What you mean? Have you seen all those articles publisher website just giving out 8-9 on every damn game they get early access to?

this has been an issue people have complained about in gaming journalism for–and i cannot stress this sufficiently–longer than i’ve been alive, and i’ve been alive for 25 years. so if we’re going by this metric video gaming has been “ruined” since at least the days of GTA2, Pokemon Gold & Silver, and Silent Hill. obviously, i don’t find that a very compelling argument.

if anything, the median game has gotten better and that explains the majority of review score inflation–most “bad” gaming experiences at this point are just “i didn’t enjoy my time with this game” rather than “this game is outright technically incompetent, broken, or incapable of being played to completion”.

no, obviously not; is this a serious question? because i have no idea how you could possibly sustain it

currently reading:

i’m not exactly a fan of gender roles or the nature of “manhood” or “masculinity” or gender expression generally myself and am supportive of their total de-emphasis, so my presumption is that the case for this is something like “manhood as a concept is so toxic and so intrinsic to the worldview that creates patriarchy and men oppressing themselves and others that we cannot create a better form of it, we can only get rid of it.”

the problem is that this is almost exclusively the purview of radical feminism, and this was not productive for them historically (mostly it just took them very weird places, the SCUM manifesto being the most infamous manifestation of this). to say nothing of the fact that most radical feminism–and radical feminists–suck and have bad politics and analysis on queer issues in large part because of how that space of politics developed

Manhood ultimately will have to die though

bizarre take; i don’t see why this is true or necessary at all

Then we slap a random-ass speed limit sign down and say “job’s done.”

we don’t actually–the basis we derive most speed limits from is actually much worse, if you can believe that. from Killed by a Traffic Engineer:

Traffic engineers use what we call the 85th percentile speed. The 85th percentile speed is whatever speed 85 percent of drivers are traveling slower than. If we have 100 drivers on the road and rank them in order from fastest to slowest, the 15th fastest driver would give us our 85th percentile speed.

Traffic engineers will then look 5 mph faster and 5 mph slower to see what percentage of drivers fall into different 10 mph ranges. According to David Solomon and his curves, the magnitude of the speed range doesn’t matter as long as we get as many drivers as possible into that 10 mph range.

and, as applied to the example of the Legacy Parkway, to show how this invariably spirals out of control:

North of Salt Lake City, the Legacy Parkway parallels Interstate 15 up to the Wasatch Weave interchange where these highways come together. It’s a four-lane, controlled-access highway with a wide, grassy median and more than its fair share of safety problems.

So how did the Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) respond?

It increased the speed limit from 55 mph to 65 mph. It said the speed limit jump will “eliminate the safety risk” on the Legacy Parkway.

UDOT conducted speed studies up and down the Legacy Parkway. It found that most drivers were going much faster than the 55 mph speed limit. Channeling the ghost of traffic engineers past, the safety director for UDOT said, “We decided to raise the speed limit to a speed that is closer to what drivers are actually driving. In doing so, we hope to eliminate the safety risk of speed discrepancy, which can happen when you have a significant difference between the speed most drivers are actually traveling and those who are driving the posted speed limit.”

In the case of the Legacy Parkway, the 85th percentile speeds ranged from 65 mph to 75 mph. Based on that and what it deems engineering judgment, UDOT originally proposed raising the speed limit to 70 mph. After community pushback, it settled for 65 mph.

According to the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD), this slight adjustment is acceptable. The MUTCD specifies that speed limits “should be within 5 mph of the 85th percentile speed of free-flowing traffic.”

Other people talked about it here long ago and I actually don’t have much more to add besides the desire to share it with those that are not aware of the tool. So, do I create a new publication or add a mostly empty comment to something old?

it doesn’t seem like people use Lemmy search very often, and comments on super old threads don’t bump them to the top of the order, so reposting is fine

do you mean a small population on this community, or in life?

in life. most people in NYC have literally never experienced this one way or the other before NYC implemented it, and certainly aren’t seeking out the kinds of spaces that would be partisan on it in some way. their opinions on this are accordingly malleable based on “does this feel good or bad,” and you can see this in how there’s already been a large change toward supporting congestion pricing as the benefits have become increasingly tangible:

“A plurality of voters [40-33%] wants to see congestion pricing eliminated, as Trump has called for. Pluralities of New York City voters [42-35%] and Democrats want congestion pricing to remain, Hochul’s position,” Greenberg said. “In June 2024, voters approved of Hochul’s temporary halt of congestion pricing 45-23%. In December, voters opposed Hochul’s announced reimposition of the congestion pricing tolls, 51-29%.

“Having one-third of voters statewide supporting the continuation of congestion pricing is the best congestion pricing has done in a Siena College poll,” Greenberg said. “Additionally, support currently trails opposition by seven points, when it was 22 points in both December and June 2024.”

but I feel like the people who oppose congestion pricing / are pro-car operate on feelings and vibes.

you’re describing a small percentage of the population here–most people have no strong opinions on congestion pricing (because it doesn’t really have a prior in the United States), and as such it’s extremely important to write articles like this which can show them that it is working and it benefits them in every way

congestion pricing has been pretty consistently found to make air quality better for obvious reasons (fewer cars on the roads) so you can safely infer this is also the case here. unfortunately, there are several significant air quality variables outside of NYC’s control that are probably going to make reductions less obvious than, say, Stockholm or London. most recently, nearby and unseasonable wildfires caused the city to have several days of terrible air quality. back in 2023, those huge Canadian wildfires caused the same problems on and off for their entire duragion.

i’m removing this because it’s a completely empty calorie comment with literally no relation to an extremely detailed, well done article. please don’t make comments like this, thanks.

Aside from the obvious stuff like promoting mutual aid, grassroots agitation efforts are probably your best bet. Organize in workplaces and other places where people meet, get them angry and suggest effective courses of action.

respectfully: this is just not a serious proposal. and the fact that you think nobody is doing these things—rather than what is actually the case, which is that people do them but they are simply not effective or easy-to-scale acts of political praxis in an American context—is indicative that you should stop making confidently bad tactical prescriptions.

and i’m not even going to address your fantastical idea of how to build a spontaneous general strike out of “mass protests” when it is evident you have bad tactical prescriptions. you’re not even treading new ground here, really. Peter Camejo’s speech “Liberalism, ultraleftism, or mass action” is the definitive dunk on your flavor of politically delusional theorycrafting, and that speech turns 55 this year:

This is the key thing to understand about the ultraleftists. The actions they propose are not aimed at the American people; they’re aimed at those who have already radicalized. They know beforehand that masses of people won’t respond to the tactics they propose.

They have not only given up on the masses but really have contempt for them. Because on top of all this do you know what else the ultralefts propose? They call for a general strike! They get up and say, “General Strike.” Only they don’t have the slightest hope whatsoever that it will come off.

Every last one of them who raises his hand to vote for a general strike knows it’s not going to happen. So what the hell do they raise their hands for? Because it’s part of the game. They play games, they play revolution, because they have no hope. Just during the month of May the New Mobe called not one but two general strikes. One for GIs and one for workers.

Being out for the count before anything actually happens doesn’t seem to be good strategy

you’re right, people have never martyred themselves (and, in a sense “been out for the count before anything happens”) for successful political change before. do you realize how ridiculous this sounds? you are the classic person who–even if they are legitimately radical, which i don’t think you are–upholds the status quo by, in the words of Martin Luther King, Jr, “lives by a mythical concept of time” and always wants to wait for a more convenient season to do something. but plainly, the more convenient season will never come if nobody does anything because they might be “out for the count”.

?

on Chiapas:

• Autonomy Is in Our Hearts: Zapatista Autonomous Government Through the Lens of the Tsotsil Language (Dylan Eldredge Fitzwater)
• Zapatista Spring: Anatomy of a Rebel Water Project & the Lessons of International Solidarity (Ramor Ryan)
• Developing Zapatista autonomy : conflict and NGO involvement in rebel Chiapas (Niels Barmeyer)

on Rojava:

• Democratic Autonomy in North Kurdistan (TATORT Kurdistan)
• Revolution and Cooperatives: Thoughts about my time with the economic committee in Rojava (anonymous)
• Make Rojava Green Again (Internationalist Commune of Rojava)

on Revolutionary Catalonia and various aspects of the anarchism there:

• Collectives in the Spanish Revolution (Gaston Leval)
• The Anarchist Collectives (ed. Sam Dolgoff)
• The CNT in the Spanish Revolution (José Peirats Valls)
• Anarchists in the Spanish Revolution (José Peirats Valls)
• To Remember Spain (Murray Bookchin)
• Ready for Revolution (Agustín Guillamón)

most of these should be findable on Anna’s Archive, or by just googling the title. if not, i can track copies down.

this is not serious enough for the mod shield, but my god stop misusing the word clickbait and stop being confidently incorrect. some of you literally just use this to mean “thing i don’t like” or even “thing that explains itself in a way that is not my fancy”–neither of which is what the word actually means.

So… I’m not really pro-capitalism as you’d likely conceive of that term,

i don’t know what you think “not really [being] pro-capitalism” means, but the fact that you can neither straightforwardly state that you believe in socialism nor elaborate substantively on your economic beliefs is an indicator you’re just some sort of radical liberal. and that’s fine–and radical liberalism is nice and all for this moment–but it is not a serious ideological system with credible tactics that will eradicate fascism or solve the inequalities and inequities that create the basis of right-wing authoritarianism.

I don’t think you get me. You likely don’t have until 2026. A lot of the infrastructure for a full authoritarian takeover is already in place.

okay, let’s suppose this is true: what would you like me as an individual to do besides what i am already doing. help organize a general strike? one is already being organized for 2028, and you can’t exactly spin up the infrastructure for one of those in a matter of months unless you operate under a very incorrect idea of how unions work. a strike is a massive financial, political, and organizational commitment–to say nothing of how a strike necessitates buy-in from the workers who engage in it (perhaps 40% of whom are in favor of the current administration, and would thus need to be convinced to organize against it).

or maybe you propose some sort of political violence? maybe firebombing a government office or assassinating an elected official? aside from op-sec considerations, those would be very stupid ideas to take up. bluntly: we’ve been there and done this. most left-wing political violence in the West does nothing to substantially harm the state, and frequently, it actually legitimizes authoritarian violence in the eyes of the public. the primary base of support for ideas like this are ultraliberals and ultraleftists who confuse the spectacle of political violence for meaningful political action–people who, in other words, think the most transgressive action they can take is the most correct one.

and if not these, what else? organize boycotts? people already do those. organize public marches? people already do those, to the point where it’s impossible to keep up with all of the ones being organized. organize sit-ins and other nonviolent protest? people already do those. i don’t know what you expect here that isn’t already happening.

If not wanting to get arrested and tortured (again, this is not a hypothetical) is slothfulness then… Uh… Okay?

if you aren’t willing to face meaningful political consequences for what you believe in, then what tactical or ideological advice could you possibly have that i should care about? the law has already pacified your politics and your convictions into uselessness–you have essentially stated you won’t fight for what’s right because it would inconvenience you.

this is also contradictory to what you’re arguing in the first place: how is this position of yours any different from Sanders’ supposed failure to meet the moment with tactics and radical politics? if fighting for what’s right means potentially being arrested and tortured then, yes, as unpleasant as such a commitment sounds you should be willing to be arrested and tortured!

First, I never said I was a socialist.

well then i definitely don’t care what you have to say in terms of criticism—if you’re not a socialist then the ideological framework from which you make that criticism is incorrect on merits and an incorrect basis on which to build a political movement which will ever resolve the crises you identify here. these crises are symptomatic of capitalism and a product of it;^[1] you cannot separate the economic system out here, nor will superficial political and economic reforms ever prevent what is happening now in America and Europe from occurring again in the future.

you need only look at the Nordic and Finnish democracies—where genuinely social-democratic reforms still define many aspects of society and are load-bearing aspects of the contemporary political culture—to illustrate this. they still have massive problems with reactionaries, would-be authoritarians, and open fascists gaining political credibility; but this is unsurprising if you recognize that, at the end of the day, they still live in a hegemonic economic system which cannot exist without necessarily impoverishing some people to make others wealthy, and creating debilitating social and political inequities. you will never deprive reactionary politics of their oxygen and grievances until this is resolved, and socialism is the only economic system which can bring this about.

Sorry I can’t pass your little purity test; now actually do something something so you don’t end up like us.

luckily, i am. most of my waking hours are spent doing behind-the-scenes political work, and i can also literally point you to some of the public-facing work i’m doing well in advance of our next elections. see, just as a sample, my Support 2026 and Oppose 2026 lists, or my For a “Bill of Rights” Package in Every State, County, and City which lays out an electoral strategy for American socialists to adopt and whose basic planks i’m pushing for within DSA in the lead-up to this year’s convention. don’t put your slothfulness and excuses for why you can’t do political work on me, a person actually doing political work as a volunteer day job because i want the things i believe in to be built in my lifetime.

Responding to that post wasn’t worth my time

okay, so you don’t have an answer or a strategy, and when challenged on that you resort to denigrating people as “liberals” for disagreeing with you. thank you for clarifying that your opinions are worthless.

It might have been less disappointing if there was no goal to be honest.

unless you’re actively doing political work yourself, i genuinely do not care (and nobody else should care either) what you think is useful or useless advocacy. you do the work, if you’re so strongly opinionated that how Bernie is going about this is the incorrect approach–but don’t complain that other people are doing things “improperly” if all you ever do is post or craft opinions. socialism already has far too many people who speak but do not act.

That aside it’s still missing the final touch; what are people meant to do in and after attending these rallies? Just… Exist?

do you think that people become class conscious and politically aware of the necessity of socialism through their own volition? these rallies are political education and political mobilization–they are making people aware of the relation between what is happening in their country and the economic structure that facilitates it, and getting them back into being politically engaged in the first place (because many of them probably ended their political engagement in November, and are not used to caring about this stuff outside of the usual cycle of American electoralism).

quite simply: there will never be a mass socialist movement without people like Bernie doing stuff of this sort–there is no basis for socialism in the American public as a whole, and this is and has to be the first step in rectifying it. and once again: even if you have criticisms, i don’t think you currently have a right to voice them, considering you don’t sound like you’ve done a second of politically educating the people around you. if i’m wrong, feel free to demonstrate that–but bluntly you sound like a poster who is all talk but no action.

To me it seems like these rallies lack a coherent goal

i think demonstrating popular opposition to a flagrantly bought and corrupt administration which is being visibly puppeteered by one of the richest men in the world–and tying that to Sanders’s longstanding crusading for the working class and how they are structurally oppressed by capitalism and the oligarchs who benefit from it–is a pretty coherent goal, and one that Bernie has been extremely open about in talking about the tour and why he’s doing it, but sure:

What is the impulse behind this “Fighting Oligarchy” tour?

One of the failings of the Democratic Party and the media has been their unwillingness to take a hard look at the reality facing the American people. We just don’t do that. Here is the reality: You’re living in the richest country in the history of the world. Despite that, you’ve got 60 percent — six-zero percent — of Americans living paycheck to paycheck, struggling every week to pay the bills. We take that for granted. We should not.

Over the last 50 years, despite an explosion in technology and productivity, the average American worker, in real inflation-adjusted dollars, is making less today than he or she did 50 years ago. And during that period, there has been a massive transfer of wealth from the bottom 90 percent to the top 1 percent — tens of trillions of dollars. What’s more, 85 million Americans are uninsured or underinsured; 25 percent of seniors are living on $15,000 a year or less. We have the highest rate of childhood poverty of almost any major country on Earth. That is the reality today. It’s a reality that we don’t talk about — and that is why people are angry.

Your politics have long warned about the unchecked power of millionaires and billionaires. Right now, under Trump, the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, is seizing the reins of the executive branch and carving up whole agencies. Can you talk about what’s so extraordinary — and extraordinarily revealing — about this moment?

I have been talking about this issue for a long time. It is worse now than it used to be — and the American people are seeing it. What does it tell any American when the three wealthiest people in this country — Musk, [Jeff] Bezos, and [Mark] Zuckerberg — are literally sitting right behind the President at his inauguration? What does it tell you that Musk spent $270 million to get Trump elected and is now the most powerful person in American government. What does it tell you that Bezos, the owner of The Washington Post, kicked in a million dollars to Trump’s inaugural fund; that Zuckerberg did the same, and also, when he was sued by Trump for his ownership of Meta, kicked in a $25 million settlement — “settlement” quote, unquote, right? — to Trump. If that doesn’t tell you that a handful of multi-billionaires have enormous control, not only of the economy, but the political life of this country… If you don’t see that, then you really don’t know what’s going on.