💾 Archived View for quasivoid.net › gemlog › 2021-04-19-trash.gmi captured on 2021-12-06 at 14:29:53. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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I went vibing with the boys today. We really had no idea what to do. We eventually decided to get food. We had no idea where to go to food. We decided to go to Raising Cane's, at my suggestion, as a location had recently opened in the area and I had not yet gone.
I was interested in going because everyone seemed to really be hyping it up. I was greatly let down. Not only did it not meet expectations, I thought it was fairly sub-par. It's already been established that it's all about their "secret sauce," but I got sick of it pretty quick. When I wanted to enjoy my chicken and fries without it, I found that the sauce was necessary to make them any good. The chicken and fries were of depressing quality. Overall, I rate Raising Cane's a strong five to a light six. The toast was okay, I guess.
Recently, I got my first job, and my first income. It's hard to appreciate how much money equals freedom until you actually have money, are over eighteen, and have an ID to prove that you exist. The full extent of this ocurred to me today while I watched one of my friend exchange his mommys cash for vape juice from the passenger seat of his car.
huh. I could just like, buy drugs now if I wanted to. I just don't feel like it'd be financially responsible.
One of my friends has asserted that something about cages really fucks with the drivers psyche. Another has observed the impatience and anger directed towards cyclists in a huge segment of drivers in their state. I don't think this analysis is coincidental, with the caveat that I can only accurately say that about the American mindset.
I'm the dude who walks to the grocery store.
I'm telling you most fat Americans think they can't ride to the store because it sucks. We work too much and only get to go shopping once a week, so generally 'make the most of it' by buying a bunch of bulky, most likely frozen, items, which aren't convenient to carry on a bike because land developers and the auto industry were able to turn fear of dindus into incentive to make gated cul-de-sac suburbs along 55mph roads, with no sidewalk, that lead to the high way or the Walmart Super Shopping Center.
We can't live like that and say people just '''perfer''' to drive
I started thinking about this again while reading a 4/n/ thread about cager entitlement, the kind that asserts that the road is for cars and bicycles are toys which belong on the sidewalk else the cyclist deserves it when they are hit and killed by a cager who's looking down at their phone, and read this reply which really captures the essence of the American anti-social (as opposed to individualistic) white picket fence mindset. I'm leaving the slur in because it is an accurate portrayal of this mindset from the classic "patriotic" perspective, the mindset which automobile manufacturers played into with their lobbying as city planning began to reshape to fit around it post World War I.
Anon laments the new shape of city planning, the shape characterized by the shift from city centers to decentralized cities, parking lots and structures larger in surface area than the campuses they belong to, the thinning of sidewalks, and pushing residential zones further out into the suburban outskirts, all of which follows from the core mindset they illustrate. In some sense, the car which represented the American ideal of individuality and freedom has come to represent anti-social decadence and conformance. Cities in America are no longer built for humans, they are built for machines. People have alienated themselves from their own environments, often experiencing most of the world through their windshield. Cities are desolate, populated mostly by rivers of cars and empty sidewalks.
With people so alienated from the environments in which they reside, it's no wonder they become psychotic behind the wheel. The idea of the car is speed and convienence, and when its only other machines on the road - not people - anti-social behaviour follows. This is how you end up with behaviours such as drivers giving cyclists "punishment passes" (passing far too close to be safe), endangering lives and often killing people with no repurcussions. People get angry when there is something between them and their golf course.
While on todays outing, my driver was briefly slowed down by a car in front of him taking a right hand turn. He honked. Why? That car had to turn right. That implies slowing down, when there is no dedicated right hand turn lane. My driver could see this with his own eyes. I asked him if that honk was necessary. He said, I guess not. It was an automatic impulse upon being slowed down.
I could write a whole ass essay about alienation of people from cities and anti-social behaviour on the road. I probably will, eventually, after properly outlining such a project. There's too much to unpack for a day log. I do have some excellent resources covering the topics of city planning and automobiles to recommend, though:
The Automobile Shapes The City
Collection of essays outlining the history of automobiles in America, and their effect on various aspects of American life.
Excellent YouTube channel full of video essays about city planning, particularly with regards to transporation infrastructure. My favourite video of theirs is "Why We Won't Raise Our Kids in Suburbia (and moved to the Netherlands instead)", which is really a video about alienation and inhabitable nature of North American cities.
Please Share This When I'm Killed by Someone Driving a Car
Lovely channel about cycling as a sport, but as a whole it's not a particularly relevant resource for this topic. However, this lone video serves as an excellent exposition of the reality of being anywhere outside of a steel box to protect you.