You have not heard people complaining about cities impeding traffic, likely, because of the bubble you live in. That is the thing that makes regular people to run for the city offices. A whole lot of recent "urbanization" is not going to survive for long because of this IMHO.
Many people are not driven entirely by their economic interests, thus you can see people wearing clothes not from the Walmart bargain bin, driving cars with electric windows, and eating out instead of cooking rice and beans at home. Renters, just like home owners, want to live in the most comfortable home they can afford in general.
People who lament the lack of rentable pods and don't understand why anyone would pay more for a bigger house in a quitter neighborhood or just for a nice view exist, but you are in the minority. Thus renters are not going to vote to live in a ghetto so they could save a few hundred on rent.
There is a difference but not in the way you think. Producing an asset is just buying other assets and labor. The difference with buying an asset is that a part of the assets you bought for production is illiquid for a term of the production. Generally you can only sell unfinished construction at a huge discount during most of the stages. So producing an asset is as same as buying an asset but with a lockout period, when you cannot sell.
Nailguns are not as complicated as you think, anybody with IQ over 80 can be trained to the top proficiency in 30 mins. Same goes for other power tools, they are generally much easier to use and more productive than their human-powered equivalent. The effect of the construction industry adoption of those is in smaller crew sizes, which is also being observed in SW industry.
For the 2003 Iraq war, US managed to goad 48 countries to get involved [1]
For the 2026 Iran war, it looks more like the US was goaded itself. The current coalition consists of Israel and a dozen of Middle East countries providing bases to stage the war. If you squint, it is still looking hegemonic but nothing like what was 20 years ago.
> When did Iran attack Afghanistan? I've never heard of this and googling does not return anything.
I don't know, but the GGGP comment mentioned it, and the comment I responded too left it completely unaddressed, referring to countries with "US/Israel assets."
So Canadians bike less in winter than some Finns (not all, as the author of the video himself mentions that Oulu stands out among Finnish cities in this regard) yet those Finns make only 12% of winter trips by bike. That means the vast majority of winter trips they make (88%) are not by bike. In a small town, which is 12x6 miles judging by google maps yet has 590 miles of bike paths. If anything this proves cycling in winter is not an option for the vast majority of population.
And yes, the Dutch have their bike paths and bike without helmets, we all know that. The secret is the lack of elevation and living in crumped cities: on average a Dutch person bikes 3km per day [1].
It's utterly fascinating you wrote that and yet could not make the right conclusion.
"In a small town, which is 12x6 miles judging by google maps yet has 590 miles of bike paths."
+
"not all, as the author of the video himself mentions that Oulu stands out among Finnish cities in this regard"
The right conclusion here is that infrastructure and its maintenance is clearly the defining factor. This really shouldn't be surprising.
Consider this: how many trains do you think passed through the areas rail tracks are at before the tracks were built? Or: how many trains need to pass through an area before we can justify the cost of building train tracks there?
You simply can't point to just any winter cycling stats without first making sure the infrastructure is there. "Cycling in winter just ain't working out!" — no, you literally are not putting in the minimum of effort — "we've tried nothing and are all out of ideas" vibes.
And here's the kicker: You assumed these statistics are from a city that's a cycling paradise, but I'm willing to bet Oulu is a car-infested shithole, just like all of the Netherlands is. No, I'm not kidding in the slightest. And it's pretty much confirmed in the video the parent linked: [1].
Sure, those areas are as good as it gets at this time, but they're nothing to what things should look like, so since your conclusions are based on faulty assumptions, they are automatically invalid.
What these cycling-friendly areas are doing is slowly grinding away at the overbearing behemoth that is the already existing car infrastructure with the eventual goal of getting to at least parity. But they're still decades of work away.
The simplest example is free parking. You expect to get to take up 2m x 5m of public space with your private property for free and forever, almost anywhere in every city in the world. If anyone so much as touches it, they're strictly legally liable. That's normal though, right? Yeah...
Another, literally the snow plowing mentioned in the video: [2]. Imagine you woke up one day, got in your car to drive to work and... uh oh! There's 20cm of snow on the road! Can you imagine the uproar?
I sure can't, because 20cm of snow is normal on cycle paths in 99.9% of the world. And you're comparing those two realities with each other. So "not a lot of people cycle in winter" is actually "not a lot of people cycle through 20cm of snow". No shit.
Overall, the amount of information in the very video the parent linked you just straight up ignored makes me think you either didn't watch it, or didn't want to pay attention to a lot of the points made, like the one on population density: [3].
> yet those Finns make only 12% of winter trips by bike
Yeah, during Finnish winters. How many countries do you think this directly applies to? If 12% of Finns during their harsh winters can cycle just fine in -20C weather conditions then what does that say about the cycling stats of e.g. California?
> The secret is the lack of elevation...
I like to quip that bikes have gears for a reason and it's worth learning to use them, but these days the existence of e-bikes and e-scooters nullifies this argument entirely.
> ...and living in crumped cities: on average a Dutch person bikes 3km per day.
Yes, we're talking about cities here. So, the purpose of pointing out that biking over long distances in say, rural areas, is not viable is what exactly? We can pivot to talking about trains instead if you'd like...
Is this an AI slop or you just don't understand English?
I pointed out that a city with tons of infrastructure still has the vast majority of winter trips (and other trips too, but bike ridership drops in winter) not done on bikes and you are insisting that there is no infrastructure...
Which Aeroflot flights were hijacked and flown to West Berlin? I've never heard of this. Funny though that Windows Copilot believes this happened and says that:
"On December 12, 1978, two Soviet citizens hijacked an Aeroflot Yak‑40 on a domestic route and forced it to fly to West Berlin’s Tempelhof Airport, which was under U.S. control."
But then, when asked about any reference to this event, gives this:
"1. LOT Polish Airlines Flight 165 (30 August 1978)
A LOT Tupolev Tu‑134 was hijacked by East German citizens seeking asylum and forced to land at Tempelhof Airport in West Berlin."
I once called my Dad out about Chinese nationalists setting bombs on ships in the 60s. He reckoned his ship had come to the rescue of one where they'd found a bomb and the command crew had posed with it for a photo and it had gone off, killing or wounding all the crew capable of actually navigating the ship.
No mention on Wikipedia of these terrorist activities, nothing in the history I could find online. He was a bit of a tall tale teller so I called him out on it.
He was quite upset and ended up showing me his ship log book. With the ship name and the rough date, I actually found two news articles that had been scanned by Google scholar conforming that it had really happened.
I bet there's a lot we don't know that happened behind the iron curtain, I wouldn't doubt this just because you can't easily find any references with a quick Google.
If you want the rest of how they saved the ship, they tried to get a junior officer over in a sort of swing. If they'd have succeeded they'd have actually all been entitled to a salvage payment. But it was too rough so in the end they just got the other ship to follow them back to port.
When the pilot came out to dock the ship, he found another bomb.
West Berlin was a part of Germany under US/UK/French occupation, I have not heard anybody referring to it as being "behind the iron curtain" before. What would be the reason for the above countries to completely erase multiple hijackings of Aeroflot planes from history? While still popularizing other hijackings, to the point of making a Hollywood movie about the LOT flight I've mentioned [1]. And why the Soviet Union would have joined the West in this conspiracy, while being open about other hijackings (mostly attempted)?
The story is ridiculous on its face: why fly to West Berlin where you'd need to get another flight to get anywhere? The popular targets of hijackers in the USSR were Turkey, Israel and Sweden. "Spetsnaz" is not some organization, it's just an abbreviation of "special designation" similar to English "spec-op", multiple military and law enforcement organizations have their own specnaz as they had in the USSR. Aeroflot was not one of them though, its flights were protected by the "air militia" - a department of the Ministry of the Interior, which was also in charge of the airports security. And, judging by multiple hijacking attempts, there were rarely armed agents on the plane or they rarely decided to engage, which makes sense, since fights on a flying plane would put lives of all passengers into mortal danger. Putting TWO teams of armed soldiers on each plane is something only an LLM could hallucinate in my humble opinion.
Russia had been under sanctions since 2014 and in January of 2015 its economy was already "in tatters", as reported by Obama in the State of the Union that year. Then, in March of 2022, great Joe Biden proclaimed that he has turned "ruble into rubble". I am sure the 20 packages of sanctions since then destroyed anything that left and it's really just vacuum in place of Russian economy now... Why end the lies if you can call anyone pointing them out a Russian bot?
Any form of exaggeration is counter-productive. Russian economy is going slowly down, with the main cause being the war or Putin's need to fund it, and in a part also because of sanctions. But it can be low for decades, Russians will never go out on streets about it. But hopefully when Putin dies Russia returns to normal relations with the rest of the world and this bad epoch can end.
Saying the same thing without exaggerating doesn't make it true. Russian economy is growing, it's the rate of growth is going down. As for Russia returning to normal relations with the rest of the world: it's normal already. Russia cooperates with the majority of the world's population in China, India, Brazil etc.
Or, as Reshetnikov says, Russia's economy will continue to slow down in the first half of 2026. The prices will continue to increase, soldiers will continue to die in thousands. India announced they will not buy Russian oil, so the only major buyer will be China, driving the price even further down.
I have several friends in Russia, and I do wish them well, but it will be difficult to get back to normal as long as Putin is alive.
I am not sure where did you get this, there is no such announcement publicly available.
> but it will be difficult to get back to normal as long as Putin is alive
There won't be a return to the 1990s-2000s subservient state, which you seem to be calling "normal". Whomever comes to replace Putin is going to be way more nationalist than the guy who spent more than half of his life in the USSR, being a Party member, and working in the field of internationalist politics.
> 1990s-2000s subservient state, which you seem to be calling "normal".
No need to go that far, I visited Moscow a few times before 2014 and it was more or less fine. I'd say 2 decades behind the West but OK. What is now is a big mess with Russia being an international pariah. This is bad and also unfair to millions of people who don't care about imperialistic ambitions of Putin and just want to live their lives in peace.
Finland had an offer from the USSR to swap some land for double the size elsewhere. After the "serious military victory over ussr" it lost that land plus some more for the total of 11% of its area, including its second largest city.
>and fought with ussr in 1941-1945
That is a very hilarious way to say that Finland allied with Nazis and got crushed again.
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