I liked that song, it was one of my favourite songs of theirs to sing… Now every damn time that chorus comes on, this is how I’m gonna see the lyrics in my head… Cheers mate.
Crazy idea : let’s use churches to accommodate homeless people since you can find them fucking everywhere, surely they’re not used after 8pm, and that’s basically the point of them in the first place, no?
Then they should provide access to toilets. Where are they going when they want to take a piss? Also isn’t helping the poor in anyway they can a charitable act revered by their religion?
Every major religion reveres helping the needy, for example in Islam, zakat, giving money for charity (if you have enough wealth to afford it) is a requirement.
I get the idea and I think it’s wonderful but have you ever been to a homeless shelter? They need staff to break up fights, protect women, clean up the mess made by drug users and alcoholics, and all sorts of other difficult things your average old lady pew duster isn’t capable of dealing with.
Most churches can’t keep the lights on. For every LDS or RCC there are a thousand places on the verge of bankruptcy. Every atheist I know makes a big deal about the big players but not one has shown me the raw the numbers that proves that if they paid corporate tax rates it would be mean more than a few more cruise missiles used to blow up weddings in Pakistan.
Government can’t do that job either. We already have homeless shelters. I don’t know why people talk like this is a new idea. We have homeless shelters in our society. They’re government funded in some cases, or church-funded in other cases.
We still have homeless people. We do provide free shelter and food to people. And we still have people sleeping on the street.
we need places to accommodate them. like how restaurants used to have smoking sections. there should also be access to drug abuse healthcare with no mandate and allow long term residency in shelters, including the ability to receive mail and use it as a legal address for ID documents and employment. if we did all that we could see a fraction of them, perhaps even a large fraction, eventually getting back on their feet and out of the system.
We’ve been doing extended openings 0700-2200 for several years in Oslo. As do libraries all over Norway. You need to use your library-card or app to open the door, so there’s some control (data lives for 7 days). We have very little problems - maybe there’s some homeless there but they are as welcome as anyone else. We do have security guard, or one that strays between branches. And yes we do have homeless people in Oslo.
Go Norway! I whish we had a library law here in Germany like you do - our places are underfunded and understaffed… a lot of my colleagues are very passionate about their jobs, we could do so much more with our local libraries.
A lot of Norwegian libraries are underfunded as well.
In Oslo public library (Deichman) we’ve been given more money the last 10 years than previously. And we have shown what that money can do.
During Covid shutdown the Library was what kept open except for two weeks - that really showed what kind of back-bone we were for Oslo.
It was very tough on our frontline workers as we were swamped with students ignoring any precautions. Working in libraries are still low paying compared to the education
we know the solution. it's building a shit ton of cheap housing and handing it out to people and charging them 30% of the income, not counting the first $20k. it's just rich psychopaths who run the country would rather profit off of prison and let them die instead.
Same. The homeless population has unfortunately made libraries where I live pretty dangerous places and I can only imagine how much worse that would be if they were open all night. My city doesn’t seem to care at all about people shooting up and ruining public spaces.
We should absolutely have safe housing for homeless people with UBI and transitional programs. We should also offer mental health and substance abuse treatment – and in extreme cases humane involuntary treatment for people that are a danger to themselves and others.
And none of this should take place in shared, public spaces for the safety and dignity of everyone involved. This is a failure of society and needs to be treated as such. Placing the burden on individuals isn’t the solution. Expecting public spaces designed for other uses to pick the slack of a broken societal safety net is insane.
You can’t have humane involuntary treatment. In cases where somebody is threatening someone else, I would say involuntary treatment is called for. But we shouldn’t decide when its okay to imprison people for exercising their bodily autonomy.
Yeah, nothing against that idea in theory, but in practice, places like that end up full of urine-soaked drug addicts that are high on meth, making it an extremely unattractive place to hang out and socialize.
Denver’s Union station downtown is a perfect example. It’s a “public private” space that tries to stay open late on weekends to cater to the crowd but ends up being a hellhole.
places like that end up full of urine-soaked drug addicts that are high on meth,
You’re putting all homeless into a box. Not all are homeless because they are addicts. Some are legitimately forgotten by the system and for different reasons lost job/domestic abuse/no fam/disability/health issue/financial issues. And even at that : addiction is also a symptom of a shit society. Not the same issue as what causes other homeless people but there can be more than one problem in a poorly designed system that comes up with the same result of being homeless.
Society built on capitalistic ideals for more than just survival as a goal has an extremely narrow scope for who it is interested in serving.
also more homeless drug addicts started after they became homeless, not before. being on the street like that deteriorates your mental health. the longer we let this go unaddressed the worse it gets.
You’re putting all homeless into a box. Not all are homeless because they are addicts.
Are we not allowed to make generalizations at all? I promise you if you open a homeless center in any major city you will find out very quick that psycho behavior comes with homeless people at scale. It’s a guarantee that you will have meth addicts ruin whatever infrastructure you provide them. It doesn’t matter that there are some good homeless people when you are almost guaranteed to face the bad ones.
With the exception of your first sentence (me putting homeless people in a box, which I’m not sure if you’re making a pun or not), all of other the things you said are correct and I agree with. The things you said and the things I said are not mutually exclusive.
In other words, not all homeless are the same, not all are drug addicts, and society should do better at preventing homelessness, and you might still have a late-night library filled with urine-soaked drug addicts.
Sandler had quite a run there for a while. Happy Gilmore, Billy Madison, The Waterboy, Big Daddy, and Little Nicky were all big hits and all have their fans! I don’t care for BD much, and kind of consider LN his last really funny movie. The other 3 though I think are comedy classics that hold up pretty well. Sandler is so stupid, slapstick, and offensive that they transcend themselves somehow (a few particularly bad jokes here and there aside).
I think the ones he did with Drew Barrymore (Wedding Singer, 50 First Dates, Blended less so) were pretty good. I still regularly sing, “Somebody kill me please,” to myself
I have legitimately had this photo saved for years and have always been confused. You just solved a major mystery for me. Fucking thank you. That being said… calling a movie from 2000 ‘old’ immediately made me age 30 years and now I have osteoporosis.
What baffles me is if you were really that confused or curious, you could have at any point googled "Hitler maid pineapple," and immediately gotten an answer.
Furthermore, where did you find this picture such that it was devoid of any and all context of the joke, not even in comments? And why did you save it?
What baffles me is if you were really that confused or curious, you could have at any point googled “Hitler maid pineapple,” and immediately gotten an answer.
ADHD
Furthermore, where did you find this picture such that it was devoid of any and all context of the joke, not even in comments?
I’m not sure. Probably some “WTF” or shitpost community somewhere where the context was unnecessary.
And why did you save it?
That I can’t answer. I have a lot of really random bizarre nonsense saved on my phone. That’s why I have so much crap to post. In my entire time posting across both accounts, with nearly 2,000 posts, I’ve never had to look up anything specifically for this. It’s just stuff I have saved.
Hope that answered your mysteries @FeatherConstrictor. Sorry. I have so many messages and comments flying through my inbox that some get lost in the shuffle sometimes.
Haha thanks for the response it does clear it up. I have ADHD too so I know what it’s like, although my collection of images are neither easy to find for posts or of high enough quality (AKA as obscure as this magnificent post).
No worries about the length of time, it’s just a comment on a random internet post. Hope you’re having a good day!
Canada's Hundred Days. Aka the last 100 days of WW1.
Functionally, Canada won WW1 for the allies.
Being under 10% of the WW1 force, in that period they tackled defences everyone else thought impregnable and shattered them, like the Hindenburg Line, and in the process paved the way for the allied advance. They also took out a quarter of the German forces in that time.
While they did arguably use proto-blitzkrieg tactics of using lots of machine guns, and then also using vehicles to move troops even quicker while using said machine guns, one of the biggest factors was a prodigious use of chemical weapons.
To the point that in the interwar period, Canada had the largest capacity and stores of chemical weapons. During WW2, said stockpile is one of the reasons Hitler refused to use chemical weapons on the allies.
Edit: And a lot of the rules on fair treatment of POWs and rules on capturing surrendered soldiers also stems of Canadian soldiers behaviours during WW1.
We’re a simple people, enjoying quiet lives and good standard of living. But threaten our maple syrup - even from afar - and we will give you a reason for the Geneva convention!
To be fair, French Canadians were overrepresented and didn’t want to be there so they figured if they were super good at it they could go back home ASAP.
If I remember my chemistry right, chlorine trifluoride would like to have a chat with you. It’s such a powerful oxidizer that when burned with oxygen, the oxygen is actually the fuel rather than the oxidizer.
But then this is the stuff that the Nazis decided was too dangerous to use as rocket propellant, then decided it was too dangerous to use as a chemical weapon.
I don’t want to chat with Chlorine Trifluoride, it’s nasty.
But yeah, there are some obscure situations where oxygen isn’t the oxidizing agent, but the name “oxidizer” gives a clue how rare that is. In most normal situations, oxygen is the oxidizer and the thing it reacts with is the fuel. Partially that’s due to Oxygen being a good electron acceptor, but mostly it’s because there’s a lot of oxygen in the planet, and anywhere you can have humans you pretty much need to have oxygen.
Also don’t forget the good old Shotgun / Trenchgun, which was seen as an unfair weapon in trench warfare as there was no answer to it in close range and tight corridors.
Germany literally banned the use of them, Germany.
But how are we going to emulate proprietary online services for games relying on them?
Games preservation should be legally enshrined, and require client and server source code to be published if a provider decides to stop running the online services required to play.
Not that most modern multiplayer games are worth preserving due to their toxic design, but this isn’t a huge issue. BF2 servers started back up thanks to Russians loving the shit out of that game. Warcraft 3 is still very much playable online and NOT on battlenet thanks to W3Connect. Fightcade made 90s 2D fighters playable online. Numerous console emulators support netplay.
There are lots of examples of online services being REd to bring old games back to life, but doing it after the service has been killed off is A LOT of work
If more people captured network traffic of these services before they’re killed it’ll probably make REing the service much easier later
Well, if your games is popular enough some may start to do revival project or create these custom servers.
Back in late 2000s I rememver my brother who used to play WoW on private server (which unaffiliated with Blizzard) and mostly these unofficial server are popular for MMOs game back then.
Nowaday, you can have something like OpenSpy which emulates GameSpy servers runs by communities. It is all depend how deeper you want to venture each games.
What you can’t preserve is the joy of playing on period correct experience :)
This is a fairly lofty and unrealistic goal. Unfortunately, the right for companies to keep their source code private isn’t going to go away anytime soon and if they were legally compelled to release binaries, the setup for a modern cloud based online experience is not for the faint of heart.
A more realistic goal would be to say that all products should be usable offline (with exceptions for impossibilities like an instant messenger or something)
If the online servers don’t exist anymore, there should be a path to functionality without them. For everything, given the rise of iot especially. If there’s a path to functionality without the online service there’s a path to preserving the game
Private servers don’t really happen much or at all anymore, “here’s a .exe you can run” idea doesn’t scale on modern online infrastructure well
Emulation is typically a very difficult thing to do, often requiring cracking the original game to get it to work with non official servers and also mapping and building out all the online subsystems. It’s rare.
Men, proudly drag that battered and cracked android phone out on the first date, it’s a litmus test for shallow people, apparently.
I went on a first date with a girl I met from work. She farted loud enough to be heard over drunken yelling and music in the steakhouse we were in, immediately after saying “I don’t get embarassed”.
In a couple of weeks, we will have been together for 16 years. We’ve been married for 14 years. We cook together every evening, we hold each other whenever we are in the same room for more than five minutes, and on the rare nights where we aren’t taking each other’s clothes off, we fall asleep wrapped around each other. I would have missed out on a perfect relationship if I had judged her for a phone.
I take it with a grain of salt because he’s a humorist, but in Dave Barry Does Japan, his wife tells him at one point, “I heard three farts today. It’s okay here.” I haven’t read that book in decades and I still remember that line because I thought, how nice to live in a place where people don’t hide basic bodily functions.
I have a feeling that might be a sort of add scam. Like oh look at how much watch time all the videos on this site gets. Imagine the interactions that your ad will get if you pay me to roll your ad on my platform.
People that I know irl don’t understand why I don’t want to use TikTok. It doesn’t bother me that it’s “rotting people’s brains” or that China is spying on us or whatever.
It’s autoplay.
I can’t fucking stand autoplay. The first thing I do when I log into YouTube on a new device is disable autoplay. It legitimately infuriates me and I’m not entirely sure why. All I hear when someone is watching TikTok is nonstop incessant sound and videos autoplaying one after another. The sound often isn’t even relevant to the video and is just there to make annoying loud noise. The looping is also enraging. It’s like sensory overload (no, I don’t have autism).
If TikTok were more like YouTube in that I could click on the next video whenever I was ready, I might be into it and actually enjoy it. But it’s like someone made a platform dedicated to one of my biggest pet peeves and dialed it up to 11. I don’t understand how people find that enjoyable.
The videos are literally the entire point of TikTok. It makes sense that the MAIN feature would autoplay. It’s like complaining the pages in an ebook reader are “autodisplay”, instead of every single page requiring an additional input to display the text.
Videos are literally the main point of YouTube or Vimeo or even fucking PornHub, but they don’t incessantly play and loop nonstop unless you set them to.
I search for what kind of content I want then hit play when I’m ready. If I see interesting related content, I decide whether or not click on it or whether or not to search for something else. It’s not a nonstop barrage of spam content that I may or may not be interested in and sensory assault.
YouTube shorts are different, but I’m not referring to those.
Lol … this reminds me of a survival drink my culture has out in the wilderness.
You make a batch of extra strong orange pekoe tea (you basically boil the tea bags for ten minutes) … the tea is more like strong coffee … then mix it with lard, flour and sugar.
Back then when people traded in wilderness posts, the main items you stocked up in was … Tea, flour, lard and sugar … so when you’re out in the cold, around a fire and you have no time to cook or break camp, you made this survival drink because these are the foods you always carried.
It’s call Tea Ploss … and yes it tastes absolutely horrible … but when you’re cold hungry and tired, it’s delicious.
If I drink it at home, I’d probably puke… but leave me out in the bush for a day and around a fire in the cold, it feels good and reminds me of my parents and my old family.
Tea Ploss is a relatively new invention that came with trading with Europeans … it was something done out of necessity and something you built a taste for over time
Pemmican is thousands of years old … it’s absolutely delicious when prepared properly. And there are an endless variety of it depending on the region, dialect, environment and animal used … my old family way up in Hudson Bay used smoked arctic char mixed with berries. The mix of salty smoked fish with a bit of sugary berries is unbelievable. No one makes it any more but as a kid I remember having it and it was like candy. When I think about it, it was like modern protein energy bars … its filling, tastes sugary but with subtle tastes.
I have relatives and friends in far northern Canada in Inuit territory … they enjoy raw fish and whale oil stuff and blubber … those are definitely things you have to build a tolerance for.
This comment thread is just setting off memories for me like crazy today
My parents were born in the 30s in the bush way up in northern Ontario. They remember living through famines in the late 40s and early 50s. Yes in modern Canada, there are people who still remember surviving famines in the wilderness … some of those survivors are still alive today. My late father said he remembers coming across families in the wilderness that boiled their moccasins to make a kind of soup to try to eat something. Women were so malnourished, they weren’t able to produce breast milk, so they resorted to feeding babies fish broth, when they could get some.
So you are right … when times are desperate … shoe leather is actually delicious.
Wow. I was being a little flippant, sorry. I didn't really consider that it might literally be true for some people.
Those are some amazing stories / memories. I can't imagine how difficult it must have been for your parents and others. Even thinking straight can be difficult when you don't have food. Add bitter cold to that (right?) and I'm impressed that they survived.
No need for apologies … these silly conversations help us to connect and remind us of our human family.
I share my stories … but it’s also amazing to read the endless variety of other stories from so many other people in so many other situations in so many other times and places.
Whom Miss Piggy consistently suspects is actually 007, refuses to accept any proof to the contrary, and makes increasingly amorous overtures to vow to keep his secret safe? These, naturally, only end up confounding the investigation’s progress rather quickly, all the way up to her faking her own death (to “flush out the real killer”), and Benoit breaks the 4th wall when he realizes he’s now trapped in a series of movies with the lot of them.
But if I catch some dirty shitbag pull out of the lane to get into a clearly ending lane just to skip ahead a few cars...I'm going to glare rather harshly as I let the dirtbag back in.
...What? You approve of people leaving a lane to enter a lane that is, within sight, ending just so they can zip ahead and force a merge? That will 100% slow down traffic.
And at no point did I say I wouldn't let them in. It was a joke about assholes who exploit zippering. Are you so called-out that the idea of a glare ruins your day or did you misread the above?
Zipper merge is effective if it takes place at the end of the line, not the merge point. Essentially as traffic backs up, the merge point should back up as well. That isn’t practical in reality; you can’t dynamically move the merge point IRL.
You can’t zipper merge when you’re unable to move forward after waiting until the last secondnot being allowed to zipper merge by selfish assholes and being pressed up against the road closure.
… Just go to the end and then merge. It doesn’t mean drive up to the wall and then try to turn 90 degrees. The entirety of Europe does zipper merges and it’s an incredibly easy thing to do. You just need drivers that think of other things rather than just themselves.
I’m not saying anyone should drive up to the wall and try to turn 90 degrees. I’m saying that’s what people do, in the US at least. It just happens and it creates traffic.
And that right there is exactly why it’s not gonna happen here
We couldn’t get a significant portion of our population to mask up for a pandemic, we ain’t gonna teach zipper merging to enough people that’ll actually use it for it to matter
The main problem with zipper merges in practice are selfish people who rush to zipper and cause even more congestion because of their erratic attempt to merge. Like traffic circles they work great when everyone is doing it right and they cam get really messed up when people do it wrong.
It would be great if zipper merging was taught as part of getting a license. Or they actually required someone to learn how to zipper merge as part of their license renewal.
The number of people I've seen use the inner lane to turn out of the circle pisses me off. Change lane to outer circle, then exit the circle. The number of times I've nearly been hit because some asshat in a giant truck decided they own all the lanes is too high to count.
My favorite is when they are in the right lane, merge to the middle and back out when going straight so they don't have to actually slow down and go in the round outside lane, defeating the point of the roundabout.
You mean they just cut through the circle like it's a straight-away? There's a circle near me that has 1 entrance-exit pair that happens all the time. And an entrance b/t the two is really hard to see when entering and has nearly zero visibility to that left entering lane. I've nearly been creamed by people doing 30mph through there like that.
It's a shittily designed roundabout but they need some traffic calmers there.
Yes. I have noticed that newer circles discourage this by having tighter entrances and exits that limit the ability to do so, but a lot of older ones were gradual enough that you could go through it without even turning the wheel.
In traffic circles, even if someone messes up, the problem is usually resolved and the circle is back to normal operation within a minute or so. Unless someone is literally camped in the middle of the circle, life finds a way.
I am not calling it rushing because they are passing, but because they are going a significantly higher speed when starting to merge, requiring them to slam on the brakes and cause the same issues that merging too early causes.
Like going 20+ mph over the posted speed, not just going the speed limit in the open lane.
People who stay in the open lane and don't pass in the no passing zone and just zipper merge at the end are not the people I am talking about when I say rushing.
You can either work with human nature, or try to work against it. But if you choose the latter, you’re gonna have a bad time.
As someone with a background in traffic engineering, I care about what actually works. Making yourself feel good by passing judgement on drivers doesn’t actually do anything to solve the problem.
Because it is stupid to blame early merging people instead of just assuming the speeders are the same people that speed and do shitty sudden lane changes in normal traffic.
You don’t get it: the blame doesn’t matter. What matters is designing the built environment in such a way as to afford good behaviors and preclude (or at least discourage) bad ones.
That’s why traffic calming works much better than merely putting in speed limit signs with lower numbers on them, for instance, and why I really liked this suggestion elsewhere in the thread.
Do you mean "rush to zipper" as in "using an open lane to move forward and then zipper merge into the remaining lane when that one closes?" That is precisely what you should do.
The problem is the selfish people who refuse to let those people actually zipper merge, like OP.
I mean speeding at a far higher speed than the other plane and then suddenly slamming on the brakes and forcing themselves into the other lane. Rushing to merge, not just zipper merging at a similar speed.
If the lane being used is still open for forward traffic, that is a completely legitimate zipper merge, although it would be safer to match speed more gradually and, of course, wait for an appropriate space to merge into. As a hypothetical, that's a borderline case, and it's certainly possible to adjust the details of the hypothetical to make the merging driver into the dick. But I'm not sure that's a useful pursuit.
How is matching speeds to merge and finding a space an edge case? That is how merging works.
Not matching speeds is how people going slower than the flow of traffic when merging from on ramps causes issues. Matching speeds when merging is crucial.
The issue is, at the end of the day, that nobody ever seems to know how to keep a decent distance away from the car in front of them. It doesn’t matter how slow traffic is, leave some space in front of you. It gives you room to slow down in case something happens, and it gives everyone else room to merge.
Zipper merging requires matching speed with the lane you are merging into so that drivers can make gradual changes in speed to make an opening for the person merging. That avoids sending a wave of brake slams that results from sudden unexpected lane changes. If you’re passing a bunch of people, you’re probably not doing a zipper merge.
You’re also much less likely to end up with someone not letting you over if they see you matching speed instead of speeding up to the merge point.
If you're passing a bunch of people, you are using the open lane to travel. By the time the lane you are in comes to an end, you then modulate your speed to match traffic in the slower lane, and merge. Because cars have brakes.
You need to start matching speed at the start of the signage for the merge. At that point it’s no longer just a lane, it is a lane with restrictions.
You’re not actually increasing total throughput by speeding ahead, you’re only changing the order. The total throughput is determined by the flow of traffic after the constriction point. That flow is smoothest when drivers match speed.
What you’re missing is that the “closing lane” is often designed to be utilized to prevent traffic from backing up into another traffic control device.
While you’re “matching speed” with the open lane that’s hardly moving- traffic has now backed up into an intersection and caused gridlock on cross streets for miles behind you.
So while “total throughput” on YOUR journey has remained the same you may be causing chaos to the roads around you.
Your best bet is to just assume the traffic engineers who designed the closure know better than you.
The middle and last scenario both have people merging in at the end, but only the scenario with matching speed has smooth high throughput flow that alleviates congestion.
The lane hardly moving is usually because of uneven merging at the closure point. If everyone matches speed then both lanes are filled equally. That’s what the traffic engineers say is best.
There’s a problematic entry ramp that I used to drive every day on my commute. Traffic would back up around it every day in rush hour. When I matched speed and zippered in at the end, the congestion actually started to clear a little as the lane being merged into started moving substantially faster without people cutting in out of turn.
This does not address my point at all. I agreed that your suggestion would not necessarily negatively impact the total throughput on your route.
My point was that your route does not exist in a vacuum and the utility of the open lane may not be obvious without having the same information available as the traffic engineers who designed the closure.
Matching speed does a better job of filling both lanes evenly and reduces the amount of backed up traffic. The slow lane is what backs up to prior intersections. Matching speed is what allows the slow lane to clear up and prevent affecting upstream intersections. You’re point isn’t actually relevant to what I’ve described because the lane is fully utilized in a proper zipper merge with speed matching.
So I’m not ignoring the purpose of the merge lane, and I’m not advocating early merging. I’m describing the key aspect of zipper merging that the cruise ahead people are missing.
@Nougat
It’s hard to discuss zipper merging because people use to justify all sorts of dick behavior. Zipping through an empty left turn only lane to skip to the head of a right turn only lane for example. That’s not an example of zipper merging but there’s tons of people who I’ve seen argue that’s acceptable behavior.
Theory: Everyone down voting you has never driven outside the US.
We don’t teach the proper way to zipper merge, so people block those doing it for cutting in line. It’s a different culture that should be changed for efficiency, just like middle lane squatting, but it’s just not important enough to address.
I mean. The UK (particularly Northern Ireland) are gods of zipper merging. It is like all of the queuing is to train them for exactly that. Every single time I felt like an asshole because I slowed down even a km/h or two to “let someone in” when they knew exactly how much space they needed and had it under control.
Germany… I am honestly gobsmacked at how bad Berlin and Frankfurt were at zipper merging. It felt like if I suddenly discovered that nobody in mainland China could make rice without a rice cooker. Like… I think the US might somehow actually be better. And we are HORRIBLE at zipper merges. At least New England, if not Chicagoland.
If I am traveling internationally and driving? The bare minimum is that I’ll ask the person at the rental counter if there are any “gotchas” to be aware of. And if I have any friends in the area, I’ll chat with them on a hangouts/discord call before I fly over.
Hell, I SHOULD do the same when driving domestically but at this point I can handle NYC, LA, Boston, Chicago, and all the stupidity in between so… fuck it and sorry if I cut you off.
But also…
Theory: People think speaking in absolutes based on driver’s ed manuals is stupid? And you actually have to understand “the rule of the road” and how to drive defensively.
It's not just Berlin and Frankfurt, the autobahn is known for two things in the countries surrounding Germany; no speed limit and people completely skipping the acceleration lane.
No, it fucking doesn’t because we don’t live in a perfect world and entitled/dumbasses fill the road. If I’m in the right lane and some chucklefuck is matching my speed in the on-ramp next to me and doesn’t either speed the fuck up or slow the fuck down in the 2 whole minutes they have in that lane, they’re gonna end up slamming their brakes at the end. All it would take is a modicum of awareness to get over and stop this awkward bullshit. That’s just ONE example.
This isn’t a traffic jam. This isn’t the middle of Delhi. We’re talking about normal everyday traffic. It’s 2 cars in a 4 lane highway, and the dumbass can’t even merge.
And no, it’s not my responsibility to make sure they get over. I’m not hand holding idiots.
Point is, we don’t live in a fucking vacuum and all it takes is opening your eyes and judging the situation in front of you accordingly.
We're talking about two different things then. Open road, light fast-moving traffic, lane ending - the "merge zone" lengthens with that speed and space.
Heavy slow-moving traffic, lane ending, use the lanes which are available and zipper merge at the end. Merging too soon in this situation does create congestion.
In a vacuum it creates congestion, in reality things can be different, usually shitty drivers
For example: I drove a large truck most of last year and people simply will not let you in if you attempt to zipper mete properly in a vehicle deemed slow or cumbersome. They will literally close in as tight as they can on each other knowing that should you hit them you’ll be found at fault
This can even result in the people in the lane behind said vehicle to start zippering at the point behind the vehicle, essentially moving the zipper a car length down the highway. These people also frequently close in and box out that cumbersome vehicle as well.
This technically keeps traffic flowing, but massively breaks flow when the vehicle finally managed to edge enough into the lane to force a merge or someone gives them room to actually get in
I always defer to commercial vehicles on the road, no matter what. Those people are at work; I'm not. It's not a perfect analogy, but I also don't go into retail stores and get in the way of employees, either.
I am generally a nice-ish person. I’ll try to slow down a little to give them more room. And then they just slow down too because they don’t know how to drive without matching speed with a car next to them. And, fortunately, they aren’t looking at me so I can’t even wave them in. So it is just a waiting game of “Are they going to speed up and cut me off so that I have to slam on the brakes, or are they going to slam on the brakes at the last second and stop their lane until my lane stops to let them in?”
Nobody is saying to force your way in to the merge lane five miles ahead of the closure. If traffic is moving along, move along. But if you see an opening and know the lanes are going to merge? Merge then and there.
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