So how many people in the area will be fighting for a lamp post? Or are there lamp posts for everyone?

There aren't lamp posts for everyone, but there's not much contention. Very occasionally the road whatsapp group gets a message about it.

Can micro-managing middle-earth management cube farmers

You have cubicles? Christ I hate people bragging on the internet.

If someone wants to, they can drive up and down that street all day, every day, simply because they feel like it. It's a public street.

Are you 100% sure about that? There are generally rules about public nuisance and noise. Driving down a road a couple of times at night is OK. Repeatedly going up and down all night could easily fall foul of those laws.

Also Waymo isn't a person. There is absolutely a difference between something a person can do at a cost to themselves, naturally limiting the fallout and having a company algorithmic funnel vast resources at fucking things up. Waymo don't have much of a right of anything, self driving cars are known to not be ready and they very much operate under license.

Basically you have to drive around like you're going to have to stomp on the brakes at any moment, because the place is full of tourists that run the stop signs and pedestrians that walk into the street.

As it should be! America's stop sign are pretty silly and the laws against jaywalking are an insane. As a Londoner, the one time I drove in SF, it was... fine? Compared to the mad max hell of Tooting-bloody-Highstreet (its official name) it was a picnic.

Jokes aside though in dense cities, cars are usually by far the minority traffic in terms of number of people, though usually the majority in terms of amount of space taken up. People drive like the latter is the most important but ought to drive like they are the ones in the way, which broadly speaking they are.

Most countries have done sort of public nuisance law because you cannot cover every possible way today people might unreasonablely disturb others.

So they probably don't actually have the right, but you know big companies don't really have to obey laws.

I've always wanted a version on the gimp that takes ages to start, runs slower and can access all the critical files in my home directory but not a plug in usb stick it a secondary drive for "security reasons".

As if the stance of a sheep is surprising...

Please. Sheep have identifiable desires and goals in life. Not much, sure, immediate food, immediate safety and being near other sheep. But still identifiable.

You are doing a real disservice to sheep with this comment.

I also live in the UK and like millions of my countrymen I live on a terrace, so charging at home is basically impossible.

I also live in the UK on a terrace. The council licensed a variety of companies to install lamp post chargers, so people can charge at home. These problems are entirely solvable.

Just as a reminder, the US automakers benefited from almost total immunity from bearing the costs of their externalities, plus multiple bailouts over decades, plus literal fucking wars fought to keep their vehicles fuelled.

And so much more. Laws were created at the behest of the auto industry. People are often banned from he freedom of doing something as natural as crossing the road. Zoning laws have made it more or less impossible to build cities that are not dependent on cars. And if states get out of hand with using their states rights for something other than praising Jesus, oppressing women or celebrating traitors, then the federal government will try and step in to suppress any measures they don't like such as congestion charging and emission standards.

The difference is one is prescribed for pain by doctors and sold by drug companies. The other is self-medicated and sold by street vendors.

In some places, heroin is available on prescription, for when morphine won't cut it. It's usually used after incredibly painful surgeries.

No, I have no idea what you're talking about. I've not had mod points for longer than I can remember too. You're not the main character just a victim of a website that doesn't get much love and is likely quite buggy.

What if they ban me for the same reason

What if they ban you for the same reasons that a million cranks a day are largely ignored? It's true, every right wing loonie might be the next unsung scientific genius (in which case we are about to enter a period of scientific advancement the world has never seen before) or you could just be a crank who is coloured so deeply by politics that feeling trump reality,

Or you could be somewhere between.

But my money is that you are not the next Semmelweiss.

Size does in a phone but below a certain threshold thickness is irrelevant.

Imagine trying to stuff something the size of an A4 sheet of paper, but rigid into your pocket. Maybe if only it was 50gsm not 80 it would be comfortable...

Below a certain point, the curvature of you against a flat, rigid phone accounts for as much effective thickness as the phone.

Ooorrrrr buy trash bags?

I've been through this whole process. Actual trash bags are larger and thinner than grocery bags. They don't need to take such heavy weight and don't need to go as far. Plus people don't buy trash bags then litter them. You can also buy biodegradable plastic bags that won't permanently release micro plastics into the environment.

It's really not that bad. I used to tree use carrier bags too. I've got used to the new way and I think it's actually better.

Yes, because we all love walking half a mile a day in the rain

It is said that Americana think a hundred years is a long time and Europeans think a hundred miles is a long way. Unless you parked at the far end of the Walmart carpark in which case Americans think 100 yards is a long way.

There are these devices called "rain coats" and "umbrellas" that you can use to prevent getting wet while your are strolling fire all of 10 minutes. Did you seriously just complain about walking for 10 minutes??? .carrying groceries in paper bags

Good grief why must you make everything so incredibly difficult? Who on earth would use paper bags, especially in the rain. We have these things called "reusable bags" where I live that are often made of cloth.

or transporting 20-kilo items.

Look it's late and I'm tired. Ultimately you probably won't believe that people actually live in London. Maybe you'll concede we do but convince yourself that we live as Sisyphus constantly pushing heavy weights up a hill for all eternity. We don't, by the way.

Maybe one day or will occur to you that people have actually figured out how to live without a car (it's almost like settled civilisation managed that for 6000 years or so), and that transplanting every one of the most perverse things you do in the most car centric parts of America is not actually a very good model of the world.

But what do I know? I've only been living without a car since 2009.