I’ve adopted a policy of buying the latest iPhone every 5 years, which is about how long they tend to last in my experience. So far it’s worked out well.

There are considerable safety concerns regarding private jets, mostly down to the quality of the pilots. At the bigger airlines, pilots are unionized and have consistent schedules they work and routes and aircraft they fly. It’s reliable work and where most pilots (even military) end up.

Meanwhile private aviation needs to be flexible and easy to set up. Contrary to your comment this is the sector that you can usually expect to find more unscrupulous operations and pilots who are basically just Some Guy. Most of the near miss accidents lately have involved private planes (though that can often be attributed to problems in the ATC network).

As for the doors that’s more of a Boeing specific problem, they’ve made a lot of questionable business decisions in recent years and this is the fallout of that. Airbus planes don’t seem to have this problem, and customers seem to be making it clear that they would like their planes to work thank you very much.

They pollute more than you think, and using concrete is very rare in certain parts of the world. Outside of elevated roads I’ve never seen in used in my area or any part of the northern US.

I must say, you’re the first person I’ve seen to cite ChatGPT as a source.

I literally just told you two things that make them more dangerous, what makes them safer?

I don’t fully understand why SUVs are more profitable. What makes them worth more than a minivan or wagon for instance. I know premium versions of both those vehicle types exist (actually I’m pretty sure some of the only new wagons you can buy today are from premium German brands.)

We would also have to get rid of tires to do that, tires pollute a lot. And roads too, heavier vehicles wear out roads faster, and asphalt requires petroleum products to produce.

I’d wager most people have been in one considering how common they are, doesn’t make them any less terrible. Size is definitely a problem, they are very space inefficient, and quite dangerous. The center of gravity is very high, and because the front end is high up, anyone hit by it is more likely to end up under the vehicle. The solution is to lower them down to make them safer, and replace them with safer and more efficient vehicles like station wagons and minivans.

This community is by far my favorite part of Lemmy, and you’re one of my favorite posters here.

That makes you among my favorite Lemmy posters. Do your damndest to have a good Thanksgiving.

If you live in a place where this is becoming the norm, that’s exactly what you do.

A far more above board and less vibes-based way to pay.

It’s important to require disclosure of the service fee. In my experience usually listed at the bottom of the menu. I know at least in some instances there are crowdsourced master lists of restaurants with hidden fees, and enforcement of disclosure requirements seems to have stepped up.

I actually support phasing tips out for service fees, less dodgy and less influenced by cognitive biases from customers toward certain genders or ethnicities of staff.

DO NOT HUMP

The New Pornographers - Whiteout Conditions

I remember this album from when it came out, but I first heard this song again about a month ago. It encapsulates y feelings about the Gaza war, and how the more I learn, the more I feel like there are very few moral choices one can make.

The issues with American railroading are deep rooted and go back over a century. They are not, however, an intrinsic flaw of private ownership. Rather, the way we do things here is uniquely fucked up, in fact the railroad companies themselves would likely be better off if they did things more like the rest of the world.

In Japan, their 3 largest railroads are privately owned, and provide the best service in the world. One of the reasons for this is that they actually care about their long term profitability, rather than some hyper-nerdy funny productivity numbers. But the other reason is that they diversified their business to things like real estate. These other holdings are backed up by the existence of the railroad, helping stimulate their growth along with the rest of the local economy. This essentially allows the railroad companies to tap in to that external benefit they provide, but would otherwise never see the results of. The money made there ends up invested back into the railway, keeping everything sustainable.

I’ll be clear with you and say that I support U.S. rail nationalization. But the fact that Japan has that great of a network while being privately owned deserves to be understood by every rail advocate in the west. Especially in the U.S. where it can inform us on our understanding of our own heavily flawed rail network.

Roads are stupid expensive and receive ridiculous subsidies to stay operational. This is one of the most annoying things people get wrong about transportation, apparently roads don’t have to pay for themselves (and rarely do) but rail must turn a profit (it does sometimes) despite rail being exponentially better for transportation. Nobody wants to be near a highway, but everyone wants to be near a train station (and I don’t think the racists who don’t want trains have ever ridden one).

It was never nationalized in the first place, well except for that one time during WWI.

“Privatize the profits and socialize the losses” isn’t really a bad idea when it comes to rail. The external benefit of rail infrastructure - in economic terms - far outweighs the internal benefit. Even an unprofitable railway makes a lot of money for the area it serves simply through its existence.

The problem is that if the railway is privately owned, it’s rare for it to be financially sustainable unless there is some significant traffic with relatively low overhead and little competition. Pair this with the U.S. railroad industry prioritizing operating ratios over profits and you get a situation where railroads will actively discourage potential traffic because of its complexity despite said traffic being profitable. Meaning that things that should be going by rail are instead forced to go by truck.

The ideal solution to this is to keep the infrastructure in public hands, which will remove the burden of internal benefit from the infrastructure owner. This will help allow rail transport to improve dramatically. Private companies will still be able to operate trains, however their overhead and complexity will be significantly reduced because they no longer have to be burdened with infrastructure management, and will also only have to operate certain types of trains, rather than one company running the whole railroad. This means that it will be easier to ship things by rail in a similar manner as you would ship by road today.

Highball!

One of my favorite things about Reddit was that whenever two Germans found each other in a comment section they would always start a long reply chain in German. I always thought it was cute.

Batteries might work on short, infrequent, local lines. But any long distance route should have wire put in, it saves significant costs over diesel or batter operation, and as soon as a service becomes decently frequent (every hour or whatever) electrification makes more sense form an economic and environmental perspective.