Why blur the profile picture but show the selfie? Isn’t that a bit pointless?

Hard to see something if you’ve got your eyes closed. There’s plenty of liberal support for Assange, just this week the centre right led government of Australia passed a motion to urge the UK and US to return him to Australia.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-15/motion-to-urge-us-uk-to-allow-julian-assange-return/103469226?utm_source=abc_news_app&utm_medium=content_shared&utm_campaign=abc_news_app&utm_content=other

Why did you reply again without reading either post?

The post said they are trying to vape and gradually reduce their nicotine intake to 0. I don’t know how it can be made any more clear in stating that their near term goal is not to stop vaping, but to reduce the nicotine dose in the vape to 0.

They are trying to reduce their nicotine dosage in their vape but due to their addiction, are having withdrawals and ultimately re-adding the dose. This is 100% due to nicotine, they are not trying to reduce how many times they inhale the vape.

Dude that guy said very clearly his method was to lower the nicotine dose in his vape to ween down to 0mg/nicotine free vape. He isn’t trying to quit the habit, you didn’t even read his post.

Quietly returning to the status quo is radically different from what happened after the Munich Olympics. What is it that makes you think the mossad and their political leaders are so much quicker to drop a grudge now?

Mid 30s Aussie living the the US. Yes I can drive a manual, yes I do drive a manual and yes I think it should be mandatory for 100% of learning drivers regardless of whether they plan to daily drive an automatic or manual when licensed.

The quality of driving here is considerably worse here than what I’ve experienced in Australia or Europe and I’m convinced requiring people to drive in a machine that forces them to consider the next ~100m leads to higher quality, more mindful drivers.

You came across as super patronizing so I responded the same. It’s not that big of a thing man, chill out.

You can eat and not pay attention with a manual transmission, I don’t know why we’d pretend you can’t. If you’re just on the highway cruising both are just going to be in one gear all the time.

I never claimed you couldn’t eat and drive a manual. I said that people who claim autos are better because they make it easier to choose to drive distracted (alternative phrasing - who choose to drive like a reckless asshole) shouldn’t be on the road.

Either way, the problem is that people have to drive even if they don’t want to engage. The popularity of automatic transmissions proves that (to most Americans at least) cars are an appliance and something people do because they have to. Fuck cars.

Well, yeah, that’s always been the case. There are some enthusiasts sure, but for the most part a car is seen as a more convenient bus. But people riding the bus seldom choose to behave dangerously while commuting, there’s something about the mentality of these people (choosing to drive distracted) that is at odds with normal, acceptable behavior

You don’t need to assure me of the blatantly obvious. My point wasn’t that you can’t eat and drive manual at the same time, it was that all these people claim automatic is a better transmission on the basis it facilitates their choice to drive distracted shouldn’t be on the road. I didn’t see a single person saying “oh I like driving manual better because it makes it easier for me to be an irresponsible road user”.

All of these people responding that they prefer auto so they can eat or otherwise not pay attention in the car are the best (only?) argument for why everyone should drive manual.

Whatever your transmission preference is, if you’re not engaged in driving you shouldn’t be on the road!

The two differences you listed improve traffic flow and safety massively!

Driver education is often more strict depending on country (I’m thinking Scandinavian countries and Germany), unsurprisingly this makes a big difference.

Traveling faster is a bit of a moot point. If people drive faster and rate of incidents and road toll are lower, surely that proves that travel speed isn’t the problem in the US.

But really, the drink driving culture in America is terrifying. The state of Texas has a similar population to Australia (where I’m from), 9,560 people died on the road in Q1 2022 in texas. Australia had just under 2000 FOR THE WHOLE YEAR! Both places have similar speed limits that are considerably slower than Europe, so I don’t think it would be honest to try and say the low speed limits cause deaths. My best guess would be that drink driving is enforced at 0.05 in Australia compared to 0.08 in Texas. On top of this, Texas only enforces if officers have a cause for lawful detainment, which is a high threshold to cross compared to random breath tests common where I’m from.

It’s incorrect to think of most road laws as being in place for safety, instead recognize that it’s largely a tax by another name. It is never safe to drive 20mph below prevailing traffic, regardless of what the sign on the side of the road instructs.

To avoid fines, pay attention and try to avoid routes where there are often cops collecting a toll, especially during quieter times when you’re one of a smaller number of commuters (and more likely to be the sucker who gets pinged). If you’re white, congratulations, you’re way less likely to be the unlucky party who gets pinged.

Exponentially both ways though I would argue, often, the slower driver is more of a hazard to other drivers!

If someone burns past in the left lane unless someone else does something wrong (like move lanes without looking first) or causes rapid traffic slowdown in the left lane either by merging poorly or being too aggressive on the brakes, they are more or less not a risk.

If someone is driving too slow they are dangerous without anyone else making a mistake - if you or anyone behind you doesn’t have visibility (eg behind a truck, around a bend, glare from the sun etc) then there’s a hard braking event, which is always dangerous. The more slowly compared to prevailing traffic they go, the more attentive other drivers need to be, the more dangerous it becomes.