It’s pretty much a rule for funerals: wear black clothes and if you wear a tie, use a black one, if you wear a ribbon, make it a black one

I felt I needed more than 1L of DHMO after breakfast, I have been a habitual user for pretty much my whole life

It’s there hope for me‽

Australian magpies have a much nicer song than any corvid

My Australian town is almost as bad as American ones because it was built after cars became necessary

It has decent bike paths and painted bike lanes on many roads. Riding to local centres is easy, or to any of the five or so nearby schools (which gets a lot of kids onto bikes), but if you work a desk job it is probably in one of the three big centres and you’re likely to live up to an hour by bike away. So few adults get around by bike

That’s only because America makes terrible public transit

1. Are you saying the problem is cars are too expensive and too expensive to maintain because they are too complex?

Cheap cars are more dangerous. Simpler cars have higher emissions. I think the more complex ones are better. I would like to see legislation against the anti repair methods manufacturers use

2. Cars let you take longer trips. One of the Australian capitals had a train to the beach towns. That right of way was taken by a highway and the railway now only runs a tourist route between the three or four beach towns but not to the city

With cars less needed other transit methods get built for popular trips

Failing all that, hire a car the few times of year you want an out of town holiday would be cheaper even than a very cheap car

3. This one is completely correct. Last time I had a car problem I had a choice of tow companies and mechanics. Government services are monopolies but they’re pretty proof against failure. The worst that might happen is you might buy a car that turns out to be less valuable than you expected because it’s bad quality or the company owner turns out to be a nazi. But even that only costs you if you need to sell the vehicle.

I envy you for your walkable city. I don’t think I did better by getting a thousand square metre block and a detached house. I’d like to see our cities made walkable and the outer suburbs connected by rail so no one needs a car. I’d like to see cars banned from the city centre except working vehicles, taxis, disabled people, tourists with a hotel in town. For long trips off the transit network one would take a train to a car hire depot out of the city and drive from there. Hopefully cars will be sufficiently smart that the fact the drivers will have little practices will be mitigated