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I hate cars and love walkable cities as much as the next guy in this community, but this comparison is just nonsense.
If the only thing you do and are comparing is 4 trips a month to the grocery store that is in walkable distance you are not spending $200 a month on gas and probably also less on maintenance and stuff. And if you are only doing that you also don’t need the newest and best car.
I feel like this type of bad faith analogies just hurts the message.
Thr dutch are laughing with their bikes with the massive storage box thing
Bakfiets
Buy a 5000 lbs truck to haul less groceries than cyclists do on bikes.
Let green text guy live his own definition of an ideal life, but it would be a pretty pathetic life for me if the only place I ever had to go was the grocery store.
If you live in a place where walking to the grocery store is feasible, chances are pretty good that you can get to your job and most other important places via sidewalk, bicycle or public transport.
But I like traveling. My boyfriend is in arizona, and my two favorite beaches are in California 2 hours apart from each other. I like to drive and travel. Some people prefer car-free life for its simplicity & economy, but freedom & travel define my whole life.
A month ago, I took a bus to a beach and was literally the only person at that beach. You get much greater freedom when public transit goes everywhere.
But also cars aren’t the epitome of individual transport, lightweight motorbikes are. Last week I saw a mountain and was like “there’s farms up there, I can probably ride to the top”, and then I did.
He works there too! Eat, sleep and shit at the grocery store. The civilized dream.
Walking to my grocery store and back would be an all day affair and I’d have to have help hauling everything because I’m married with two kids, so our two week grocery bill runs between $200 and $300 depending on what all we need. My closest Walmart is 25 miles away. My closest local grocery store is about 7. And there is no public transportation here.
US pilled
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All american cities were built that way until the suburbs were deliberately built to destroy that, because there was more profit in the system of private vehicles. (Along with everything else that falls on each individual in the suburbs, which also prevents us from organizing, which benefits the designers of this system)
Your problem is assuming if it can’t be done by one person, single-handedly, then it can’t be done at all. For every person that thinks like this, our capacity as a class is reduced.
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Sure, we have leftists in America; we just removed on Lemmy instead of actually stand on street corners handing out pamphlets.
lmao, speak for yourself dude. There are plenty organizations doing this work; not just handing out pamphlets but actual organizing, direct action, education, mobilization, etc; you just haven’t gone looking for them and by default you exist in an ecosystem that suppresses them from your view.
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Sure, and you let me know when your city council; or any politician at any level of government for that matter; does anything to materially improve conditions for the working class, completely unprompted by working class people organizing and making demands. And you let me know too if they are faithful to those demands and give any credit to the organizations that pushed it through, or give just enough to shut people up and present it as if it was all part of their plan the whole time.
My call out was not constructive, but it wasn’t intended to be. You can always emigrate.
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Germany is going to turn you away because they’re also becoming rightwing authoritarian, not because they think US immigrants are too fascist.
Also, they’re too scared of the US to officially grant US citizens asylum, even if they did want to do that.
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AFAIK the other EU/EFTA countries aren’t much better when it comes to rightwing authoritarianism. Even the ones that currently have center-left governments usually have a strong far right opposition waiting for next election, and a lot of the time the center-left governments are already enacting rightwing authoritarian policies (see UK).
But fair, Germany should know better given its history, but instead it just made them more vulnerable to Israeli propaganda and blackmail.
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Rough!
I have 3 large supermarkets in less than a 10 minute walk and another small one that would be “walking from the parking lot” distance.
We also have a local sourdough bakery and a sort of farmers market pickup point within walking distance.
We must have grown up on the same street. Lol
You could take a bus to Costco…
2 hours, two trains (the first being 21 miles in the wrong direction) and 4 busses for my closest one
Ah yes, I love when my city’s shitty public transit also takes me completely out of the way of my destination
Where i live that makes a 10 minute drive 50 minutes 😭
Yeah same, if not longer. I just like Costco, that’s all lol
buses tend to question people carrying more than a backpack full of stuff
Where? I’ve lugged 3-4 bags onto public transit without issue beyond feeling like a jackass.
Lol I’ve seen contractors and day laborers get on the bus with pressure washers, tool boxes, etc. And don’t even get me started about what the fent fiends bring on the bus
Forgot the gym membership. With a car you can drive to the gym to walk on a treadmill.
Here on Copenhagen:
- Buy a bicycle for 4000 dkk.
- Bike less than 1 km to arrive at Netto/Rema 1000/lidl/Coop 365.
- Buy a kanelsnegle for 8 dkk.
- bike gone.
Only in Nørrebro.
Kanelsnegle doesn’t even sound like a real word.
Edit: It’s a cinnamon bun.
Kanelsnegle is the plural of kanelsnegl, so I understand the confusion. It should’ve been a kanelsnegl.
It literally translates to cinnamon snail.
But as I know the Danish, you probably pronounce it more like Ka
nelsnegle
This is assuming you live in a walkable town or neighborhood. I remember a reddit post (can’t find it anymore) of a guy trying to walk less than 2 miles to an appointment in Orlando. He followed Google Maps directions down the shoulder of a highway that led to a dead-end, backtracked, tried again, and finally made almost all the way to his destination, which was on the opposite side of a 6-lane highway Google wanted him to cross.
I’ve only ever visited the theme parks in Orlando, but I experienced one intersection I had to share with cars. I spent every walk sign waiting for cars making a turn to yield. Even though I had the right of way, literally none of them did, until I finally had to run across the street because the cars at the red light, who could see I was 1/3 through the intersection, floored it the second their light turned green. Sure, fuck all of those car-brained drivers who refuse to yield to pedestrians, but also fuck that city for not fining drivers for shitty behavior, or at least changing their traffic lights so all cars have red lights when pedestrians have the walk sign.
Anyway, point is, personal choices are important, but they can’t overcome the systemic issues created by car culture without collective action. And Orlando sucks ass.
Congrate, your first sentence figured it out.
Maybe you just got here but bud I’m getting so tired of people assuming that people like the person in the post aren’t also the same people screaming for better infrastructure so we can ditch this high dependence on cars. We know that not everywhere is like this and that’s why we also have a MOUNTAIN of examples of even the shittiest places in the US, but also all over the world, doing things to build better for not that much money.
The entire point of the post is to show that people who fight against that change don’t have much of an argument. We know how things are but they don’t need to be like forever. Nearly every city used to be a 15min city before the car and then 50-100 years ago we fucked it all up(because of bribes from car manufacturers) and kept that shit train rolling.
Yeah, that would be a great point if the entire post wasn’t a 4Channer framing this as personal choices and not systemic ones. The dudes not talking about how the car industry destroyed railcars, he’s dunking on people who drive to the grocery store, and the implication is clearly, “everyone can and should do this,” which is bullshit.
Except there are places where that’s true. There are also people in places with the same mindset who buy trucks for twice the price of a reasonable hatchback and act like the extra $30k+ is less than occasionally renting a U-Haul.
You not being smart doesn’t diminish my point.
Except there are places where that’s true. There are also people in places with the same mindset who buy trucks for twice the price of a reasonable hatchback…
Yeah, I never said this wasn’t true, but again, none of that is in the fucking post. The dude’s not making a nuanced point about people who live in walkable areas but buy large trucks over sensible hatchbacks. He’s making a sweeping statement about how people who don’t walk to the grocery store are idiots, but America has the walking score of a developing nation; if you live somewhere where you can walk to the grocery store, you’re breathing rarefied air, and calling other people stupid for driving is entitled.
Like, what are you so pissy about? That I was responding to the content of the post instead of the points you assume the 4Channer would make, but didn’t? OK buddy, in the future, I’ll try to infer what you presume the OP’s hidden beliefs are and tailor my comment to that. Seems reasonable.
So you get to have all the nuance but they don’t? Ok, buddy.
The fuck are you talking about? Yeah, they don’t get to have the nuance; it’s not in the fucking post. It’s a pithy 50ish words about how they’re so much smarter than other people for not driving to the grocery store. I pointed out the reality is more nuanced than that for most people, and your whole response has been, “yeah, well, they probably know that, so why don’t just act like their response is nuanced?” To which the answer continues to be, “Because that’s not what they fucking said, are you high?”
Wahh wahh oh my god, dude. Congrats, you showed up and started running your mouth like you had access to special information and were teaching people that there are places without good infrastructure. We know this already, and I even showed you other extremely related examples.
Yes, you’re a very special smarty-pants thank you for this wonderful and definitely new take that will totally help and isn’t at all the same old tired shit that constantly bloats the discussion.
The whole “turn right on red” in north America baffles me as a European.
Oh, this wasn’t even a right on red. The green light for cars was lined up with the walk sign for pedestrians going rhe same direction. In a situation like that, when a car with a green light needs to turn through the crosswalk, they are supposed to yield to any pedestrian crossing at that time, but apparently the people of Orlando have so much car entitlement that they don’t even slow down when a pedestrian is standing in the middle of the crosswalk trying to complete a legal crossing.
American here, this is just as stupid and dangerous as it sounds. The idea is that it’s very easy to check for pedestrians before turning but literally almost no one even looks. Even if the crosswalk light is lit they don’t notice and just plow right through.
Id argue the idea is that its easy to check for cars as you only need 1 lane of traffic. Traffic engineers don’t really consider the needs and safety of pedestrians, they just do the bare minimum to accommodate them. And the engineers that do try to care about pedestrians are told things like “well thats not how its done in this book from the 50s” or “that would reduce our throughput by 5% meaning we’d need to invest in another car lane”
In NYC it isn’t allowed and now I think it’s insane we allow it everywhere else.
I know this is fuckcars, but I personally I think it makes sense. Our brothers in Lithuania are also doing it (tbf there needs to be a specific sign next to the light saying you can do it).
The less people spend waiting on pointless traffic lights, the faster cars get to their destination, the less cars there are on the street. At least that’s how I view it.
All of this is of course keeping in mind to always yield to a pedestrian.
it works great if you just break check the fucker that’s trying to turn, if you lack the confidence it works less well
here it’s more like this:
don’t own a car no store in reach ??? starve
I lived next to a little natural grocery for a few years. Prices were about 20% higher than the ordinary grocery and maybe double what I’d pay at Costco. At first I was resistant because they seemed to be overcharging so much. Overtime I talked to the employees and realized the savings I made on time and not needing a car more than made up for the higher price. Plus they had to keep prices high because shoplifting was very common.
I started figuring my time and car expenses into future shopping trips and now I don’t mind paying a bit more for the local co-op.
these days $45 at costco is like two things, and $50 at a regular grocery store is six things.
but the analogy still holds that walking is much cheaper.
I just spent about 150 my last trip and I’m set for a month. No oj though, it’s expensive there, too. I could have gotten more but I held back in case I don’t get back for a minute.
ETA: I don’t have a car and the walk would take days.
Yeah I’ve been price comparing by unit volume between aldi and BJs cause my dad put me on his BJs membership-
Almost nothing is cheaper at BJs. Rice is. A whole bundle of coconut milk is cheaper.
But like… Unless you’re already buying brand names it’s frankly a bad deal 😅 and even then I’m curious how much better than Walmart it might actually be
BJs offered us a deal so we took it.
Almost every product there (all name brand) costs the same as buying the generic brand at Walmart. Cereal, yogurt, Mac and cheese, toilet paper, I have compared all of it while we have the one year membership.
Sure, I get name brand, and Jif is better than great value, but I have saved nothing. Won’t be renewing when they actually expect me to pay the membership. Sam’s club beats Walmart by a little bit but not a lot, and I dont have a Costco or Aldi’s near me. How does Aldi’s stack compared to BJ’s?
Thank you for sharing, that’s super helpful!
Aldi seem almost always cheaper or the same price compared to BJ’s, as everything at Aldi with a small number of exceptions is store brand. Even buying in smaller quantities many things are cheaper at Aldi, by at least a little bit.
The exceptions I saw were things like rice since you can buy store brand jasmine at BJs in a huge 25 lb bag, which if I remember is a good deal compared to Aldi (obs ignoring membership cause you can’t really factor that in). Basmatti was even steeper of a deal I think, since Aldi sells less basmatti and so only sells a smaller bag and for a bit more money. And I do remember dry black beans being cheaper but I believe that was even cheaper at Walmart. That might also be true for canned coconut milk which I think was cheaper at BJs, but it might be a bit cheaper still at Walmart, I don’t recall.
Milk has weirdly been way cheaper for me at target in my area, than basically anywhere else, which feels very strange, but it’s close to me and I’m usually there to pick up perscriptions anyway so it’s not too inconvenient to get only milk there.
It’s been a bit since I did price comparisons though, and my memory is exceptionally bad 😅. I almost always shop at Aldi so I don’t compare them ongoing, I just went through the process of checking a bunch of things recently.
Shopping at Aldi I would generally expect you to save a bit of money vs BJ’s unless you’re buying stuff you can buy at BJs in much larger volume.
Plus Aldi doesn’t make political campaign donations, and as such isn’t using my money to purchase my political institutions away from me, which I very much appreciate
Cool thanks for the info.
Also didn’t know bjs was donating lije that. Terrible.
Almost all companies do unfortunately, Aldi is a somewhat rare exception
You can look up what companies do or don’t, and which parties they support with the Goods Unite Us app or website, it’s handy :)
There was a comm here on lemmy where people posted screenshots of the apps overview for various companies, which was neat, but I haven’t seen any posts from it for a while
Whoa, you can get a BJ membership? I thought it was something you always had to pay for each time.
Can you shop at BJs without a membership…?
Its a wholesale club, like sams and Costco. But yes, you can get a membership, I think that’s the default/standard way of shopping there, shopping without a membership I think would be an exception to the norm
Is there like an option to pay an added fee on top of whatever you’re buying to be able to shop without membership? If so, how much is it?
And is the membership card called “Happy Endings” or something?
Once again a post about zoning laws instead of cars.
“I would like to live in a carless society”
v
“I would like somewhere to park my car”
is a real dichotomy that spans both issues.
A great example is my own hometown of Houston, a city famous for its lack of zoning.
By 1978, the city had gutted itself in order to clear space for more parking. It took decades to reverse that mistake and rebuild the interior of the city. A big part of that was the introduction of (still very modest) bus and light rail.
Still a ton of parking spots I see, could’ve been replaced by bicycle racks, apartments, and parks.
The parking spots could have gone underground.
There’s a series of underground shops and restaurants in downtown Houston, connected by tunnels. Great way for someone working downtown to walk to lunch when it’s too hot to go outside.
There is some underground parking on the edge of downtown.
With that said, it’s actually very difficult to build underground in Houston because of the high water table.
could’ve been replaced by bicycle racks, apartments, and parks.
We did actually have a ton of public racks and even rental bikes installed under Mayors White and Parker. Turner kinda neglected them. Then, over the last year, John Whitmire tore them all out again.
I’ll also note that the Main Street light rail has created a boom in apartment housing along its length. South of downtown was basically a slum until the rail was installed. Now it’s a bunch of 8+ story apartments and a few high rises with shopping/restaurants on the first floor.
Then I hope Whitmire gets ran over by a car. Hope he plucks the sour fruits of his own policies.
Reading more on him and he sounds like an ass. No AC for inmates in hot summers… then he’s a criminal himself for making people die. Maybe he should undergo a lack of AC himself.
He also seems awfully willing to lock people up, instead of actually making the situation better by ending his own life.
Living within 1 kilometer walking distance of a grocery store is amazing. Instead of expensive fast food I can get comparatively inexpensive deli food. And if I want to be frugal and cook meals myself, cheap beans, rice, fresh meat, dairy, and produce are all available. Plus, I get a nice daily walk instead of checks notes from a previous life drive twenty minutes to the gym each day to walk on a treadmill.
I got a rice cooker recently, great investment. I pan fry up whatever, some protein and vegetables, I’ve got a few good recipes going. With rice. I’ve been eating healthier and way cheaper. Tonight was chicken, green beans, and various seasonings. Was delicious af and cost me like 1.50$, if that.
The way to go IMO. I’m on a 20-year streak in not having a car. When I pick a new place to live, walkability to a good grocery store is one of my primary considerations. I only shop for one, so lugging groceries is no big deal, and I enjoy the extra exercise.
Throughout my life I’ve watched people spend all their money on conveniences and degrade physically, mentally, and financially as a result. Why not situate yourself for long-term success from the get-go? I wish more people were conscientious of the energy balance required to sustain a healthy life and best aligns with the environmental impacts we’ve wrought upon ourselves.
I just broke my 12 year streak of not having a car. I took a job as a city bus driver. Whaddya do when you’re supposed to run the first bus out of the garage and it’s too snowy to bike? I feel like a failure and a jerk. But I am trying to move close to the depot, so hopefully I could walk.
I think if anyone gets a pass for needing a car to get to work it’s the early working bus driver, haha.
That sucks, but we gotta do what we gotta do. I don’t begrudge anyone for adapting to the environments society has established. Sticking to ideals is a rarity when things are structured to push us toward consumptive lifestyles. So, I’d not feel like a jerk; heck, just having a modicum of awareness is a step in the right direction.
do grocery stores where you live not have frozen food? that’s the ideal in my book: perfectly decent quality and you just have to heat it.
This is the best one i’ve tried, it’s literally just frozen veggies, precooked pasta, chicken, and sauce. Healthy as fuck while tasting great and taking 0 effort to prepare.Healthy as fuck is a bit of a stretch for industrially-processed food grown with pesticides. It’s better than fast food.
Come off it, chopping veggies up and freezing them (‘industrial processing’) doesn’t make them unhealthy. There’s also not a way to guarantee that your food has no pesticides (it’s permissible under the organic label in some conditions) unless you grow it yourself.
Hell studies show that frozen and then cooked food is the easiest to absorb nutrients from so in a sense it’s even healthier.
Oh boy, if you really think these are healthly I have bad news for you… Sure there are worst options around, but that still counts as processed food on my book!
so, respectfully, what the absolute fuck are you on about? do you only eat roots you dig up in the forest?
The secret is cooking yourself.
The pasta you sent, have a Nova Score of 4, which means ultra processed food:
https://world.openfoodfacts.org/product/7310500184180/tagliatelle-chicken-findusNutri-Score A
Very good nutritional quality
The science on “ultra-processed” foods is scattered because even dietitians can’t agree on what an ultra-processed food is, or agree on what exactly it is that’s so harmful about it. If it’s high sugar and salt then the processing has fuck all to do with it. If it’s specific preservatives then processing has fuck all to do with it, it’s those specific things that are bad.
Until it’s something other than vibes-based, it’s a bad idea to exclude affordable vegetables or fruit from your diet solely because they’re processed.
For me its about what you said: processed is adding stuff to preserve and “improve”. Nothing bad about frozen basic ingredients that arent cooked. Also in my country fresh veggies and fruit are cheaper than frozen ones.
For me its about what you said: processed is adding stuff to preserve and “improve”.
Which is why it’s a bad, wobbly standard to use. Lactofermented vegetables are incredibly healthy for the gut microbiome, but would fall under this processed label. Processing isn’t inherently bad, and neither is preserving.
so clearly you didn’t read your own link, because that is literally based on the fact that it contains glucose, that is the ONLY reason it’s classed as ultra-processed.
you cannot seriously look at this and conclude it’s processed, there’s no way in hell you’re here in good faith and i very much suspect your upvotes are fake.
i very much suspect your upvotes are fake.
k
Maybe its a cultural thing, but mostly fresh vegetables, fresh fruits, fresh meat, fresh fish… I think you got the idea. Frozen veggies are good too (if not pre-cooked or seasoned).
Yeah, but these frozen meals aren’t much more processed than frozen veggies, at least the good ones. Can be a little pricey for what you get though.
I think you’re right about that. They’re just frozen veggies mixed together with chopped meat. The main thing I’d look at is how much salt they dump into these things.
Spices wouldn’t be fresh, either, but that’s more of a taste issue than health issue.
I live less than a kilometer from a grocery store but it takes me a half hour to walk there because I’m in a subdivision and there’s no direct sidewalk.
I used to be able to cut across yards but somebody put up a fence to stop that.
The gym is such a waste of energy. With proper form you can get that workout doing useful things. For charity if nothing else.
Buy used 110cc motorbike for 250-300USD
pay 30USD a month for fuel because 160mpg
flop over in the middle of traffic because the 25kg bag of rice you’re balancing between your legs shifts
My pedal bike can equip pannier carriers - doesn’t something like that exist for motorbikes too?
Yes, but the rack is already being used to hold the rest of your groceries, family of 5, dog, refrigerator, and all the other things car owners claim they absolutely need a car to transport.
Buy used 110cc motorbike for 250-300USD for faster commute
pay 30USD a month for fuel because 160mpg
get groceries delivered
take tram if it rains or if you feel like it
Which customer buys 25 kg of rice at once? Literally nobody.
Skill issue, regardless.
Hey there, Rice-a-Roni - there are 8 billion other people in the world, so it’s pretty bold and exceedingly stupid to speak for all of them. In fact, I’ll bet there are literally a billion people in the world that buy their rice 25kg at a time. I know it is very common in Hawaiian households, I’d guess that there are more Hawaiians buying 25kg bags of rice than there are Hawaiians buying 1 kg bags.
Dunno why you needed to say ‘Rice-a-Roni’, but I think it’s not stupid to be baffled at buying 25 kg of rice.
Most I see is 1 kg bags.
Right - and my point was that the whole rest of the world doesn’t see or experience life in precisely the same way that you do. It is only stupid to make broad generalizations about the whole rest of the world from your tiny little corner of it.
The same also applies in your way, though. Realise that not everybody buys 25 kg bags. Sure, I learnt something new today. But I think it’s good to keep in mind that the world is a nice varied place where not everyone does the same.
You’re the one that literally said “Which customer buys 25 kg of rice at once? Literally nobody.”
Your attempts at backtracking don’t work when the only thing someone needs to do to refute what you’re saying is looking up.
Extremely common in Asia.
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That’s what the average SEA eats in like 2 days. Its the big bags at any grocery store
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Correct. I have not been riding motorbikes since before I could walk, so I cannot do what the locals do. Yet.
That’s what the average SEA eats in like 2 days. Its the big bags at any grocery store
No the fuck we don’t. A 5kg bag lasts an entire week for a family of four adults
Slight exaggeration for comedic effect.
Slight
I’ll say… 25kg in two days is over 42k calories per day. Either south east Asians are literal human machines that do the hardest physical work imaginable or they’re all fatter than OP’s mom.
I slightly exaggerated how slightly I exaggerated, for comedic effect.
The average south east Asian eats that much? I find that hard to believe. Maybe you mean 2.5 kg? Then I could see that being plausible for a household of four, spread over a week.
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Big sack cheap. And motorcycle lifestyle is a sea thing.
That’s roughly two bags at Costco. Way more than my wife and I would buy for just us, but I could see larger families reasonably buying that much.
I am looking for places to buy 50 lb sacks of people grain, especially barley. Feed stores sell them but idk what chemicals they use. 20 bucks at feed stores for ag.
lb
You and your funny units
What I hate is stores that give the price per unit in ounces. Especially when it is in pounds elsewhere, like the more expensive one the price will be in ounces so then you have to multiply times 16 in the store in your head it is super annoying.
Where I am they also use different units. Could be could be 100g, could be 1kg. But since, well, you know, the metric system, all you have to do is move the decimal point to multiply or divide by 10.
Is that ounces as in mass or ounces as in volume? Or is it both.
Haha, either liquid or dry ounces, fun to do the dividing into 128 for gallons too but 16 is a pint and 32 a quart and 4 to a gallon so it is easier unless the chiseling companies downsized their products to 12 oz from 16.
I buy 5 or 10kg bags of rice at once and i live alone.
