no.

you pay co-op fees so the co-op can exist in our society in the first place. things like a space to operate the co-op out of or advertising the co-op cost money.

people still have to show up and share the labor, ya know, cooperatively, as the name implies…

you seem to think a co-op is something you just pay dues to and get to use like some sort of service. that’s not what a fucking co-op is and i guarantee everyone at your co-op who puts actual work into it fucking resents your attitude about the whole thing and probably think you’re freeloading, tbh. those people pay dues too. but if they just sat on their ass demanding things like “redoing the entire front curb” for three years straight just because they “pay dues,” guess what? there wouldn’t be a co-op to make demands of.

your dues don’t entitle you to “demands” with a co-op, they entitle you to fucking participate. and participating in the co-op isn’t all fun, it’s a lot of hard work.

EDIT: I know i’ve been pretty harsh and abrasive towards you so far but you genuinely seem to misunderstand mutualism and what a co-op fundamentally is and why it isn’t just a store with fancy leftist branding.

think: if i pay money to a restaurant i expect the food to be cooked and served to me for that money in exchange. if i paid money to go to a potluck, that payment doesn’t entitle me to demand that nancy next door makes the thing i’m bringing to the potluck for me - no, that’d be fucking absurd. in this case, your payment merely is so you can participate in the first place, you still have to go to the store and make a dish to bring to the potluck.

also… i’ll be real i’m kinda rude to you when i see you sometimes bc the thorn thing is supremely dumb and grinds my gears, i do ML/AI as a career so it’s always upsetting to see people entirely misunderstanding my job and what it is or how it works. it happens all the fucking time recently and you get tired of it. but otherwise i can tell you seem to have your heart in a decent place and probably want good things for this world - i don’t hate you and if anything i’ll be a big enough person to say that i’m sorry for anytime i’ve just come at you with rude diction or tone.

we probably agree about a lot more than you think. i hate big tech and what they’re doing right now. doesn’t mean the engineering they’re using to do it is itself evil, though. as non-condescendingly and genuinely as possible; if you’re ever interested in real ways to protect your personal data and be proactive against the big tech panopticon hmu, i know what im talking about.

i understand if you don’t trust me because i seem like im “in on it” or “one of them,” but seriously. even if that’s how you feel… sun tzu once said to know thine enemy!

stop demanding shit from your local co-op and offer to go redo the curb yourself if it’s such a big deal for you. or, if you’re not able-bodied enough to do so, then rally the resources in the community until you have friends who are. you’re not fucking helpless, jesus.

smh jesus fucking christ man i consider myself a leftist but this sort of shit is why this episode of KOTH is people’s mental image of a co-op. if you use the co-op, you’re a part of the co-op. the co-op is work and a job, it’s not fru-fru “let’s make some requests of the management” land. corporate america has given everyone the worst goddamn learned helplessness brain-rot…

also, pt. 1234456789, you using thorn doesn’t “confuse” the AIs like you think it does and frankly comes across as a weird nazi dog whistle or something initially. who tf types with archaic runes? cringe.

based and real-pilled, the both of you.

i’m excited for the future of art. we have the potential for a new age of renaissance men who master the arts, humanities, and sciences all at once.

i think a lot of people shitting on genAI don’t see engineering itself as art… and i think that’s a piss-poor, deathly sad view of this world. it’s like 2/3 of westerners weirdly resent anything “math or science coded” as they might call it. a shame. a damn shame.

don’t listen to others, “everyone can do X” is one of those technically true unfalsifiable statements people tell themselves to soothe their bad feelings about their own mediocrity.

you’re right that it isn’t just a matter of will or effort, some people are born into incorrigibly better positions to become the next Mozart or Einstein. the truth is that in this world the majority of your fate is not written by you and it never will be - and that’s okay.

maybe one day people will get off their weird “personal responsibility” high-horse, but until then…

just because i acknowledge why american civil engineers make the choices they do doesn’t mean i condone the entire situation as a whole.

of course it would be better for american infrastructure to be updated, modern, and un-frankensteined.

until that massive societal undertaking can be done to address the root causes of incredibly high pedestrian injury rate in this country as a whole, however… your local small town road engineer isn’t god and has to work with what we have. and in the united states and american locales it is statistically safer for pedestrians to have those extra feet of space between them and the cars. yeah, it’s a band-aid solution to a gashing wound of a problem, but i don’t understand why you’re acting so pretentious about it and like the only issue here is the placement of the sidewalk. the image represents a failure of american society, the engineers that made this sidewalk did the best with what they had and this design is likely the safest in the provided context.

what, do you want them to pave the sidewalks like in canada and just deal with the hundreds of extra injuries and deaths a year that will result because the rest of society hasn’t been appropriately changed as well? you wouldn’t just build american style intersections in the middle of bangkok, why the fuck would that change here??

you have demonstrated your knowledge of civil engineering by showing me you don’t even seem to understand the basic premise of designing for the environment your installation will even go in…

there’s nothing i’ve really said here that’s an assertion or opinion, it’s not really something to agree or disagree with unless you’re willing to make that disagreement on the same technical grounds the information is built on. if you want to disagree with this you’re disagreeing with the entire body of civil engineering’s idea of good practice worldwide, not just some stupid americans.

the OP picture is not bad civil engineering, it’s great civil engineering doing exactly its job in a bad society.

i’m not saying anything anti-sidewalk. not once. you’ve just kind of demonstrated to me that you don’t actually really care about the civil engineering at work here and mostly just want an excuse to shit on americans, which is honestly kind of lame because you really don’t need to invent things to shit on us right now, there’s plenty of real things to go around.

of course the grass isn’t a meaningful barrier. of course the pole isn’t a car barrier (even though in the US they often are because they’re often reinforced with steel and concrete).

i… never claimed any of those things, or even anything close to it. i actually even addressed those assertions pre-emptively by acknowledging the actual reason one might build a sidewalk this way in the US, but you seem to not really be reading anything i’m actually saying.

no idea what you’re on about, man. have a nice one.

that’s also a giant avenue with a speed limit likely anywhere from 35-50 MPH right next to the curb you want this sidewalk to run up against. sure, there’s a light there to slow people down before the intersection, you might say… and to that, i say, the unfortunate reality of living in a country where everyone has to risk their lives driving a car everyday is that the vast majority of drivers are nincompoop incompétents that you wouldn’t trust to shine your shoes, let alone with your life.

civic engineers have to consider local cultures and environments when designing even shit like sidewalks and paths that might seem dummy simple. they made the right call here for safety in an american locale. people don’t often careen their cars all the way off the road. people very often clip right up against the curb bc of low visibility, drunk driving, etc.

i mean, i’m not trans so i don’t really have a very good personal opinion here…

but it’s just as wrong to be implying to people flat-out “the sooner you start your transition the better,” too. not that that’s what you’re doing but i see that sort of rhetoric a lot online and it’s potentially damaging.

people who genuinely aren’t transgender but are exploring their identity do genuinely exist too and deserve credence and respect as much as anyone else. i see a lot of “egg” discourse in trans spaces and while i can understand it thanks to the perspective of a lot of trans people in my life, from the outside-looking-in it gives the wrong impression as a community and does more harm than good in the long run.

what and who the fuck do you think makes your “nice listening setup” possible? the goddamn fae??

jesus christ you two are dripping in pretension, patent waste of time…

lmfao, it has nothing to do with knowing quality and everything to do with knowing where your fucking food comes from and not being an upstuck, privileged brat over it.

that’s a pretty ignorant take still. electronic music is plenty capable of having “sonic details” nowadays. in fact, because of a lot of the ML advances lately, you can emulate pretty much any sound profile digitally now. this was becoming true even before people had the idea to use ML solutions to do it, too.

virtually all music you listen to that was produced after 1980 has had electronic production done to it. live shows now are actively mixed as the show happens. “well recorded music” is actually more about electronic post-production than picking just the right shangri-la-esc recording locale, now. you associate “flat” and “lacking sonic details” with electronic music for no other reason than ignorance. you’re discounting the work of thousands of engineers and billions of man hours who make those “best” live shows and “well-recorded” music you hold so dear even possible, and it’s incredibly disrespectful at best.

the quality of audio has vastly improved in the modern period largely thanks to electronic music. live and recorded music used to sound like shit, comparatively. take off your rose-colored goggles and see, man.

this is the most boomer-ass fucking take on electronic music i’ve ever heard.

hey, 1989 called and it wants its “electronic music has no soul and lacks the human element^TM” tirade back…

i’ve heard people make music on synths and computers that has more “soul” and more meaning than any “real” musicians, as you might call it. you’re denigrating people’s work not for the quality of the work itself but because you have some weird, backwards stereotype in your head preventing you from even giving it a proper chance.

they’re doing it very knowingly… they wrote an entire nearly 1000 page fucking document detailing exactly what they’re doing in excruciating detail.

the fascists == idiots trope needs to go bc that’s exactly what makes them dangerous. lots of these fuckers are quite intelligent and conniving. you should be weary.