*Don't actually drive fast unless you're a racer on a racing track
this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2024
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Its a scientific fact that I can’t drive 55.
I used to have a "driving CD." It started with that song, and the second track was "Highway to Hell," followed by "Highway to the Danger Zone."
Surprisingly, while I do have 3 racing licenses, I have never gotten a speeding ticket.
Just drive fast in racing games, it is surprisingly not just safer but way more affordable than buying a sports car and paying for tires and getting speeding tickets…
Even a decent driving rig can be had for under a grand. Way cheaper than almost any car.
It's also convenient that you can just press the reset button when you inevitably launch your video game vehicle into a fence at high speed. A single crash in a real car is real expensive when you gotta fix the parts of the track you just wrecked too. See: nurburgring barrier repair costs + towing
You can also still experience that strange calm people love that comes from driving at your limit, where there is zero room for anything other than your presence in the moment reacting to the road, your vehicle and what is coming around the corner…..
But with the throttle screwed on there is only the barest margin, and no room at all for mistakes. It has to be done right. . . and that's when the strange music starts, when you stretch your luck so far that fear becomes exhilaration and vibrates along your arms. You can barely see at a hundred; the tears blow back so fast that they vaporize before they get to your ears. The only sounds are wind and a dull roar floating back from the mufflers. You watch the white line and try to lean with it. . . howling through a turn to the right, then to the left and down the long hill to Pacifica. . . letting off now, watching for cops, but only until the next dark stretch and another few seconds on the edge. . . The Edge. . . There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over. The others -- the living -- are those who pushed their control as far as they felt they could handle it, and then pulled back, or slowed down, or did whatever they had to when it came time to choose between Now and Later.
But the edge is still Out there. Or maybe it's In. The association of motorcycles with LSD is no accident of publicity. They are both a means to an end, to the place of definitions.
The above is a quote from Hunter S. Thompson on this odd but enchanting species of calm that he gets from driving his motorcycle too fast and though I am sure it is much more intense to do in real life, the fact is if you play a good driving game you absolutely go to a similar place in your mind. You face the same mental situation of the road coming at you so fast that all you can do is exist in the moment, except instead of the edge-y boy antics of almost killing yourself or someone else from driving like an asshole (and also burning fossil fuels for no reason, though with a motorcycle that point is moot they get such good gas mileage usually) you are playing a video game where a spectacular crash is part of the fun (looking at you Flat Out, Burnout and Wreckfest :P ).
That mental state that people who love driving fast crave is the same mental state gamers who like playing competitive games pursue (you ever see someone play quake multiplayer competitively? It is the same exact flow state even when it isn’t a racing game), it’s just one hobby puts human lives at risk and the other is a fun time no matter what.
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Dont worry, I keep it under 140 mph. And I only speed when I have a spotter.
Or you're bootlegging.
Also try not to hit the wall at 180mph.
Damn that’s some solid advice, thanks! I’ll hear it for ~250
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~$ echo ”for i in $FASCISTS; do /usr/bin/punchInTheFace i; done” > fa.sh
~$ sudo bash fa.sh
Bottom center should be "make a sexbot out of some woman you saw online"
👂?????
Leah Brahms
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Who's the bash the fash guy?
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Picking up wild animals which would much prefer to be left alone, so you can get your picture taken, is not loving them. Keeping animals in cages so you can have something on your shelf to look at, is not loving them. Most animal ownership is possession for the possessive, masquerading as caring.
I feel like I've seen this take a lot more in the past ~5 years than I did before. Not just that zoos are unethical, but that any animal ownership (or really interaction of any kind) is inherently abusive.
You're certainly entitled to feel however you want about animal ownership and act accordingly, but personally I feel like it's honestly kind of a weird take?
Humans are obviously not the only species that develops symbiolotic relationships with other organisms (in a diversity of power dynamics), but we are also not the only species who take on specifcally ownership or shepherd roles for other species (like spiders with frog pets, or fungus farmer ants, among many many other examples). Thus, the ontological position this opinion must operate from is that humans are somehow distinct and superior to nature, such that we have separate and unique responsibilities not to engage in mutualistic ownership with other organisms, on the basis that like, we're somehow "above" that? That we're so enlightened and knowledgeable that we exist in a category of responsibility distinct from all other organisms?
Of course, a lot of our relationships to animals can be described as harmful in other terms without needing to take this specific stance. Like, our relationship with many agricultural animals can be critiqued through the harm done to their individual well-beings and through the harm their propagation does to the global environment. Or irresponsible pet owners can be critiqued for how their unwillingness to control the reproduction or predatory abilities of their pets can harm local ecosystems, like an introduced invasive species might. Or valid criticisms of many zoos when they prioritize profits over animal welfare, rehabilitation, ecosystem restoration, and education. Or that the general public picking up wild animals is a problem because it disturbs their fragile ecosystems and traumatizes them, especially when done on the large scale of human populations (but distinctly not for ecological study, wild animal healthcare, education, etc., like Steve Irwin et. al) But none of these are specific criques of the mutualistic ownership relationship itself as much as problems with the way we handle that relationship.
Idk, I'm interested to understand your opinion, especially if it has detail I'm missing beyond "we shouldn't have pets, zoos, or farms because we're better than that"!
Behold, an abuse victim! /s
I know you meant this as a funny reply, and I’m sure your cat is very well taken care of.
…but I want to point out that the argument against pet ownership is more about the millions of animals in puppy mills, or on the streets, or abused by breeders, or bred with genetic issues for the sake of purity of breed. Your cat was extremely lucky to be adopted by you. But so many other cats are not. So many other cats die in shelters, or on the streets, or from euthanization, or in breeding mills. We create and fund the system that brings the unlucky cats into existence, for our own benefit.
The argument is that all those millions of cats and dogs that suffer and die so we can choose a few of them to pamper as pets, is not worth it.
Your cat isn’t an abuse victim. But all the other cats who weren’t so lucky, are.
Plus animal abuse is incredibly hard to discover: because animals cannot go to the police and report their owners. Lol. They don’t have voices. That makes them incredibly easy victims to exploit. Humans as a whole are really a hard group of people to trust with such vulnerable creatures, ngl.
I’m very fun at parties, I know.
the photos I take of my cat don't help the case
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My most charitable interpretation of you bringing up that spiders have frog pets is that, because pet-ownership is a thing that other animals do, it’s okay/natural for humans to do them too. And if we argue that it’s not okay for humans to do it, it must be because we think humans are inherently superior or something. Hopefully it’s accurate because that’s how I understood you.
This leads me to say:
The difference between us and other species that develop ownership/shepherding/symbiotic/whatever relationships with other creatures, is that humans can conceptualize morality. (inb4 the “morality is subjective” line: yeah, it is. But if you agree that suffering, torture, etc is a bad thing then we’re on the same page here axiomatically.) Unlike spiders, or farmer ants, we understand that causing other creatures to suffer is wrong. Because we are smart enough to understand, we have the responsibility to act in accordance with that understanding.
Another point is: male lions kill the cubs of other lions. Dolphins rape each other. Rats eat their own babies sometimes. Cats play with the mice they catch before killing them. The natural world is full of animals doing horrific things to each other. If you are going to say that it’s okay for humans to keep pets (or whatever) because animals do it/it’s natural… why can’t humans kill and eat their own babies? It’s because we know causing others to suffer is wrong, and therefore hold ourselves to a higher standard. We ARE superior: in the sense that we’ve invented philosophy and morality. That’s not a weird take. And it’s not a take that’s incompatible with this argument.
Similarly, we don’t hold our own children accountable for their crimes to the same degree we hold adults. If a kid steals money, or beats someone up, our society doesn’t punish them the same way as an adult. Because we understand that their brains have not yet developed the capacity to fully understand empathy. To truly be responsible for the suffering they cause.
Animals are, a lot like human children in that sense.
Therefore, we totally can “exist in a category of responsibility distinct from all other organisms.” We literally already do when it comes to things like murder, rape, and torture. Why not add distressing and frightening animals to take photos with them, or keeping them in cages, or what have you; to the list of things we should take responsibility for?
I hope that helps clear up the confusion for you.
On "mutual ownership". I'm not convinced that anything, whose agency has been removed through confinement, can be said to have equal weight in the decision to be owned, and thus be claimed "mutual".
You give evidence of our like behavior with other animals, and claim that my position MUST operate from the belief of our "difference and superiority".
Consider the inverse: Humans are not distinct and not superior. Therefor, all animal behavior is acceptable human behavior, for we are not but animals.
Its not exactly the society most would want to live in. People can and do use animal nature as means to justify horrible behavior. "Its a dog eat dog world, the villain proclaims", as if the only surprise is that their victim would have expected it any other way. Mantises devour the male after copulation. Why then do you demand I not do the same?! Pointing to the way things are in nature as a means to find justification for human behavior doesn't seem to lead to a useful foundation for ethics; maybe it even to to its dissolution.
So yes, I think we're different. I think that in many ways our difference comes from our responsibility of stewardship. Because we do have knowledge, agency and control to the degree that we can destroy or restore environments.
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