Aww, 1990’s memes give me the warm-fuzzies. We can’t have the economic prosperity anymore, but we can still pretend that men are all simple-minded goons and women don’t like sex.

Here’s the thing, though, this guy isn’t one of “us.” I didn’t egg him on, or help plan. I only knew Kirk from the tiny-face memes. The nebulous “we” isn’t responsible; the shooter doesn’t seem to have had a network radicalizing him. He’s the proverbial lone wolf. That means he’s exactly the kind of unpredictable, stochastic agent that I’m saying is out there in the world to provide the fascists their justification.

They were gonna do it, anyway. They were just waiting for an excuse. Any excuse. In a world as big and complex as ours, probability would have provided them with some pretext sooner or later. As we can see, they don’t know anything about the shooter, or his ideology. It’s just an excuse. If the world didn’t provide them one, they’d manufacture it. Walking around on eggshells and trying to avoid giving them one was never tenable.

Yes, the same way that kiloinches is technically allowed.

Way off! There are 25.4 millimeters per inch, not 64, and most measuring tapes have 1/32" markings.

Same. The more-standardized sizes in men’s clothing means I just have to resign myself to the fact that I need to buy size M, size L, or size XL depending on the brand, and that it still will never fit right. This is why the majority of my shirts are short-sleeved, even in winter.

I’ve recently met several men who got into sewing as a result.

Random memory unlocked: Back in high school, I had to borrow my girlfriend’s jeans for some reason I don’t remember. (We happened to wear the same size.) I do remember having SO MUCH room in the pockets, because I had narrower hips.

Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure that this is one instance that validates the textbook approach. In addition to the comment here, I had read several on the red site several years ago, one I remember from a buyer for a chain of outdoor gear stores, and another from the owner of a boutique clothing store. Both said that they tried to get women’s clothing with real pockets, but eventually gave up because it just doesn’t sell.

This topic came up in a group of my sailor friends on a boat last week, and ironically, all of the women’s garments had good pockets, so they couldn’t provide an example. But then, they were all wearing utilitarian clothing, rather than stylish. One friend had just bought new pants from REI; I’ve noticed for decades that if you want real pockets, shop at REI.

For what it’s worth, stylish, form-fitting men’s clothing also has tiny, or no pockets.

self driving cars which negotiate a uniform speed.

Until then, human drivers could approximate this system by all agreeing on a uniform speed. Maybe through some sort of app?

Or, this sounds crazy, perhaps the authorities could post signs by the side of the highway with the uniform speed printed on it?

It’s the other way around. Residential properties are used as investment vehicles, because it’s profitable. It’s profitable because the prices are high and rising. The prices are rising because of the housing crisis, which is caused by lack of supply. Lack of supply is caused, in large measure, because of restrictive zoning.

If there were a glut of housing on the market, prices would crater, and it wouldn’t be profitable, investors wouldn’t buy residential properties. They could still try to buy up all of the properties, and create artificial scarcity that way, but the idea is to make a profit, not just collect residential property for the sake of having it. As soon as they started selling or letting properties in large numbers, supply would rise and prices drop again.

It’s the artificial scarcity mandated by law that’s driving the high prices. This explanation is confirmed by many cities, like mine, that have a very low rate of private equity ownership, and still have a housing crisis.

Here ya go, a whites-only community in Arkansas.

Consider that the Father of All Selection Biases is at work here: Of course we’ll hear comments, from all the men who can’t handle the concept of not sharing their opinion, sharing their opinion of not being able to share their opinion.

Lemmy is like a house party, where everybody has the freedom to talk to whomever they so choose, thus creating segregated groups. If one butts in to a conversation, the participants are free to ask one not to participate, and are free to walk away if one insists. (In this metaphor, the WomensStuff community doesn’t even mind if you listen in.) For a house party, though, the host is well within their rights to not invite anybody, or even ask guests to leave. That’s a very strictly segregated group.

What’s been the ripple of evil from allowing house parties, or companies to pay only a select group of employees, private clubs, family dinners et cetera? Has the existence of the chain of women’s-only gyms destroyed men’s lives?

“Carbrain” is a real mental disorder, though. How else do you describe somebody who looks through a windshield and sees a long line of idling cars into the distance, and thinks, “clearly the problem here is bicycles.”

(e: improved punchline)

Of course, I drive (I kind of have to because of the way our landscape is designed to mandate it), so I have to include myself in this. It’s well-established by psychological research that drivers have very little empathy for other drivers, but especially little empathy for bicyclists and pedestrians, viewing them as less-than-human annoyances. Add in that driving in a city requires that one subject other people to the noise, the pollution, the danger, and the arrogation of space by one’s vehicle, and you pretty much have to suppress any empathy for the people who live there, otherwise it’d be unbearable to do. That lack of empathy is textbook sociopathy, induced by the activity of driving. It just happens to be widely normalized, but we still see posts even here on Lemmy from new drivers who are struggling to suppress those thoughts.

Putting the shoe on and loudly announcing that it fits?

Getting trapped in a building with a mass shooter is something very, very unlikely. On the other hand, I face the danger of death by automobile at least twice a day, on my ride to work, and my ride home. More, if I go other places. It may seem not that bad because it’s so normalized. Dying in or under the wheels of a car is something that happens to people every single day, and it barely rates a mention in the local news. Sometimes the victim doesn’t get even get a name. By contrast, the stochastic nature of mass shootings makes them scary, like plane crashes or terrorist attacks, the natural order of things is upended. Death is death, though, and I wouldn’t be less dead if it were a texting driver rather than a gunman.

And the texting driver is a whole hell a of a lot more likely. So, yes, it’s entirely logical that I’m afraid of that. Not being able to understand and denying that fear is exactly the kind of car-induced sociopathy that I’m talking about.

Throwing insults is not a discussion, by the way.

You don’t understand what fear is like?

They’re not the same. This is privilege speaking, I know, but gun violence mostly occurs between people who know each other. I’m not in those circles or neighborhoods, so only the occasional mass shooting might affect me.

But cars? They’re omnipresent. There’s a steady stream of them in front of my home, so I can’t avoid the danger. My life is threatened by cars every damn day, and my quality of life degraded by them. And you can’t tell me that driving a car around a city is anything but sociopathic disregard for the well-being of others, because that’s what it amounts to.

Cars as bad as guns? No, they’re worse.

An automobile, at the end of the day, is a luxury item. A toy. Humanity existed for most of its history without cars, and even today, you can get to work or the grocery store without one. (Granted, often not easily, but that’s only because we’ve made it difficult to get there any other way. But making it difficult was a deliberate policy choice designed to exclude poor people.) One could argue that the automobile is an anti-tool, as its use is making our lives materially worse (traffic violence, health impacts, pollution, ecosystem destruction, climate change, the burden on government and personal budgets), but that ignores a car’s major function as a cultural identity marker, and for wealth signaling. We humans value that a lot. Consider, as but one common example, the enormous pickup truck used as a commuter vehicle, known as a pavement princess, bro-dozer, or gender-affirming vehicle.

In that way, they’re exactly the same as firearms, which are most often today used as a cultural identity marker. (Often by the same people who drive a pavement princess, and in support of the same cultural identity.) Firearms are also also luxury toys in that people enjoy going to the firing range and blasting away hundreds of dollars for the enjoyment of it. But beyond that, the gun people have a pretty legit argument, too, that their firearms are tools used for hunting and self-defense. They are undeniably useful in certain contexts, and no substitute will do. One certainly wouldn’t send mounted cavalry with sabers into war today.