The people that are open to exploration and travel are generally not the ones opposed to progressive city planning.
The fear-based mindset opposed to change at any cost is not exactly conducive to exploring other cultures.
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This is definitely true. Get an American on a packaged trip where they don’t spend any appreciable time in one place, spend it at some all-inclusive, and their transportation is provided as part of the deal and they will basically be fed a caricature of wherever they visited that required little effort on their part. Cruise Ships are definitely guilty of that; but I’ll offer that it depends on the individual and very much the destination as well.
Going to a new place and having to figure it out on your own is very valuable. Though I’m sure plenty of Americans are just like the comic despite the exposure to other ways of doing things.
My best friend and I travel really well together. We have a vague idea of the kinds of things we want to do and we figure it out while there. One time we were in a country with few English speakers, our housing cancelled on us, we were like fuck it let’s still take the train to the next city we’ll figure out housing on the way. The shit we get up to, problems we solve on our feet, these things help show how a place can actually be not how some tour agency pretends it is. I much prefer that
All true. Having unscripted time in a new city is incredibly valuable.
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Getting drunk on a party boat barely counts as travel, even if they go to a Caribbean beach resort
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I’m the other way around - I took one trip to the Netherlands and didn’t expect to come back forever changed. I know what good public transit looks like now and can’t unsee it. Since then I’ve picked apartments based on how bicycle and metro connected they are.
Same. My girlfriend used to be a car enthusiast and ever since I took here there she’s gone full !fuckcars.
Yeees… yees… all is going according to plan
Not even close to being untrue. I’ve listened to a lot of conservatives being anti-sidewalks growing up, complaining how sidewalks aided criminals.
I’ve listened to a lot of conservatives being anti-sidewalks growing up, complaining how sidewalks aided criminals.
I’m sorry, I’m not pretending to be stupid to challenge you, or challenging the notion at all, but could you please elaborate on what that “logic” is?
I just don’t see a correlation honestly. Unless it’s the same as like “universal healthcare helps criminals” in the sense that yeah, it’s universal, it’s also for criminals, but eveyone is helped by it, so… I… I fail how they could’ve even began to argue such a point.
But I know lots of conservatives are irrational dumbfucks who don’t actually even understand what “logic” means.
Dense population attracts crime, dense population allows for more walking and cycling infrastructure. The coincidence of those two facts makes people think that walking and cycling infrastructure causes an increase in crime. Those people are confusing correlation and causation
My hypothesis is people are easily frightened idiots. They don’t like change of any sort. It frightens them and then they can’t reason about if the change is good or bad long term.
If a place had bike lanes for years the same people who bike-lash would probably oppose removing them.
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Well, when you put it like that then my hypothesis doesn’t sound very plausible. But maybe racism just Trump’s everything else.
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Reminds me of one of my favorite videos.
background
MARTA - Atlanta’s transit system, created in the 1960s. It was originally supposed to go to the 5 innermost counties of metro Atlanta (Fulton, Dekalb, Cobb, Gwinnett, and Clayton), but the 1965 ‘authorization to participate in the system’ referendum failed in Cobb. Long story short, MARTA ended up only in Fulton and Dekalb until 2014, when Clayton joined. It’s still not in Cobb or Gwinnett.
Cobb County - a county in the northwestern suburbs of Atlanta, known for being relatively white, wealthy, and racist (especially on its northeastern side).
In the decades since MARTA was founded, there have been repeated attempts to get Cobb to join, but it always fails and one of the biggest arguments the opposition uses is that it would bring “crime” (which around here, is well-understood to be a dog-whistle for “black people” in that context).
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lol. Those Americans have never left the country and don’t have a passport.
Sadly no, nothing more disappointing being 10,000 miles away and being told “hey we are from america too, go trump” 🤮
Lots of Americans get passports and leave the country, it’s just too expensive for most Americans to do it.
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Have you ever been outside the US? Plenty of American tourists like that here in Amsterdam, and presumably in other tourist destinations too.
Republicans are typically the people against good public transportation or bike lanes on roads. Republicans tend to be the people who don’t travel outside the United States. Democrats tend to be in favor of these things and they are also the people who would be riding a bike around on vacation.
Imagine your typical red-neck conservative going to Europe on vacation. Hard to do? Now imagine them going on a bike tour. It’s fucking ridiculous.
I see plenty of American conservative-looking tourists in Amsterdam, on bike tours too.
Not rednecks, but the kind of suburban chuds you see on TV holding up anti-abortion signs and driving squeaky-clean SUVs.
Exactly
I’m an anarchist American and I’d die on a bike tour
I literally have a father in law that bitches about a new public transit bus line being put into his suburb to get to the metro. Americans will bitch about anything. I have to hear about it all the time.
I’ve been to cities with nice public transit and clean streets.
I still don’t like cities.
But I appreciate that if we make cities nicer and more convenient more people would choose them and they’d stop tearing up wild places.
I will not live in your cities. But I know why they must exist.
Unless you’re making your own soap etc, you’re still living in a society which wouldn’t function without said cities. So live in them or no, you’re still dependant on them.
Don’t remind me.
I mean, you could just learn to make your own soap?
It’s not that hard, just a bit labour intensive at times. But if you actually hunted game you might actually have the ingredients as extra. And you could easily still have it be nice soap, by also having a garden and making simple extracts from plants like jasmine and whatnot for scents.
I’m kinda jealous about some American “homesteaders” at times, because America is just way better for that, geographically and bureaucratically than Finland. Not that I could afford it anyway but… A man can dream.
We also have some pretty nice homesteaders in Danmark if you want to find som nearby to see.
Not a bad recommendation, I’ll be sure to check it out.
Any links or search terms would be appreciated.
I fully intend to learn to make soap and do the other things. I just hate that I’m stuck in this society for the time being.
You and me both brother. Albeit I still have this silly notion of educating others and perhaps not everything sucking as bad in the future. But that’s the naive kid in me.
I’m pretty sure I could make soap. Catch a deer, process it properly, render a good measure of fat somewhere, the good white fat you scratch from the top.
Make potash; Drip water through hardwood ashes in a bucket with a filtered hole. Boil the collected brown liquid until a fresh egg floats in.
Then
Make Soap: Heat the fat until melted. Slowly stir in the potash liquid. Boil and stir until it thickens into a heavy paste (it will likely be a soft/liquid soap).
But that’s just one utility item, and a daily one. All the toothpaste and other cleaning supplies as well and whatnot. Ofc you could get basics from companies which abide by your morals, if such exist.
Here’s a not wholly unrelevant thing from J Draper on utube
https://youtu.be/2RxwwC3c89k?t=2m55s
It’s about a large victorian households needs for servants and the timestamped bit talks of outdoor servants so like who would’ve hunted the game and maybe made potash idk
You had me at J. Draper.
First learn to make your own sodium hydroxide. You can’t get away from dependence on others, everything is more complex than it looks
Making potash didn’t seem that complex tbh.
Indeed, but it’s another necessary step. Nothing is as simple as it seems. You probably need the wood plantation anyway for fuel
Oh ofc not. Check the video in my comment from the timestamp.
Making soap would be just one item. It’d be somewhat challenging to make literally everything you need from scratch. Not impossible but, challenging.
“wood plantation for fuel” uh I’m Finnish and I’ve lived in houses with wood stoves half my life I’m afraid I don’t quite get your meaning
It’s telling that Americans think walkable neighborhoods are vacation destinations and not real places. They literally go to a place called “the magic kingdom” to walk around and enjoy but think it’s at best a quaint ancient /medieval throwback or a fantasy land
Don’t forget the not actually public transit! Back when I worked at Disney and went to the parks with friends on my day off, we’d decide which park we’d end at, park there at the start of the day, and just take buses or the monorail to go between parks.
How can you feel guilty for pollution if you don’t believe in pollution? Checkmate libtards. Now excuse me, I have a plane to catch, going to the grocery store, both trucks are at the garage.

Dw, the boys at the yard were just on a test drive, and are already on the way back with your truck.
Fake. Those kinda people would never ride a bike. Instead, they would be stuck somewhere with their oversized car and would complain why they can’t drive theough the inner city and do sightseeing from the inside of their car lol.
It doesn’t really help that Americans can’t ride a bicycle for shit. Tourists on bikes are a major hazard, but so are tourists on foot in any city with dedicated space for bicycles. They just cross it and walk on it without watching or even a single thought. They just assume it’s part of the pavement.
I doubt many Americans vacationing in Europe are opposed to walkable cities.
Then you’ve never met an American.
America is not the only car centric culture. What is up with all the ‘America bad’ bullshit on Lemmy lately?
Also, I literally live next to a fully separated bike lane in an oil state…
Bullshit? It’s like comic book super villan axis of evil bad. Hard to even make hyperbole about how bad the US is. Are you living in Israel perhaps? That’s the only way I could see maybe by comparison not thinking everything the US is doing is just horrendous.
The government is. What did I do as a Native American just trying to live my life and not voting for the current administration? And what does that have to do with cars?
Not attacking you, no one was. The cartoon is a charicature that is representative of common American views. You are in a shit hole country and the heartland of America is full of uneducated hate filled bigots that represent a strong enough voice to shape the government into what it is.
Don’t take it personally. It’s not like everyone in Israel is an asshole either, but as a country, total shit hole.
Lemmy is big on tankies, and they often make assumptions about how the US and people there are.
Assumptions not only consistently backed up with locally sourced data but also very much agreed upon by almost every thinking person both in and outside of your asshole of a country
The only Americans I want to meet are natives. The rest of you are either descendants of religious fruitcakes or their sycophants, even if not by choice
Oh and Afroman I would like to meet him, his new music is a breath of fresh air
Your post is inconsistent with data
I’m being confrontational here. Rise up you tired masses, and win back our hearts.
Sycophants are sycophants, the data just shows statistics. But never would I pay a dollar of tax to what is arguably the most aggressive and terrible country to exist. A failed experiment that spits on the great minds that conceptualized the free State. Corruption for so long, that claiming democratic decisions to be the culprit is a farce.
America wants slavery back, never let it leave even.
Cue SOAD prison song
But America bad tho
America is not the only car centric culture. What is up with all the ‘America bad’ bullshit on Lemmy lately?
Also, I literally live next to a fully separated bike lane in an oil state…
Because unlike other car centric places, the US federal government is actively opposed to any improvement in bicycle or walking infrastructure, though some states are willing to defy the federal government
Add to that how the US federal government is opposed to renewable energy, opposed to protection of the environment, opposed to protection of threatened species, opposed to immigration, opposed to past immigration, opposed to assigned at birth gender nonconformity, opposed to non reproductive sexual preferences, opposed to education — especially of women
Your oil state is probably more responsive to people’s desire to ride a bike without being killed than the US, and yours is an oil state.
God how i wish we could have that.










