The thing that continues to shock me about the modern world is the multitude of ways we let cars ruin are lives.
Private cars continue to be a Blight, an obsession and focus on speed and size in car culture leads to accidents becoming more and more deadly.
Counties like China used to be completely dominated by bikes, now Beijing has some of the worse air quality in the world. Globally respiratory conditions in adults and children continue to rise. And co2 drives us ever closer to climate collapse
Switching to electric and hydrogen doesn't fix this either, parts still need to be mined, rubber still needs to be produced, as does plastic and old cars and bygone petrol stations need to be scrapped as many cannot be converted
Streets and cities used to be a place of community, but now they are dominated by cars. Want to go to the park? Sorry, it was torn up for a parking garage. Want to cross the road? Yeah, just wait ten minutes for all the cars to pass and get over in 10 seconds before someone decides that getting to mcdonalds is more important than traffic laws. Oh, and I hope you've not got a motor disability or are in a wheel chair or your royaly fucked.
Pedestrians used to have the right of way always, never cars. You never had to teach children to look both ways because cars were expected to stop. Of corse motor companies started paying schools to teach traffic safety and over the decades streets became devoid of people to the point where some see hanging around on a conner or playing curby as a crime.
Cars themselves cut of connections, drivers get ever more angry at simply mistakes and spend acumelate years of there life in traffic Jams. And don't think Lane expansions help, that just means the jam expands to meet the new capacity
The private car in the modern day is pointless and dangerous, cars do have a place, like for businesses or the police or I'd your disabled and public transport in nonaplicable, but other than that the car is of a bygone era
There's a reason that more young people don't buy cars and not just because there expensive and bad for the planet - though that is a factor - cars are simply to dangerous and difficult to use.
Edinburgh has experimented with banning cars from several Streets, reinstating conections and allowing kids to play. They up parking charges to dissuade people from using there car and clogging up the narrow streets, they instal low emissions zones to stop the most polluting cars entering.
And it works.
More and more people in Scotland are using public transport, the tram lines have been expanded, as have the train and bus routes. Travel becomes cheaper and these measure have begun to spread.
It's not just Scotland either, Ireland and prodigal have done similar. Brazil has expanded bike lanes to make cycling safer and introduced a bike share system.
Spain went even further and made train travel free and German citizens even tried to get Berlin to completely ban cars
The era of the car is ending, and the sooner people accept that public transport is safer, more affordable and better for the environment, the sooner and smoother the change will occur.
One day, when I'm and old lady sitting on by garden chair, I will look out and smile because coming down the street will not be and endless cavalcade of cars, it will be the odd company van, the single decker bus carrying passengers and merry children running down the streets.
Or you know we could keep using the car and literally destroy the world via climate change whatever you want really.
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Getting Jean's perspective of Neil has casually reminded me that Neil really was out here in tfc acting like Andrew was insane for thinking he was a mole for the Ravens.
Like the man was so offended that Andrew would assume that, even though he spent every moment before that being completely fucking feral, having a literal shrine to Kevin and Riko in his bag at all times along with $250,000 in what amounts to cash, knew french well enough to not only yell at Kevin with no context, but say something that got Kevin to throw him against a wall in retaliation....
This is the man who had the audacity to act like Andrew's assumption that he was hired by the Moriyamas was completely unreasonable.
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I think the reason why Naruto fans get so passionate and upset about the series is because of how real it can be. Naruto isn’t about paragon heroes outdoing dastardly villains. It’s about human beings fighting tooth and nail to survive in a world surrounded by death. It’s about broken systems made and perpetuated by broken people.
The Hyuga clan isn’t just antagonistic or pretentious, they practice slavery.
The Uchiha clan weren’t just killed by some raging psychopath, they were systematically massacred.
Itachi isn’t just cruel to Sasuke because he’s a bad brother, he’s cruel because he’d been told time and time again that you can only survive by being cruel and he wants nothing more than for Sasuke to survive.
Nagato isn’t trying to take over the world just for the sake of power, he’s trying to take over the world because it beat him down to the point of believing that the only chance at peace there is is the world being forced into compliance through fear.
Iruka isn’t hard on Naruto just because he’s a strict teacher, he’s hard on Naruto because he knows from experience how unforgiving the world is towards orphans.
Kakashi isn’t just some silly and slightly lazy teacher, he’s a contract killer still grieving his loved ones and struggling to do better without knowing how he’s supposed to.
Sakura isn’t just a fangirl, she’s a normal girl in a very dangerous and abnormal world constantly being made to choose between what she’s supposed to do and what she feels.
Sasuke isn’t just some edgelord, he’s a survivor who lost everything then gets repeatedly told that he has to choose between keeping what he’s gained and doing better than his brother.
Naruto isn’t just trying to be the best Hokage there ever was, he’s trying to prove his worth to a society that abandoned him just for existing and, in a way, confirm his worth to himself.
The Naruto story is about humans trying to force themselves into the role of weapons because that’s what they were told they had to be. It’s a story where everyone is a perpetrator but no one is trying to do wrong. It’s a story where everyone is a victim but no one is a perfect victim.
The world and the characters aren’t simple and trying to simplify them only takes away from them. So of course we get passionate about showing off all the reasons why they shouldn’t be simplified and all of the ways they’re complicated. Of course we get upset when we see others simplifying them or selling certain aspects of their characters short. Of course we get upset when the series itself simplifies them. Of course we get upset when the series chooses to abandon them. Because it not only feels like the characters are giving up, it feels like the series is betraying anyone who chose to get invested in its complexities.
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