He still has time to do loan forgiveness "helicopter money" style. But even if all we got was an expansion of targeted relief programs I think it totally counts as fulfilling his talking point. The issue with student debt is that for some people there's no way out, but generally speaking college-educated people are more well-off and forgiving all debt would be a regressive stimulus that targets the wealthier side of the population. Targeted relief is a great way around that.
>also regressive stimulus are not even a thing. maybe you're thinking of regressive taxes?
Regressive taxes favor the rich over the poor. By "regressive stimulus" I'm presuming he's talking about stimulus that favors the rich (eg. well off layers/doctors with high student loan debt but high earning potential) over people with modest student loans but low earning potential.
Yes, that's exactly what I'm talking about. It's amazing how easy communication is when your words aren't interpreted in the most obtuse and uncharitable way by extreme progressives
words have meaning; using them correctly in context matters. the fact of the matter is the term you used has nothing to do with stimulus'. you were attempting to imply that forgiveness somehow harms the lower classes when it categorically doesnt.
the only person being 'uncharitable' here is you; attempting to label someone calling out your BS position as 'extreme' and then attempting to categorically label an entire political spectrum with the same brush.
which still isn't correct. it doesn't hurt the poor that the upper middle class will also receive this benefit. regressive taxes do. in fact this policy still helps the lower income class because many of them will also benefit from it and far more than the upper middle class.
Motorcycles have about 29 times the deaths per mile compared to cars. If all you're worried about is saving space and gas they're a great option - my Honda cruiser gets about 80mpg. But it's incredibly dangerous. I think it's plausible that safety could improve with infrastructure changes and driver education, but I don't think it could ever compare to being strapped into a metal cage with airbags and crumple zones
I drove for 6 years with 3 different bikes (125cc scooter + 125cc small bike + 600cc bike)... and as much as I love it, I gave it up. I have to fight the urge to buy a new one every few months. I've fallen & had accidents 4 times and I'm lucky to be alive to be honest. It helps to know the stats around the death rates and to watch a few accident aftermath scenes to cure yourself.
I truly do want everyone to drive them for all the benefits they bring but I also truly don't want a single person to die like that, so I no longer recommend that other people buy them (not even a scooter for short distances).
I hear a lot of how motorcycles are dangerous and they absolutely are. But 1/2 of wrecks are single vehicle wrecks and most of the other wrecks are cars turning in front of motorcycles or motorcycles getting rear-ended at lights.
American streets are designed poorly, see stroads and all that. If we want motorcycle fatalities to go down, we need to strive for all fatalities to go down.
Yes 5.5k riders died last year, but 42K car drivers died. Yet we're fine with that because "well per mile that isn't that bad" 42K isn't a good number and there needs to be greater discussion surrounding the poor driving conditions created by poor planning.
Not to mention that in a substantial portion of the world, motorcycles aren't practical for most of the year. Snow, ice and cold aren't great for two-wheeled vehicles.
You should check out the Not Just Bikes Youtube channel.
The channel is mostly on city planning that supports walking and biking (rather than motorcycles) but the Dutch bicycle in the snow because they have an infrastructure that supports it.
But we ARE talking about motorcycles here. And sliding out on ice on a bicycle is wayyyy different than a motorcycle. Most people can muscle a bicycle into submission but a light motorcycle starts at 300lbs/130kg. Good luck holding that upright if you and the bike disagree on where the tires should be going.
I saw many comments above included stories from Taiwan. If you are not aware, Taiwan has an incredible amount of rain, yet there are scooters everywhere. I never understand how scooters remain so popular!
People wear rain clothes on scooters. This is very dangerous. Your vision is very bad in the rain and your control of the scooter is also bad. I did this when I got no other choices.
Yeah and if you need to tow a trailer they don't work either, but those are not very good arguments why we don't try to accommodate them in the situations where they do work very well, i.e. city driving in regions where it doesn't snow very much. The same applies to bicycles and ebikes.
Motorcycles can tow trailers. Sidecars are also a thing. In the 1950s there was a motorcycle dealership in Portland that had a motorcycle carrier sidecar. If your bike broke down they would ride out on their bike, roll yours onto the side car and give you both a lift back to the shop. No trucks needed.
Australia here. When we're not on fire or under water (which is also where scooters perform rather badly), it often seems to be too hot to wear safety gear.
Add the sense of entitlement of large 4WDs to complete non-enforcement of road rules protecting riders of both motor- and acoustic bikes by the Police, and you've got a deadly mix going.
Yeah, I think the Giant Car problem is what will doom this system in the US. True scooters like these can use the bike lanes in most cities (ymmv) so they might have a chance but they'll be stuck behind regular bikes and e-bikes and so limited to those speeds.
There is mesh synthetic safety gear that's quite good these days (I'd imagine it'll eventually disintegrate on a long slide, but will at least help with impact. Also road rash typically isn't what will actually kill you). It also comes in colors that will reflect the sun a little more than black, which is still the most popular motorcycle clothing color by sales.
I used to ride a lot in Ocotillo Wells where it would hit 110F in full safety gear, so it is possible. Helps when you're going fast enough to get wind chill.
[citation needed]. Not because I doubt the number (it seems plausible), but because I'd like to see the data.
IMO once You factor for speed and environment (how much time will any of those electric city scooters ever ride on highway and/or above maybe 50-60kph?), You'll be left with two causes of accidents - rider who loses control (exponentially less deadly with reduced speed) and scooter vs car crash on intersections / in lanes. In this case, much as those crumple zones work well for whoever is inside the metal box, they also add extra mass / energy to the body that's being deformed on the outside...
I ride motorcycles. I am never more scared than when I am stopped at a traffic light, especially if there is a car in front of me. I have seen (and in my car been) rear ended. It's not fun. On a bike that is almost certain death. Even at 25-30mph. With the number of drivers on cell phones this is a real risk.
Personally I mitigate this by stopping at the edge of the lane and keeping an eye on my mirrors. If I am going to get hit I can at least escape between the lanes.
In civilized countries filtering between lanes of stopped cars is the norm. This gets the vulnerable two-wheeled vehicles out of the danger zone. In the US that is illegal almost everywhere. Even if it was legal drivers would have to be educated to not use their vehicles as weapons, something that is surprisingly common.
But, for anyone else reading, one of the few places filtering and lane splitting in general is legal (up to ~10mph speed difference) is in California.
There was extensive discussion on a recent episode of "Highside Lowside" (Revzilla's Podcast) about whether lane splitting at speed increases or decreases safety, complete with stats and personal experiences. (In their opinion it comes down to the skill of the rider.) Filtering when cars are fully stopped is likely safe and less contentious.
Highways are actually some of the safest roadways for motorcycle riders, with the vast majority of motorcycle accidents happening at intersections. Scooters are not immune to this, and would in fact spend more time in these danger zones than motorcycles. I do believe that area also plays a large role in fatality rate as well as culture. Eliminating any alcohol consumption goes a long way in avoiding motorcycle accidents, but there's a huge cruiser culture that involves going to the bar as a ride destination. And localized driving culture also plays a big role. In many developing countries where more people are on bikes, speed limits tend to be lower to match road quality. As such, most motorcycles and scooters will be functionally equivalent, with most bikes being sold being less than 250cc. But also, all the traffic, including car traffic might be slower. Additionally, the increased prevalence of stick shift means less texting and driving. Whereas in the US, especially in big driving cities, you may have very aggressive driving culture. Like Chicago, where I actually felt safer on a full motorcycle than a bicycle and most definitely safer than on a scooter. In those places, being slow puts you at the mercy of the aggressive drivers coming from behind you. Classes I took there actually encouraged you to be a more aggressive rider, to ride slightly faster than traffic to find bubbles in the traffic and be certain that you weren't going to be rear ended by someone doing something stupid. Sorry I don't have any data, just around 100k miles of seat time over the course of about 5 or 6 years, most of it urban riding. Motorcycle's are very dangerous, and there are steps you can take to mitigate the danger, like choosing when and where to ride, but at the end of the day, you are always at the mercy of cars on the road, and drivers seem to be getting progressively worse as more people are on their phones.
A major factor that I see surprisingly few people advocate for even in an educational setting is helmet color and high-visibility clothing. If I remember correctly just wearing a white helmet alone is associated with a 25% lower risk of being in a fatal accident. A white helmet + high vis gets you closer to 40% or 50% reduction.
There were rumblings in Australia about making high-viz clothing a requirement but I'm not sure if that actually got passed or not. From the data I've seen it makes nearly as much of a difference as wearing a helmet vs not.
It's surprising how much motorcycle armor is out there touting their super-advanced kevlar buffer pad race construction yet are colored darker than night.
Yes, motocycle is evidently more dangerous than car. But, some people don't have a choice. In some country, car is still a luxury. For example, in my country, a used car can cost at least 3 times a brand new motocycle.
Import duty + Excise + VAT with some ridiculous calculation, 3,000 cc import to Thailand is about 328% (data from 2019, i think the formula is still the same today). It really feels stupid (despite of no choices) to buy 300% price of original price.
You are talking about the stats from an American perspective. Such a car-centric view. Not everyone lives in America.
Hundreds of cities and countries have infrastructure suitable for two wheelers. Especially when you are within the city limits. Cities in India it is extremely common to ride two-wheelers and it is generally safer to ride scooters. Most delivery drivers use motorcycles - millions of them in fact.
I think it's safe to use insurance rates as a proxy for the likelihood you'll get into a crash. Rates are almost invariably higher for every type of coverage if you live in a more densely populated area.
You're talking about fatalities though. There are 1000x more rear ends in the city but I have yet to see a car flipped over in the city like on the highway
Is that for third party only though? Perhaps also confounded by higher-prices of cars in cities vs rural areas when you do crash into something = higher costs.
From what I've seen, collision coverage tends to be used for cases where you made a mistake and need to get your own vehicle fixed. Generally all the coverage sections will get more expensive when you move to a more densely-populated area but the from the cases I've seen, collision coverage will tend to be significantly more expensive in Chicago than southern Illinois.
Producing data for something like that sounds like an incredible ask and I'd be super interested to see how other people have tried to tackle that problem.
My anecdotal experience is that they teach something close to that in philosophy departments, at least insofar as you need to be able to present the logical steps and connections you're making in a plain way so your paper is easier to engage with regardless of how abstract the topic is.
I think the actual critical thinking is something that happens internally and you can't really correct or improve that as a teacher if the student isn't capable of explaining what they're thinking - and if you can teach the student to explain what's going on inside their head, they can learn more effectively from people more intelligent than them later on because then it's public knowledge what they're screwing up instead of private. So to that end good writing might be even more fundamental than critical thinking skills.
If they took the same heavy-handed approach to diet that they took with smoking I'd find the policy approach a lot more tolerable honestly. Just picking one or the other seems like discrimination because I think generally being fat is comparably unhealthy to smoking.
Even if the FTL aspect turns out to be impossible, I think it's still an interesting hypothetical alternative to chemical and electric thrusters. More realistically I'd bet it's even further off than terrestrial/lunar mass drivers to solve the payload problem but it's an interesting thought nonetheless.
To your point, even if the theoretical drive is feasible but limited to sub C speeds, a drive that requires zero propulsion mass and where the contents of the bubble don't feel any acceleration would be absolutely huuuuuge for manned space flight.
yeah 100%. I do wonder about the energy requirements though because intuitively they don't totally make sense. I still don't understand why it couldn't be used as an infinite energy generator. Is it really just that the ship would move without gaining any momentum since it's the space around it moving instead of the ship itself?
It would be worth quite a bit, but it would have to be comparable to either rogaine or hair transplant surgery. Hairline surgery isn't worth the money for most men, but they wouldn't even blink paying that much for cancer treatment. If it were comparable to rogaine in price it wouldn't be as much of a cash cow since they're making less per sale and maybe making fewer sales because it cures the problem. And if I remember correctly, we only have finasteride/minoxidil for hair loss because they were originally used for high blood pressure
I am bald, not totally but enough to shave my head. I would love to have simple solution for this problem. And I would pay gladly a lot of money if this would be a one time thing. Or let's say every coule of years. But I have seen friend having his hair transplanted, it is not much hair in one sitting. And after one year of growing that hair, for me it is like meh, I wouldn't bother. He does not take pills as far as I know. To have a good enough hair, you need to have couple of very unpleasant transplantations and take pills with side effects for a long time(maybe for ever).
For me it is not worth the hustle at all. So while I passively lurk for better treatment I shave my head 2 times a week and don't waste energy on thinking what if. I know some people have big mental problems considering hairloss. I am glad I can grow a beard and I am tall, so it does not make me look bad. It is just a different look. There is a lot of baldness acceptance videos going on during this pandemic, for example bald caffe on youtube. I think it can help a lot of people deal with issues. So, not a problem of money but it is a hustle to get it done right.
The few I've read don't hint at much money being thrown at the problem. Books often start by "we know very few about hairs".. not "we have all the data anyone would ever want but the problem is really hard to solve".
Something gives me the feeling someone would have cured cancer/hiv/starvation/mental illness like 50 years ago if it actually caused health problems for people.
This has nothing to do with your original assertion that the lack of cures for male pattern baldness is due to a lack of health problems associated with the condition and not because it remains an intractable problem with hack treatments that have only recently become moderately suitable.
I don't know if this was clear to you, but the link was no associated health problems -> less funding for research -> no available cure. I'm sure hairline surgery would be a lot more popular and people wouldn't balk at the cost nearly as much if the surgery added 20 years to your lifespan
This entire argument hinges on the assumption that male pattern baldness is curable with 50 year old technology. If someone could prove that then they could develop a treatment with 50 year old technology.
What's far more likely is that the 'cure' for baldness will be the merger 21st century technologies including tissue engineering and genetic modification to make perfect and long lasting hair follicles for automated transplantation.
The argument you're presenting is akin to saying that people in the 15th century didn't go to the moon because there wasn't an economic purpose for doing it and not because there is no way to go to the moon with craft made of wood and iron.
I've always been curious on this question because I don't have any physics background.
If you made something like a gravitron ride on the moon, would it take a slower rotation speed to reach perceived 1g than if you spun up a ring station in orbit? This calculator makes it seem like you could get pretty close to 1g with just a bullet train running on a 3.14 kilometer loop.
It seems like the main thing stopping earth trains from being faster is that most of our tracks were built a really long time ago and it's not worth the effort replacing them, but if metal is readily available and you're laying new track already, designing for ~300km/hr wouldn't be that much of a stretch no?
Yes, a little. In freefall, such as on orbit, you need 1 gravity of centripetal acceleration. a = v²/r; v = √(ar); if we assume a 3-meter radius (roughly Gravitron size) we need about 5.42 m/s tangential velocity to get one gee. The moon's gravitational acceleration is 1.62 m/s/s; to find the centripetal acceleration needed to get a Pythagorean sum of one gee, we take √((9.81 m/s/s)² - (1.62 m/s/s)²) = 9.67 m/s/s. That means that now our √(ar) tangential velocity is just 5.38 m/s, which is less than 5.42 m/s. Does that help?
The main thing stopping earth trains from being faster is politics, not engineering. Trains have been occasionally going over 300 km/h since 01955, decades before maglev. The Shanghai Maglev Train has been running at 430 km/hr since 02004. The Euroduplex regularly runs 320 km/hr on regular 1435mm standard-gauge rails and reached almost 575 km/hr in a test in 02007. 300 km/hr trains have been in regular service since 01989. There are several other train lines that run over 300 km/hr, in Taiwan, PRC, France, Belgium, Saudi Arabia, Japan, Germany, the UK, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Korea, and Switzerland. Soon India and the US will join them.
The big advantage of maglev is actually not smoothness or absolute speed but acceleration and deceleration.
My guess would be that online dating is extremely biased in favor of women because men tend to over-value looks while women tend to value things that are harder to communicate at a glance. Which would be why men generally feel ignored and women generally feel like they have tons of really shitty options.
from my experience, it's absolutely necessary if you listen to a lot of podcasts because every tech-illiterate podcaster dude will see an EQ setting on their microphone/recording software and think "low frequencies are manly and sound good" and boost the hell out of it, and it sounds absolutely awful.
Granted my home speakers might have something to do with it, and headphones/earbuds do tend to have a high-pass filter built in just from their construction, so it probably doesn't affect everyone the same way.
I've been using equalizerAPO for desktop for years. I can only think of a handful of content creators that don't pull that bass-boosting garbage anymore, so the high-pass filter pretty much always stays on unless I'm playing music.
Or don't even normalize. The one podcast I regularly listen too regularly has guests record over the phone or DIY and they are often inaudible (to my over used ears). That'd be a great feature on spotify if it doesn't exist
Somebody should really make an easy-mode podcast recording app that functions as a phone call, but records the speakers locally, and then sends the audio to the host. It could even measure the latency on the call can cut that time out. This seems like it would be pretty trivial...
Once the child is past the age of breast feeding, biology has nothing to do with how well you can raise a child. It might determine who ends up with the child since judges tend to favor women, but that has more to do with tradition than their innate parental expertise.
