331–340 of 399 posts
The solution to this is known by everyone, including those who will fain ignorance. Implement universal healthcare (including mental health), regulate guns (insurance, registration, training, buybacks, red flag laws) including banning weapons of war, build public transportation and transition away from car-mandatory living in all but the most rural areas, and push for democratically-controlled unions and worker co-op…
The US is difficult to compare with other developed countries because it essentially has (1) affluent core regions and (2) poor peripheral regions. The US is essentially bimodal. The core regions resemble the developed world, with similar levels of education, wealth, and political perspectives. The peripheral regions are much worse off. Entire states, such as West Virginia, are peripheral. Think low wealth, low life…
Obesity. Americans are so obese that they don’t even recognise anymore that they are fat when they are fat. Every time US based tech people come to the UK or Europe for conferences it’s incredibly eye opening what they think is healthy and how they see themselves. Plenty of folks who think they eat and drink healthy and are in a good body condition and all I can see is a big wobbly man with barely any hair on their h…
I was with you until the hair on the head part. Do you know of any established link between balding and other factors? Is it more prevalent on either side of the pond?
The US is difficult to compare with other developed countries because it essentially has (1) affluent core regions and (2) poor peripheral regions. The US is essentially bimodal. The core regions resemble the developed world, with similar levels of education, wealth, and political perspectives. The peripheral regions are much worse off. Entire states, such as West Virginia, are peripheral. Think low wealth, low life…
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Cars are getting so big that people can’t drive them. An indescribably sad statistic: In the US, a parent drives over and kills their kid in the driveway every other day [1]. All the guns also cause -a bunch of— some small kids to kill their siblings every year. [1] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna52109
> Cars are getting so big that people can’t drive them. While controversial because car companies in the US intentionally chose to market large SUVs to the public, there is some evidence that smaller vehicles are safer and that auto manufacturers have doubled down on unsafe vehicles. Why this is the case, isn’t exactly known, but one of the theories is that bad drivers will get behind bigger cars and take more risks.…
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The full text of the amendment is pretty clear that "a well-regulated militia" depends upon "the right of the people to keep and bear arms", it does not limit that right. In order to train farmers and craftsmen into an effective reserve fighting force, they have to have weapons of their own they can practice with. Times have changed, obviously, and civil society no longer depends on citizen firearm ownership. You can…
> We should probably repeal and replace the First Amendment while we're at it, and tie up some loose ends like Citizens United and the inability of U.S. governments to criminally punish hate speech. I am not a gun nut, and have little interest in owning/shooting guns. I've done it, and found it boring. But my defense of the 2nd Amendment is based on the domino theory that if the 2nd can be ignored, there goes the Fir…
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It’s not necessarily recklessness. Cars in the US have gotten much larger and heavier in recent years. A Ford F150 might be safe to drive, but it’s not safer for pedestrians and other road users than the smaller cars we used to have.
Plus, modern US trucks are as big (if not as heavy) as WW2 tanks. Photos taken from the infamous DailyMail, but they look correct to me, that is [1] and [2] [1] https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2021/07/25/21/45875073-9823577-... [2] https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2021/07/25/21/45876985-9823577-...
The original article points out that the primary difference between the US and the UK (as well as other peer countries) is that you're much more likely to die young in the US. A 5-year-old in the United States has a 4% chance of dying before age 40, whereas a 5-year-old in Australia, Austria, Canada, England and Wales, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, or Switzerland has ~1% chance of dying before age 40 (val…
Woah! Deaths by billion vehicle miles in UK - 5.2. In US - 12.5. (both have tens of thousands of KSI, but the US has over twice as many per cap. In fact, way, more KSI from car accidents than even gun related homicide in the US. I hadn't realized that!) Deaths by gun related homicide in UK - 200. In US - 20000. (Both numbers pale in comparison to motor vehicle deaths, but there are a lot more in the US. Probably to b…
Has that changed? Is the UK license standard as high as it once was?
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It's so bizarre that America is the only country in the world that seems to face these kinds of problems. As a Canadian who grew up in a household with a dozen firearms, I never once touched those firearms, and hardly ever saw them until I was taken to the range by my father and taught how to use them.
America is the only first world country to border South and Central America, which is the region of the world with a homicide rate orders of magnitude above any other. It is no surprise violence spills over due to proximity.
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"Never" is a long time. Given the explanations I've been given for why demonstration videos of general purpose vision-based robots are still often sped up x4 or more (despite Tesla and Spot), I have to assume it's at least a few years away yet, but that's not never.
The human will always be responsible. There is no way the manufacturers are going to accept liability in case their self driving car has an accident.
I would favour this.