"you've got to buy one of these precision location tracking phone chargers, it's on sale for only $55"

What a dismal state of affairs

is that fuckin bill maher down there? Vice was never good but what a fall-off jesus christ

their analytics are not good either lol, though not as bad as I'd expect given this amount of drivel

and he was the model for gordon freeman lol

"huh that video title/description sounds kinda interesting..."

*clicks*

semi serious question.

I stumbled onto my local metro area's reddit while trying to look up some historical photos and stared into the abyss for a few mins.

I resisted the urge to leave libreddit and make an account just to reply but, I ran into this post that is basically complaining about having a car in one of the most central neighborhoods in the city, and asking for advice on getting off street parking (in reality, anything that isn't an overpriced surface lot that offers no protection is going to be quite a hike away from their apartment, there's no way this will work out).

They claim they work in X first ring suburb where "there are no buses" and that's why they have to have this car, which is hilarious because they could one seat ride to half of that suburb in under half an hour from a bus that leaves from their front door. the other half it'd be a 2 seat ride but still under 45 mins, and obviously way cheaper than a car. There are also plenty of neighborhoods they could move to that would have less breakins and cheap off street parking, but they seem convinced that's not the case.

But I digress.

The fellow ers in there commiserating about how horribly expensive off street parking is (in a neighborhood that is basically in downtown) got me thinking... If we can't get city governments to do shit about on street parking and massively unsafe roads, is allowing the street to be so unappealing to park on that people have to actually pay for their giant waste of precious urban land, a viable option to improve things?

this expectation that you should be able to just leave your 2 ton death box lying around in public anywhere for any length of time and nobody will so much as touch it doesn't apply to any other kind of property (just look at bike theft), and it really fucks with people when you violate that. I feel like that's a usable weapon, in a way, against gentrification and car dependency and traffic violence.

Were kia boys doing praxis?

From the perspective of someone who sometimes has some cash to redistribute on here, I just want to provide some feedback on the semi-recent rule changes in this comm. I don't think all of them are working and I think this comm needs just a little bit more attention to rectify the situation!

First, and I hope least controversial: the sidebar desperately needs to be updated to reflect the actual updated rules.

Second, similarly uncontroversial, the rules should generally actually be enforced. Not enforcing them consistently is worse than not having them in some cases. This ties into several other issues.

Third thing, clarity is needed on whether or not payment details are allowed in the form of not (immediately) personally identifiable usernames. The rule rn says PII/opsec leaks aren't allowed and that payment links aren't, but usernames seems more gray. I thought that usernames weren't allowed at all until I re-read the post, and judging by the variety of different approaches to providing payment details in recent posts, I'm not the only one unsure.

Fourth thing, I think that strongly encouraging people to update their posts when they receive aid is a good thing for helping spread the community's limited aid resources around more where they are needed most. That's good guidance and I wish everyone did it!

Fifth, and to me personally, one of the most important, I am less likely to send money, if I have to effectively dox myself to the poster to do it, and when I have to ask for payment details over DM, that's basically what I'm doing (its trivial to correspond who I am by timing and payment method, even if multiple people do send them money, doubly so over multiple different posts over time). It's one thing for them to know my name or my venmo or whatever, but when they can tie that name to a specific hexbear account I start to go from "keeping the risk in mind" to "I don't think that's a risk I'm willing to take". So while I can understand the urge to not have posters dox themselves, the reverse is also true.

Sixth, as a result of having to DM for payment details (both because of the doxing risk and just the extra steps for both parties), mutual aid posters are currently incentivized to violate or skirt around grey areas of the rules if they want to get more aid. Combined with the lax enforcement/unclear rule, this creates a really sucky situation where people in need are punished monetarily for trying to follow the rules.

Seventh, related to #2/maybe #1 and others, I am of the opinion the comm probably needs another mod or two, it's pretty active and can be a fraught topic when there are disputes, and currently there only seems to be one active mod?

A further revision of the rules to explicitly allow non-doxxing payment methods to be published, followed by an update to the sidebar, would be greatly appreciated tbh. Or something like that. I appreciate all the work done to keep this site safe and functional and such, but these little issues have been nagging at the back of my mind for months now and needed to get out.

Thoughts?

These fucking dipshits lol, its winter, so the trees are missing leaves and there's coal smog on everything, which was in wide use in the west just as it was in the east because it was cheap and domestically abundant. The reason it held on longer in the east after reunification is because the east was economically hollowed out and coal continued to be cheap compared to retrofitting in modern heating.

Here's a picture from the late 60s(?) that's not in winter (though it unfortunately frames out the large trees that are visible in the foreground of the reddit OP):

reinventing commie blocks from first principles with five-over-one characteristics

I'll still take it