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Cake day: June 13th, 2023

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  • My state is ruby red and even the fairly large city I live in is red. Begging people to vote specifically for biden in situations like ours only makes people more apathetic since they know Biden has no shot. But if you tell people how to be more politically involved outside of voting, they’ll be more empowered to want to vote just so they can get people more aligned with them in their local and state elections. It’s the state government in red states like ours that will enact awful policies that we will actually feel. Pushing an unpopular president as the main reason to show up to the booth will only make them stay home instead.

    Tangential: Covid is still killing a ton of people every month (though it gets better in warmer weather). This past January had over 10k covid deaths that were largely ignored by Biden and pretty much everyone else who are desperate to show how “good” things are now. But also, I’d caution against being hopeful for another pandemic that would wipe out conservatives since it’s tiptoeing on fascism, which you’re trying to be distinctly different to, eh? If a huge portion of Americans are fascist, America will be a fascist nation. I’ve heard conservatives wish that CA would sink into the ocean and that NYC would get swept away from a hurricane and I hope to god we haven’t ratcheted so far that now democrats are wishing and hoping for the deaths of their political enemy.





  • So you know what state that person resides? You’ve confirmed they live in a swing state where their vote for president actually matters? (This is not me advocating against voting since local/state positions are important, but if you’re focused on president, only a handful of states really make a difference at all).


  • Queer person here: we’ve had to violently fight for our rights and were successful in the past and we will do it again if we need to, so expecting a vote for anything will fix the issues of the marginalized is very out of touch. Doing nothing but voting is 99% political apathy, and it very much feels like all this browbeating is coming from someone who only votes and mayyyyybe donates to the ACLU or planned parenthood once every couple years. Do some real work and stop spending so much of your mental energy on inconsequential (assuming you don’t live in a handful of swing states) things. Build coalitions. Form or join unions. Stand up for what is right and protest what is wrong.



  • Or maybe if the average American stood with the marginalized instead of yelling at them to fall in line, we wouldn’t constantly have issues where the marginalized are systemically murdered and imprisoned. The blood isn’t on their hands for having morals and boundaries. It’s on the masses who refuse to give up even an ounce of comfort to lend a hand to the downtrodden. The path the democrats are on is the same path the current republicans have walked before.

    Who are you willing to sacrifice for your own comfort? Why is that a valid position? Because the other guy points that same weapon at you instead and it’s scary? How many different groups are you willing to put on that sacrifice list until you just turn into a fascist republican? “Just following orders” is just as cowardly a response as “It was my only choice”.




  • Not that it matters because the point comes across fine, and being hyper fixated on grammar is a form of gatekeeping, but “badly” seems weird here. It might just be an American English or regional American thing to me, but in school, the whole good/well & bad/poor thing was made pretty distinct. Good and bad were descriptors of action where well and poor were descriptors of feeling. I can do good (things) or do bad (things), but things can go well or go poorly.

    Grammar stackexchange seems to disagree with me though




  • If transportation is necessary, find ways to mitigate emissions as best as possible. If emissions are unavoidable, use the thing with least emissions (small-tired lightweight vehicles) until you research a solution to a tire material that isn’t harmful (which is being worked on I think). Busses mitigate a dozen or two cars. Local rail mitigates a few busses and a few hundred cars. Essentially, personal vehicles should be small and lightweight, and essential mass transit or city services should be large enough to serve an entire area.


  • I’m not sure if a study exists for it, but I’d assume walking produces more microplastics/km than bicycling because of how soft shoe rubber is and how scrubby the action is. Who knows. There is a study I saw that said that walking produces more CO2 per km than cycling, but I’m not sure if this is parallel to microplastic emissions.

    The logic will make sense if you think that tailpipe emissions are so litte, it’s almost not worth considering in comparison to tire emissions. So the next step is to say “so how do we limit the microplastics in the air and in the ground on a necessary part of transportation”- the answer is to make it smaller and lighter. And if you want to go distances that you can’t get to by bike, that’s where public transportation comes in.


  • But in the comparison of tailpipe emissions (0.02 mg/km) vs tire emissions (36mg/km), I know which one I’m more worried about.

    Nick Molden of Emissions Analytics seems to think that the heavier the vehicle, the worse the wear on tires seems to be (though it greatly depends on driving style and torque). That’d probably mean heavy EVs and SUVs are the worst for this.

    Not that bicycles are completely clean- but there’s probably a time in the future to worry about bicycle microplastics- after the cars have been phased out.



  • Breathing in Micro-rubber/micro-plastics from disintegrating car tires aren’t fixed at all by electrification.

    I can also hear ICE cars approach from behind when I’m cycling, but that isn’t the case with electric vehicles (which might be using “autopilot” and can’t see me on the road). I’m not sure if that whirring sound is present outside of low speeds, but I certainly can’t hear it with wind crossing my ears. Sometimes tire noise is audible, but not always.

    On the other hand, ICE drivers are more likely to intentionally try to hit me soooo