Does Canada need to maintain relevance in Europe? Asia? Africa has the fastest growing and youngest population in the world — the region will no doubt play a key role in global commerce in the next century. Why is it justified to ignore Africa but not other parts of the world?

“We need tons of parking lots until we get walkable cities” gets things totally backwards. Walkable cities are impossible because of the stupid amount of parking lots we have.

The dilemma you pose of “parking vs walkable cities” isn’t even real: we massively overbuild parking lots so we can stand to get rid of most of them. I’ve been to SK many times. Strip mall parking lots are half empty even during the busiest times of day. It’s insane. You could build housing on tons of that land without ever causing parking lots to fill up.

Here in Vancouver, there are almost no strip mall parking lots and the absolute number of cars is higher than anywhere in SK, and yet, there’s STILL too much parking. There’s almost always parking within a block or two of any store outside of the downtown core. The distance you walk probably isn’t that different from across those huge parking lots.

Honestly, we can go on a massive parking diet and, because we overbuild parking so much, there won’t even be any downside for drivers.

Why are you getting downvoted? Why is Lemmy defending rich corporations and not consumers??

You opened dry pasta in a dry room and got less than the advertised amount. If there’s residual moisture in the factory that evaporates, that is their problem, not ours. Yes it’s a small variation, but that reasoning works both ways: they should include a few extra strands to make sure the consumer gets the right amount.

Americans pay more in taxes towards healthcare than any other country, and then pay for private healthcare on top of that.

I buy iPhones because they’ve been much cheaper. The purchase price of flagship iphones are similar to Android flagship prices, but they’re supported for years longer. My last iPhone was the 6s, released in 2015. It’s still receiving security updates today in 2024, more than 8 years later (last update Jan 22, 2024). When I stopped using it, it ran as well as the day I bought it. The resale price was also decent.

Meanwhile, android phones from that era typically lost support within 1-2 years of release.

No urban designer or transportation expert thinks that cars scale with population. Talking about rural and small cities is the opposite of scaling with population. Car dependent big cities like LA or Houston have hellish traffic.

At least have a cursory look at the link I posted in my last comment. Cars play a huge role in bad land use. This is why they have an enormous effect on housing supply.

You seem to be lost. You made the point that walking from a train station to your final destination was some major problem. I’m not even sure what point you think your last paragraph is responding to. Yes America is bigger than a few blocks. So is Europe and China. So what?

The fact that cars mathematically cannot scale with population is “so very minor”? Or that cars are the most expensive form of transportation? Or that cars require tons of parking and wide roads that lead to inefficient use of land, contributing to a housing crisis and ugly sprawl?

So what is a “major” problem? Ah right, walking a few blocks.

nowhere near where I live

Even the Netherlands or Japan have many places where only travel by car makes sense. We will always need some cars. Maybe your situation is like that. But your personal situation doesn’t dictate whether or not it makes sense for society to build a lot more trains, which is what we’re talking about.

Also, describing how much less convenient trains are for you presently than driving is kind of missing the point. Everyone already agrees that train lines don’t exist to service many places. We’re not talking about what exists now, but how things should change.

It’s pretty obvious that a single train full of passengers is more energy efficient than the same number of people driving a bunch of individual 4000 lb SUVs.

Cars are even more restricted in travel time. Unlike trains, which typically come multiple times an hour, car travel has to be planned around rush hour and gridlock.

Honestly, I don’t even know how we can be debating this. Car dependence is a dead end. Cars don’t scale because a linear increase in drivers requires a non-linear increase in surface area. Car dependence makes it impossible to meet our climate goals. These catastrophic failures are so much worse than needing to walk a few blocks. There are so many flaws that car people just fail refuse to see.

There are many places in the US with the density of Europe or Asia. And those are all the places trains are being built.

As an interesting side note: I have heard multiple times that Gen X is the Trumpiest and most conservative leaning generation, even more than Boomers or Silver. I find it plausible. The silver generation has old progressive labor movement diehards, and boomers have hippies. But Gen X never really had a progressive culture movement. They came of age during Reagan and Clinton.

As an American who moved to Canada, there are similarities but Canada is still one million times better than the US.

The CRA (Canadian IRS) allows digital access to all tax info. Whatever software or service you use, just log into your CRA account and everything auto-fills. Done in a few minutes. My US taxes have never taken less than an hour, and often multiple hours if there’s anything remotely complicated.

Can’t follow directions?

What is this, tax advice from Stack Overflow? I don’t understand why people like you don’t save your criticism for the system, instead of at the people using the system.

Yes, the system is fucked up… because the instructions are intentionally designed to be complicated to follow. I don’t know a single person stupid enough to waste their time doing their own taxes by following the directions on the IRS documentation. Horrible advice. Not even professional tax accountants do that.

The IRS free tax-filing service is in limited trial in a few states, eligible only to simple returns within limited income ranges. Most people, including 1099 people like OP, can’t use it.

Your response is tone deaf. The American tax code is intentionally complicated to protect tax filing companies and to allow the rich to take advantage of loop holes. I can’t believe how housebroken some people are that they defend the shitty tax system instead of sharing in OP’s anger.

Not all liquid moving near the throat is drinking. Drowning, for example, isn’t drinking. It has to be ingested using swallowing muscles, etc. Molten lava would disintegrate the perimeter of your mouth and throat. That’s “drinking” like a shotgun to the face is “eating”.

Drinks tend to be drinkable.

Is there a punchline to this I’m missing?

Why is Consumer Reports considered a rag?

Yes, strong agree! Medium density is also the most affordable to build per square footage, compared to low density detached single family homes and high density super tall glass and metal towers.