I live in New York City and have no desire to move to the suburbs or countryside. It’s great here.

• I can walk to most of my needs. Several grocery stores, pharmacies, a big park, bars, restaurants. I don’t need a car.
• there’s a thriving music scene. I can go see live stuff of many genres every night if I want
• a deep dating pool. Lots of people. Lots of queer people too, if that’s your jam.
• I like there being people around. The empty streets of the suburbs feel spooky and hostile to me.
• more people means it’s easier to get group activities going. Join a soccer team. Brass band. Bird watching group. Knitting community. There’s everything. Usually more than one, in case a particular group isn’t your vibe.
• stuff is open later.

Some of the things people imagine about cities aren’t really true

• it’s not constant noise
• I typically can’t hear my neighbors
• people don’t typically interact with you on the street, but if you need help someone will usually step up
• it’s not shoulder to shoulder constantly. People seem to imagine it’s always times Square on NYE, but it’s just not.

While you’re not unseen like you might be in the countryside, no one really cares that they do see you.

Some people want “more space” but I don’t really know what for. A one bedroom apartment is fine for me. What would I do with more rooms?

If I had kids, I wouldn’t want to put them in the suburban hell cage like I had. Nothing to do. Can’t get anywhere on your own. Don’t like the few dozen kids in your school? Well that’s your whole pool of friendship options. I was always so jealous of the kids I knew that lived in the city. They could just get on the train and go to the beach, or go skating, or go to a punk show, or whatever. I had to beg my parents to drive me anywhere interesting, and usually they didn’t want to.

We really should be organizing to fight the right wing, because they’re pretty unified.

It does feel like unrest is coming. I don’t want to live in a world with car bombs in the US, but I do want all the republicans dead, so.

I’m pretty confident that most people moving around NYC are not taking a taxi on the daily. I’m guessing you don’t live here.

New York is more than like midtown manhattan. I would not describe it as “clogged with taxis”.

Also there’s like 3.5 million subway riders per day in NYC.

So I don’t know what point you’re trying to make.

Some people love their country like a child loves their parent. Perfect, the strongest smartest ever, can do no wrong. Any criticism is an attack and unacceptable.

Some people love their country like a peer. They see their strengths and their flaws, and they want them to grow and improve. Sometimes that means hard conversations and difficult changes. But they do want what’s best for them.

I think a lot of people are struggling economically, and movie theaters are kind of expensive. If labor had a bigger slice of the pie, more of them would probably spend it on movies.

I used to go to a theater that served food and drink right to your seat, and enforced silence from the crowd. It was pretty good. But that’s also like $50 a go.

Well… since a lot of people don’t read books, and our public education has kind of failed, maybe we could use television to teach people about politics.

Maybe do The Jungle so people remember why regulation is important, and maybe even go the extra mile so they learn about organization.

Something about how weekends were fought for in the us, maybe.

Trust-busting, so people can remember that mega-corps aren’t your friend.

On the other hand, some people sincerely think Homelander is the hero of The Boys, so maybe we’re doomed.

Oh good. I thought about making stickers to slap on badly parked cars, because they’re really irritating and dangerous. But my lawyer friend at the time advised against it.

Any plan that depends on “and then the common person develops discerning taste” is doomed to fail. Especially considering that even people who are usually picky might enjoy something basic from time to time

I was going to say something similar to that too. Specifically, the consolidation of power means there’s less smaller companies taking risks. You’d think a big company with Disney money could afford to be weird and experimental, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

I say this despite enjoying superhero movies

Others have touched on this but this also feels downstream from the capitalist hellscape. Most people don’t have a lot of spending money. Movies are pricey and a bad money:time ratio.

I bet if wages were up, more people would go to the theater. I don’t want to spend $40 to watch a movie and eat popcorn, but I’d consider it for $3.

Sometimes I think about the billions of dollars of wasted productivity caused by Outlook being so bad at rendering email.

Also frustrating: how end users don’t care. You can explain how Uber mistreats employees or Airbnb causes rents to rise double digit percentages, but they’ll just be like “oh but it’s convenient”.

Twitter is a Nazi bar but “it has such good memes!”

If people cared just a little more, things could be so much better.

If you think ‘voluntary’ is acceptable for anything important you want corporations to do, you have no business making decisions about real life. If it’s voluntary, they’ll only do it if it benefits them.

If those Internet duds that get mad about black people in video games spent like half that energy being mad about, like, wage theft, we’d be so much better off.

If they thought about things and came to good conclusions afterwards, they probably wouldn’t be driving this kind of car to begin with. The people who are driving it are probably not good thinkers.

That’s really bad. You might get other people sick with what you have, but if they’re immune compromised or otherwise vulnerable they could have a really bad, possibly fatal, time.

Apply it to healthcare, science, finances, and the world will become a better place, especially in healthcare.

That’s all kind of moot if we continue down the capitalist hellscape express. What good is an AI that can diagnose cancer if most people can’t afford access? What good is AI writing novels if our homes are destroyed by climate change induced disasters?

Those problems are mostly political, and AI isn’t going to fix them. The people that probably could be replaced with AI, the shitty “leaders” and such, are not going to voluntarily step down.

Ah, I always liked Three Panel Soul. Shame it doesn’t seem to update anymore.

I like being around people and arguably am extroverted, but I sure as fuck don’t want to do that at work. Don’t cross the streams, man.

I’ll go out for drinks or food or whatever after work. But if I’m supposed to be doing work stuff, I don’t want to have all the office distractions