Don’t care. Also, please don’t use “low class” as a slur.

I don’t know. Vandalizing luxury cars finds me morally indifferent. I’m not going to argue for vandalizing them but I simply can’t get myself to care enough for the poor souls whose “cybetrucks” need a new paint job.

The potholes are our patented traffic calming technology.

Sure. Also, be a critical reader.

Sure, if you focus on the “zero” part of the phrase you can score a cheap point. Now focus on the “trucks” and the “clogging” part. A van can stock up a small to medium store just fine, and a walkable neighborhood doesn’t need big box stores to begin with (and small business ownership is a plus for economic conservatives too). And with fewer cars carting individuals around, delivery vans can move in and out much more efficiently without clogging up anything.

Bicycles on their own don’t turn people into assholes, the same way toaster ovens or flip-flops don’t do it, so we have to assume there is some percentage of the population that are assholes no matter what they drive. So before letting them loose in the city, would you rather equip an asshole with a multi-tonne metal murderbox or with a bicycle? The more assholes on bikes the fewer assholes with the means to murder people.

That’s why cities in such climates also need really good public transit systems.

What I don’t like about the Oh the Urbanity! videos is their complete lack of …class perspective. For them it’s about supply and people’s choices. There is no space for like, power relations in the urban space, and there is no understanding that density can also be a repressive power. There are places in the world (where many immigrants to Canada come from) and places in Canada where density is a signifier of poverty, bad services, lack of green space and overall bad quality of life. Without addressing this simple fact, they end up sabotaging their very valid arguments and come off as annoying smarmy neoliberals.

I’m not of course saying that poverty and density are necessarily coupled. In Canada some of the worst poverty is at some of the least dense areas (indigenous reservations ).

What I’m saying is that there is a good density and there is bad density. But good density requires a strong welfare state to put in place shared public amenities. And that’s completely missing from these videos. Instead somehow “satisfying demand” will fix things alone.

Again, it’s not as if suburban planning addresses any of the social problems. But it being the default in North America means that it already occupies a strong ideological position in the public imagination. The imaginary “benefits” of suburbanity are part of the default thinking, of the existing ideological hegemonic paradigm.

“Make” English nonsensical? Lol, English is already one of the most nonsensical European languages!

WTF man, Stardew Valley of all things?

To start, those whose statements are cited in South Africa’s ICJ submission.

But of course Israelis are not held up to the same standard when it comes to glorifying violence. As far as I know, Germany has not banned any of the extremists of the Israeli governing clique currently commiting atrocities in Gaza while loudly broadcasting genocidal language.

Not to mention that not all violence is the same. Even on Oct 7th, while the attacks on civilians are unquestionably absolutely reprehensible and deserving absolute condemnation (same as the attacks on civilians by the IDF and the settler militias), there was also legitimate resistance violence. IDF is an occupying force, its soldiers and its bases and installations are 100% legitimate targets for armed resistance (same as actual Hamas fighters are legitimate targets for the IDF).

Having seen what the IDF is doing, at this point I have stopped considering Palestinian armed violence that targets Israeli military targets to be terrorism. No, fuck off, it’s legitimate armed resistance, Palestinians have the right to defend themselves ans their nations right to exist. IDF targets are legitimate targets.

And I will start caring about the occasional stink of politically insensitive imagery when a similar standard is applied to Israelis. The entire Israeli leadership has adopted openly genocidal language, while openly genocidal and dehumanizing cultural elements are shamelessly being promoted in Israeli society.

I will not hold Palestinians to an impossible moral standard while Israelis are massacring them. This man has seen first hand the results of Israeli war crimes, he has treated without anesthesia the children on whose bodies their shrapnels were embedded. So he made an unfortunate antisemitic reference. After Palestine is free I’m sure his grandchildren will be a bit embarrassed by their hero doctor grandad’s more extreme opinions.

hUmAn ShiELdS

Guess what fucko, western civilization survived the end of apartheid in South Africa, and will survive the end of apartheid in Israel/Palestine.

Making South Africa’s case even stronger. The world is watching, fuckers.

Since when is the US government the IC-fucking-J?

OK, wait a minute. The modern Olympics are a super problematic thing in themselves, but the idealistic naïveté that underpins them has a certain internal logic. And this statement breaks that internal logic. If Russia breaks the Olympic Truce, then sanction them however appropriate (e.g., by excluding them from the next games, like it has been done before), but this kind of pre-emptive exclusion is inconsistent with what the Olympics are about and reeks of hypocrisy and double standards, when it is only directed at Russians and Belarussians and not any of the “what about X” countries that anyone can think of.

That said, fuck the IOC and the corporate monster that the Olympics have become.

The Israeli president and prime minister have apologized. Not saying that’s anywhere near enough, but it is an official apologetic stance.

Anyone notice how Israel is apologetic for killing foreign aid workers but treats the deaths of non-combatant Palestinians with complete and utter indifference?