Enforcement probably has to come at a higher level than e-bike owners. Regulations on production, imports, retailers, logistics...basically make it more difficult and expensive to get an illegal non-UL battery than a legit one. Would help if there was movement on this in most states or even federally.

The QBB desperately needs another lane for bikes and peds. I guess ideally you'd have three:

1. Peds
2. Non-motorized bikes
3. Powered vehicles incl. scooters (ICE & electric) and e-bikes. Anything motorized but not car or light truck. Maybe even motorcycles.

But...I didn't say to stare at people?

Wtf why is it so bizarre to say that it's relaxing to space out on the train and look at what's going on around you?

It uh...is? Huh? Sorry but I'm gonna have to push back on this.

More screens with attention-grabbing animated graphics are the last thing people need in 2023.

One of the great things about the train is that it's a public space where you need to just sit and zone out, think, observe people around you. Sure you have your smartphone panting in your pocket but that's easy enough to ignore with the shitty signal.

With a screen shouting for your attention and pushing your brain's buttons that's just one less space available in the modern world for reflection and calm.

Or saving for a down payment, or investing, or any number of other things besides spending upwards of 1/2 your monthly income on rent in a neighborhood with many other, cheaper apartments and neighborhoods nearby.

Levine continually shouted about how the city needed to lock itself down, hardcore yo, in the same way you'd find in NE Asia or Europe, well into 2021.

Yet in late 2021 there was such pitiful uptake of covid vaccines among freaking nursing home patients.

Dude just wants to grandstand. He freaks me out. He's always on, always selling, always about Levine.

Well get used to him. He'll probably be the mayor in a few years. Ugh.

Gonna call bullshit on this.

Best case compared to average case. Really not a fair comparison here.

Cats too

"Goldman Sachs launches small local PR initiative"

I know I'm criticizing that attitude

> Yeah lol they don’t wanna admit they could’ve killed or disabled someone.

I would bet money that something you've willingly done or failed to do has been part of the chain of causation that led to someone's death or injury. That's just an inescapable part of this horribly complex, interdependent society we've built.

Breaking those chains of causation or attenuating their effects requires interventions that impose negative consequences of their own. Sometimes they're worth it. Others not.

I don't know how you convince people who like the way of life that perpetual covid suppression entailed that they should give it up. They want to stay inside, hide from the world, order everything, be on their computers all the time, wear a mask in public. These are positive changes to them. They're not negative consequences.

There's not much you can do but oppose their efforts to make this regime a permanent fixture of society.

Basically yes.

To some people March 2020 was a seminal moment in human history, and forever afterward people will hide their faces in public and exist in a low-contact weird asocial world to combat our new invisible enemy.

A return to normalcy is not envisaged.

Yessssssss

You're a good egg.

There are already an insane number of cats in Brooklyn alone. Tons of them die on the street every year. Local TNR groups can't keep up.

I don't think more cats is the answer to the rat problem. The answer is better garbage disposal.

Oh the poor little guy looks like he's had a rough time. Hope he finds a good home.

I know I'm trying to demonstrate how absurd and totalitarian an idea it is to limit people moving to the city from inside the US.

Yeah I gotcha. Feelings are running high right now for obvious reasons. I just wanted to set the record straight (ugh).

I'm not claiming they are. My point was that it would be no different if a cishet man decided to do this vs. a gay or bisexual one, or a trans woman, or a butch lesbian, or whoever. It's a person putting on a costume reading to children.

As long as there's no age-inappropriate sexual content (which there isn't) then there's really nothing to object to. That is, unless one finds the idea of gender-nonconforming behavior objectionable in itself.

There's no way this is in good faith, but in contexts where we're talking about lgbt people versus the majority of the population that identifies as cisgender (as opposed to transgender) and heterosexual (as opposed to homosexual or bisexual) it helps sometimes to use that portmanteau adjective (here used substantively) to make it clear you're referring to them.

"Cishet" isn't in Websters yet, you're right. I certainly didn't make it up, though.

I'll edit it to say "cisgender heterosexual man" instead.

I think a lot of this anger is stirred up by social media shit-stirrers (one in particular) who posts videos from actual drag and burlesque shows where a few parents have (wrongly, in my view) taken their children to be in the audience.

This conveniently omits the much larger number of shows where this does not happen, the much larger number of parents who don't take children to these events, and of course the completely age-appropriate, de-sexualized drag queen story hours put on by NYPL.

It implants the idea that lgbt people are somehow publicly sexual (in the prurient sense) in all contexts, at all times, that there is no such thing as drag or crossdressing or gender-nonconforming behavior of any kind that isn't sexual, and that therefore lgbt people have to be driven from any and all public spaces where children are present, to protect children from age-inappropriate sexual displays. It erases all distinctions between drag queen story hour and the drag show at your local gay bar, putting a target on the back of the performers as well as anyone who "supports" them.

It's sneaky, posisonous, and pretty scary to be honest with you.

I think the issue here may be that people are conflating the kind of drag they see at drag shows, a lot of which is extremely sexual in nature and very inappropriate for children, with the idea of a man/woman/whatever wearing a big silly dress, big silly nails, big silly hair etc. and reading a story to kids, completely devoid of kind of any sexual content whatsoever.

The latter is what drag queen story hour is. The former is probably what the protestors think drag queen story hour is.

If a cisgender heterosexual man wants to wear a big frilly dress, put on big silly nails and a weird wig and read a story to kids with a funny voice...what exactly is objectionable about that? It's entertaining, educational, and may even teach the more perceptive kids that clothes are just clothes and it's not a big deal for a man to wear a big silly dress if he wants to.

Yeah it's becoming clear to me that the issue is mainly that people consider "man wearing womans clothing" to be "sexual" by default. And that just ain't so.

They probably can't conceive of drag beyond the super sexual (and inappropriate for children) stuff you see at some drag shows.