Found in The Local.de:
Several people were injured Monday when a car drove into a carnival procession in the central German town of Volkmarsen, police said. "There are dozens of injured, including some who are gravely hurt," a spokeswoman for Volkmarsen police told AFP.
Speaking to DPA news agency, a police spokesman added that children were among the injured. The driver has been arrested.
Germany is on high alert following a shooting spree by a far-right gunman in the city of Hanau, also in Hesse, last Wednesday, that left 10 people dead.
Monday's incident took place as residents in many parts of the country celebrate Rose Monday, a highlight of annual carnival festivities that sees adults and children alike dress up and attend parades where people play music and throw candies from floats.
According to the Daily Mail
Police in Germany have tonight searched the home of a driver who deliberately drove a car into crowds at a German Carnival parade on Monday afternoon.
Special police officers dressed in all black with protective gear were seen entering the property of the 29-year-old who has been arrested for attempted murder after he ploughed his Mercedes into the carnival crowd packed with children.
30 people were injured following the incident and forensic officers have now set up a cordon around the car, with pictures showing several officers examining the silver vehicle.
The driver, a 29-year-old German citizen, mounted the pavement in the town of Volkmarsen, 15 miles west of Kassel, around 2.30pm on Monday before ploughing into families that had turned out for the festivities.
Police arrested the driver at the scene. While officers could not disclose a motive for the attack, local media reported that investigators are working on the assumption that it was deliberate and that investigators were looking into all possibilities.
German police say he is being treated by doctors due to injuries he suffered in the incident, and prosecutors [say] he now faces charges of attempted homicide. Reports suggest he was from the local area and had no history of political extremism.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 25 2020, @02:49PM (71 children)
For readers in USA, a couple of comments:
UK "pavement" = USA "sidewalk"
Germany "Mercedes" ~~ USA "Buick" (USA marketing of Mercedes is very much high end, a luxury car)
And one personal comment -- if we can't agree on "Right" and "Left", can we possibly agree that fanatics of any flavor are a problem for civil society? Reactionary and Radical actors both cause trouble.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Tuesday February 25 2020, @03:20PM (1 child)
FWIW I think more americans know Mercedes as a brand than buick.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 25 2020, @03:49PM
Exactly. In Europe, Mercedes is just another brand, often used for taxicabs.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 25 2020, @03:41PM (33 children)
Another important one that adds context:
"German citizen" = recent immigrant, not of German decent
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday February 25 2020, @03:56PM (13 children)
I suspect that might be the case here. I was curious, so I did a search for an image of the attacker, or any information on him. DDG gave me a reddit link, saying much the same as you have just posted here. The reddit page was loading - then it vanished, and I got a cute 404 page, "The page you were looking for does not exist".
Lo and behold, I look back at DDG, to open the link again, the link isn't there.
The censors are on top of this on!!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DannyB on Tuesday February 25 2020, @07:50PM (3 children)
The end move in politics is to censor the internet to have the right facts.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 25 2020, @10:36PM (2 children)
No dude, the end move in politics is to flood the internet with bullshit and then cry censorship when lies aren't given the same privilege as facts.
Your boy bannon confessed to it. [bloomberg.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 26 2020, @07:49AM
Timothy McVeigh was a Muslim, at first, before they found him , and determined that all the fuck-faced Islamophobes got it wrong, much as they are doing in this thread. White people are the real threat, angry, prostate-inflamed, next to death, white people. Well, fuck them, and I can only hope they die off soon, before they give us another Donald J Trumpf. Come on, old Fox Viewers! Die for your country! Uncle Sam wants you, Soylent or not!
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday February 26 2020, @03:34PM
Doesn't your post simply restate what I said?
However, Steve Bannon certainly isn't "my" boy.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 25 2020, @10:32PM (7 children)
Ermigad!!! Reddit moderators deleted a post based completely on made up wishcasting. Censorship!!!!
But hey, if someone says it on teh intertubes it must be true, right?
Your idiocy is showing. But then again, it always does, you fucking boot.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday February 26 2020, @12:36AM (6 children)
No, it is your own idiocy. Your post indicates that you accept that a post on reddit disappeared within several seconds of my having found it. Your post also indicates that the link to that post disappeared off of DDG in the same time frame. So, you accept that the Gatekeepers have cleaned up the internet, right before my eyes.
And, you have no problem with that?
Maybe I'll change my nick to Jumpin Jack Flash. Did you watch the movie with Whoopi Goldberg? Maybe you should. Data disappears faster than data can be copied, in the movie.
I really don't know whether the perpetrator is a real German, or if he's an "immigrant", or he's a second, third, or fourth generation "immigrant" to Germany. But, the censors are actively suppressing any hint that he may not be a real Euro.
And, half of us think that is just fine.
Wait until the censorship whip is in the other hand. You have heard of McCarthy, right?
HINT: I won't be any fucking happier when the Republican right is holding that whip, than when the Ctrl-Left is holding it.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 26 2020, @12:41AM
FTFY, Short Version.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 26 2020, @01:41AM (4 children)
> Your post indicates that you accept that a post on reddit disappeared within several seconds of my having found it. Your post also indicates that the link to that post disappeared off of DDG in the same time frame.
I took you at your word and now you are disputing your own claims? WTF man? Were you lying and none of that happened?
> But, the censors are actively suppressing any hint that he may not be a real Euro.
"the censors" You fuckbrains are always triggered about conspiracies. You just practically admitted you made the whole thing up. I guess you made up the evil cabal of censors too.
Fucking dumbass boot.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday February 26 2020, @01:52AM (3 children)
Nice spin, spin doctor!
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 26 2020, @02:36AM (2 children)
Lolwut? Every one of your posts is just you wanking it to fascism fantasies.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday February 26 2020, @02:43AM (1 child)
What a dumbass you are. While you stroke your ego that some "alt-righter" is upset over censorship - you neglect that one day the censorship will be controlled by the other side. Or a third side who wants to silence both you and me. Idiot. You're on Soylentnews here. What part of "censorship is bad" have you failed to understand?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 26 2020, @07:54AM
Fuck you, Runaway, and let me repeat that for all Soylentils: Fuck you and the Russian Bot you rode in on! You contribute nothing to this site, you are a douche, and the fact that you got banned from every place else on the internets, and can only post here, is a shame for both you and SoylentNews. Do the right thing, Runaway, shut up. If you have to use your new .22 and eat a bullet, for you to shut up on SoylentNews, well, just let me say, you are not MDC, Runaway! At long last, sir, have you no sense of decency? Have you no sense of shame?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 26 2020, @06:35AM
I also was curious. I can find no evidence that the attacker in this atrocity was not our own Runaway1234, in fact, his posts here suggest that it was Runaway. Of course, none of the mainstream Media, or the Traitor Network Fox, is going to report the truth in this case, that a radicalized uneducated ex-truck-driver hillbilly from Arkanasaws is the killer, or attempted killer (more evidence, Runaway never seems to be able to complete what he promises, despite being an Oaf Keebler), who went to Germany solely to false flag a Islamophobic interpretation to a run-of-the-mill incel attack. I can find no evidence that this is not the case, so I am standing by my opinion that it was Runaway behind the wheel. Matches his commercial driving record!
(Score: -1, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Tuesday February 25 2020, @04:13PM (3 children)
It's not an Aristarchus sub unless the words "White Supremacist" are in there somewhere. Still, how many attacks are perpetrated by Whites compared to Islamic Savages?
Deutsches Vaterland! Heil Hitlah! 14/88 109/110 C-3PO R2D2!
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Tuesday February 25 2020, @05:45PM
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 26 2020, @12:17AM
Just remember, Donald J. Trump is the choice candidate for the most brutal supporters of Islamic Terrorism https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/02/report-saudis-uae-funnelled-millions-trump-2016-campaign-200225162254067.html [aljazeera.com]
I love the irony, sadly your brain is so broken you'll find worm your way into supporting Trump without the slightest hint of irony. It is like the superpower of stupid people.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 26 2020, @06:39AM
Just the username "Ethanol_fueled" is enough to disprove White Supremacism. Whites cannot be superior, if one so stupid be one of them. Ethanol_fueled, in order to save white supremacy, you have to out yourself as "non-white"! Only way to do it. If you are white, then white people be too dumb to be superior. Simple logic. Fess up, Eth!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by janrinok on Tuesday February 25 2020, @04:47PM (14 children)
You guys aren't happy unless you can make this a racist issue, are you? 18 children - what political views do you think they hold?
But, of course, you believe you know more than the local LE on the ground.
Steffen Roettger - now there is a good Muslim name, or perhaps you think he was Turkish? Get your heads from up your asses and try using some intelligent thinking.
It might turn out that this was a political attack but, without facts, all you are doing is stirring up unrest.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 25 2020, @05:41PM (7 children)
No, I suspect local LE on the ground politically aren't allowed to talk about what they know.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by janrinok on Tuesday February 25 2020, @05:50PM (6 children)
So we are better off making stuff up?
Absolutely nothing to support this statement.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 25 2020, @06:34PM (3 children)
except for the fact that the "news" is saying "German citizen" and not showing a picture of the suspect, which many times means "Muslim given citizenship foolishly/maliciously". Otherwise why are they choosing "German citizen" as the lone detail to provide? It's possible that they are just being responsible in the details they give out, but if they are anything like the US, they are doing it for propaganda purposes/full of shit. Furthermore, if the suspect were white/ethnic German the "news" would probably be plastering his face all over the place to bolster their right wing terror/hate narrative.
(Score: 5, Informative) by quietus on Tuesday February 25 2020, @06:49PM (2 children)
They're legally restricted probably -- the full name of a suspect is not allowed to be reported, for instance, during trial (only the first name), until verdict has been made. To illustrate: a big row (in Belgium) a couple of years ago when a serial killer (white, native Belgian) was captured and his picture was published after a couple of days, when he was still being interrogated. I think this is because cases like these still have to be judged by a people's jury, and publishing [selective] personal info about him might/will influence potential jurors in a high-profile case (like this one).
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday February 25 2020, @09:28PM (1 child)
Not only could they legally restricted, they could also consider it bad practice to highlight the details of the perpetrator, on the grounds that it might encourage other people to do similar things to make themselves famous. Sorta like how a guy shot Ronald Reagan because he wanted to impress Jodi Foster (she wasn't impressed).
Here's what I know about the perp: Whoever it is, they're a terrible human being and deserve to be punished to the full extent of the law. Anything beyond that would be speculation at this point.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 25 2020, @10:10PM
Says you. If Jodie wasn't a rug muncher [wiktionary.org], she'd probably be polishing Hinckley's knob [urbandictionary.com] to this day.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 25 2020, @06:39PM (1 child)
Yes, but the way things get reported nowadays, a term like "German citizen" has zero meaning. Could be a 1000th generation local or post-WW2 migrants, an ex-gastarbeider or any of 200 more categories. This nebulous reporting then lets loose the dogs of speculation. Just like in some countries where race is a sensitive issue - "five men in robbed a gas station, please help the police find them, they had on jeans and a shirt with writing." Ok, are they grey aliens, black, white, asian, caucasian - we are told nothing. Because the beigeists have PC-ed the world into submission. Eventually the truth will come out in this case and we will have one of the radical ends of the rope - a neo-propeller or a raghead. Mercedes, they are like water in Germany, most popular brand for taxis.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 25 2020, @10:03PM
Fine. It was an "Asian".
Happy now?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 25 2020, @06:37PM
Ethnic Germans should not be "at rest" in regards to the desert monkeys being brought in to ruin the country, and breed them out of existence.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 25 2020, @09:23PM (1 child)
So why is it that when this kind of thing happens in the US, it is ok to speculate on the political motives or comment on the gun culture, or whatever, but when it happens in the EU, it is all "let's just wait until all the facts come out before jumping to conclusions"?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by janrinok on Wednesday February 26 2020, @04:02AM
I don't speculate unless I make it very clear that that is exactly what I am doing - you'll probably find it is the same people speculating on events in the US as are on this thread doing the same thing here. Some of our community want to make it a racist issue, or blame the gun culture. That is their view of the world. I would much rather wait until we have the facts available.
(Score: 2, Troll) by driverless on Wednesday February 26 2020, @04:48AM (2 children)
From the news stories (in German) it was apolitical. The police said:
For those who don't speak French, it's saying that it wasn't an extremist, but he had a record of aggressive behaviour, threats, insults, etc.
Oh yeah, for those who are assuming he's $insert-racial-predjucide-here, his name has been released as Maurice P, standard practice in Germany to keep the surname as only the first letter when reporting on crimes. So obviously a muslim/black/whatever your racial bias is. Definitely not a plain european German with a history of violence.
And if anyone says otherwise, it's because they're part of the MSM/deep state/censors/fake news. Geeze, I can't believe the bullshit people talk themselves into believing, anything as long as it's not the simple, obvious truth.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday February 26 2020, @06:38PM (1 child)
Well, Maurice is a French first name. Thus blame the French! ;-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Wednesday February 26 2020, @11:49PM
Actually that makes sense, if he was supposed to be Sepp Oberhumer and ended up being called Maurice I can see that he'd have anger problems.
And for whoever modded my post Troll, everything I said there was quoting various predjudiced comments made earlier in the thread. If my mere quoting of them is a Troll, what does that make the originals?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 25 2020, @03:45PM (12 children)
The right's teenage climate girl is cooler than the lefts: https://www.dailydot.com/layer8/anti-greta-thunberg-naomi-seibt/ [dailydot.com]
I say we should do what she says.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 25 2020, @03:58PM (2 children)
Naomi Seibt is sexy. That's all that matters.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 25 2020, @04:13PM (1 child)
good grief what's up with her face
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 25 2020, @04:41PM
Naomi? She has a face. Saint Greta only has a grimace.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday February 25 2020, @03:59PM (2 children)
Saint Greta asks, "HOW DARE SHE?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 26 2020, @10:09PM (1 child)
If it weren't so childish a vile then the amount you're triggered by Greta would be hilarious. It is still quite amusing, then I realize that you're supposedly a mature adult who flips out every time she or climate change come up.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday February 26 2020, @10:26PM
I kinda hate to use the word, due to our Hudson, who imagines that he creates them - but it's a fekkin' meme. Libbies almost worship Saint Greta, someone dubbed her St. Greta, and some libbies flipped out over it. So - St. Greta the Grumpy. And, HOW DARE YOU!!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Freeman on Tuesday February 25 2020, @04:51PM (5 children)
Am I the only one that finds the whole Greta vs Seibt thing creepy? Neither of them can possibly have a real grasp of the situation. Yet, Greta was allowed to speak at a UN meeting and chastise them. I mean, come on. If I want random kid's opinions, I'll just ask the ones I know. Seems to be super irresponsible and much more of a seen it on Facebook kinda thing.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 25 2020, @05:35PM (1 child)
So you never had an opinion as a kid? Must have been a boring kid...
"Don't trust anyone over 30" played a good part in ending US involvement in Vietnam:
https://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/issue/2000-04-06/article/759 [berkeleydailyplanet.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 25 2020, @08:07PM
Sure, but why should everyone care about the opinions of these two? They have both been manufactured/groomed for public consumption for some reason.
"We cannot have a teenage climate girl gap!"
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 25 2020, @10:45PM (2 children)
The creepy thing is the right-wing Koch funding propping up some child who only has 50k followers on youtube and then all the corporate media going nuts for them because reporters are so god damn addicted to a "both sides" framing that they've forgotten that the job of the press is to report truth, not just be stenographers for propagandists and leaving it up to the public WHO ARE NOT EXPERTS to figure out out who is telling the truth and who is lying.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 26 2020, @12:02AM (1 child)
Not that journalists are experts either. In better times, at most they could have put honest effort into reporting what they researched.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 26 2020, @02:38AM
They aren't experts, but they have the means and training to find the experts and report what they say instead of just giving equal weight to everybody regardless of their expertise and motives.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by tangomargarine on Tuesday February 25 2020, @03:55PM (17 children)
"Reactionary" as a political label is so stupid. Used derogatorily it implies that the only "correct" political viewpoint is to be progressive.
Sometimes new ideas are dumb. So you oppose them. Oops, now you're a "reactionary."
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 25 2020, @04:40PM (7 children)
> "Reactionary" as a political label is so stupid.
OK then, what is the correct word? There needs to be something generic for extreme right behavior that corresponds to "radical" (extreme behavior/beliefs on the left side).
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday February 25 2020, @05:06PM (2 children)
Why? Just call them "radical right."
Or if you simply *must* have a replacement term, I'd suggest "regressive."
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 25 2020, @05:41PM (1 child)
At least one dictionary disagrees: https://www.thesaurus.com/browse/reactionary [thesaurus.com]
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday February 25 2020, @07:09PM
People use the term to mean illogical things. News at 11
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday February 26 2020, @05:37AM (2 children)
There's plenty of generic labels out there. But what do you need them for?
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 26 2020, @06:58AM
khallow excites no one as a brand name. In fact, has the opposite effect in most cases.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 26 2020, @07:26AM
Depends, are they halal certified? If not, why not?
(Score: 2) by Bot on Wednesday February 26 2020, @11:25AM
Dividing people in left and right is like Bush saying "either with us or with terrorists", lolwut, the terrorists are helping your already drafted political program.
Many people opposed to lefty socialism would probably have opposed the same tactics when adopted by national socialism. Control over economy and private life, appeal to youth, appeal to revolution, replacement of traditional religion with spirituality of the self, cult of personality. The problem being that these 'conservative' people's own political representatives, the republicans, the catholics, the whatevers, always bent over for the socialists, red or black, without fighting. So, they are the ultimate political bitches, because they are also lapdogs for the plutocrats, and, as every politician ever recently, unable to fight the battle against the money printers.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 25 2020, @10:48PM (8 children)
> Sometimes new ideas are dumb. So you oppose them. Oops, now you're a "reactionary."
No dude. That's the definition of conservative.
A reactionary is someone who wants to undo established progress to return to a "simpler" time.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday February 25 2020, @10:56PM (6 children)
Well it doesn't sound like that's a universally-accepted definition.
Another reason not to use it.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 25 2020, @11:48PM (5 children)
Hello, McFly? Modern American conservatism has become the equivalent of the absolute nutjob right in europe.
Refusing to use a correct term because it accurately describes how nucking futs some americans have become is the opposite of being neutral, its catering to the nuts to obfuscate just how nuts they are. Stop carrying water for the nazis dude. I'm not exaggerating - modern american conservatism literally wants to undo the liberal world order established as a result of the defeat of the nazis. [washingtonpost.com] If returning the country to a pre-nazi time isn't reactionary, then what the fuck is?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 26 2020, @12:00AM (1 child)
If it wouldn't be so sad, it'd be funny seeing the losing team of the last presidential election using their PR section (used to be called journalists) to scare poor dumb fucks glued to their phones, that Trump the antichrist will bring literally Nazism to America (would that be before or after he sells us out to the Russians?). Three whole years later.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 26 2020, @01:44AM
Your great grandparents were the ones chanting "mustache man bad" back in the homeland weren't they?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday February 26 2020, @05:40AM (2 children)
Why should we care? Europe is pretty skewed as well, politically.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 26 2020, @07:01AM (1 child)
khallow does not know where Europe is, of why he should care about it. Typical American. Really, really, stupid; and, geographically challenged. This is why Pompeo runs about with un-titled maps, just in case a NPR reporter or khallow should show up! Unfortunately, the NPR reporter could identify Ukraine, while khallow pointed to South Dakota. Sad, really.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday February 26 2020, @02:50PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 26 2020, @08:03AM
"Keep America Great": Conservative. Keep the Darkies off the streets after dark.
"Make America Great": Progressive. Hell, yeah! Go, Bernie!! It's the American way!!!
"Keep America as shitty as it is": Liberal, Status Quo, but bitching about it.
"Make America Grate, Again": Reactionary, implying a return to a past that never existed, cf. Reagan, Ronald, "It's Morning in America, Again".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 25 2020, @07:12PM (3 children)
Germany "Mercedes" ~~ USA "Pontiac"
Poor Old N* Thinks It's A Cadillac.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 26 2020, @08:11AM (2 children)
What's a "Pontiac"? What is a N*? Are you a Boomer? OK, Boomer.
All I can find is this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontiac_(Ottawa_leader) [wikipedia.org]
What does this have to do with "Mercedes", which as far as I can ascertain, is María de las Mercedes [wikipedia.org], not that I am trying to obfuscate the Fine Alt-right Racist shit being spewed here about car brands.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday February 26 2020, @06:47PM (1 child)
Your search-fu is clearly lacking.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontiac [wikipedia.org]
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 26 2020, @10:12PM
wooooooosh
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 25 2020, @03:19PM (21 children)
what will it take to get sensible car control laws passed?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by ikanreed on Tuesday February 25 2020, @03:25PM (20 children)
Behold your terrible future [fastcompany.com]. There was exactly 1 motor vehicle death in Oslo in 2019 due to their car control laws.
It's not as bad as you think, private cars are a plague on society, and only made any kind of sense when not everyone had them(or you're way out in the country, not pretending that's not a thing). For example, the average american restaurant has 3x as much space devoted to parking as eating.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 25 2020, @03:50PM (13 children)
Americans waste lots of stuff, we should all live in tiny tubes like in Asia and eat insects like the desert dwellers. There is no need for more to fulfill our physiological needs.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Tuesday February 25 2020, @03:52PM (12 children)
Spending 1-2 hours a day in a metal tube waiting for the metal tube in front of you to move 6 inches: the very definition of freedom.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Tuesday February 25 2020, @04:25PM (11 children)
My commute is eight minutes.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Tuesday February 25 2020, @04:35PM (4 children)
Great, thank you for the single contextless data point.
The average is a half hour each way.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 25 2020, @04:42PM (2 children)
My commute is 1 second, just walk to the desk.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 25 2020, @07:51PM (1 child)
Do not shit where you eat, is that not work where you sleep, or no play where you pray.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 26 2020, @02:22AM
The only praying I do involves git
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 25 2020, @04:53PM
This https://www.autoaccessoriesgarage.com/average-commute-times [autoaccessoriesgarage.com] guotes US Census at 26.2 minutes for the average. Also includes a heat map of USA times. The definition seems to be based on home->work, since some small bedroom communities are among the longest times--no business locally so nearly everyone has to commute. Didn't come across anything about work->home, which might look much different?
The average might be useful to urban/highway planners? Anyone else??
For everyone else, it's their personal commute time that counts. Mine happens to be seconds -- working at home, but don't have anything work related in my bedroom...
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday February 25 2020, @07:54PM (5 children)
My commute is ten minutes, with five traffic lights. Was three traffic lights until the skunks installed two more.
I don't like work at home by glow of computer monitor. Office is brightly lit. That, and I don't want to have to deal with Windows PC ownership issues.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 25 2020, @08:11PM (4 children)
So the average commute of soylentils is (10 + 8 + 1/60 + 3/60)/4 = 4.5 minutes
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 25 2020, @08:20PM
If: smart = less commute time
Then: SN'ls = smarter than average by ~5x
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday February 26 2020, @05:42AM (2 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 26 2020, @07:04AM (1 child)
But that is because you do not have a job, khallow! We all know that Yellowstone shuts down in the Winter, more or less, so you are now off-season? Commuting to the Commode? Typical khallow bad faith and flatulence.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday February 26 2020, @02:47PM
A couple of hotels still operate in the park during winter. The Park get about 10% of the visitation during winter that they get during the rest of the year. And there's construction delays on the route I take to work, go figure. Winter doesn't respect plumbing.
(Score: 1, Troll) by Bot on Tuesday February 25 2020, @06:44PM (4 children)
>There was exactly 1 motor vehicle death in Oslo in 2019 due to their car control laws.
They also have low crime due to their immigration control laws, so maybe when you apply control in a rational way, instead of controlling the reaction to imposed chaos, things might work.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/2017/11/norway-is-hard-on-migrants-but-tough-love-works/ [spectator.co.uk]
Account abandoned.
(Score: 5, Informative) by ikanreed on Tuesday February 25 2020, @07:29PM (3 children)
That article says... absolutely nothing meaningful in support of your argument. Like nothing all. The word "crime" comes up exactly once, and it's someone vaguely gesturing at the idea of crime rates having some relationship to immigration without any supporting information. At all. None.
The person they quote there in that no supporting evidence article, Sylvi Listhaug, was forced to resign for accidentally publicly posting insane racist conspiracy theories about immigrants on facebook.
And if we want to look at actual data, Greece took in about 1% of their population in the "migration crisis" and their crime rate went down, but Norway refused and theirs stayed the same*. Poland took the most immigrants per capita and their homocide rate halved. Hungary instituted the most horrendously violent and psychopathic "immigration control" measures this side of Australia, and their homocide rate doubled*. There's no coherent truth to the immigration scaremongering. It's meaningless garbage from a far right party's racist spokeswoman to your dumb, credulous ears.
*Unlike you, I'm not making the case that these data actually mean anything(besides you being a shithead), because I don't believe in cherrypicking.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 25 2020, @10:52PM (1 child)
I wish you had linked to sources for your data because I would really like to use it myself in the future, but as an internet rando myself nobody is going to take me seriously without proof.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Wednesday February 26 2020, @12:00AM
It was just homocide by country and decade from wikipedia.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Wednesday February 26 2020, @11:04AM
Poland?
Account abandoned.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 26 2020, @12:31AM
What a racist solution, you know Niggers cannot buy nor take care of bikes properly, this only benefits Whites and their racist allies, like the White-adjecent Asians.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday February 25 2020, @03:24PM (25 children)
In Britain citizens aren't allowed to have guns, so extremists have been killing people with knives. British politicians have begun discussing banning knives.
In France, Germany, and other places extremists have been killing people with cars. They are not yet discussing banning cars, but it's only a matter of time.
Once guns, knives, and cars are gone, extremists will kill with stones and clubs. They will try to ban stones and clubs.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Tuesday February 25 2020, @08:01PM (5 children)
I haven't heard of many "mass knifings". (although I'm sure TSA has dreams of them)
Cars can kill / injure more people. Maybe comparable to guns. But cars and drivers are registered and licensed and insured. I wonder if self-driving may one day prevent running cars into people (even unintentionally).
Stones and clubs probably won't kill large numbers of people like an automatic weapon can. Well, some clubs might, depending on what they play.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday February 25 2020, @10:05PM (2 children)
I have read that high bridges are entirely too attractive to the suicidal. The Golden Gate is infamous for that. Now I understand they have netting to catch jumpers.
There's only so much can be done. Netting seems worthwhile. Banning knives is not practical. Too easy to add an edge to most any hunk of sheet metal.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday February 26 2020, @03:37PM (1 child)
You mean like the sharp edges inside of PCs that cut your hands open?
It's as if they pay someone to sharpen the edges of modern computer cases. Or maybe they've found a way to automate that manufacture step.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday February 26 2020, @07:52PM
Nah, sheet metal is like paper in that when sheared, the trailing edge often deforms into a sharp crest. Same principle behind paper cuts. The sharp edges can be blunted (I've rasped and filed many an edge of sheet metal to do just that), but that costs more money, so manufacturers don't bother.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 26 2020, @06:25AM
You haven't heard of many mass stabbings because they're not given the same coverage as other forms of mass killings. They don't fit the narrative. Same reason if this had been a white guy running over some Muslims it'd be given 24/7 front page coverage. Now it's basically dead news. Though I do suppose there is also the old saying - dog bites man is not news, man bites dog is. Here [wikipedia.org] is a list of 70 mass stabbings from Wiki.
Asia is probably the best place to look for examples of what's possible. The reason is that killing people is surprisingly hard, whatever your instrument. It tends to take skill, training, and a genuine desire to really follow through. In places like America when there's a mass stabbing you probably have an idiot carrying out the attack because there are indeed better instruments available. So you're probably looking at 1 out of 3 on our requirement list. However, in Asia guns are generally somewhat rare, especially in places like China, and so even when a more clever psychopath wants to kill people, knives and other such instruments may end up being used.
I'm not going to hotlink to these (they're all linked above). Just picking out a few to demonstrate that it's not [x] that kill people, but people that kill people.
Yema stabbings - 19 killed
Huang Guozhen - 16 killed, 1 injured (publicly executed 10 ten days later in front of a crowd of 10,000 - Chinese justice)
Kunming attack - 35 killed, 143 injured (8 attackers including 2 women)
Duong Van Mon - 11 killed, 6 wounded
Shi Yuejun - 12 killed, 5 injured
And many many more.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday February 26 2020, @07:04AM
Wikipedia [wikipedia.org].
BBC [bbc.co.uk].
There are a lot more. It doesn't get covered by the American mass media.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 25 2020, @11:51PM
You were always a closet fascist, weren't ya?
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday February 26 2020, @05:35AM (17 children)
We'd all be better off if cars were made to be more expensive and difficult to own, reducing the ownership rate. Less space could be wasted on parking, things could be built closer together, making public transit more feasible, and fewer people would be hurt or killed in auto crashes.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday February 26 2020, @06:49AM (5 children)
I can't disagree with you, personally. I enjoy living in Brooklyn where I don't have to drive if I don't want to. And it always seemed cool that we might live in arcologies one day.
But that's not the world we live in. All those towns and cities developed far apart in the age before the automobile or even the train. Living that sort of life was isolated and small. When they finally did bring the railroad through to some places, the railroad company had all the farmers, ranchers, miners, and everybody else over the barrel in terms of haulage because there was no alternative.
People went gaga for the car for a reason. It meant freedom from that stranglehold. Also, life for most of the US and Canada (and other places besides) today would be difficult if not impossible without cars.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday February 27 2020, @02:59AM (4 children)
The larger cities in pretty much all developed nations outside North America seem to do just fine with subways and trains. Just imagine if NYC (specifically Manhattan and Brooklyn) decided to shut down their subways and trains, forcing everyone to buy a car. The cities would grind to a halt: there's simply no place to park them all, nor could the streets handle that much traffic.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday February 27 2020, @10:01AM (3 children)
They don't, though. I have lived and travelled all over the world and there is no city that does not have lines of cars snaking in and out of it. Tokyo, which has an excellent subway and bus system, even has double-decker freeways all over because there are that many cars.
I'm not saying it's an either-or proposition. You are right: clean, reliable public transportation is essential to dense urban cores. But cities would not fare well without cars either. I have one, and I dislike driving; I hate having to move the car for alternate side parking. My favorite way to get around NYC is on a folding mountain bike, because it's fastest and free. But I keep the car because there are use-cases for which it is best.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday February 28 2020, @02:39AM
Tokyo has double-decker freeways because land is extremely expensive there, and it's cost-effective to build them double-decker instead of side-by-side. It doesn't mean there's tons and tons of bumper-to-bumper traffic though. But yes, it's not a car-free city either, but from my limited time there, I did not see anywhere near the amount of traffic I see in dense American cities like NYC and DC (I mean in the downtown parts, not the suburbs). And much of the traffic I did see was taxis, not privately-owned cars. One interesting fact about Japan (or at least Tokyo, not sure exactly) is that you're not allowed to buy a car if you can't prove you have a place to park it. There's almost no on-street parking in the cities, so unless you have a garage or rent a space somewhere, you just can't own a car. But there are, I think, a fair number of people who own cars, and keep them mostly for weekend trips out of the city to places where train service is non-existent or comparatively poor, and also people who have small children or use vehicles for work-related things. (Also, don't forget that Tokyo is a megacity, and not all of it is as dense as the core, just like many other cities. Cars make more sense in the outlying areas.)
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday February 28 2020, @02:44AM (1 child)
But cities would not fare well without [ownership of] cars either.
Also, I'm not sure this is really true these days, at least for the most part. I can see that some "cars" really are pretty necessary: work vehicles like trucks/vans can't be replaced with subway rides, for instance. But for personal, private use (recreational, commuting, etc.), I don't see why anyone in a dense city with good public transit really ever needs a car. For those weekend trips to small towns, there's always rental cars. Lots of Americans in cities are already doing this, with things like Zipcar. Why bother owning and garaging a car, with all the costs that entails, just so you can take a drive out-of-town once or twice a month, when you can just rent a car for a day instead? I see these rental cars all the time in the DC area; people frequently use them to go hiking in the mountains 2-3 hours away.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday February 28 2020, @05:58AM
Yes, we tried all those options before we bought our car. We tried car rentals first; 3-day weekend? Forget it, all booked. Kids? Super, haul them and all their crap on the bus to the rental car agency (or even more fun, haul it there through turnstiles on the subway!). Also, there's the expense. Cabs, car services cost a fuckload of money and none of them would take us with our infants. Also, if it's rainy or a Friday evening, forget it. And the idea of taking your infant in a New York cab is tantamount to begging Child Protective Services to step in. We tried Zipcar when it first started, before we had kids. That wasn't bad, except you can never predict what the traffic is like and trying to get the damn thing back before your reserved hour was up was harrowing. Then it became more popular, all the cars were taken, and they jacked up the rates so high that it was even more expensive than the rental car agencies.
We like to hike/canoe/get into nature on a regular basis, and though you can get to some places on regional rail in the Tri-state area, you better damn well be done with your hike before 7pm and back at that stop before the schedule drops off to almost nothing and you're stranded for the night in the sticks. Also, kayaks and bikes aren't fun to carry into trains, even if they fold (our Sea Eagle kayak is inflatable and that sombitch still weighs 90 pounds). Further, we discovered that while we can get our groceries delivered from our local neighborhood market, we save several thousand dollars a year by getting the same stuff at BJs/Costco/Sam's Club stores and farmer's markets in the suburbs where the inlaws live. Dunno about you, but hauling a couple hundred pounds of groceries onto the suburban bus line, then onto the Long Island Railroad, then onto the subway, and then up three flights of stairs in our brownstone just to avoid owning a car is not my idea of a good time. Then there are the long road trips we like to take. Yes, you can get long term/long distance rentals, but they are much more expensive than gas and tolls in your own car.
I could go on, but there are definite use-cases for car ownership for city slickers and we're fully mobile. If you have any kind of health or mobility issues you can safely bump all that I said up by an order of magnitude. It is extraordinarily difficult for paraplegics and others to get around NYC without cars.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday February 26 2020, @02:54PM (10 children)
"Better off" is living closer together and more feasible public transit? Not feeling it over here.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday February 26 2020, @02:55PM
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday February 27 2020, @02:56AM (8 children)
You prefer sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic? That's your choice: either living together and more feasible public transit, or sitting in backed-up traffic (unless you live in a rural area, which isn't feasible for most people because there's no jobs there). The laws of physics prevent a car-based society from being both efficient and dense.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday February 27 2020, @12:13PM (2 children)
Nope, but I don't enjoy not getting where I want to go either. My favorite public transportation story (took Amtrak and Caltrains to Palo Alto from a suburb of Sacramento) ended up with me in the wrong city ( downtown Sacramento) at 10pm and only one bus out. I've routinely missed freeway exits in a car, and just took the next one and turned around. Far less drama.
There's also this magic assumption that public transportation will get better, if we make the more competitive forms of transportation like cars worse. That so many people prefer bumper-to-bumper traffic for years over living in high density housing should tell you what most people think is more important to them.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday February 28 2020, @02:03AM (1 child)
>There's also this magic assumption that public transportation will get better, if we make the more competitive forms of transportation like cars worse. That so many people prefer bumper-to-bumper traffic for years over living in high density housing should tell you what most people think is more important to them.
No, public transit works fine if you have competent people running your government, and a culture that values working together instead of "I got mine Jack, fuck you". It works fine in most other developed nations, plus many developing ones too, far better than the clusterfuck we have here.
If Americans prefer sitting for hours, idling, in traffic, to actually getting around and having a convenient lifestyle as people in other nations enjoy, well I don't know what to say to that. But I do think America's extremely high obesity rate is a good indicator of how well Americans' decisions work out in reality here.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday February 28 2020, @06:11AM
I don't know what place you're thinking of where good public transportation magics away car traffic. I have never seen such a place. Tokyo has really good public transportation. It's expensive, but it runs well and has good intermodal connections. You can move seamlessly from bus to ferry to subway to bullet train. But you know what it's like on the freeways? That's right, bumper-to-bumper traffic. So then they made all their freeways double-decker. How's the traffic now? Bumper to bumper. They also have a very healthy bicycle culture, but the roads are still bumper to bumper.
In other words, you have one of the absolutely most densely populated urban cores on Earth with superlative public transportation and your scenario still doesn't exist there. It's because as good as a public transportation network is, it still doesn't meet every use-case and people will still drive from areas that are poorly served because it's the only place they can afford to live.
It's not an uniquely American experience to sit in bumper to bumper traffic, and Americans don't do it because they are stupid or fat and lazy.
Clean and reliable mass transit is a good thing, but it's not a transportation panacea.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday February 27 2020, @12:52PM (4 children)
Eight years later, that particular project is still dishing out the sugar to the right cronies and still struggling with the basics. Meanwhile it took me about a week to find my present car.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday February 28 2020, @02:31AM (3 children)
The problem with Califoria's HSR isn't just the environmental stuff. From what I remember reading about it, the whole thing was mismanaged from the start, and is also a victim of this nation's lack of good central government (i.e., the states have too much power), and its broken federal system (this is not to say that all federal systems are broken, just that this one is particularly bad; there are other countries with federal systems that work decently well, like Germany). The big thing I remember reading was about the route of the HSR. A sensible route would have connected the major cities in CA along the coast, most notably LA and SanFran. But instead of just having a route between those two, somehow politicians got involved and the route was extended way away from the coast, adding a lot of costs and travel time.
Here's a couple of interesting articles I just found, the first about CA's failed project in particular and the 2nd about HSR in the US in general:
https://www.city-journal.org/californias-high-speed-rail-project [city-journal.org]
https://www.constructiondive.com/news/high-speed-rail-in-us/422559/ [constructiondive.com]
Basically, this country just seems too politically broken to build something like this. If you want to see how to both build and operate a HSR properly, go to Japan. The Tokaido Shinkansen has been operating between Tokyo and Osaka (through Yokahama, Nagoya, and Kyoto) since the 1960s, and has never had a fatal accident (unlike Amtrak). When I was there last year, my ticket required me to wait a few minutes since I bought it last-minute, and I counted a train arriving every 7 minutes. This is about double the frequency of the subways here in DC, and that's for a long-distance, inter-city train. Moreover, much of the route goes straight through mountains (there's not a lot of open land in Japan). But this route is now too overcrowded, and 185mph is too slow, so they're now building a new 505kph (314mph) maglev train line from Tokyo to Nagoya, which will go through even more tunnels in an even more direct route (90% of the 178mi route). It's projected to be ready for commercial service for this first Tokyo-Nagoya section by 2027, and to cost 9 trillion Yen (roughly $90B), which is roughly what CA's HSR was supposed to cost initially. There's no way this country could build something on this scale for that kind of money, in that timeframe. [wikipedia.org]
Some other stupidities from those articles above:
"Some of the worst revelations in the state auditor’s report concern basic failures of contract management. The CHSRA paid contractors without inspecting their work, and contract managers’ review of the quality and cost of finished products was often so shoddy that the auditor could not even conclude whether the CHSRA’s spending was justified."
"A state audit has shown that the CHSRA knowingly incurred massive additional cost risks by starting construction prematurely; desperate to show progress and to meet a deadline for federal funds, the CHSRA began construction in the Central Valley without buying all the land it needed, or even completing negotiations with the freight railroads whose rights-of-way it planned to use."
"Regulations are also a barrier to high-speed rail's wider implementation. For starters, Harnish said the country's Buy America laws — remnants of the $50 billion General Motors Great Recession bailout — are preventing high-speed rail cars from being imported into the country, as there are currently no manufacturers producing them in the U.S. There isn't a single high-speed rail factory in the United States today, and there is no supply industry to supply those factories, even if one were to get built," Harnish said. This requirement derailed a planned China-backed high-speed system between Las Vegas and Los Angeles just last month.
But even if the Buy America rules were not in place, cars made in other countries don't meet American safety standards as set by the Federal Railroad Administration. Rail cars made in the U.S., Harnish said, are designed to protect automobile passengers in case of a crash rather than the rail passengers, the opposite of the way cars are designed in many other countries.
"Our regulations create a train that is really heavy, so it's much more likely to get into an accident," he said, "and it protects the vehicle more than it protects the people inside the train, whereas the rest of the world's focus is on keeping the train solid and absorbing the forces of the crash in order to protect the people inside the train.""
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday February 29 2020, @02:13AM (2 children)
California doesn't need a good central government in Washington, DC to build its own HSR system. It needs a competent builder and a compelling use case.
I find it interesting who is having the trouble here. The would-be HSR builders go straight to the broken system every time. They're not even trying.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Sunday March 01 2020, @03:29AM (1 child)
CA *does* need the DC government: they already send most of their tax money there. In other countries, the national government is the one that handles funding for these big projects, not some small region.
As for a compelling use-case, I can't imagine a more compelling use-case than transit between LA and SanFran, two of the largest metro areas in the US that really aren't that far apart. They're the perfect distance for a HSR: too long for a comfortable car ride, but too short for air travel to really make much sense (the plane can't even get to cruising altitude for such a short flight). For a competent builder, you have a good point; they'd be better off hiring the Japanese to build one of their systems, which is exactly what Japan has been trying to do in the northeast corridor (there was some talk during the Obama administration of Japan building a line between DC and Baltimore, to be extended to NYC). The Germans could do it too (China's maglev train is German).
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday March 01 2020, @04:03AM