Such differences remained steady during that time frame, so whilst they explain the actual baseline levels, they don’t explain the change in trend that happened in the US but not in Europe.

(What you suggest would only make sense if in 2009 the road infrastructure design, driving standards and average speeds became much worse in the US and kept getting worse, something not really supported by observation of those things)

The most logical conclusion is that something changed in one place that did not change in the other.

The biggest change that happened in the US but not in Europe in that time frame was the in the US the prevalence and size of light trucks increased massivelly but not at all in Europe. Further, as we see in this study such vehicles are far more dangerous to pedestrians, so this specific change that happens in one geographical zone but not the other does seem to be the most likely explanation. Certainly this is a lot more logical than an increase in mobile phone use whilst driving (as that also happened in Europe) or the better road conditions in Europe vs the US (as that didn’t change even though the rate of pedestrian deaths in the US reversed its trend and started climbing up whilst in Europe it remained on a trend of slowing falling down)

They’re a “me, me, me”, “don’t give a shit about endangering the lives of anybody else”, anti-social choice of vehicle.

Those are core character traits of people who are Fascists, though, granted not all people with those character traits are Fascists.

Personally I do believe that the spread if that mindset and the increasing immunity from consequences for being like that towards others is one of the things backing the rise of Fascism.

That said, I do agree with you that “Everything that’s bad is Fascism” just devalues the word and reduces its impact.

The danger from higher kinetic energy comes from the longer break distance and time to stop: given the same driver reaction time and distance to the pedestrian, a heavier vehicle will take longer to break to a stop and thus have a higher velocity when it collides with that pedestrian than a lighter vehicle.

This is not to deny the difference that a higher front makes, just pointing out that kinetic energy does in fact make a difference, though of course as you point out not because of any “higher energy transmission on collision” or such, but rather indirectly because the vehicle is more likely to collide at a higher speed because it takes longer to break.

I couldn’t find info on this for explicitly for light trucks, but here’s some for trucks.

A higher kinetic energy means the vehicle takes longer to stop from the same speed (that’s true even with better brakes and better tires, because if you try to reduce the energy faster than a certain rate the vehicle just starts skidding) which in turn means collisions with pedestrians happen at a higher speed, which is more deadly.

I couldn’t find a page of info for specifically light trucks, but here’s one for trucks.

This is not to deny the effect of higher fronts and hence lower driver visibility, just to point out that kinetic energy too matters.

That also happens in Europe and yet you don’t see a similar increase in pedestrian deaths.

What did not happen in Europe but did in the US during that time frame was the invasion of roads by personal tanks.

That sentence is a self-issued Certificate Of Stupidity.

I’ve been gaming for over 3 decades.

For the last couple of years (a decade at most) my experience is that most AAA titles are oddly unsatisfactory compared to many Indie titles - for example I get more fun from playing something like Valheim than I do playing God Of War.

Further, almost “infinite replayability” titles (the kind that you play until you’re fed up and then come back a year later and they’re fun again) are either Indies or old titles - things like Factorio, Rimworld, Valheim, The Sims, Oxygen Not Included, Project Zomboid and so on.

I get the impression that most modern AAA titles are made to be “experiences”, which in practice tends to make them oddly constrained and linear in terms of gameplay (something which sometimes is compensated with extra grindy gameplay), which personally I find not really all that fun.

Anyways, all this to say that at least for this old salty dog of a gamer I don’t quite see how I can be pushed to a pure game subscription model given that there are A LOT of indie titles and old games which are a lot more fun than the kind of titles that would end up as subscription exclusives.

Yeah, the weakness of the “this is all a massive conspiracy to force consumers to rent all their computing power” theory is that old computers work just fine as long as you don’t try and install a newer Windows.

We’re maybe 2 decades past the point were you had to upgrade your PC every 5 years for it to be suitable for everyday computing usage. There are only two things pushing PC hardware upgrades nowadays:

• OS support time limits and the ever expanding bloat of newer OS versions (which is nowhere as much a problem if your OS is Linux)
• Games

Now, for Games, all attempts at getting gamers to have their games hosted in servers and playing on light PCs - most notably Stadia - failed miserably.

As for OS, how successful has Microsoft been at getting people to actually upgrade to Windows 11, especially since hardware prices shot up?

I think it’s far more likely that people just keep on using their aged hardware more often than not with no longer updated OS versions, than it is for them to actually start paying subscriptions to use remote computing power to browse the web and read their e-mails, especially since that still needs some form of local hardware so doesn’t totally solve their problem with expensive hardware.

I’ve had that happen to some hiking boots once - one day their soles just turned to powder - but that was 2 decades after I got them and they had seen heavy use before that.

And before anyone jumps in here with “at least not as bad as america!!!”… thats exactly the kind of low bar thinking that landed us in this situation…

Well, look at the bright side: at least you don’t yet have to compare your country with North Korea like Americans do to make it seem less bad.

“Every crisis is an opportunity”

– Every single slimy “liberal” politician who is really just a posh autoritarian with a toolbox of Identity Politics slogans.

I’ve cycled to work regularly in a couple of countries in Europe (including The Netherlands, which are pretty much Europe’s Gold Standard on cycling infrastructure) and do and did paid attention to that kind of thing were I didn’t.

In my experience there are ALWAYS assholes who for their own convenience will block the bike lane if they can get away with it. There might be more in some places and fewer in others, but they always exist - assholes fucking things up for the rest are a fact of life.

As I see it, the only solution for it is protected bike lanes were possible so that it’s simply impossible for a car to go there and where that’s not possible, speedy and stern enforcement (the “there’s a tow truck there in 5 minutes top and the fines are painful” kind).

That’s entirelly the mindset of the average car driver everywhere.

Were I am now, Portugal, when the police starts properly enforcing some rule of the road that’s regularly not obbeyed (like, say the no parking on sidewalks one or the no running red lights in the next 30s after it has turned from yellow one) those types start bitching and moaning about how the police are “hunting for fines” - in other words, admitting that they’re breaking the rules and claiming that the real problem is actually enforcing of the rules.

(By the way, unsurprisingly, Portugal is has one of the highest rates of road deaths in the whole of Europe).

A charged, tense statement.

Read between the lines: they’re saying that they have to cheat to win.

The entire fundamentals game was broken back in around 2012 when, in the aftermath of the 2008 Crash, Central Bank meetings setting interest rates became more important in setting the direction the Stock Market took (up if they lowered interest rates, down if they did not) than fundamentals.

It just so happens that the period when Uber rose coincided with that period of high interventionism by Central Banks which lasted almost a decade since their solutions for the 2008 Crash did not address the underlying causes and the recovery following that Crash was one of the slowest post-Crash recoveries ever (in fact, Interest Rates and GDP Growth are still not back to their historical trends).

It wasn’t Uber who broke the Financial System’s reflection of real wealth creation, it was Zero Interest Rate Policy flooding the Economy with pretty much free money and Too Big To Fail meaning that certain Financial Institutions could do every Financial Crime they felt like and never really be punished for it and take any risk they felt like because Central Bank money was always there in the background to save them if they went too far.

Something only becomes an intellectual property (intangible) asset if there is a law that says that said specific kind of thing can be intellectual property - the whole domain is an entirely artificial creation and there is no such thing as natural intellectual property.

So whilst French and EU do have the concept of intangible assets, it’s irrelevant here because software patents aren’t intellectual property according that those laws and hence are not “assets” and are thus not covered by such laws.

“640kB should be enough for anybody”

– Bill Gates

These things are delaying actions by governments unwilling to do what the public opinion in their countries wants them to do towards Israel, so instead of sanctions against Israel there are mere “plans” to limit trade with just a small number of Israeli companies and individuals - in other words “mere talk of taking the smallest possible step they can take”

It both reflects - as you say - the changed views on Israel of public opinion (a change which, as far as I can tell, has happened already months ago) and a political class in power who, for some strange reason (maybe related to the Epstein pedo-ring which was partly a Mossad operation, maybe related to how the top companies in the World for things like remotely hacking smartphones and turning them into surveillance devices are Israeli) doggedly support Israel against the desires of the public which elected them.

And it’s only a “plan”.

In other words, talkie-talkie.