Your unpopular (non-political, non-offensive) opinions!

[Retro_R]

My Neighbor Totoro is overrated as hell. That doesn't mean its bad per say, just over rated. It's ok, the art style is amazing, but theres barly a plot. Its not as good as ppl hype it up to be.

 

Also for the anime male simps, Toji Fushiguro is also super overated. Again, not saying hes bad, hes just not as hot as sum of y'all make him out to be. Nanami way better.

[HanZie82]

3 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

The whole “stroads” thing is another one.  The catch all term is “urban sprawl”.   Cities built pre automobile work better without automobiles and cities built for automobiles don’t work well without them.  Most North American cities were built post automobile.  Only a few on the east coast weren’t.  It’s a world wide issue, but one concentrated in the US because it’s where mass produced automobiles came from. Countries with older cities build much smaller automobiles with tighter turning radiuses because streets are often narrow and winding because they were not built for cars.

Nah its a zoning issue. Them bureaucrats take it way to seriously.

Why cant you have shops where people live...

 

I dont have a car, and i can get EVERYWHERE within 2 hours in my country. (its small country tho)

Walk to the supermarket, without feeling endangered by any road-user.

 

So yes its certainly possible, just needs some changes in some outdated laws.

Most important, have the divide between residential zoning and commercial zoning be less.

 

They need to stop Simcity it and be more fluent.

[Bombastinator]

1 hour ago, Niksa said:

Well, they still suck. Why is there no balance? In EU lots of “built for cars” places are being transformed into the pedestrian areas. It CAN be done if there is a will to do so. 
Also I disagree it being a worldwide problem. EU is quite fine. Most of Asian countries as well. Some of the Asian countries (Japan, Taiwan and China for example) eliminate need for a car even for the longer distance traveling because of the high speed railway systems. 

I was agreeing with you.  I’m Just saying it’s even worse and more far reaching than you describe and has been complained about for many years

[Bombastinator]

52 minutes ago, HanZie82 said:

Nah its a zoning issue. Them bureaucrats take it way to seriously.

Why cant you have shops where people live...

 

I dont have a car, and i can get EVERYWHERE within 2 hours in my country. (its small country tho)

Walk to the supermarket, without feeling endangered by any road-user.

 

So yes its certainly possible, just needs some changes in some outdated laws.

Most important, have the divide between residential zoning and commercial zoning be less.

 

They need to stop Simcity it and be more fluent.

Zoning was created on purpose.  It solves other problems. Zoning issues are of paramount importance to land owners because they directly affect the value of plots of land and to utilities because they affect what services are allowed or required to be connected.  Therefore as a big money issue there are a lot of things affecting zoning besides the one you describe.  Zoning has been a thing since the late Middle Ages when tanners got banished down wind because their business created foul odors.  For examples of how zoning is used, there are bunches of city planning simulators around.  Such simulators generally have different flaws and simplifications of reality, so they are more useful for understanding methodology than describing results, but they exist.  
 

There were som cities built vey recently that don’t have these problems in China, but there the common presence of automobiles came even later.  The primary modes of transportation in China until quite recently were train, bicycle, and ox cart.  Still are in large sections of the country.

[Bombastinator]

1 hour ago, Retro_R said:

My Neighbor Totoro is overrated as hell. That doesn't mean its bad per say, just over rated. It's ok, the art style is amazing, but theres barly a plot. Its not as good as ppl hype it up to be.

 

Also for the anime male simps, Toji Fushiguro is also super overated. Again, not saying hes bad, hes just not as hot as sum of y'all make him out to be. Nanami way better.

I have never been able to watch this film all the way through.  I found it glacially slow moving. Like “whales of august” slow moving.  Another film with a fantastic pedigree I also found unwatchable.

[Bombastinator]

8 hours ago, HanZie82 said:

Yes the USA sucks.

The have a huuuge zoning problem, that will come to kick them in the arse.

(If you want more info, watch the youtube channel "Not just Bikes" )

Altho saying this can rile up a many of people, so i try not to.

 

But then other places aren't much better anyways.

It has already happened.  Several years ago in fact.  It’s one proving difficult to fix. 

[whm1974]

40 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

Zoning was created on purpose.  It solves other problems. Zoning issues are of paramount importance to land owners because they directly affect the value of plots of land and to utilities because they affect what services are allowed or required to be connected.  Therefore as a big money issue there are a lot of things affecting zoning besides the one you describe.  Zoning has been a thing since the late Middle Ages when tanners got banished down wind because their business created foul odors.  For examples of how zoning is used, there are bunches of city planning simulators around.  Such simulators generally have different flaws and simplifications of reality, so they are more useful for understanding methodology than describing results, but they exist.  
 

There were som cities built vey recently that don’t have these problems in China, but there the common presence of automobiles came even later.  The primary modes of transportation in China until quite recently were train, bicycle, and ox cart.  Still are in large sections of the country.

I wonder why Rulers of Lands way before then didn't setup sort of Zoning for Certain Industries to be setup on the Outskirts or outside Housing Areas. 

 

Strange enough back during the Middle Ages, Town Fathers required Theaters to outside Town Limits...

[Bombastinator]

19 minutes ago, whm1974 said:

I wonder why Rulers of Lands way before then didn't setup sort of Zoning for Certain Industries to be setup on the Outskirts or outside Housing Areas. 

 

Strange enough back during the Middle Ages, Town Fathers required Theaters to outside Town Limits...

At the time theatre was considered a very lowly and questionable profession. They may have done the same thing with brothels if they were allowed at all.  In the US, the single state that has not made brothels illegal actually does this.

[whm1974]

7 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

At the time theatre was considered a very lowly and questionable profession. They may have done the same thing with brothels if they were allowed at all.  In the US, the single state that has not made brothels illegal actually does this.

Yeah and for a Time women were not allowed to be Actresses. Men in Drag had to be used instead.

[Bombastinator]

On 12/6/2021 at 7:03 AM, IPD said:

Like how it takes a special kind of stupid to fail for decades at energy independence?

Perhaps a special kind of interference.  I don’t think either was unknown to be a problem, it is instead a question of how widespread and popular such attitudes were. Active intervention to reduce the popularity of both concepts was undertaken by various industry groups for various reasons.

[IPD]

 

 

IMHO, the key issue is designing in such a way that automotive travel is possible, but discouraged.  This also requires cities to plan out bike paths/lanes and actual sidewalks.  Simply blocking off a lane of traffic for "Bikes" isn't enough.  You need a legitimate, segregated (either via curb or grass/dirt) bike lane.  Even in subdivisions in many new areas...sidewalks are a practical afterthought.

 

If planners/designers approach the urban area with the mindset of how to get pedestrians/bikes from one side of the city to the other--efficiently--without crossing (or being forced to run parallel to) vehicular roadways, then you end up with a good layout.  The Denver/Rio-Grande trail in UT runs through a few underpasses as it crosses main thoroughfares; and it gets a LOT of use.  It's a good design.  Non-motorized traffic should be able to operate independently of the constraints of conventional roads.

[Bombastinator]

2 minutes ago, IPD said:

 

 

IMHO, the key issue is designing in such a way that automotive travel is possible, but discouraged.  This also requires cities to plan out bike paths/lanes and actual sidewalks.  Simply blocking off a lane of traffic for "Bikes" isn't enough.  You need a legitimate, segregated (either via curb or grass/dirt) bike lane.  Even in subdivisions in many new areas...sidewalks are a practical afterthought.

 

If planners/designers approach the urban area with the mindset of how to get pedestrians/bikes from one side of the city to the other--efficiently--without crossing (or being forced to run parallel to) vehicular roadways, then you end up with a good layout.  The Denver/Rio-Grande trail in UT runs through a few underpasses as it crosses main thoroughfares; and it gets a LOT of use.  It's a good design.  Non-motorized traffic should be able to operate independently of the constraints of conventional roads.

“Non motorized” is a lot of things besides bikes though.  I’m remembering Boston, which was originally laid out for horse and cart, with the same goals.  Horses can climb stairs but they can’t climb human stairs.  The treads must be 5 or 6 times as long, though the risers can be slightly higher.  There is also a turn limitations because of the cart, but it isn’t linear, much like horses.  A horse can turn in a very tight space if they’re traveling at low speed. Get up past a walk though and turning radius degrades dramatically. A cart is freewheeling. The wheels can go backwards as well as forwards and they aren’t linked.  A two wheel cart (which most were) can actually spin in place if statioary.  The horse would have t walk around the cart it was pulling though.  There are such stairways in Eastern Europe still, though not many.  Once they were fairly common.  Boston used to have them as well.  They are of course impossible for bikes.  Turning them into ramps though made them possible for cars but not bicycles.  Too steep.  On the whole though a bicycle is much better at navigating a city laid out for horse and cart than an automobile is.   Neither are great though. 

[Donut417]

On 12/6/2021 at 8:03 AM, IPD said:

Like how it takes a special kind of stupid to fail for decades at energy independence?

Well when most people wont support the best solution (Nuclear) you really dont have a choice to be energy independent. Solar and Wind are not enough in many cases. Coal causes too much pollution and while Natural Gas is cleaner its still not 100% clean. 

6 hours ago, HanZie82 said:

dont have a car, and i can get EVERYWHERE within 2 hours in my country. (its small country tho)

Walk to the supermarket, without feeling endangered by any road-user.

 

So yes its certainly possible, just needs some changes in some outdated laws.

Most important, have the divide between residential zoning and commercial zoning be less.

 

Its not just zoning laws. All the rail for example in the US is privately owned. What does that mean? Well when Amtrak wants to use the rail, which they are allowed they have to yield to any slow moving freight trains. Why? Because the companies who own the rail own the freight trains. Amtrak only owns a small portion of the rail their trains operate on. That also means high speed trains are out. The only way to get high speed trains would be for a company to build all new rail. Between the challenges of getting the land, the cost and all the red tape, its not worth it. Plus how do you decide what cities are connected? I mean do you just connect the big cities? On top of that how do people in areas where that service does not exist get around? Private business haven't stepped up to offer bus service and while some is provided by the government, that costs money, in terms of wages, benefits and you have to have a CDL I believe to drive one. Not sure about the rest of the US, but some of the counties and cities in Michigan are fucking broke as a joke. 

 

While I do support biking. The problem with that is its colder than a Witches TIT in a brass bra in the middle of Winter around these parts. Which means biking in winter is not practical when you have the opportunity to get frost bite or hyperthermia. 

 

Then you have the other side of it. Countries in Europe for instance are a bit more on the socialist side than the US is. Many US citizens consider socialism = to communism. So anything thats consider socialist tends to have lots of controversy surrounding it and have poor public support. 

[Bombastinator]

17 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

Well when most people wont support the best solution (Nuclear) you really dont have a choice to be energy independent. Solar and Wind are not enough in many cases. Coal causes too much pollution and while Natural Gas is cleaner its still not 100% clean. 

Its not just zoning laws. All the rail for example in the US is privately owned. What does that mean? Well when Amtrak wants to use the rail, which they are allowed they have to yield to any slow moving freight trains. Why? Because the companies who own the rail own the freight trains. Amtrak only owns a small portion of the rail their trains operate on. That also means high speed trains are out. The only way to get high speed trains would be for a company to build all new rail. Between the challenges of getting the land, the cost and all the red tape, its not worth it. Plus how do you decide what cities are connected? I mean do you just connect the big cities? On top of that how do people in areas where that service does not exist get around? Private business haven't stepped up to offer bus service and while some is provided by the government, that costs money, in terms of wages, benefits and you have to have a CDL I believe to drive one. Not sure about the rest of the US, but some of the counties and cities in Michigan are fucking broke as a joke. 

 

While I do support biking. The problem with that is its colder than a Witches TIT in a brass bra in the middle of Winter around these parts. Which means biking in winter is not practical when you have the opportunity to get frost bite or hyperthermia. 

 

Then you have the other side of it. Countries in Europe for instance are a bit more on the socialist side than the US is. Many US citizens consider socialism = to communism. So anything thats consider socialist tends to have lots of controversy surrounding it and have poor public support. 

To support the climate point, In my area they even sell special bikes for winter biking (which are not very usable at other times of the year the tires are enormous and spike covered) and special very heavy cold weather gear for it and even then it’s still dangerous.  I have a tenant who used to do it anyway because he was very committed but got in an extremely bad accident (medivacced.  Scars multiple feet long.  Motorcycle+deer= lived only by sheer luck) and is no longer healthy enough to do it.

[adarw]

7 hours ago, Bombastinator said:

Zoning was created on purpose

it was, well mostly because of systematic racism. now people want to change the fact that you cant build complexes right beside houses but everyone is like i support that but no one wants it in their neighbourhood. its really counterintuitive. lol

 

(please dont ban me mods, racism shouldnt be covered as politics, it happened and it happened a lot.)

[Bombastinator]

19 minutes ago, adarw said:

it was, well mostly because of systematic racism. now people want to change the fact that you cant build complexes right beside houses but everyone is like i support that but no one wants it in their neighbourhood. its really counterintuitive. lol

 

(please dont ban me mods, racism shouldnt be covered as politics, it happened and it happened a lot.)

I wouldn’t say mostly.  You’re talking about redlining and stuff I think.  Was it USED as a tool for racist action? Sure.  It wasn’t the main reason though.  The main reason was different. It amongst other things did provide some control over who built what where. This did have the side effect of allowing predudice to enter into things but it wasn’t the main reason.  If you remove zoning you have to replace it with something else or very very very bad things will happen.  Things that are actually worse than systemic racism.

 

re: complexes

There was a rather famous instance of such things in the 70’s called Cabrini Greene in Chicago.  The solution turned out to be not giant mu buildings but many small ones. That’s what habitat for humanity is about. 

Edited December 11, 2021 by Bombastinator

[Donut417]

1 hour ago, Bombastinator said:

o support the climate point, In my area they even sell special bikes for winter biking (which are not very usable at other times of the year the tires are enormous and spike covered)

No one has extra money for that though. Its like Winter Tires, Ive never owned a set and likely never will because to me the expense of buying and storing them is not worth the time or money.  Plus no way in hell im biking 10 miles one way to work in the snow in the cold, even with cold weather gear. 

[Bombastinator]

2 hours ago, Donut417 said:

No one has extra money for that though. Its like Winter Tires, Ive never owned a set and likely never will because to me the expense of buying and storing them is not worth the time or money.  Plus no way in hell im biking 10 miles one way to work in the snow in the cold, even with cold weather gear. 

It’s not merely the tires. The things are so big they need special front AND rear forks just to clear.  Bigger than sand tires.  Low pressure things.  They pancake a good bit on the ground on purpose to make a big enough contact patch to matter.  Heard them called moonbikes.  A whole special bike.  Maybe a grand.  Plus you get to store it.  Still doesn’t give enough grip on ice.  You can turn more or less ok,  but stopping is twitchy.  Absolutely have to have disc brakes for one, and water water everywhere.  Like being in a hard rain 24/7.  It’s better than trying to ride a regular bike on ice which is more or less instafall, but it’s still not great.

 

ADDENDUM: Reread this and it made it sound like the tenant owned a moon bike.  This is not correct.  The two pieces of information came from different places.  The tenant had a regular bike, and he hurt himself on a motorcycle not a bicycle. (He might have differently hurt himself on a bicycle as well, I don’t know) he did have special tires for his regular bike, he did ride int the winter, and he did have special clothing made for riding in the winter. He also talked about special tires for his regular bike.  Those were for avoiding punctures though.  I don’t know what sort of tires he used in the winter. I assume something. 

Edited December 11, 2021 by Bombastinator

[kasugatei]

 

This is not beautiful. Humans can’t have teeth in that color. Also super uniform teeth shapes scream artificial. 
 

So called “Hollywood smile” looks way distracting because it simply doesn’t look natural. 
 

Don’t get me wrong, I consider that having nice teeth should be one of the priorities for everyone, but this kind of dental job doesn’t look that nice. Perfection doesn’t  exist in the natural world and beauty is in those small imperfections which this doesn’t have at all. 

[IPD]

True.  ^  Unfortunately, symmetry is hard wired in the human brain, so most will unconsciously look for it--even if it is unrealistic.

 

I'm most bothered by Tom Cruise's middle tooth....

[Avocado Diaboli]

The 256 character file path limit in Windows is bullshit. Especially because if you overstep it, there's literally no error message indicating that that might be the problem. The attempt just fails silently and dumps you back into where you were until the application throws an unrelated error. Also, coworkers who insist on having dozens of nested folders with long-ass names are assholes. Can you guess what problem I'm trying to fix right now?

[kasugatei]

I will return to tattoos. 
 

Just don’t put tattoo on yourself for the sake of having tattoo. It is quite obvious which people did that and it just doesn’t look good. In lots of cases it is comparable to using Office Clipart on your body - seen millions of times and unimaginative. People who really want tattoos will do research, they will know which tattoo artist can do art that they want and the art won’t be something like copy/paste from the internet. 

[Retro_R]

On 12/10/2021 at 10:52 AM, Bombastinator said:

I have never been able to watch this film all the way through.  I found it glacially slow moving. Like “whales of august” slow moving.  Another film with a fantastic pedigree I also found unwatchable.

I've seen it all the way through a couple of times. I dont rlly feel there's a 'plot', just a sequence of events. Its sum nice for the kids but not that much more. I remember realizing how meh it is when i showed it to a friend and we just sat there like

 

idk if i said this on the og post, but Spirited away is a LOT better and has a ton more sustance to it. It even got my not anime watching sister interested.w

[kasugatei]

If you open a topic with extreme vague title like “help needed”, “I need help” or similar you don’t deserve any help. This is not only for this forum, but other forums in general. 
Why is so problematic to write eg. “Intel i7 overheating” in the title? Then someone who will have an idea about the topic might help and it increases your chances that the most competent user will reply. But if you are too lazy to even help yourself with finding the help, I am first who is going to ignore you. 

[Bombastinator]

7 minutes ago, Niksa said:

If you open a topic with extreme vague title like “help needed”, “I need help” or similar you don’t deserve any help. This is not only for this forum, but other forums in general. 
Why is so problematic to write eg. “Intel i7 overheating” in the title? Then someone who will have an idea about the topic might help and it increases your chances that the most competent user will reply. But if you are too lazy to even help yourself with finding the help, I am first who is going to ignore you. 

Well I wouldn’t say they don’t deserve it, necessarily, as there are some things that do require such.   However, if they don’t define it one gets to decide what sort of help they need.  Help setting up a go-fund-me for their sex reassignment surgery comes to mind.  They also might need to figure out how to dispose of a body (I understand a herd of pigs works well)  Such a post might of course be observed by law enforcement.  the mind boggles with possibilities…

Edited January 6, 2022 by Bombastinator