I can't tell if this is parody or not.

Are they?

This century Russia has engaged in a offensive wars against Ukraine and Georgia, put down a couple of internal rebellions and fucked around intervening in five or six conflicts in their neighbourhood and Africa.

Iran has maintained a few proxy militia groups to counter Israel.

China has... done nothing. Specifically refused to engage in any international military action. Not since Vietnam, actually.

Wikipedia's list of wars involving the US is split into multiple pages, despite the US only existing for a few hundred years. The one for 2001 to present is long, I'm not going to count them. Some of them are anti-pirate operations, mostly legal anti-terrorist actions and a UN sanctioned international actions. There are also some illegal offensive wars, a couple of them massive. Betrayal of allies, torture, lots of war crimes.

Domestically, yeah, the US is a better place to live than Iran, especially if you're a woman, although the US is working hard to change that. Probably better than China or Russia too depending on what you value. Internationally none of them hold a candle to the US of A.

To be fair, this is an example of the CIA on good behaviour. No ACTUAL assassinations, probably, not a whiff of torture, not a single government overthrown.

Let me restate that. Most of what makes neighborhood streets dangerous is vehicles and pedestrians using the same space at similar times.

Who has priority is largely uninteresting, because ultimately if a car hits you, you're still probably dead whether you had the right of way or not.

Ostensibly, sure, if you got rid of all the cars, streets would be safer for pedestrians, but they would also be a huge waste of space, because pedestrians don't need huge roads to walk. Roads exist principally for cars. The fact that pedestrians have to cross them is just an unfortunate design constraint that's hard to avoid cheaply, and giving pedestrians priority is mostly just feel-good policymaking that doesn't solve any of the fundamental problems.

The only truly safe way to share the space is to ensure that pedestrians aren't in the road when cars are. The best approach, at least in cities, is second-floor walkways, so that pedestrians and cars are never vertically at the same traffic layer. A slightly less optimal, but still reasonable approach is to give pedestrians a separate walk cycle in which the entire intersection is theirs. Pedestrians have priority during that cycle, and cars have priority the rest of the time, and as long as everyone follows the rules, nobody gets hurt.

But none of those solutions work for neighborhood streets, which is why the presence of pedestrians on neighborhood streets without sidewalks and proper traffic control for pedestrians results in the roads being inherently more dangerous than other streets.

Attacking nuclear facilities is at least moderately rational. Various countries have done that half a dozen times over the past few years. Attacking drone manufacturing and storage might also be reasonable.

But...

What does an illegal decapitation attack have to do with nukes? Do you think the new supreme leader is going to somehow be more rational than the last one? There is a fundamental difference between going after clear military targets to prevent Iran from developing weapons that threaten their neighbors and going after civilian and government targets.

No, they will keep doing this until they are a nuclear power. They've seen what denuclearization did for Ukraine, and it's hard to argue with their logic. Having nuclear weapons is a strong deterrent to invaders, who realize that the response could be swift and devastating at a scale that countries never recover from.

It's unclear what other things they will do at that point. We can only speculate. Mind you, I don't like the idea of a nuclear-armed Iran, but again, I see no evidence that anything happening over there right now is going to change anything, or even delay it enough to matter.

Is anything that the U.S. government is doing right now going to change that reality? The way you prevent them from laying mines is the same way that you prevent oil from leaving Iran — bombing ships the second they leave the harbor. If you're not willing to start with a full air and naval blockade, you've already failed, and the only thing continuing the war can do is increase the number of ways that you've failed.

Behold, some tech bros:
https://www.historyhit.com/fac...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

They might have launghed then, but they're not laughing now.

My AI says there aren't enough em dashes, so you're probably both wrong.

At 3 A.M.? Probably. At 3 P.M.? Unlikely.

Most of what makes neighborhood streets dangerous is pedestrians. After dark, this concern goes way down. At some point, it becomes effectively zero, and the only thing increasing the risk is the number of driveway entrances, and in particular, blind driveway entrances.

And, of course, the presence of small children who behave erratically. In general, you should drive those speeds whenever you see evidence that small children are playing or are likely to be playing anyway, e.g. when driving past parks before sunset, when you see small children walking down the sidewalk while tossing a ball back and forth, etc.

And when there's no evidence of children, it doesn't make sense to slow down nearly as much.

Cyclists and pedestrians are also a big risk. They often behave in unpredictable ways. Also, if you pull out in front of cyclists, this is a very bad thing. But all of those factors are also highly timing-dependent. When there are no cyclists nearby, a road can be 45 MPH, but when cyclists are nearby, you need to slow down. Drivers need to have the situational awareness to realize that driving at the speed limit is not always safe, because the alternative is for the speed limits to be set so low that they are always safe, which results in miserably slow roads.

I've heard of neighborhoods pushing for 5 MPH (8 KPH) speed limits. When cyclists and even some pedestrians would be ticketed for exceeding the speed limit, you're doing it wrong. Even at 15MPH, there's only a 9% chance of an accident seriously hurting a pedestrian even if you don't slow down at all, so the benefit would only come from drivers who are completely not paying attention, and would likely be cancelled out by a higher number of drivers zoning out and not paying attention, in which case the chances of pulling out in front of a cyclist (who realistically won't be going that slowly) goes up. No free lunch. But that doesn't keep people who don't understand statistics from saying "If 25 (residential default) is good, 5 is better."

Driver response time doesn't increase at all. The rest of stopping distance is determined by physics and doesn't increase much, at least not in good conditions where any old tire and any sufficiently strong brake is going to perform about the same. It CAN decrease a lot in bad conditions, whcih is also where most of the technology is useful, but most speed limits are set for good conditions with a law that says you should decrease your speed appropriately. Driving around at the speed that's reasonable for the worst possible conditions would really drive people nuts.

Not murdering people isn't a law either. It's a general characteristic of a social species (with a legal basis, because people are dumb and cannot take advice).

Any law can be done. The courts can undo it; if willing, and it can take a long time for justice and public pressure to play out. Such as the Dread Scott decision. Change in judges, maybe politicians, and maybe a violent revolution (or suppressing one in that case.)

You can't just sign or click away your rights but we do all the time; a big lawsuit and sometimes a few laws-- like CA for example has laws that prevent you from giving up rights. Such as the employment non-compete rights you can't sign away in CA that made silicon valley possible. Other states still don't have those rights protected except lawsuit by lawsuit; sometimes... and 1 right at time. CA doesn't protect all of them either, don't take that wrong. Rights are not given but they are violated.

FYI, my state for decades had a lawsuit that killed the traffic cam ticketing laws; it's only recently begun a new. I'm not sure if it will hold up when it gets to court again and what they may have sneaked into the law for the next generation of judges who will revisit the matter.

Yes. I agree the nation is collapsing and it will happen and the turning point will be 2025 in the history books; couldn't be more clear unless an armed insurrection that was successful - probable had the election functioned... but societal collapse leads to dysfunction. Rome took 300 years to fall; people debate over when-- because it's death by 1000 cuts. Same here but 2025 is more stand out than other events; Nixon was huge but subtle and nobody could reasonably project beyond it; Reagan on the other hand, some people could and did predict 2025 back then.

All you can do is try to prepare people for the aftermath. Russian style cynicism is their most powerful weapon and export...and nobody knows how to heal their infection; some think a strong conservatism for a few generations but I see no confirmation; plus the people involved have read that theory and hijack conservatism to preempt that or simply because conservatives are easier to control once you can sucker them.

A good fight would end them.
1) Confronted by your accuser? it's a robot. my state ended cameras decades ago on such a lawsuit. also no context to any of it and lack of evidence of context. Rich can at least get themselves free from punishment...

2) The owner can't be held liable for use of their property. This isn't a child given a gun... but good way to involve the NRA; easier argument which could be applied to gun owners.

3) Subsequent punishments based upon your car's violations is certainly not going to hold up. Losing your license because your wife keeps getting violations is insane. Limiting this to fines against the car avoids this-- and we already have crazy lawsuits against property which is guilty until innocent (the object not being human) would go a long way to making this impossible to fight outside the top 3% (who'd just pay the fine or buy another car.)

Suburbs never were sustainable outside of a wealthy middle class. Modern rural areas living with modern tech like paved roads, electricity, phone... and farming help, were not affordable without welfare from everybody else. The 3% are at war against the middle class; clearly winning.

It's always really about the ability to fight back. Poor lives do not matter. Often these are brown people but we also have a demographic of "white trash" who are too busy trying to punch down on brown people so they don't feel they hit rock bottom themselves. Along with red-necks who are falling down economically and feel their privilege slipping away. (plus all groups have tiny insecure men factions who are toxic. Penis enlargement and legal prostitution would solve so many deep problems... but crash the US auto industry who only survives on big SUV and trucks. mid-life sports cars tend to be foreign.)

In theory, sure. In practice, the FTC regulates things like this about as well as the CPUC regulates electric rates. Regulatory capture and bending to industry pressure has become the default at this point. Right to repair laws are really the only solution. Such laws distribute the enforcement responsibility by potentially enabling random annoyed DAs to prosecute or class-action attorneys to sue, depending on whether they are written as civil or criminal law.