151–160 of 411 posts
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Because our entire capitalist economic system is built on consumption, which is largely reliant on the birth rate being above the replacement rate (2.1). This is especially important for some sectors like durable consumer goods, housing, etc.
Why is this downvoted?
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It seems to be very rarely enforced. I ride in Seattle without a helmet all the time and have never had a problem.
Out of curiosity: why do you ride without a helmet?
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Minivans are only un-cool until you are forced to appreciate their practicality. They can transport groups of kids and all their gear, a bunch of dogs, a surprising amount of furniture or even large sheets of lumber or drywall. I would only consider replacing my minivan with an electric minivan.
My wife and I don't have kids (yet) but absolutely love our Pacifica minivan. It fits 4x8 sheets of plywood in the back perfectly (it was designed this way), all of the seats fold down into the floor, which is awesome, and it can tow a trailer. We actually got it because it meant we could more easily pack more things to burning man every year. Since then we've done tons of road trips all over the country, and build t…
We're still big fans of ours though.
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Out of curiosity: why do you ride without a helmet?
Helmets are big unwieldy things. They're not easy to carry, and are shaped such that even if you had a bag big enough for one, it would probably crowd out a lot of things that might also go in the bag (e.g. very few bags might hold a 15-in laptop and also a helmet) It is inconvenient to take spontaneous or quick bike rides if you have to lug a helmet around everywhere. Also, there is at least some debate about whethe…
Then one day, a guy wasn't paying attention, ran a stop-sign at high speed when we were still in the intersection, and hit my sister's bike's front wheel. There was no way she could have gotten out of his way.
I can still hear the THWACK of her helmet hitting the pavement. The helmet did its job, and absorbed the impact by cracking. She got out of the experience with a few days of pain.
I've always worn a helmet after that.
This is an actual conversation I had to have with my wife, having a third kid definitely requires a larger vehicle as the vast majority of cars today simply don't work for a family of five. Child car seats are too wide and the backseats of most cars are too narrow, and the price jump to a vehicle that would be able to handle three child car seats at once is enormous. Throw in some dogs, a couple pieces of luggage tha…
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There is no reason to give a career — a poor abstraction built around the simple concept of doing work for money — higher value than rearing a child, something millions of years of evolution has gender specifically selected for.
That poor abstraction is what allows most people to provide their children with the quality of life they deem necessary.
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Out of curiosity: why do you ride without a helmet?
If one leaves it up to the law, it's easy. If not, it's basically an expression of personal weights assigned to a whole lot of fuzzy things. Can you draw a clear line between when you wear a helmet and when you don't? Is it perfectly obvious or more up to habit? Would it be influenced by a change in laws? Or if there were helmets available marketed for the specific activity? Is it obvious where riding a bike fits in…
To answer your question, perhaps because the common factor in all of these activities is that I am moving relatively slowly and my surroundings are basically stationary. These factors are void if I am riding a bike (or a motorcycle), where I might be moving at a few mph and there could be vehicles around me that might be moving even faster.
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Whatever happened to station wagons, with all those extra flip-up seats in the back bay? This is the new Wagon Queen Family Truckster. This is a damn fine automobile. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzXN5sQ5g-U&ab_channel=Foste...
They're called SUVs now and the extra seats are absent so that they can be styled with a sloping back. Priorities.
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The Radian is definitely king of three across. But they're premium priced ($200 each, or $600 for three), and sacrifice comfort particularly for longer trips. In general people who have never had kids don't seem to grasp that the average (non-Radian) car-seat is BIGGER than an adult side-to-side. The Radian series has a niche because they produced a car-seat the same size as an adult (with no loss of safety), but had…
> sacrifice comfort particularly for longer trips. I guess maybe they are less comfortable than traditional car seats, but since car seats are basically build like lazy-boy recliners, that seems unsurprising. Our kids have never complained about the comfort or lack-thereof. They seem to have pretty equivalent comfort when compared to the back seat itself as far as I can tell.
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My wife and I don't have kids (yet) but absolutely love our Pacifica minivan. It fits 4x8 sheets of plywood in the back perfectly (it was designed this way), all of the seats fold down into the floor, which is awesome, and it can tow a trailer. We actually got it because it meant we could more easily pack more things to burning man every year. Since then we've done tons of road trips all over the country, and build t…
Note that the Pacifica Hybrid doesn't have stow-and-go for the middle row of seats (the battery fills that space), and has no rated towing capacity. We're still big fans of ours though.
Still want that comma.ai, though!