That we can have bullet trains, but not here apparently for no reason other than greed.
this post was submitted on 20 Dec 2025
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"Can we have comfortable flights on airplanes?"
"No."
"Can they at least be affordable then?"
"Yeeaaahhhh... No."
"OK. How about the existing passenger trains? Can they be..."
"Nope!"
Do ya feel like doing pull ups before ya fly? The big guy sitting next to ya does.
We aren't taxing the rich
Stock buy backs should be illegal. Let them sell to others as the free market gods intended.
We did until they realized it is cheaper to shape public opinion than it is to pay their fair share.
That loud cars not only exist, but there are actually more of them than in 3rd world countries. That it's a "culture" here, and people actually use their excess money to make cars louder, bigger and more dangerous to everyone else (not the driver, he pays extra for his safety).
Coming from a 3rd world country to Australia it was one of my biggest disappointments. I thought we had loud cars because we we're "uncivilised" or didn't have the money to fix them. I was so wrong...
There are many others, but I guess this was the biggest illusion I had about first world countries.
What were some of the others? Did the cost of living surprise you?
A lot of people who dream of moving to the first world seem to forget about that part.
It's all about attention. People need attention. They're willing to do anything to get it. The question becomes whether they have positive and orderly means of getting attention or negative and chaotic means.
When were young we get shown what it takes. Our strategies are formed by our experiences. Unfortunately, there's some very large cultural groups that only teach their children how to get attention via negative means. They'll get angrier and order until you notice them. You don't have to like them, only see them.
One route to getting attention is to just be a loud, angry, asshole in public. Generally do things to make people deal with you because you've got no other routes to validation or attention. The US loud car cultures are one of those strategies. Cara are anonymous, we live in isolating communities, and if you can make your presence loud enough people will be forced to give you the attentive n you crave. It's pretty, childish, and spiteful, but at least you're not nobody anymore.
Choosing loud cars is literally killing people. The research is finding that living in places with elevated noise levels is shortening lifespans through stresses from fight or flight reactions over time.
All of this are showing symptoms of much deeper societal trauma that will plague us for generations.
In the mean time, I vote we find cars that exceed a sound db rating and crush them immediately. No questions. Drag them to the machine and cube them.
That's what I thought, but when I talk to these sick people they say they "like" the loud, horrible, scary, obnoxious sound. They do it because they feel pleasure with the sound itself.
If it was true, they would do it even if they were alone. They would drive to the middle of nowhere to enjoy their horrible sound without other noise. But they only do it in heavily populated areas. Almost if they are really just fucking assholes wanting attention.
What is the truth? I guess we'll never know. I can only hope for the law to be changed.
But unlike you, I wish no harm to the machines. Only to the drivers. Machines are useful tools, even if loud. The drivers should lose the right to drive. If you remove their tool they will find another one to misuse.
The drivers are the problems, the criminals. Not the tool they use to commit crime.
All the steps towards dystopia and nobody is able to stop it. Doesnt matter what you vote for or what you buy. So you are just seeing it become more and more dystopian every year and you cant do anything.
That I have to go to work. Love my job hate the idea of doing it for so long.
Feeling that right now.
I couldn't work Friday because I was sick, but I'm totally out of PTO for the year and like almost every company, sick-leave and PTO are wrapped together in one package. So I have to go to work right now on a Sunday night and catch up with work I couldn't complete on Friday. Still sick, but if I don't maintain this job, I won't have health insurance among many other things.
It feels like having a literal lifeline attached to my job, I can't have a bad week, I can't have a break, I can't escape. I have to do this dance for decades to go, and according to every calculation I've done, unless I win the lottery I am not going to retire. Lost too much earlier in life.
I'm going to be slogging through moving around little numbers on a screen until I die, feeling my years just tick by.
I’m sorry you have to go through that dude and honestly after reading this it makes me think I have no right to complain, it’s all relative though so I’ll still complain.
I can’t believe how bad y’all have it over there. I’m hesitant to point out how much better my situation is in the UK as that would be cruel af. But if you’re curious I can highlight the differences between the USA and UK as we have it so much better than this.
Not the person you replied to, but I'd be curious to know. Especially about time off work, healthcare, and cost of living.
I could write a book about those things, but I'll just say this. I get 5 sick days a year (used to be 3) and it's hard to take them when there's a lot of work, which is almost always. The rent on my last apartment almost doubled in 10 years, and the current one is on track to do the same.
Sure.
Total hours of work per week 33, standard in the UK is 37.5 but I have a good boss. I work Monday - Thursday 08:00-16:30 with an unpaid hours break. Friday 09:00-12:00. Tuesday and Thursday are office days, the rest are from home.
Holidays (vacation) we start with 20 days per year increasing 1 day per year for a maximum of 25 days total.
Sickness, unlimited within reason but even then it’s unlimited. I’m not happy a lot of the time and so I much have been off sick for 4-5 weeks this year in total and never once been pulled up about it, again my boss is good. Other jobs would typically put you on a development plan if had more than 3 instances of sickness, but even then they would work with you until you got better.
Healthcare, we live in the Uk. It’s free at point of service as it’s factored into what we pay out of wages.
Cost of living is quite high but I wouldn’t say worse than the USA. But everything is pretty much 33-50% more expensive than pre covid. Rent is insane.
I should say that as a software engineer, two years in, that my salary is probably lower than many many companies but for me I like time more than I like money and their is literally never stress at work, it either gets done on time or it doesn’t. We all come first.
Okay let's see.
Most of all I think, I hate that i don't have easy access to nature. I live in the European lowlands, and the best we can do here is overcultivated/overhiked forests that are basically parks.
Then I hate that there are not enough trains (even in Europe). We subsidize the shit out of airlies and yet if I just want to hop on a train to go to London or Copenhagen, I basically can't, without sigificant planning.
Then I also hate that the glamour of driving is gone. The age of Peak Car is long gone, the only reasonable option to go from A to B is on a highway but even thise are mostly jammed most of the time. I know Peak Car was very polluting (heck, my definition of Peak Car is basically the 60s so they still used leaded fuel lol), which is also smth I hate... I guess I basically want to live in the sweet ignorance of the 60s to not even know about these.
Then I hate that skiing is basically a dying sport, with more and more people (over)using the less and less usable slopes because of course together with climate, we fucked the ski resorts too.
And lastly but not least(ly), I hate how we fucked the Web and want Peak Web (the web of the late 90s/early 2000s) back please.
Especially as a European the first two things can be changed to some degree. I live within sight(200m) of a proper nature park that basically is an extension of an national park. And I have four different options for fast train travel within an hour and a (most of the time) reasonably good regional connection and a almost perfect regional connection 25min away.
Tbh, we did specifically move here for these things.
In terms of driving I must disagree - I have driven various cars from the 60ies and while they are gorgeous from the outside, the inside was always very underwhelming and also simply exhausting to drive. But maybe I am also too different - I used to have big company cars (BMW 5, Audi A4/6/7, MB C/E) and did not really like them. Nowadays I drive a EV6 and it's the most fun car I ever had,by a higr margin.
I don't know man, i rented various types of new cars and absolutely didn't enjoy any of them. My own car (v60) is utterly average (although very comfortable and will not replace it for a good while i think), and my all time favourite was my 2002 subaru forester which i had next to a brand new 2013 forester and still preferred over the newer model. So maybe I'm a lesbian and we certainly don't share the same taste in cars :) And nature... well you are lucky to live close to it. To me to get to Norway or Sweden (where i consider nature nature) is multi days of travel (unless i fly, which i hate, see the beef about trains).
Try the Black Forest. We have Lynx and wolves and even a mysterious elk this summer.
And tbh, V60 is a high average to fall from. Had one of these and while I didn't loved it, I liked it. To quote a friend of mine who still owns one "brutally average and brutally versatile".
Try a EV6 or 3,though. Good EVs are a huge difference when it comes to "fun in everyday driving" imho, due to their different engine characteristics.
Water isn't free any more?
(I was told it was in the past. No water bill, how?)
In yester year people would build water wells on property they claimed as their own. They'd drink it straight from the ground. Then their neighbors decided to let oil companies, chemical plants, and factory farms operate on the land. The water was then no longer suitable to drink.
Bringing it closer to the conclusion, it's costly to treat the water that we want to come out of our taps, so we're paying for that cleaning/treatment of water.
Canadians dont pay for water still.
Our 'hydro' bill is electricity, due to it coming from hydro electric dams
I pay over a thousand dollars per year for water in canada.
The water in town would not be safe to consume without treatment (lots of heavy industry here) and it's nice to know that my toilet flows somewhere else
It's still free in Ireland, at least for home use.
A unified language, Esperanto.
Hell, I'm a native English language speaker that doesn't do well with other languages but I saw the pragmatic case-use of it.
There’s a video game loosely based on that language, The Expression Amrilato. It’s how I first heard of it.
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America as a whole.
People not being orderly. Im order autism! Need my order!
Would an order of cheeseburger with fries and coke do?
How big are we talking?
Democracy
Apparently the first world is free or something, yet everyone is so amazingly conformist. From the way they speak to the way they dress to the work they do and friendships and relationships, the vast majority is content to live a life of greige and shopping at Costco.
tbf costco is very convenient, and with their corporate structure/solid pay etc. they're like the least evil supermarket chain you can buy from. better than alot of mom & pop type places
sure, i'd shop at a local co-op first but if you have to shop at evil megastore you might as well do it at the somewhat less-evil megastore, right?
Sure, they're not a bad place to shop. But making it a personality trait is excessive.
Also Costco hotdog is the only true stablecoin.
Private medical clinics only the super rich can afford.
That our "antichrist" turned out to be just another clownish conman.
The EMDrive wasn't real
Flying cars still aren't a thing yet, despite having been promised since the time of the Jetsons.
I'd even settle for a flying broom at this rate 🧹
Sure they are, they're called helicopters.
The problem with flying cars isn't that it's not possible, it's that it's not possible to do safely. People can't seem to stay out of each others way in two dimensions, much less three.
the thought of an average driver being able to fly their car is absolutely terrifying. also would make heists, sabotaging and spying very easy
It's harder to crash into another flying car in 3 dimentions, no?
Every crash is drastically worse though. A fender bender on the ground? Sure annoying but whatever.
Fender bender in the sky and you have two vehicles dropping out of the sky. Even if they don't land on anything or anyone that's still a disaster.
Also you have too much faith in people being able to deal with an extra dimension, we barely deal with cars as it is.
Flying cars are too dumb to exist
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Capitalism
If it comes to flying, mine would be to never have flown on a Twin Otter, ideally with a bush pilot somewhere in remote mountainous boondocks. I'd settle for a Cessna Caravan or a Kodiak etc. instead.
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