Categories
Misc

SUVs

“We’re constantly being told that doing anything about the astronomical growth and the average size of motor vehicles would infringe on the freedoms of people to do whatever they want. But your freedom to swing your arm ends where my face begins, and SUVs are a giant punch in the face to everyone who doesn’t drive one. …

Over a ten-year period, over 500 American children were killed by being run over by SUVs – usually by their own parents, in their own driveways. This is insane! This is legitimately insane in any civilized society. This information alone would be enough to regulate the hood design of SUVs and light trucks, but instead the industry solution for this is proximity sensors and front-facing cameras, because car companies are happy for any regulations that means they can sell you more stuff. …

In the early days, most SUV buyers were arseholes. I’m not being flippant in suggesting that all SUV drivers were arsehole, but arseholes were literally the primary target market. When automakers wanted to make SUVs mainstream, auto industry research determined that the average light truck purchaser was obsessed with status, less likely to volunteer or feel a strong connection to their communities, less giving, less oriented toward others, more afraid of crime, more likely to text and drive, [and] more likely to take risks while driving. …

I really struggle to understand how a [European] DHL delivery driver can do his job with a [Renault] Kangoo van, but a middle-aged suburbanite thinks they need a Chevy Silverado [truck] to buy groceries. … One of these vehicles is designed to efficiently carry lots of useful stuff, while the other is designed to carry fragile egos.”

Source: Dense Discovery and Not Just Bikes.
Categories
Misc

Jon Stewart calmly dismantles gun zealot

Source: Kottke

Categories
Misc

Inflation

Three reasons prices are going up. But also most notably massive markups and lack of healthy competition.

Source: Kottke

Categories
Apple Misc

Tracking “recycled” shoes with Airtags

U.S. petrochemicals giant Dow Inc and the Singapore government said they were transforming old sneakers into playgrounds and running tracks. Reuters put that promise to the test by planting hidden trackers inside 11 pairs of donated shoes.

Most got exported instead.

[…]

t a rundown market on the Indonesian island of Batam, a small location tracker was beeping from the back of a crumbling second-hand shoe store. A Reuters reporter followed the high-pitched ping to a mound of old sneakers and began digging through the pile.

There they were: a pair of blue Nike running shoes with a tracking device hidden in one of the soles.

These familiar shoes had traveled by land, then sea and crossed an international border to end up in this heap. They weren’t supposed to be here.

Five months earlier, in July 2022, Reuters had given the shoes to a recycling program spearheaded by the Singapore government and U.S. petrochemicals giant Dow Inc. In media releases and a promotional video posted online, that effort promised to harvest the rubberized soles and midsoles of donated shoes, then grind down the material for use in building new playgrounds and running tracks in Singapore.

Dow, a major producer of chemicals used to make plastics and other synthetic materials, in the past has launched recycling efforts that have fallen short of their stated aims. Reuters wanted to follow a donated shoe from start to finish to see if it did, in fact, end up in new athletic surfaces in Singapore, or at least made it as far as a local recycling facility for shredding.

[…]

Source: Reuters
Categories
Misc

Why everything you buy is worse now