car so I would absolutely buy it again.
- 2002 BMW M5 for $23k - If I go too long on this it'll come off weird. It's my dream car, I saved up for years to buy it in cash, and it's amazing.
- 2019 Honda Odyssey for $32k - Had to push for a minivan. Insanely un-fun to drive. Insanely fun to move kids, dogs, bikes, and gear in. My pity for women who can't get a goddamn grip and upgrade to a minivan from an SUV is boundless. Great purchase, but I can already tell the depreciation will sting, given how poorly we treat it.
In terms of "worth the money" the extra ~$15k/car really went a long way, especially not all of that disappears when it comes time to sell. It should be obvious, but people who don't care about cars don't care about cars. You can drive the same age and mileage model and they're going to be radically different based on who kept up with fluids and tires. Spending the extra money to buy from an enthusiast in the used market is just a no-brainer.
Side note: I don't drive 100+ like SOME of our board members, but I'm a solid "84 mph almost all the time" guy. I've done one 2am cannonball runs at 100+ to make it to the last eclipse. A nice German sedan handles this far better than you'd expect if you haven't been in one.
yofuckreddit
1d ago
FWIW this is un-fun enough I would have preferred not to have it on the thread.
yofuckreddit
2d ago
Porn stars? No.
Prostitutes? Surely, many "Models" who marry influential men can become influential themselves. The actresses who fucked Weinstein now enjoy high status and influence.
yofuckreddit
2d ago
Essentially you're saying we should shame because she's an effective promoter of her ideas through her niceness?
she pushes [her ideas] against a high-iq people population (rationalists) who should be having more children
Don't get me wrong, I'd prefer to have a child of two rationalists over another member of the permanent underclass. But to speak in plain language: These cucks are self-selecting out of the gene pool, and that's a good thing. Anyone stupid enough to participate in Polyamory is unfit to be a parent.
I want to avoid the "lived experience" trap. That' said, both you and @hydroacetelyne are making some assertions about how cycling compares to other modes of transportation that are totally incorrect. They make it obvious you don't have firsthand experience and dislike it enough that you aren't believing other people when they explain the advantages it provides.
I'm not going to demand you hop on a bike and try and use it more for 6 months before you share an opinion. But try and assume we aren't all just a bunch of idiots who happened to like the worst form of transportation that's ever existed to fuck with other people.
Example: On Saturday mornings, I'll wake up before my wife and hook up a 2-kid trailer to my bike. I'll take a greenway for around 4 miles. The last half mile is a mix of sidewalk, crossing a 5-lane road, and parking lots. I would never even consider it during rush hour, but at 7:30 it's perfectly safe with long sightlines and low traffic etc.
My day starts with ~600 calories burned, quality time with my children, vitamin D, a delicious breakfast, and a rested/happy wife. That's a lot of birds knocked out with one stone.
yofuckreddit
3d ago
improved cycling infrastructure is taking people off busses and trains, not cars
I would disagree with this. Bicycles are far closer to an individual mode of transportation than a subway, much less a bus. This is why delivery drivers are using them instead of shuttles and hub-spoke models. For a door-to-door journey an individual vehicle is the best option.
yofuckreddit
3d ago
In short I'd say: Very few. It's not easy.
I'm biased because I'm living in a city with one, but I think greenway networks (a la the Atlanta Beltway) that allow cyclists "highways" to only certain parts of urban landscapes, while requiring the traditional gruelingly slow || dangerous approach we're used to only in short bursts is a good model.
3 modes of transportation is a lot to support, your question illuminates how truly difficult it is, and so it's the best of many bad options that I've personally experienced.
yofuckreddit
3d ago
I'm a moderate on this - I hop on the sidewalk plenty on big roads. Once you start doing this, however, you realize how bad they are. Even with how much slower you are on them, a cyclist is going to see far more of this infrastructure than an average pedestrian. They end at random places (right when lanes crunch!), foliage overhang is a serious problem, dirt and potholes push you to the edge of the curb and risk you being struck by cars anyway...
This is also assuming zero competition from pedestrians. Once there is some, it turns into a nightmare. They're unpredictable, have dogs with them, etc. I just think "the system" (whatever it is) has to have some sort of tangible benefits to counteract the myriad downsides of cycling: mechanical maintenance, capital expenditure, and enormous risk of theft. I have to have some speed advantage even if it's not the 4x one I'd get on a road.
yofuckreddit
3d ago
You didn't read my statistics quite correctly. That's just pedestrian deaths.
###Deaths/Year
- Car -> Car :
40,000 - Car -> Pedestrian:
8,000 - Car -> Cyclist:
1,000 - Cyclist -> Pedestrian:
10 - Cyclist -> Car:
~ 0
After that you can do your own normalizing based on capita or miles driven. The latter is most fair to cars, but given how much further they can go and how often cars kill riders despite their rarity, I think per-capita is a much better measure.
Roughly cars are at a minimum 10x more deadly, and realistically more like 100x
yofuckreddit
3d ago
The good (?) news is I wasn't expecting anything different. The attitude is consistent everywhere (forums, reddit, instagram, meatspace) and with almost everyone. It's honestly funny to watch people just skip past reality. Even with the most insanely generous statistical twisting, cars are a whole order of magnitude more deadly to everyone (and in reality, at least 100x). Almost no other topic would disregard reality over feelings so quickly!
At least some folks are admitting it's irrational, and others have actually been on a bike before.
And in a future on the downslope of fossil fuels, they won't be possible at the scale that they are now
As another upside, the electrification/automation of cars is going to, 20 years from now, be a boon to people who want to cycle. Less variance in driver behavior, ambiguity over laws and standards, etc. There's always going to be a risk of being hit by someone manually driving, but there's a good chance technology will get us in a better place eventually.
Just sucks that my body's going to be in way worse shape by then.
yofuckreddit
4d ago
DD says they require SSNs and IDs. Account Sharing seems rampant - their own algorithms flag more than 100,000 accounts right now to have to "reverify identity* every shift, and they're incentivized to maladjust the algorithm in their favor.
You'll almost certainly never get the real data. Instead, I'd use someone's inability to understand English as a sufficient proxy for what I'm suggesting. It's a severe enough problem on Uber (for people driving cars under a regulatory regime) that I just can't reasonably play along with the theory that the problem is reduced or eliminated when it comes to bicycles. I'm going to believe my lying eyes and ears.
Normally traditional hot "zones" of money-making became overly saturated with drivers out of nowhere, he added. He said he often chats in Spanish with foreign drivers, many of which tell him they are from Venezuela.
"[Us drivers] run into each other all day long at these various businesses and restaurants and so forth," he said. "We chat it up. I chat with the migrants, too. I'm a grandson of an immigrant. I'm sympathetic for them but I'm a rules guy first."
Preston said he personally met countless "unqualified" individuals—estimating that the senators' concerns about hundreds of unverified or illegal drivers could be understated on a national scale.
He alleged "fraudulent" accounts are commonly sold or shared via the dark web or openly in Facebook groups. In August, Preston said he hadn't been re-identified by the app in over two years.
yofuckreddit
4d ago
Maybe? A California Stop/Rhode Island Roll is an unofficial moniker for when cars do it, and an idaho stop is the practice being enshrined in actual law for cyclists across multiple states.
- While it'd be nice to have a scholarly article about who's delivering food, there's negative incentive for universities to do this sort of research, and I'm sorry: pretending like this isn't true is just too stupid to entertain. Step outside in any major western metro, look around, and then come back to the keyboard. I will concede that "100%" is high :) (EDIT: The fact that the authorities in NYC are specifically worried about hurting immigrants and therefore not acting to improve the situation with dangerous cyclists is another reason I can't take this seriously)
- You're absolutely right on this point. Another point of regulatory skirting in NYC: Amazon has four wheeled delivery machines with vestigial pedals on them and huge batteries and motors. These seemed to be helmed by slightly more "professional" drivers but are obviously dangerous vehicles hanging out in lanes designed for human-powered transport. The problem is that all of these exist on a gradient, and nobody wants to make the first move of creating an onerous regulatory regime on what was, just a couple of years ago, a simple machine that some nerds started riding as a hobby.
yofuckreddit
4d ago
It is definitely not true that only the delivery drivers ride them. You can rent them from CitiBike, and plenty of non-delivery drivers ride them.
Yes, I could have been more clear. Both types exist. My (obviously extremely limited) experience was that every time someone blew through a crosswalk it was a delivery driver, not a civilian on a rented bike. In terms of volume they were ~equal.
yofuckreddit
4d ago
I was a little prepared for a general cycling debate. I agree that rules apply... but do consider the different ways that "we" are pulled.
- When in a group ride on the road, two wide, drivers complain that we aren't single file. The group is small enough to pass when 2x, but too long to do so when 1x.
- We're asked why we can't ride on sidewalks. If you haven't pedaled on one recently, they're completely unpredictable and awful for bikes, not even mentioning how inconvenient it can be for pedestrians.
- When we come to a stop sign, we always stop. But almost every time a motorist waves us through. To them, it seems polite - they understand we would sacrifice momentum much more than they would. But then we're holding up the whole intersection as we get started again...
- Then if we're clearly going to make it to the stop sign well before anyone else, it's best just to blow through. Otherwise, the driver is going to be waiting far longer if we come to a complete stop.
- Some (too many) drivers will never pass (regardless of margin), which blocks all of the cars behind them. The cyclist is the one who gets the blame for this.
- Weaving through traffic at a stop light to maintain momentum so we don't block is hated by many, but if you've ridden for a bit you know it's the least damaging way to do it.
From a personal perspective, I can safely say that every time I've been a real asshole it's been by accident, but will not pretend like there aren't problems with 3 types of transportation competing for travel space in many places.
yofuckreddit
4d ago
To start, note that there are subcultures in cycling. I think a lot of the negative traits you're thinking of are largely confined to roadies, which I don't consider myself a part of.
In an urban environment, it's hard to be a cyclist and not look down on everyone else. Cars are crawling along streets, burning gallons of gas to shift 4,000 pounds of steel and 200 pounds of human, moving at a speed similar to you. Meanwhile, pedestrians are moving even more slowly, having trouble carrying any weight at all. Quite simply: There's a best way to get around, and you're it.
Then, add the antagonistic nature of so many interactions. You have to be prepared to die for no reason at all. Everyone hates you, and wants to steal your mode of transportation the moment you come to a stop. When I am on the road, especially by myself, my nerves are shredded after being aggressively fucked with.
I think the people who are on the road a lot get into this mode. You have to be closer to the middle of the lane to avoid being driven into the curb, pedal away from danger, trust your instincts even if they violate traffic laws... etc.
Perhaps a much more sympathetic take than you were looking for.
To add more on the negative side, people who are on the road regularly are typically affluent. Bikes are expensive, you need to have the free time to use the equipment, and the mechanical know-how to maintain a (abiet simple) machine. It all circles around arrogance and elitism.
The Economist has published an article (paywalled, sorry) on the state of cyclists in New York, which dropped the day I was leaving the city. It was the first time I had visited as an adult. I came away with some respect for it (loved the food, service, and how fast everyone walked). The point of the story is supposedly that cyclists are now being treated unfairly:
The New York Police Department (NYPD) has started issuing criminal summonses for bike riders committing a slew of seemingly low-level fouls. Now, if caught running red lights, stopping in the pedestrian crossing or wearing headphones, wayward cyclists must appear before a judge, even if they are not contesting the fine. If they do not, they risk arrest.
I’m a cycling nut, so the issue is close to my heart. In a T2 city, I feel like our role is that of a scapegoat. People fantasize about killing cyclists pretty regularly, and none of them understand the challenges and tradeoffs we have to deal with. At this point, I've just thrown up my hands in despair at this ever being better, so I just get on the road as little as possible.
The people on two wheels in NYC are a different breed. Each of the longtime residents I asked - 100% - are now more scared of cyclists than cars. My 3 day trip felt the same to me. Every car was attentive and respectful of me as a pedestrian. The cyclists were fast, heavy, and disregarded almost every crosswalk signal or red light, despite having their own lanes. What’s the quantitative danger?
Of the 449 pedestrian deaths in the city between 2020 and 2023, electric bikes, scooters and mopeds led to just eight of them.
Notice the sleight of hand here. What’s included are E-Bikes, scooters, and mopeds - each of these truly motorized vehicles. The number of people killed by analog cyclists nationwide has been, for many years, single digits. This is important. E-bikes allow users to achieve speeds and momentum totally beyond their skill, and are often part of poorly maintained machines that are part of sharing programs. My mind is blown that even 8 people have been killed - that's an enormous number even in a place as dense as NYC. It probably means a huge number of serious injuries as collateral damage.
Cyclists kill between 1-9 people in the US per year. Cars kill 7,000+ Pedestrians (Not to mention other drivers). If you compare lethality on a per-capita basis, it's not even close. Cars are 230x more deadly (Including only pedestrians, not the 40,000 total deaths). Per-person-miles-travelled reduces the disparity a lot. It gets down to where cars are "only" 8.5x more deadly than bikes.
Put simply, the fixie riders racing through the city are psychotic but not dangerous to pedestrians.
As you’d expect, the lede is buried, along with the Culture War. The cyclists zipping through the city on E-bikes are exclusively yapping in a foreign language on speakerphone, with DoorDash bags on the back of their cycles. Nothing should get in the way of private taxis for burritos.
E-bike riders are “one of the top, if not the single, highest generator of complaints” from constituents….Mr Hoylman-Sigal (city senator) supports putting licence-plates on commercial e-bikes, so that violators can be held accountable. But such proposals have gone flat due, in part, to a desire to protect the largely immigrant delivery drivers.
To recap how insane this is:
- The problem is 100% illegal immigrants on E-bikes and mopeds
- No solution to control this will be put forward out of sympathy for the illegal immigrants
- Punishment must be metered out, though, since it’s one of the biggest problems facing the city
- Therefore, the solution is to punish analog cyclists with social security numbers!
It’s so similar to LA, albeit with fewer vehicle fires and bricks on heads. The fix just cannot be the obvious and correct one. Instead, it’s to hop on Reddit to “map police hotspots” or refuse to stop as a way to LARP civil disobedience.
yofuckreddit
4d ago
I had the opposite experience on multiple cars. White was a premium, while other colors were free.
Like that previous thread, I know many people don't care about what they drive. How it looks, how it feels, what it does etc. But surely you can see why exterior color would generally represent people's tastes?
yofuckreddit
4d ago
My theory is that somehow color got associated with low class or cheap. In order to not look cheap, you do neutrals.
This holds some water. It may tie back to cleanliness as a symbol of status. You can let a stain or a mark slide a lot more easily when you have brightly colored walls. Once everything's white it has to remain immaculate, and if your nails are done well it's clear you've paid someone else to keep things up.
yofuckreddit
4d ago
I understand your point on cars, even if I'd argue this generation influenced colors more than buying power might suggest.
But one doesn't have to own a house to influence or consume interior design patterns. The boomer women I know, of course, follow interior design trends, but the moniker "millennial grey" emerged because it was appearing in apartments and social media from said people.
I also agree the cycles appear to be accelerating.
yofuckreddit
5d ago
I think it depends on where you'd put Silver on the cool vs lame scale, but I'd agree it'd be more correct to say that things hit their Apex.
yofuckreddit
5d ago
A world without color under the rainbow
Well, it’s pride month (Grammarly suggests capitalizing Pride here...)! Again. I rolled out of bed last week to a saccharine salvo of big brand bullshit. That, and smug condescension from the women I know on Instagram “wishing homophobes an uncomfortable month”.
When the gay marriage movement really kicked up steam in the early 00’s, I was always a bit perturbed by the use of a rainbow. I’ve always been a fetishist for color - my first attempts at building user interfaces somehow became unusable clown vomit because of it - and so a single group monopolizing literally every hue of light at the same time seemed like a bit much. But I was a good lefty-libertarian and didn’t complain.
I tried to drag this board into a conversation about cars. I won’t make that mistake again, but a point of discussion centered around all of them being way less colorful than they used to be.. If you take a look at a graph you can see that things really started getting “Super Fucking Lame” right about 2007. Don’t worry, the problem’s gotten worse: 78% of all cars sold today are a neutral color.
It wasn’t just vehicles, though. At almost the exact same time, Millennials began making everything grey..
Meanwhile, woke discourse has been (was?) on a tear in mainstream media institutions:
A clear trend of increasing prevalence of prejudice related terms is apparent with words such as racist or sexist increasing in usage between 2010 and 2019 by 638% and 403% in The New York Times or 514% and 141% respectively in The Washington Post.
If you ask a politically correct LLM about why everything is lame, it will suggest that we’re this way because of “economic uncertainty” or social media. Others will say something vague like resale value.
If I know anything about anything, it’s that correlation is causation. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that a wave of rainbows and the unrelenting drumbeat of intersectionality has, in many ways, relied on the dilution of color everywhere else. How else can you shove it in the world’s face? A coffee shop already full of colorful whimsy would be burying v99.0 of the LGBTQIA+ flag. It’s only through the clash of it with the drab whites and browns of an espresso machine that a message can be sent. At least the latest revision inoculates itself against good taste pretty well. The clashing racial bars and two spirit circle make it hideous on its own.
The death of peak woke is… probably overestimated. But even my blackpill soul feels some sort of vibe shift. Dare I hope for color to make a comeback?
yofuckreddit
8d ago
As a longtime "Reduce Defense!" hawk and a former left-libertarian, it's just not enough. The Pie Chart doesn't lie.
I have enough friends in the MI complex to know how fatty and corrupt the whole thing is, but if you're serious about cutting spending, you actually shouldn't start there for two reasons:
- The scale of personal welfare is such that small moves here mean big benefits
- The defense industry spend at least trickles down into technology that eventually benefits the human race (after extracting some blood). Facilitating the underclass' antisocial tendencies/addiction to corn syrup is worse long term.
yofuckreddit
8d ago
I'm not a negative person by nature! I think this is the most intractable problem in American politics and culture. People with high IQs and (IMO) higher-than-baseline morality still cannot fathom cutting benefits. Our political class doesn't even have to deal with physical violence through riots, but they're still too scared to do what must be done.
The problem with the glass > half full approach is that I have not heard of a valid approach to solving the problem. It has only gotten worse during my lifetime. This was the most significant and serious approach to cut spending in a quarter century, and it failed miserably.
Why do they keep dying? Does she beat them up or just bad luck?
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