No. Nothing matters. He said it himself.

I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK?

When I started to use Linux more than two decades ago, Qt’s license was not considered free software friendly. Because I didn’t want proprietary software, I avoided KDE and Qt applications. I know the situation changed after a few years but it stuck with me.

Controversy erupted around 1998 when it became clear that the K Desktop Environment was going to become one of the leading desktop environments for Linux. As it was based on Qt, many people in the free software movement worried that an essential piece of one of their major operating systems would be proprietary.

Plus, it was much easier at that time to have themes and “rice” my desktop using only GTK apps.

So it’s petty but even to this day, I kept the old habit and still avoid Qt applications.

I know it’s not what your asking but I never used Discord because it’s proprietary and, my friends and I stayed on IRC.

Now IRC is usually just text but we wanted something a bit more modern so we settled for The Lounge. It’s a web IRC client that can display and host videos and images. It can also keep some of the channels history. It brings some modernity to IRC, as we can paste images directly onto a channel.

There’s another similar client called Convos. Apparently it can also do video/voice chat but I never tried.

So I’m not sure we’d switch to an XMPP based protocol, as IRC web clients pretty much just already works for us instead of Discord.

Why are you trying to convince me that cars are awesome and for adults that needs to get stuff done?

You think I go shopping using a kayak? There are literally the biggest retail stores of my country a few street corners away from where I live. There is a grocery store on the other side of the street.

And you know, people without cars have nothing to do all day. They don’t work and don’t do anything important. Only people with cars are busy people getting stuff done. It’s impossible to get stuff done otherwise.

Not to mention that peole without cars will never feel like real adults.

I’m not an adult and I don’t get stuff done because I don’t have a car? I can’t go shopping? WTF?

Keep your “freedom”. I don’t want it. There’s already enough cars in the streets. You don’t want me driving. Stop trying to convince people that don’t want to drive. You have nothing to gain. Everyone already loves cars. I know that.

I’m glad that you love your car. You’re not the only one. Now can some people actually want to live without one or are you going to force yours into my living room to tell me how useful it is, and how it makes you feel mature and important?

And people actually use that as an insult. “You’re not an adult until you own a car”. Which is a sad way of seeing millions of people that have been living without a car for their whole life.

And the freedom feeling depends mostly if you live in a region that is offering you ways not to be car dependent. Where I live, we have a very decent network of bike paths in the city but also going into the countryside and traversing the province. I live on the island of an archipelago and can pull my inflatable kayak with my bike trailer, explore the islands around, access nature nearby. I can also go camping and hiking and into the wilderness 200 km away by using this cycling network. I often go visit my parents and family 140-170 km away by cycling there. I could have start to drive and bought a car 25 years ago but I moved somewhere I wouldn’t need one, and my bike represents freedom. I’m free from having to pay big oil to fill a tank to go anywhere. I’m free from monthly parking fees. I’m free from paying the plates and the insurance.

Over the years, what I learned about cars don’t make me see them as freedom. I see them as a way to keep people perpetually paying for gas, sending billions to big oil. I see them as an endless sea and stream of pollution. They pollute the air and the sound. They are bad for mental and physical health. They take an ungodly amount of space. They kill about a million people every year. On the planet, every 30 seconds someone is killed in a car related “accident”. Every year, two billion animals (yes, billions) are killed by cars.

Going to see my nephew for his birthday in the suburbs where my sister lives is comical. Twelve people invited to go park their cars around a house that only has space for the cars of the occupants. You have to find parking everywhere you go for this thing, then whine that there’s no parking anywhere. Going to a funereal is also depressing, but even more so because you can see the traffic and congestion created by someone that died.

Cars are a horrible for humanity. They’re like a drug that everyone tells you to try. You’ll see. They’re so useful. Of course you can’t go back.

Yeah. I moved into a city and region with enough transit for my needs but my family still lives in a place where there hasn’t been a coach or trains in 30 years. There were before but not anymore. And going to other regions or cities without a car is also becoming more and more difficult, if not impossible.

Unfortunately my province and country only care about cars. I really don’t want to drive but I fear that I won’t have any other choice at some point in the future because my other options are actively deteriorating.

A car. Gas/petrol for a car. A parking spot for a car. Car insurance. A driver’s license. Winter tires for cars. Anything car related.

It’s so ridiculous to pay for a mobile living room that needs to be parked everywhere people go with it.

You don’t say. It’s almost as if I was deliberately obtuse.

Cynical take from today’s fucked up point of view: The teacher was woke and entirely wrong. The proof is that climate change is still not happening today. Caring for the environment is economic terrorism. There never was anything to worry about in the first place. Drill baby drill.

Unless you buy a plot of land in a forested area, it’s not yours, so you can be evicted at any time.

Or you will need to see a dentist or doctor at some point.

I had that kind of thought multiple times and it’s so tempting until you think about the details.

I make a difference between the workers and the industry.

Therapists where I live can work in the public system, or in the private system.

It’s free to see a therapist in the public system and they are paid by the government, but it’s nearly impossible to have a session because they are booked months and months in advance. So they are not making more from this.

Then there’s the ones working privately, usually also booked months in advance but for a few hundred dollars an hour. They are also not making more from this because they were already working full time.

However there is a “mental health industry”, like Betterhelp, that will gladly exploit and profit from the circumstances.

“And because I consider mental health important, today I’m proud to present my sponsor, Betterhelp!”

Sweet capitalism.

My cynical ass tells me that if we can grow storage devices, the tech is gonna be bought and patented by a giant corporation so they can charge us a hefty price for it.

And face coverings are now illegal in public.

This reminds me of the song Dearly Beloved by Bad Religion.

Dearly beloved, dearly beloved, dearly beloved

(Make no mistake, despite our traits I’ve seldom seen)

I can’t relate to you (I can’t relate to you), I can’t relate to you

…

Do you know my name - sing a light refrain

For a man estranged - I won’t deny that I’m inclined to isolate

Dearly beloved…

Don’t worry, car collisions are only one of the leading causes of preventable deaths in the US.

Who cares if you’re blind, you need to go places. Here’s your license. The other shiny dots are just NPCs.

Anything but public or active transit.

Of course. My meat tenderizer connected to the internet has an accelerometer and sensors. For a small monthly subscription fee it tells me how hard I need to beat the meat, and for how long. All powered by AI for my convenience.

There is a quote attributed to Voltaire that says :

Common sense is not so common.

The rural town where I grew up had passenger trains for 120 years but they were discontinued in the 90ies. My mother likes to say “when I was a kid we took the train to visit my uncle”. But now getting in or out of there requires a car.

So I had to move in a city for the “privilege” of having barely acceptable transit by European standards. And it still feels weird to take a train multiple times a week when some of my friends and family never did in their entire life.

A bicycle. No gas to pay, no parking fees, no insurance, and I can do most of the maintenance.