azertyfun

This is terrifying. Americans are running headfirst into the Greatest Depression, except this time they are the Nazis and they have enough nukes to eradicate life on Earth.

And their political discourse oscillates between "serves us right" and "yes daddy". Republicans are complicit and literally everyone else will refuse to resort to political violence or disobedience even as Trump orders nukes to be fired at whoever he's mad at that week.

Bad news, the people driving cars in that traffic are breathing in the exact same fumes. The cabin air doesn't magically get rid of pollutants because it went through a paper filter meant to keep out large particulates. The asthma/cancer causing pollutants go through just fine.

In fact in slow moving traffic where two wheelers are allowed to filter, I'd expect they are getting exposed to fewer pollutants because they are spending less time in traffic. Plus cyclists get improved cardio which helps negate breathing problems.

Anecdotally the physical health difference between no exercising and mildly exercising while commuting is mind-blowing. And the fact that so many able-bodied office workers couldn't run a mile uninterrupted due to a car-dependent lifestyle should be terrifying.

Covoit, mobilité douce, transports en commun, lutte des classes, super.

Plus de voitures, non. C'est du greenwashing. Le supposé besoin de "renouveler le parc" c'est de la politique écologique telle que vue par le lobby automobile. Les voitures électriques ne servent pas à sauver la planète, mais à sauver VAG.

La "petite voiture électrique" c'est vraiment le pompon, c'est vraiment le pire de tous les mondes puisque elle a un range de nain de jardin et vise donc un public de milieu (péri)urbain délaissé par la politique de transit. Au prix de remplacer toutes les voitures d'un village-dortoir on pourrait plutôt construire du rail et inciter à de l'utilisation mixte des terrains (i.e. reconstruire des commerces de proximité et proscrire le concept américain de faire ses courses à 30 minutes en voiture 1 fois par semaine). Mais justement les habitants de ces villages dortoirs ne veulent pas de ces solutions car dans la lutte des classes, ils se battent côté bourgeois.

Oui, une Renault 5 électrique c'est mieux qu'une passat diesel. Mais c'est pas avec des ambitions aussi minables qu'on va arriver au net zéro, puis de toute façon comme acheter des bagnoles électriques c'est un projet bourgeois les gros SUV qui ont la même emprunte carbone qu'une thermique ne seront jamais inquiétés.

Pour Paris (et je soupçonne les autres grandes villes) le problème est aussi celui de la région qui fait pas son taf.

La ZFE est bien desservie par les TEC, et c'est pas la faute d'Hidalgo si le reste de l'IDF est majoritairement complètement réfractaire à l'idée de ne pas prendre la bagnole dans Paris (et vote d'ailleurs très à droite).

On peut râler à juste titre sur le côté injuste des ZFE, mais dans tous les cas le but final c'est aucune autre voiture dans Paris que le strict minimum nécessaire (livreurs, ouvriers, urgences, etc.). Que ça passe par une ZFE ou autre chose ça fera chier. Et je peux comprendre le point de vue des parisiens intra-muros que c'est pas à eux de choper un cancer du poumon pour les franciliens dont le gouvernement préfère investir dans des bretelles d'autoroute et une planification urbaine à l'américaine que des stations de RER et une planification urbaine centrée sur le rail comme par exemple à Tokyo.

Va falloir sourcer le fait que renouveller le parc automobile est désirable d'un pdv écologique.

1. Les voitures euro 2/3 ne consomment pas nécessairement plus qu'une thermique euro 6, elles émettent justent plus de composés toxiques (particules fines, NOx). Une clio diesel de 2003 qui consomme 4,5L contribuera toujours moins au réchauffement climatique qu'une clio essence de 2025 qui consomme 5L, c'est mathématique.
2. Faut prendre le cycle de vie en compte. Construire une voiture émet énormément de CO2, leur remplacement prématuré est donc délétère sauf si ça évite beaucoup de CO2 avec la nouvelle bagnole.

Là où les ZFE ont de l'intérêt écologique c'est qu'elles rendent la voiture moins attractive dans l'absolu. Et c'est là que le bas blesse, cette logique n'est appliquée qu'aux pauvres. Puis y'a l'argument de santé publique qui lui se tient très bien.

Belgium has some of (if not the) lowest income inequality in the OECD due to our very harsh income tax (highest median tax wedge of the OECD, yes even including the nordics). With quite a few asterisks attached to that statement of course because our fiscal system is a complete mess so if you're special kinds of well off (e.g. you make your income on capital gains) you'll be taxed very little.
How low income inequality doesn't correlate to very high standards of living like it does in the Nordics... Well I'll leave it to historians and economists to hash it out. The answer you get will almost certainly reflect that person's personal politics. Harsh industrial decline is worth mentioning though.

Wallonia is measurably poorer than Flanders, but both regions are developed western economies. The US has a murder rate 535 % of Belgium's, and I don't see anyone warning students away from studying there (or well, not until the past few months).
That judge should be investigated and the prosecutor should definitely appeal, and besides there is a lot of work to do safety-wise, especially for women to be able to feel safe, but that's hardly a problem specific to Leuven or Belgium.

I just thought of a reason why trying to explain the downsides of solar power generation always goes so poorly for me.

Where I live, solar=good is a given. No amount of oil lobbying can overcome the simple fact that thanks to historically heavy subsidies, PV is free money and therefore anti-solar sentiment is fringe because everyone loves free money.

(Which is its own can of worms because ungoverned PV has externalities which the owners may not be bearing or only partially, while people who can't install PV are essentially using up some of their own taxes to give a tax break to the bourgeois down the street with a solar mansion, and sure that's more solar which is environmentally good but it's also another indirect tax on the poor which is socially deleterious).

Anyway my point is that in a country where nearly everyone has PV or wishes they did, I don't see any issue with plainly stating "PV is causing major headaches to grid operators". Because pragmatically we need to justify solutions like dynamic pricing, solar taxes, and the phaseout net metering which are predictably unpopular policies with PV owners who were promised endless riches.
But I suppose from a North American perspective where "renewable energy is good" is somehow the fringe opinion and PV deployment is pathetic, then it makes sense to push back against such messaging.

You're more likely to win the euromillion than to successfully shift norms away from the 8:30-18:00 working hours. This shit is baked into every employment contract out there. I work an office job where it doesn't matter so much, but anyone who works shifts or a time-sensitive job is stuck there basically forever regardless of the time zone.

Where did you get the impression that the Marxist definition of socialism was even relevant here? Bringing philosophical jargon into colloquial conversations is basically trolling at this point since philosophical/social studies jargon often use words that have zero semantic overlap with their colloquial counterpart.

Proselytize all you want but if you "um akshully" socialism in a colloquial conversation you will look like an unwashed cave troll at best.

Kind of the whole point of nuclear dissuasion is that we are not, in fact, going to ever do that. And ignoring the existence of nukes (lol), attacking the US on their hometurf is such a monumentally stupid idea people still wonder what went through the Japanese High Command's mind 80 years ago.

Stop asking Europe for help, because you're not getting it. You've alienated your allies and broken your democracy beyond repair. Either use that 2nd amendment of yours to the fullest extent of its spirit or STFU with the "pwease stop him we're scawed :(((" rhetoric. We have way more reasons to be scared because we don't live next door to white cishet male Americans to shield us from his madness. Stop with the victim blaming. Either you stop this child or he starts a war with your assent.

1. He's dumber than you give him credit for
2. What is the point of the supposed cover story? To cover from who, about what? He's literally paying people to vote, again. Next to that, buying a social media to influence it almost sounds democratic.

The reason that conspiracy theory is appealing is the same for all conspiracy theories; it's more comforting to think the powerful have a clever masterful evil plan than the sad reality that we're all making it up as we go, even the literal Nazis.

Relevant ContraPoints from 4 days ago

The Latin thing is only a partial explanation. Some of it is changes in pronunciation coupled with a very authoritarian attitude to orthography. Few languages out there that changed so little in 400 years.

So for instance the -ent ending for plural verbs ("ils mangent") is silent because the "ent" sounds were progressively dropped. Then the written suffix logically started disappearing, and only then did the Académie bring it back because it was more Latin. If it wasn't for these reactionary fucks that rule would have been reformed centuries ago.

Unfortunately in the intervening time, knowledge of orthography became a very strong social marker. Because spelling French is so hard, the dictée came to disproportionately affect grades (seriously, old-fashioned schools still do it daily and it's all graded and very severely), which coupled with the industrial revolution and alphabetization of the lower classes meant that shit spelling = prole = bad. So now orthography is at the center of the traditional value system which has all the conservatives pearl-clutching at the idea that children can't spell "nénuphar" properly. Children's purported inability to spell properly is like the number one moral panic that has sprung up every few years for the last century or two, but also orthographic reforms are woke (derogatory). The point of orthography, to conservative types, is for it to be hard so you can show off your perfect spelling to justify your social standing.