FuckCars
Tried to post this yesterday, but lemmygrad was getting stuck on a bus in traffic with no BRT. I was a big fan of FuckCars on the other site, I wanted to create that community here. There's also a lot of intersection of resisting capitalism and cars. Cars a prime example of capitalism extracting wealth from the working class and trapping them in wage slavery to maintain it. Cars were popularized by Henry Ford, famous for being a good friend of Nazis. They kill thousands of people directly by collisions, and are a huge factor in killing everyone via emissions and climate change. Even EVs pollute either at a power plant, or the tires they use emitting particulate on the roads. Mining the required lithium to make every car electric would be incredibly extractive and difficult. They take up huge amounts of space to transport on average 1.3 people. Communities have been needlessly bulldozed to put up highways, and are then divided by them, causing more alienation and less community building. Cars also restrict mobility to those who can drive, both physically and monetarily. Someone without good eyesight or motor control is unable to drive, and that means it can be difficult or impossible to get around in car-centric cities. On the other hand, we have human-centric cities. Look at China pumping out high speed rail while America plays in the mud. Anyone who can move can ride a good bus or train. You see people face-to-face on a train, making you interact and grow community. Public transit is often more affordable than a car, and can be made free (really should be). Trains are miles ahead on efficiency compared to electric cars even, and trains can be much more easily electrified without need for a massive battery. Bikes can be used to close the gap from a train to a final destination, or all by themselves for medium range journeys. Get an ebike and you can even further extend how far you can ride, for a fraction of the resources, monetarily, space, and environmentally, of an electric vehicle. Down with cars, down with capitalism, solidarity to everyone on transit and foot, and extra solidarity to those forced into car ownership against their will.
>In response to the question asked about calling the police for possible robbery when hearing the car alarm, **about just 0.3 % of the respondents answered always call police and about 9% sometimes call the police while more than 90% of them have never ever taken any action.** It can be explained by this fact; many people have learned that automobile theft alarms are often false. Therefore, when they hear one, they may disregard it because they have mentally conceptualized the automobile theft alarm stimulus as unreliable (Bliss et al., 2007; Hazalbaker, 1997). > >The third question has been about the respondents’ reaction while hearing the car alarm; the collected answers were divided to 9 categories. The results are shown in table 1. The next question was about the real efficiency of car alarms in robbery prevention including none, low, medium, high and very high options, the results are summarized in Figure 2. > >**More than 75% of the responds, when asking if car alarm has ever interfered with the ability to sleep, was “Yes”. Beside that about 84% of the respondents have problem with its interference while studying at home or in the school (Figure 3). At an elementary school in Inwood, similar findings indicated that children in the noisier side of a school were 3 to 4 months behind in reading comprehension than children in quieter ones** (Bronzaft and McCarthy, 1975). > >[…] > >As it arises from the questionnaires, **about 66% of respondents are faced with car alarm sirens more than 3 times a day which is beyond their mental and physical bearing capacity, concerning the nature of the noise. It interferes with the ability of 76% to sleep and with the ability of 84% to study at school or home, particularly significant because they are students. The rated noise annoyance was on average 6.2 which is well above moderate.** > >It should also be mentioned that car alarms are especially harmful for two reasons. First, **their variable noise can’t be “tuned out” as easily as steady sounds. Second, many new car alarms exceed 125 decibels (dBA). This is louder than the sound of a jet airplane taking off 200 feet away. Alarms erode the sense of neighborliness and mutual respect necessary for life in densely‐populated cities** (Friedman et al., 2003). > >On the other hand, **just 3% of the respondents call police upon hearing the car alarm** and 97% face it with fortitude, anger, no concentration and calmness, inconvenience, horror and stress (75%) and objection, seeking for the reason, worry about any possible incident (22%). It seems that the most important reason for taking no action is due to no belief in car alarms effectiveness as it is shown in figure(2) that just one‐third (36%) of the people believe that it has high and very high efficiency in car theft prevention. > >Similar findings are reported in VTPI (2009); the authors stated that car alarms are not very effective at preventing thefts: most alarms are false and **cars with alarms are just as likely to be broken into those without.** (Emphasis added.) I’ve hated car alarms ever since I was little. I still remember that night when I was staying at a hotel and I obliviously pressed a car alarm button, forcing my uncle to run outside to turn it off, and waking up my grandfather, who got up to stare at me for a few dozen seconds before he returned to bed. I was embarrassed. Several days ago there was an incident in my house where I was waiting in the garage for somebody and the car alarm suddenly exploded without warning. My driver had accidentally pushed the car alarm button when she was opening the door, and I was so exhausted—almost traumatized—from the incident that I hardly said anything that day and I stayed home the next.
>BEIJING, Sept. 1 (Xinhua) -- China's 62-day summer travel season has concluded, with the railways handling a record 887 million passenger trips between July 1 and Aug. 31, up 6.7 percent year on year, China State Railway Group Co., Ltd. (China Railway) said Sunday. >During the period, the daily average number of passenger trips handled by the country's railways was 14.31 million, according to the company. TRAINS are the Best!
mastodon.scot
::: spoiler Wikipedia article on the new tunnel Kaisantunneli (Swedish: Kajsatunneln) is a tunnel for bicycle and pedestrian use in central Helsinki, Finland, serving as the main east-west cycling thoroughfare in the city centre. The tunnel is located directly underneath the Central Station, and joins the city's eastern and western cycling routes, cutting previous travel distance around the station by up to 600 metres (2,000 ft) and avoiding several sets of traffic lights, as well as removing much of the cycle traffic from the busy Kaivokatu street. Its western end connects directly to the Baana cycle path. The width of the tunnel is split roughly 50:50 between pedestrian and cycling lanes. The tunnel allows direct access to the station platforms, and connects with the separate pedestrian-only tunnel under the station. Additional cycle park for 900 bikes, as well as bike servicing facilities, will be opened in the tunnel later. Construction of the tunnel began in spring 2021 and was expected to be complete in autumn 2023, but in the end the tunnel opened to the public on 4 May 2024. The construction was especially challenging, on account of some old masonry and timber support structures underpinning the station, which were only discovered after construction had already begun. The construction cost c. EUR 33m, with the final figure exceeding the budget by some EUR 10m. The tunnel is expected to be used by up to 10,000 cyclists daily. [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaisantunneli) :::
[Photo credits: Not Just Bikes and 新星]
94 is built through a former prominent African American neighborhood. After seeing similar pics, it is incredible how nasty white supremacy can be if you look at how cities in the USA where changed after the 60s. Also, the Cathedral of St Paul is outlined as a reference.
www.youtube.com
YouTube user Drew Gooden made a great video and rant about regressions in modern car design from his perspective as a driver, with a large portion of the time dedicated to our favorite abomination: the Cybertruck. He also touches on those fucking brighter-than-daylight headlights that have been proliferating for several years now which anyone here, forced to own and drive a car to maintain the most basic existence, likely has seen in person. Alternate [Invidious link](https://inv.tux.pizza/watch?v=_S7GU9lDpq8)
Context -> This is in the western suburbs of Sydney, Australia. The family turned down an offer of $50 million from property developers. Also, not a single shop, daycare, school, mall, community center, public park or hospital in a 10 km radius. It is awful.
Capitalism always wastes precious resources for the sake of profit.
cross-posted from: https://links.hackliberty.org/post/226775 > After living in a region that was (foolishly¹) designed exclusively for cars, I moved to a proper city: a city with public transport and a cycling infrastructure. Started using public transport and felt liberated. No more insurance burden, no maintenance burden, no vehicle registration, no traffic fines, parking fees & fines, no more financing unethical right-wing oil companies that are burning up the planet, etc. It was a weight off my shoulders to live cheaper and more ethical. > > ***public transport also unethical*** > > Then a colleague convinced me that using public transport needlessly is also unethical.. that the huge amount of energy required to power that infrastructure is still harmful & wasteful. Public transport needs to exist for various reasons like serving disabled people, but when able-bodied people flood onto it, more vehicles must be dispatched more frequently and I was adding to that burden. > > ***the winner: cycling*** > > So after years on public transport I switched to a bicycle. It’s even cheaper than public transport. And it came with another upgrade to liberties: > > * privacy— my realtime whereabouts is no longer surveilled & tracked (no license plate readers, no public transport card readers w/DBs, no insurance records which can then intermingle with other insurance & credit records & cause harm in other ways). > > * independence— it’s easy to maintain one’s own bicycle. So I’m free of dependency on mechanics & free of dependency on public transport schedules (which can be unreliable). Dirt cheap and you only need to depend on yourself. > > After evolving into a cyclist, I cannot stomach the thought of living again in a non-cyclable region. Those regions are encumbered by stupidity and addicts: people addicted to their perception of convenience (despite sitting in traffic that bicycles are immune to and despite looking for parking)… and people addicted to energy (from oil or power plants) because they think peddling their bike will be a notable effort. > > ***Intelligence of car drivers*** > > It’s been said jokingly (by Douglas Adams IIRC) that dolphins are smarter than humans because they’ve figured out how to get their needs met without investing crazy amounts of cost and labor to create things that work against them to some extent. Cyclists are like dolphins in this regard, as they see people work their asses off to be able to afford the car that takes them to work, where they earn the money to finance their car ownership so they can work more. At the same time they work to finance the oil politicians who work against them. > > 2023 research suggests [cycling makes you smarter](https://goldcountrymedia.com/news/294091/we-knew-it-all-along-cyclists-are-smarter/) and apparently 2014 research suggests cyclists are more intelligent² (I suspect there’s the factor that people with naturally higher IQs favor cycling anecdotally. E.g. many profs cycle to universities). > > ***self imprisonment*** > > We all live in a prison of some kind. My new prison is being self-excluded from a big chunk of the car-dependent world and living in all those regions. But I prefer my new prison better than that of car dependency and being forced to finance companies that finance politicians who work against humanity. > > _*footnotes*_ > > ¹: it would be unfair to fault pre-climate aware municipal designs as foolish, but foolish that decades thereafter these shitty designs are still being maintained (unlike Utrecht who were wise enough to [realize their mistake & fix it](https://mastodon.online/@BrentToderian/109907272450375948)) while people continue rewarding the shit designs with their residency and tax. > > ²: I’ve not read the 2014 study myself. Some articles claim the research shows cyclists are [*perceived*](https://web.archive.org/web/20220603230839/https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/cycling/cyclists-are-more-intelligent-charitable-and-cool-than-the-average-person-says-study-9051434.html) as more intelligent while other reports claim cyclists [*are* more intelligent](https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/01/09/cyclists-more-intelligent-charitable_n_4569136.html).
Transcript: "We welcome global top music legend and entrepreneur Chris Brown to become the next FF 91 2.0 Futurist Alliance owner and Developer Co-Creation Officer. He will also take delivery of his vehicle at a future “Delivery Co-Creation Day” event. Mr. Brown hosted FF Founder and Chief Product and User Ecosystem Officer YT Jia at his Los Angeles home where they discussed FF 91 2.0’s features and highlights and officially began the Co-Creation process. Mr. Brown is an American singer, songwriter, rapper, dancer, actor and businessman and one of the most iconic R&B singers of all time. His unique style has earned him prestigious recognitions, including a Grammy, as well as MTV Video Music, AMA, and BET Music Awards. #FaradayFuture #FF91 #FFIE #DeliveryCoCreationDay"
thisishell.com
>Sudip Bhattacharya talks about his article at HardCrackers.com, "Socialism or Suburbia." Sudip is a doctoral candidate in Political Science at Rutgers University. He is also a writer, organizer, and you can find his other work at outlets like Protean Magazine, CounterPunch and Reappropriate, and the Aerogram.
I've been wondering about that for decades. 
I'm assuming the non Donald Duck'd side of this was seriously pitched as a way to make  horny in a crude yet effective way so they buy in.
They are choosing to pay parents $300 each instead of just paying bus drivers better? Absolute nonsense
So I made a passing comment of "it's almost like private car ownership is a really inefficient use of space and resources" the other day, which I didn't really pay much mind to. But all the replies were either explaining the concept of public transportation as if I don't know that's the solution to private car dependence (not in a constructive way adding to my comment or anything, I got the sense that they were trying to explain the concept to *me*) and someone even basically said "well I'm sure you think urban sprawl is an efficient use of space then." Are the "normies" this oblivious to how anti-car sentiments work? Do they think we're against the *concept* of a metal thing with four wheels and not its effects on urban development and society? Why the hell would I be against public transit or pro urban sprawl if I hate cars? Cities before cars were invented had public transit and were tightly packed and walkable. You don't think I support that?
ecologise.in
cross-posted from: https://sullen.social/post/59233 > Really great description of the american sprawl. These issues eat away my soul every single day, and this guy wrote about it in 1973. > > Some of my favorite excerpts: > >The invention of the personal automobile, and destruction of public transportation, was a triumph of capitalist drug-peddling; suddenly, all at once, everyone’s personal mobility became dependent on a single, new commodity, gasoline. Without it, we are unable to function, since urban sprawl and suburbanization now means we can’t even walk to work if we wanted to. > > >“The typical American devotes more than 1500 hours a year (which is 30 hours a week, or 4 hours a day, including Sundays) to his [or her] car. This includes the time spent behind the wheel, both in motion and stopped, the hours of work to pay for it and to pay for gas, tires, tolls, insurance, tickets, and taxes .Thus it takes this American 1500 hours to go 6000 miles (in the course of a year). Three and a half miles take him (or her) one hour. In countries that do not have a transportation industry, people travel at exactly this speed on foot, with the added advantage that they can go wherever they want and aren’t restricted to asphalt roads.” > > >You’ll observe that automobile capitalism has thought of everything. Just when the car is killing the car, it arranges for the alternatives to disappear, thus making the car compulsory. So first the capitalist state allowed the rail connections between the cities and the surrounding countryside to fall to pieces, and then it did away with them. > > >These splintered cities are strung out along empty streets lined with identical developments; and their urban landscape (a desert) says, “These streets are made for driving as quickly as possible from work to home and vice versa. You go through here, you don’t live here. At the end of the workday everyone ought to stay at home, and anyone found on the street after nightfall should be considered suspect of plotting evil.” In some American cities the act of strolling in the streets at night is grounds for suspicion of a crime. > > >No means of fast transportation and escape will ever compensate for the vexation of living in an uninhabitable city in which no one feels at home or the irritation of only going into the city to work or, on the other hand, to be alone and sleep. > > https://lemmygrad.ml/comment/1364150 >