Never listened to a podcast on Spotify and on my Home screen i have to scroll quite a lot (its like 10 row, pretty much in the middle of Home screen in my case) to see one row "Episodes for You" and one row of "Shows to try". Don't see how it is "pushing podcasts".
This has to be a USA thing right? In the 15 years i have had debit/credit cards in the EU nobody has ever checked the name on it. In fact, since the rise of contactless all the card info is now on the backside and not on front as before. Not to mention the fact that quite a few people today pay by phone contactless.
> These tensions have been brewing between NATO (mostly America) and Russia for at least a decade. It's unfortunate that the situation escalated in Ukraine though, which AFAIK is the victim in the scheming and plotting of those two powers.
As a person from Eastern Europe this is literal Russian propaganda or in simple words - dogshit. You know why somebody like Baltic countries wanted to get in NATO? Because Russia was/is a genuine threat after these countries were deoccupied from the Soviet Union. Russia thinks that these former Soviet Union countries are still their own property, they can't imagine that these countries don't want to live "the Russian way".
Maybe you're right. I honestly don't know. But I only have so much time in a day to veryfy everything. I'm talking from memory of course, but this Ukraine invasion didn't "come out of the blue" AFAIK.
Here's a collection of sources compiled by someone on Quora. I dont know how biased or accurate this person is. However, there were other instances that made me think this isn't so black-and-white or "clean" as I'd like it to be.
A lot of the sources he used are from Ukranian websites so you might need to run them through Google Translate. Some are from reputable (for at least some definition of reputable) western media outlets like CNN, BBC, NYT, etc.
The embedded vidoes don't seem to work in Chrome (they just disappear when I click them) so I've extracted the link for one of them here:
Other videos are shorter clips to prove a point, but if anyone's interested they can see the video ID in the embedded image URL when inspecting the element.
Again, maybe this is all dogshit like you say, but I find that too dismissive of the facts presented.
Just by peaking over the Quora article it is enough to say it is a Russian propaganda piece, things like some UA nazis (Russians also have some nazi admirers), the "referendums" and so on. Even if these referendums were legit, does it really trump a nations sovereignty (I am talking from my own experience as a lot of Russians were imported and locals deported in my country during the Soviet occupation and these people never integrated and probably even today there are regions where the population is mainly these Russian imports who would gladly be part of Russia). The main issue is that Russia has the view of "either you are with us or against us" so if you don't play ball we will going to "fuck you". Personally, i think that nobody understand Russia better than Eastern Europeans and the West is pretty much failing (at least the EU West who thought that playing ball with Russia will get them to back off) - https://www.businessinsider.com/countries-that-warned-about-...
The Baltics have pretty much lived all their freedom years under Russian propaganda, let it be claims that we are nazis, russophobes and any other type of oppressors of the Russian people or even a threat of Russia itself. So seeing how many in the West are falling for Russian bullshit is just sad.
Ah, I am still not fully convinced the situation is so clear even after reading the BI article...
There is definitely propganda on both sides (and how much of it is true is hard to tell). Russia isn't the only one with a propaganda machine, if anything the US is much more successful at it than Russia could ever hope to be.
I encourage you to read more of the Quora article, even if I appreciate that some of the stuff in the article might be hard to stomach, since you seem emotionally closer to the issue than I do. I believe a lot of it is very unlikely to stem from Russian propaganda.
Some of the stuff you attributed (eg you mentioned tribalism and spite) to Russia isn't unique to them or their politics; it's just a very primitive part of human nature that we still struggle with.
And to close with a tangent: it's always good to keep in mind that nobody (neither you or I) is immune to propagand; especially when it's pushed by state actors with a larger agenda. This is why I often indulge in reading stuff I don't agree with (within reason). Does give me a bit of cognitive dissonance occasionally, but alas.
I completely understand that there is a "big boys table" and everybody else, but the hard facts are that Russia occupied territories of a sovereign nation (Crimea/Donbass/Lugansk) and now is waging a full on war with that nation while stating random reasons (nazis/biolabs/Russian integrity/etc.). So i feel that anyone who tries to reason "Russia attacked because of X" is pretty much a Russian supporter.
And it hits close to home because potentially unless we are in NATO, we would be next.
While that Quora article has some important references to see the whole picture better it's still very biased and the conclusion that Russia invaded Ukraine to defend itself from WW3 is pretty wild. Because otherwise NATO would've attacked Russia (a country with nuclear weapons) or what?
Sorry to tell you, but the US think-tanks have been saying it for years that the Baltic states are there in their current configuration to only restrain Russia from forming closer ties with Germany: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UcXiUYLgbo
Oh yes, the mighty Baltic states who are able to somehow lock down Russian ties to Germany. By that logic the NS2 should have never happened or German reliance to Russian gas in general. This sounds like the same stuff Russians were claiming at some point - that the Baltics are the main players in West geopolitics or what not.
What that think tank is saying make no sense, as invading/controlling Ukraine is not making a buffer zone as you can't really call something a buffer zone when it is pretty much in Russias pocket. Something like Belarus today is not a buffer zone.
To be frank, they don't mention a thing about the Baltics' might or political prowess, they only enumerate a preferred political alignment in foreing policies of such states so that it becomes instrumental to the US in their own foreign relations with both Germany and Russia.
Well, they mention Baltics as buffer states simply because Russia wants that. So that is exactly my point earlier - Russia still thinks they have the right to control these states. It is like your neighbour saying that you cannot install a camera on your property (because you have experienced theft from your neighbour) so when you do it, he comes and beats you up for it.
And i don't get how one would think that I, as a European, would want an overseas company to handle my data. If my ISP is breaching GDPR, all i have to do is to go to data protection agency (at least i have that option on the table), good luck doing that with an overseas company... I have zero indications that my ISP is selling data for marketing purposes (unlike some US ISPs which even inject ads).
Because if the situation is reversed and e.g. the local police subpoenas your ISP to find people that are "illegally torrenting" or whatever they won't include you. That's happened a lot within Europe.
Even if the foreign government spies more nether jurisdiction is likely to care enough about you specifically to make an international case of it.
In other words I'd think most Americans would be better off proxying through Europe, and most Europeans would be better off proxying through the US.
Even better would be to proxy through a third country that your own country is unlikely to cooperate with, and which won't care about you personally.
E.g. I wouldn't want to live in Iran or North Korea, but I'd think proxying DNS through them would in some way maximize my privacy if I was living in Europe or the US.
I'll never travel to either of them, and my authorities are vanishingly unlikely to cooperate with either of them for anything short of murder.
Except proxying through Iran or North Korea literally puts a target on you locally. Not really the brightest idea.
As for other things - it is not black or white, depends where you are and from that you choose the best option for you. The "copyright" cartels are mostly American so it kinda does not even make sense to use US in order to avoid that, just makes it easier for them.
This is just dumb. Would you prefer if executives were sent to prison? These fines are beneficial in the way that business might think twice before fucking over people.
> Would you prefer if executives were sent to prison
Actually that'd be great for serious transgressions. They're at the helm, they make decisions, they reap the rewards, why shouldn't they also be punished when the company fucks up seriously?
Anti-trust isn't a crime. And there are reasons for that other than what cynicism suggests. It is far more difficult to pin down the definition, for example, than it is even for typical white-collar crimes (fraud etc.). And it's morally dubious to punish someone in unpredictable ways. (the (civil(!) anti-trust fines don't create new harm, but are intended to fix a situation, which makes them more acceptable. As an analogy: when someone damages your car and has to pay for repairs, that payment is zero-sum for society. if you hit him in the head, that's a net-negative because you (shouldn't/don't) derive as much benefit from it as they are harmed)
Then, practically speaking, the groups involved are simply too large to pin outcomes on individuals, and we don't do guilt-by-association. The timescales are also wrong, because the people responsible will often have moved on long ago. And the people usually do not participate in the spoils anywhere close to linearly with their involvement (which is a good thing because it prevents most corporate malfeasance: you aren't going expose yourself to moral and criminal guilt at a 9-5 job).
Also,, the standard-of-proof that is required is higher ("beyond reasonable doubt", i. e. 95%) than it is in civil cases ("preponderance of evidence", i. e. 50%). This is an outcrop of that moral-guilt vs responsibility thing from above, and also from the fact that in civil court it's often arbitrary what side of the courtroom you end up on.
I'm not talking about anti-trust per se, even though i think egregious cases still deserve serious punishment.
I mean shitshows like Boeing, Equifax and similar. Where the company showed blatant disregard for safety and security, and it was really not a single person making a mistake, but big parts of the entity being rotten to the core. For such things, the executives should face consequences in the form of a combination of: go to prison for some time, face heavy fines against their personal wealth ( ideally proportional), and have bans on leading any commercial for some time afterwards.
The incentives are all wrong for everything below fraud ( Enron level). Boeing got away with literally manslaughter through criminal negligence, and what consequences where there? The CEO got a golden parachute, and a chief pilot got thrown under the bus. That will make them learn their lesson, right?
We're already only a few months away from 2022, most (if not all) carmakers present on the EU market have included back-up cameras in their vehicles. I know that my brother's Dacia Logan built in 2019 already had one.
Backup cameras have been an optional extra for a long time sure, but I don't think I'm aware of any car that actually comes standard with one. Well, maybe a Mercedes-Benz S-Class. I do have a backup camera in my 10-year-old Benz, but I imagine that the original owner paid a four-digit amount of euros for it back in the day.
'Rear Visibility' is required in new cars in US by FMVSS 111.
Test procedure mandates field of view to rear of vehicles during backing, that are practical to satisfy with cameras. mirrors would require like a periscope to satisfy.
You have a very broken idea (just like most equality supporters) about what gender equality is. It should be equal opportunity not equal outcome. The usual argument about having a parliament divided 50/50 is that the population is divided roughly 50/50. But everybody always somehow forgets that even women voters aren't voting for women...
There is a difference between "parliament should always be 50/50" and "parliament has always (until today) skewed in one direction, that suggests a problem".
So if women voters for the most part have thought that a man is the better candidate there is a problem? Maybe i am just misunderstanding and basing my opinion on how election system works in my country which i think is gender equal - anyone can make a party (obviously you have to be a citizen) as long as you get the minimum amount of party members, you can run in the election and the election itself is based on votes per party + votes for each candidate within that party (+/- system). So if a party gets 5 seats in the parliament, the top most "upvoted" candidates get those seats.
There is nothing preventing women from creating a party which would appease to the women voters and running for election. That is equality. But nowadays it is easier to blame sexism and whatnot if the result is something you don't like (women not voting for the women centric party).
If, in a vacuum, men and women are equally viable as members of parliament, then a 50/50 split in parliament should be about the average in a society without bias on the part of the system or the people.
Except the world does not operate in only black and white - not everybody goes to vote, not everybody becomes a politician, not everybody has the same political views etc. This can be seen in gender equality/feminist "success" countries where when people are more or less free to choose, the distribution is not 50/50 and some groups of people simply don't want to agree to the fact that men and women can be different and want different things in life.
Right, it should be "men and women were equally likely to seek political office and ..." to account for the sexes seeming to prefer different occupations.
Sorry, I forgot to mention that in my comment. In any case, I think there are many countries where the lower number of women in parliament is largely/partially due to systemic/social factors, as opposed to biological factors.
But I don’t know if any broad studies that would indicate that being a politician is something that suits males on some biological level. If anything politics seems like a very female endeavor(stereotypically), since you’re organizing a community and highly communicating complex sociological ideals with peers of various education levels.
That’s extremely wishy washy. Women may be more socially oriented than men when it comes to work, for example, but the nature of this social disposition and inclination is different than the kind that is fruitful in politics. The motive and the end matter.
What I am missing is, that women do actually get pregnant at times. And when they do, they have rightfully other things on their mind.
Now becoming a father is surely something that got my mind busy, too, but I was still able to give 100% the whole time, without vomitting on the toilet, or having to spend the day in bed. Meaning I could have done a political campaign in that time, but my female partner physically could have not.
So demanding 50/50 either requires even more effort from the women, meaning giving birth to children AND pursue 100% (political) career - or it means, lowering standards because of sex? Meaning voting for someone because of sex and not because of competence. (sounds like sexism, no?)
In other words, it is complicated and I try to for myself to just focus on the competence on the person and not their gender (or race,...).
There is something called "opportunity cost". Small kids demand more, than just physical inconvenience during pregnancy. And small kids usually require their mother. (I cannot breast feed for example and mother milk is still quite superior to the industrial milk, but it is about more than that)
So all of it is time and energy, that could not be invested into a political career.
Have a baby and be out of the game for some time and you will have to struggle to catch up to those, who did not have a baby.
So I find it not surprising, that we do not have 50/50 for leadership positions, as they usually require intense effort, before reaching that. (networking, building skills, reputation ...)
So should we find ways, to support women more, to not "just be mothers", but also going other ways? Absolutely. But maybe we can start with not degrading women who are "just mothers" - as being a good mum, can be a 24h job.
So I think the idea that women should be mothers AND have successful careers (and preferable both at once), just creates uncecessary pressure and stress. And the 50/50 idea creates that, in my opinion.
I’m not sure we can separate the two so cleanly, equality of opportunity comes along with all of a child’s inputs and external forces as they’re growing. Equality of opportunity would absolutely mean not funneling them in one direction or another based on something like their sex, gender, or whatever.
A 50/50 outcome might be a flawed measurement of something like equality of opportunity if it were the only measurement we were using, but I don’t think it is the only thing we see.
When we consider the not too distant past, this ratio indicates we are probably doing something correctly to mitigate those external forces that used to funnel people into (or away from) certain professions purely because of something like which sex they were born.
We don’t yet have an agreed upon and accurate way to measure whether or not we are indeed offering equality of opportunity, and until we do, seeing something like this at least indicates we’re much closer than we were 20, 30, or 100 years ago.
> equality of opportunity comes along with all of a child’s inputs and external forces as they’re growing
This reminds me of the nature vs nurture debates.
"A child’s inputs and external forces" is a funny name to call their parents and teachers. Because it's mostly their parents and teachers that are going to have an influence in their education. And if they do spend more time, money and effort to boost the education of their children, then it's a family and teacher merit. It's not unfair when their children do better.
An even more important part which is not mentioned is that opportunity is in large part the result of hard work. A child makes her own opportunities by intelligence, passion and effort.
> "A child’s inputs and external forces" is a funny name to call their parents and teachers.
I used that phrase specifically because a person has far more influences in their life than just their parents or teachers. The things that limit or expand a person’s choices are far more than just teachers or family life. Are parents and teacher influences important? Sure. But they are absolutely not the only influences. And neither of those are what I mean when I say external forces.
I’m not sure I have a lot of disagreement with most of the other things you say. Of course a person should make their own opportunities from hard work, passion, and effort.
However (to tie this to the comment I initially replied to) if equality of opportunity is the goal, then we need to make sure we reward actual hard work, not only family multipliers. It’s not like we have to look far to see how many lazy rich kids have countless opportunities and how many hard working poor people struggle yet are incredibly limited in their choices.
Maximizing individual agency means we give everyone who wants to pursue an educational field or career a fair shot at it regardless of who their family is or regardless of what sex they’re born as or their race or whatever. Do they have to work hard? Of course.
Should a lazy rich kid whose family “…spend more time, money and effort to boost the education of their children…” have more opportunities because of “family merit” than the poor kid who worked their ass off and did well? Absolutely not. And the reverse is true as well.
We should be maximizing individual agency and maximizing individual choice and neither of those means we have to abandon hard work. But it does mean we have to knock down arbitrary barriers.
Equal opportunity would mean there would be a roughly 50/50 split. Unless one subscribes to some notion that biology would make women desire the positions (politics, management, ...) less.
Which didn't stop men to dominate all positions of power for centuries. Women weren't even allowed to vote, something that changed very recently in some countries (looking at you, Swiss). So yeah, equality here means to have the same right to he overspreading that men have.
That doesn't really explain the prices, a Specialized Turbo Kenevo SL Expert (9.6k EUR) full suspension e-mtb costs more than a Kawasaki or Yamaha 900cc naked motorcycle (~9k EUR). The top of the line S-works e-mtb is in a similar price point as the latest BMW S1000RR. It just doesn't make any sense other than greed.
When I first read the story I had assumed the accident occurred at very slow speed or full stop and mashing the throttle - so the 60mph v 25 would not have been something I would consider..
but 15kW vs 250w - now this is something that makes sense in this scenario for sure!
The issue is naming - term e-bike is used for everything while most if not all consumer "e-bikes" are actually pedelecs (no throttle, limited to 25kph and 250W, assisting only when pedalling). Every other e-bike is classified as moped/motorcycle which might require licence plate, registration and insurance. At least it should be like that in EU.
Nancy the Van Seat, a comfy DIY e-couch conversion vehicle created at the Stupid Fun Club, had tremendously overpowered electric motors, a handheld remote control, could turn on a dime, but had no seatbelts.
I wouldn't worry too much, I have routinely done about 50-60 km/h on a motorized bike and had 0 issues. Always had the best disk brakes I could buy though.
Anekdata doesn’t prove much here. Some things you might not be considering:
1. At 60 km/h you are going the speed of a car but car drivers don’t expect you to be going that fast and as a result aren’t wired to look for you. Doesn’t matter how fast you were going when a car going 60-90 km/h didn’t see you and ran you over.
2. Brakes are only half the equation. If your tires start slipping your brakes will lock up and then you go splat.
3. If you do happen to get off at 60 km/h you will have road rash that will take off large chunks of skin even if you wear an armored jacket and armored gloves. In spandex you’ll be looking like Deadpool pretty quickly.
4. Your tires will heat up pretty quickly at these speeds. That will affect how they handle quite a bit.
>car drivers don’t expect you to be going that fast and as a result aren’t wired to look for you
That's why I use hi vis jackets and reflective motorcycle helmets. I am not going like a run of the mill bicylist.
I use all terrain tires, I never had an issue and I am certainly not the only one that uses motorized bikes like this, in Argentina and Brazil for example, there are lots of people using them daily for their commute and nothing really happens.
>If you do happen to get off at 60 km/h you will have road rash that will take off large chunks of skin even if you wear an armored jacket and armored gloves
Wouldn't that happen with a motorcycle too? I don't see your point
All fair points but it is quite an undertaking to build an ebike that does 60km/hr with a useful range. Heavy motor, serious AH high discharge battery and a controller that can handle those amps. Your battery system will need to be above 48volts. Pushing wind above 35km/hr requires a lot more energy for each 5km/hr gain.
45-50km/hr idea fairly easy though with a 48 volt system.
Re #1 - If you are driving at places without bike lanes being able to move together with traffic flow is essential. Which then you can ask - do you also not expect motorcyclist to be on road either?
Motor cycles get treated with a lot more respect than bikes. I had a 50km/hr ebike with red back light, front white blnky light. Cars turning left into your opposite lane of travel were the worst. They never judged my speed correctly and there were many instances where I had to emergency brake to avoid a t-bone many times.
I only road residential roads and bike paths, planned my route carefully to avoid highways. Key things are to take the lane if you can do the speed limit and only give it up if safe to do so. Avoid driving close to parked cars that will open their door and kill you. Watch left turns in front of you.
A road bike on a bike path with a rider worth their salt is a bit silly as well.
The thing with riding that on a bike path was that I had no concerns slowing down amongst pedestrians or on blind corners as it was no effort to get back up to speed. I was less inclined on my road bike due to the effort. Road bikes can get up to that speed, had a few that came close to pacing me. I understand the sentiment but I had zero incidents in four years of commuting. I was courteous, used a bell. Half my ride was up hill on the path and it did 30km/hr there. Everyone went pretty fast down of course.
I'll admit, I did enjoy passing spandex on expensive bikes with my beater bike wearing jeans. This was a decade ago when ebikes were not at all a thing.
> The thing with riding that on a bike path was that I had no concerns slowing down amongst pedestrians or on blind corners as it was no effort to get back up to speed. I was less inclined on my road bike due to the effort.
Many bike paths seem to discourage slowing down for junctions by putting them in dips - the opposite of how some train stations are on a hump as "gravitational regenerative braking".
Have you ever seen videos of how invisible you look despite all the high viz stuff? In some cases it becomes urban camo. Take a look at this video, especially at 2:30 or so. It’ll show you just how little visibility you’ll have:
Your best bet is to have all your clothing match your bike, Power Rangers style, to increase your chances. And lots and lots of very bright lights. One little handlebar mounted light is going to look like a reflection or a flashlight.
15mph is nothing in terms o safety (granted no break problems). On flat lane I hit that regularly without pushing hard, most people can handle that outside crowded areas.
