But this is just culture, right? In the 70s smoking was normal and nobody was bothered by it. Now culture has changed and we see it as disgusting. With a bit of effort and luck, culture will change and driving a car in public will be seen to be just as disgusting as smoking is now.

They both agreed with each other but were arguing with a strawman. One said

their precious smartphones might be problematic.

The other said

maybe smartphones play a role

Which mean the same thing.

I’m not as optimistic as you.

Hosting video is really expensive. Making video is really expensive. YouTube was losing money for about 15 years despite having a monopoly on online video for most of that time and the best advertising tech in the world. I don’t think it’s possible to make a free competitor to YouTube.

On the paid side, there’s plenty of streaming services that are making money. But you have to be already established in order to get a contract. And since you will typically have to use social media in order to get past that initial barrier, it might as well include YouTube.

However, my guess is that YouTube makes the majority of it’s money from larger channels. If the larger channels all join paid streaming services(e.g. Nebula) then gradually that may be able to bring YouTube down.

monkrus.ws idk how it works but it’s even easier than installing the legit way.

It isn’t on a mobile device where you might go out of wifi or cellular coverage. But it’s probably a good thing as I don’t want my tab habit wearing out my disk

When i worked at the office in my last job, I find it almost impossible to take a decent break.

What is wrong with your labor laws? In my country there’s a mandatory 1 hour break(30 minutes of which is paid) in a full day of work.

So I have a theory that the carrying capacity of a car has nothing to do with the size of the car and everything to do with how much the owner cares about the car and the comfort tolerance of the passengers. Out of all the loads I’ve observed carried with a car(pickups count as cars but not vans or trailers) the biggest are always in a small beat-up old car full of tolerant and poor young people. I can’t think of a time when I’ve tried loading a car and stopped because the car is too small, it’s always because the owner objects.

Because US “cities” are sparsely populated suburban wastelands that take hours to drive across. The model of exclusively cars and suburbs just doesn’t scale.

Private cars in general are not useless, but private cars in the center of cities should be useless if the city is designed well. The space-transportation trade off does not make sense.

Yes, of course delivery trucks need access to cities, some goods are not practical to move by cargo bike. As do emergency services and buses. Nobody disagrees with this. The problem in many cities is that streets are clogged with useless private cars. So the obvious solution is to ban private cars.

Let’s say that for the same journey, an ebike is a half as much exercise as a pedal bike(or whatever you want, the actual number isn’t important). A car journey is 0 exercise, it’s infinitely worse. Going from a car journey to an ebike journey is infinite times more exercise, going from an ebike journey to a pedal bike is twice as much exercise.

By gatekeeping you’re stopping people from making smaller improvements because they aren’t going all the way

Our housing supply is so shit that people have to sleep in cars.

And where I live, people were having too much fun living in vans, so they even made that difficult.

Do I really need to repeat every reason why cars suck?. Just check everything else in this community.

Relevant for this conversion is that driving a car is far less exercise than even an ebike, and that generally people riding any kind of bikes creates a positive feedback loop where others feel more comfortable, cities build infrastructure, ect.

Why are you gatekeeping? Some people only want transportation, not a workout. Ebikes are infinitely better than cars in every way.

In what scenario would you bring photo albums when evacuating? If it’s non-serious then you can come back, it’s serious then you should have higher priorities.

No, the less than 20% of people who are forced to use a car sometimes are irrelevant to this discussion.

Stroads suck for driving especially. You are going far too fast and have to be constantly paying attention to everything because a hazard might appear at any moment. It’s exhausting.

Across most high-income countries – across Western Europe, the Americas, Australia, Japan, and the Middle East – more than 80% of the population lives in urban areas.

Yes, even for them, the information they can get through a phone is lifesaving. They can learn how to build water supply and sanitation systems and shelter. They can learn how to farm and forage for food. They can find the best way to cross international borders and become a refugee. And so on, they can improve every aspect of their lives. Information is power, and with a smartphone they have access to the entire world, rather than just word of mouth knowledge in their local community.

Obviously, places without any form of electricity are screwed, but satellite internet is rapidly becoming cheaper and more accessible so soon they won’t even need cell coverage.

2. Those in extreme poverty need access to more important things than access to these gadgets.

We’re going down a sidetrack here but this is just false. A smartphone these days is a ticket to many things required to live. Applying for jobs, applying for government services, buying essential items cheaply, cheap/free education.