Who would use them? No one walks anywhere.

We barely pay enough taxes to keep the roads somewhat drivable, so I imagine that sidewalks are a lower priority.

The cynic in me says it looks better not to build a sidewalk than to get criticized for spending money on them and then letting them fall into disrepair because there's no budget to maintain them afterwards

Where in the US did you visit? Oh wait, you can't read this cause you're a punk ass censoring, safe space hiding, dweeb.

People who don't have a car or can't afford transit though, in Europe at least they'd have to walk everywhere for shopping, govt offices etc

I remember people honking like assholes at me when I went for a stroll on one of my trips to NC, I wasn't in the road or anything, just on the grassy verges but more than a handful of drivers seemed so fuckin' pissed off about it for some reason. I guess it's just not done there?

Once you take away the crosswalks (because people are more likely to get hit by cars in crosswalks, so the statistics say), and make the roads 4 car widths wide (so that the cars can drive faster), it becomes highly dangerous and unpleasant to walk anywhere if you don't live in a dense city.

In addition, if you want to work, chances are you'll end up with a job many miles away from where you live, and (once again) if you don't live in a city their is scant public transit if any. Basically if you don't have a car in America, you go hungry.

I live in NYC now and hardly drive at all. It's good to be part of the solution.

Combine a lot of space, urban planning that emphasizes travel by car, not by foot or mass transit, zoning laws that favor malls and not corner stores, the perception that your car is an extension of yourself, and you get a country where nobody outside cities walks anywhere and only the poor and crazy take the bus.

I don't like it much. I have some depth-of-field issues and didn't learn to drive until I was in my early thirties. Living in the suburbs sans a car was pure hell. I think that America's over-reliance on cars, which probably isn't unique, but is certainly notable, is one of the things that makes it a lonely, angry country, in general terms.

Damn, that sounds like an awful hurdle to clear for the already disadvantaged poor. Having to get/maintain a car/pay for gas while earning minimum etc.

Pretty sure the North Carolinians were honking at him because he's an asshole, yes.

And yeah, Cena, living here in the city, I don't have to drive anywhere. Also, when I lived in Europe, I didn't have to drive anywhere, either - but that was because a) Europe is tiny (each country is approximately the size of New Jersey) and b) there's no reason to go anywhere in Europe besides your house, because it's all terrible.

Yeah, that's probably reason number 20568 why America is pretty much fucked at the moment. Here is a video about this sort of thing that is someplace on PoeTv, but damned if I can find it:

https://youtu.be/NMvwHDFVpCE

Cheers for that Raggamuffin, this seems like interesting watching!

Another question: what happened to all the yellow school buses? Is there a reason those aren't used so much in this part of NC (and does that extend state-wide? Nationwide?)??

while I know lots of kids around where I live get dropped off by their parents, and many parents wait with their kids for the bus, I've never seen anything like this. I'm curious why their aren't any schoolbuses also.

I see a few school buses drive by the school but not going to it. I wonder if they're not part of that school's district.

looks like the school buses stop behind the school.

wait, is this a southern state school...

Yeah, North Carolina is considered a southern state.

Would a pick up spot for a school bus not be near enough for the kids to walk to? I mean when I was a kid, we were given our bag and lunch and sent out the door to walk to transit/school.

Fair enough, but I know for a fact that my niece's/nephew's kids and their generation in Scotland still walk to school/the bus largely without adults hovering over them.

Bawbag, that's normal in most of the world, the whole hovering thing is a mostly American, white upper-middle to upper class "fear of contamination*" phenomenon.





*Physical, social, ideological, whatever kind of contamination.

I just spoke with a grandmother who subscribes to the "fear of contamination" parenting ideology. They're afraid of pedophiles lurking the streets of their neighborhoods. I guess there's more of them now and they wait for kids at bus stops. This is also why they can't take their kids to church, pedophiles are there too.

It could also be that the bus schedule conflicts with job schedules.

Many parents can't hang around until the bus comes and picks the kids up and we don't all live in a neighborhood where at least one adult can hang around to keep an eye on the kids until the bus comes.

Very often, dropping the kids off at school early is the only way they can get themselves to work on time.

When did kids have to be supervised at the bus stop? When I was a kid we didn't need that. This is an added problem of suburbia. Suburbs despite their low crime rates breed a distance from the community. It's all this stranger danger shit ruining everything.
Even my NYC neighborhood isn't immune. During summer my street would be clear in the morning, now it's a traffic jam every weekday morning from 7 to 8.

I started school here in the states in the second grade and I don't think I ever remember any parents waiting at any of the bus stops with their kids. And this was before every kid had a cell phone and GPS tracker on them for fucks sake.

Parents are scared. Sure, the odds against something bad happening to your kid are astronomical, but it's not the sort of gamble people like to take with loved ones.

It's especially bad in this day and age when judgement is so harsh. Just look at how some people can see a parent doing something minor, like turning their back on the kid for a few seconds to put groceries in the trunk, and suddenly the video of you doing so is up on the Internet going viral with people calling for custody to be taken away and others saying they will snatch your kid just to teach you a lesson.

I mean, look at those parents in New York who finally let their eleven-year-old walk home from the bus stop alone and on the first day he was snatched by a maniac who sexually abused him, killed him, dismembered him and hid the parts in trash can around the city. Sure, many were sympathetic to the parents, but many more were blaming them for letting the kid walk home without supervision.

Hell, look at the kid who was eaten by an alligator at Disneyworld. Did people blame Disneyworld for not keeping alligators away from children? No, they screamed at the dad for "letting" the alligator eat his kid.

Also, you both sound like old people with your "back in my day" bullshit.

This isn't your day. Things are different.

Bear in mind, you are being told this by someone who is 46 years old.

Stop being so God-damned old.

agh, meant as a reply.

Gawd, you can't even post correctly here. You're fucking mess. Somebody tell Bawbag that Cena_mark say's he's a an inept dweeb.

http://imgur.com/s2j5tDR

Oh my, another biting GIF from ballbag. Fitting name as you are merely a scrotum with nothing within.

Cena, c'mon. You managed to climb up the steep cliff from ignorant asshole to decent and interesting human being.

Don't jump off said cliff again because of EvilHomer. He really isn't worth it. You proved yourself capable of being better than this. Don't stop now.

I'll admit Homer's comments can be a bit much at times, but he's still my friend and I'll stand by him. I'm just saying this blocker code isn't the answer for anything. It won't make our community better. I fear there will eventually be petty blocking wars that'll tear this place apart. Ballgag is already using it and smugly asserting this power, waving it around in everyone's face. Who's next?

I have no obligation to stand there and let EH keep (and this is a metaphor here, the punching represents slurs and insults) punching me in the face.

I will not humor an argument that basically amounts to "You're oppressing him by not letting him express how much he detests people like you by punching you in the face, walking away like that! Get back here and stand still for him!".

I'm not stopping him from sharing his bullshit with anyone else, and neither is bawbag. But we have NO obligation to endure it. Freedom of speech implies no free, unwilling, audience.

Bobonne - I've said this before, but the fact is, Cena's NOT an ignorant asshole, and he has NEVER been an ignorant asshole. Cena's had differences of opinion with many people - me more than most! - but having differences of opinion does not mean he is ignorant. The real "ignorant assholes" were the people who never listened to Cena, never took him seriously, and didn't give him respect until after he began saying the stuff they wanted to hear.

You can disagree with people without hating them, Mr Bobonne. You can have rational, logical discussions about tough issues without having to resort to name-calling, ad hominem, or retreating into self-imposed safespaces. Cena gets that. He's always got that. The problem - if indeed there ever was a problem in the first place - has never been with him.

>>I have no obligation to stand there and let EH keep (and this is a metaphor here, the punching represents slurs and insults) punching me in the face.

Is this really true? I can't think of an instance when EH was bigoted, hateful or truly mean-spirited. Not saying I've read everything, but I'd be pretty shocked.

Of course you have no obligation not to block him. I wasn't going to make a "freedom of speech" argument, just the argument that scattered threads where various users can't see each other's posts won't help this community one bit. It'll make for some awkward shit.
Homer hasn't always been like this, but will you ever come back to see if he changes? Of course not. He's brushed away, ignored forever. It'll cause users to censor themselves in the fear of being the victim of a mass blocking.
Homer's style isn't malicious, or at least I haven't detected malice in his posts. Perhaps we just need to communicate better. The suburbs are like a community on Ublock. I live close to my neighbors and sometimes they drive me crazy, but I'm not going to tie them up and shove ballgags in their mouths. This is a vibrant city. We don't need the picket fence promises of Ublock.

When have I insulted you, Bobonne? I don't believe I've done that, I try not to make personal attacks against people, but if I HAVE been hurling "slurs and insults" at you, then I apologize! Really, I mean that. It is never my intention to hurt people's feelings - merely to show where their arguments might be lacking - and if I ever do hurt your feelings in the future, I would appreciate being told immediately, so that I might at least apologize and make amends.

I do agree that you are perfectly within your rights to decline to listen to me, and if that is your choice, I cannot stop you. *Ethically* of course, Cena is correct - if you're going to start blocking users, then you're an idiot, and you're ultimately going to be harming yourself. But, you do what you feel you need to do. I wish you the best of luck, hope you change your mind some day, and if not, was nice knowing you! It was always a pleasure getting your input.

15th, Cena, he LITERALLY just called me a man, in his usual (though not always) passive aggressive "I'm not touching you" way in the post right before yours. Because he was hoping it'd hurt me. Because THAT is who EvilHomer is. A petty little piece of shit that posts her for no reason other than the hope that he'll get some attention, make someone remember him for hurting them.

Oh, but of course, I forgot. If we actually stand up and either walk away, or tell someone to stop punching us (again, metaphor) over and over again, we're "being thin-skinned", or "censoring" people, or causing a "chilling effect" on people that "just happen to believe something different than you do".

This is far from the first deliberately transphobic attack he's leveled at me, you know. There was that time, around christmas last year, where he came out of nowhere, after I'd made a post in a particularly nasty trans-baiting video thread, about how "tranny" is actually pretty much the trans form of "nigger" or "faggot" (which it is, by the way), and maybe people could try and not throw it around casually, especially if they aren't TRYING to hurt people. His almost immediate response? I'm not going to go search for it, to get the precise phrasing, but it was pretty much: "Fuck you, tranny, I'll call you whatever I want, because you don't get to dictate what people say.".

Hey, free speech, right? Hell, he's probably jacking off right now, seeing how upset he's managed to get me, without my even being able to see his posts. But seeing people fucking defending him as "not malicious"?

He's nothing BUT malicious. Everything he posts, outside of MAYBE my little pony and steven universe-related content, is malicious at its heart, intended to stir up conflict, make people angry, and hurt people. It's what he does in EVERY fucking thread, and the fact that he (USUALLY) doesn't just use crude words that'd more directly express what he's really saying, doesn't make him a good person, any more than certain groups using "urban" or "thug" makes them concerned citizens that are just concerned about the effects of large cities on the surrounding suburbs of peace.

Fuck it, I'm out of here for the holidays. Have a merry christmas (secular or religious), hanukkah, whatever you celebrate, or don't, this holiday season.

?!

Ooooh.

So you're a trans-woman? I honestly had no idea. I don't know where I just called you "a man", but believe it or not, that was not my intention, and I probably wouldn't have done it, had I known you were a transexual. So, yeah, OK! I apologize about that.

I don't recall that conversation AT ALL, but I doubt I said "fuck you". Telling you that you have no right to dictate what others say - well, yeah, that IS probably a position I'd take, and I'd stand by it. Not because I'm trying to *hurt you*, mind, but because I am very much in favor of free speech, and I don't want you to be able to hurt anyone else. Hell, I'm telling you that YOU CAN BLOCK ME, with my blessing, which is about as suicidally far down freedom-of-speech lane as one can get! That's not to make you mad; that's not because I'm siting here, saying to myself, "boy, that Bobonne, I want to piss her off good!" It's because, like you, I have certain values, values which I sometimes feel the need to stand up for. (if it helps, I've always been pretty pro-trans, both online and off, and I'm one of the few people here who consistently tries to use transgendered pronouns)

Still, and I cannot stress this enough, it was NEVER my intention to make you so upset, then or now or at any other time for that matter. Honestly, Ms Bobonne, I barely even remember you or your posting history, but if you've been harboring such a passionate grudge against me for... God, how long? Years? Then, yes, fuck! I'm sorry! Really, truly sorry! You sound genuinely distraught over this, and I wish you had of told me sooner, so that we could have cleared things up. I don't know how I could make it up to you, but if there's anything I can do, by all means let me know.


I hope you at least get a chance to read this before you block me, because I am sorry, and I do wish you the best. Happy Holidays!

"I can't think of an instance when EH was bigoted, hateful or truly mean-spirited."

Oh, no, he actually is all of those things, he's just behind several obfuscating layers of passive-aggressiveness.

OH SHIT I JUST NOTICED EVILHOMER IS BACK.

I LOVE YOU, MANG.

I wonder how we change that. It's hard to change a people who've been programmed to want their own two story house with a big yard.

>> I wonder how we change that. It's hard to change a people who've been programmed to want their own two story house with a big yard.

Agenda 21, cultural conditioning, and UN martial law.

The meme's already been inserted into the public consciousness, and sooner or later, the joy of tightly monitored Arcology micro-capsules will trickle down to the proles.

@Cena slowly. But its doable. Check out the Netherlands. In the 70's they had been affluent for decades and had started to fall into a car-centric low density planning pattern.
Then one summer a disproportionate amount of schoolchildren were killed on their bicycles by cars. This sparked a popular anit-car movement and the government responded, slowly eliminating suburbs and roads and adding more public transport and cycling infrastructure.

But what would actually inspire Americans to change their ways. Dead children can't even inspire Americans to dump their guns let alone their cars.

Also Americans typically react to cycling deaths by not riding bikes.

Ultimately, the suburbs in America were, and still are, almost entirely created by white flight. They're attempts to get away from urban areas full of "urban" types, while still being close enough to reap the economic benefits of the urban center.

A lot of kids have grown up in them for a couple of generations now, though, so they see them as just another sort of neighborhood, and thus aren't directly motivated to live there for the reasons described above, but there are still plenty of people that DO move into them even today on the presumption that all those "urban" types with their "urban" problems won't be present there.

This is why suburbs typically tend to go Republican along with rural areas, if not quite as deeply red, compared to more central urban districts.

I know the redness first hand. I grew up in the suburbs north of Atlanta. I do notice many people who grew up there who fled the souless suburbs and are giving new life to East Atlanta, but it'll take a long time for Atlanta to recover from all that white flight.

Is there a legit reason for less usage of the school buses in the burbs?

It's just peer pressure. They feel like bad parents for not hovering over their kids until the very last possible second.

ah, so a performative element of 'keeping up with the joneses'. I could see that. Shame for the kids though, I loved my walk/transit journeys to school, they were always adventures.

They quite literally don't know when to stop, or how.

Sorry that they followed me in here FWIW.

jfcaron wrote this about as politely as a human being can.

Here's the revised instructions: Step 1: Install UBlock Origin:https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock
Step 2: open up the settings, go to 'My Filters' tab and paste the following:

poetv.com##div[style="padding-left: 30px;"]:has(a[href="/users.php?userid=13598"])
poetv.com##td[class='video-text']:has(a[href="/users.php?useri d=13598"])

(replace the user ID number with any user, in this case I've chosen evilhomer because his post-election schtick is boring the fucking tits off me)

Step 3: apply changes and voila, no more comments from that user will be visible. You will still see their video submissions but any comments they make will be filtered entirely. The only visible sign will be a double linebreak where their reply would have been. No more wall of text about ponyfucker cartoons or devil's advocate shit on every goddamn subject.

How does it look in practice? http://imgur.com/aqI6ZJm

Oh here's Ballgag with his safe space solution. You can be coward just like him.

Stanley. You've been here for a long time. This ublock is a threat to our community. Homer's been here a long time. I know he's been a bit much lately, but ublock isn't the answer. Keep PoeTV weird I say. This will just lead to blocking wars that'll destroy this community.
Look at how Ballgag has been spamming those instructions. It's him trying to assert power here, to control it, and others with the threat of being blocked. It is a form of censorship and it doesn't belong here.

I'd assumed that people were smart enough to see Bawbag's behavior for what it is - petty trolling from a tedious, passive-aggressive poester who has never coped well with differences of opinion, and is taking it out on me because I'm too nice to him to call him out on his bullshit - but if you feel the need to join him in this silliness, SP, you go right ahead.

I'm sorry to see you go, and no hard feelings.

I don't even blame Bawbag, though. He's a victim of this insane anti-liberal zeitgeist that has been ramping up all year - everywhere we look, people are getting way too triggered about the dumbest shit, desperately trying to wall themselves off into intellectual and cultural ghettos of their own creation. Bawbag is being particularly dramatic and cunty about it, but his behavior is merely symptomatic of broader trends.

First you guys turned on Orcs, then you turned on RoUS and DQL, now you turn on me and Cena - where does it end? With you and Bawbag, alone in an empty comments section, desperately racing to block each other first?

Note how he says "Thank god for technology", that sounds reminiscent of Frankenstein, 1984, Brave New World, and all the other examples of science fiction where man + technology+ hubris run amok.

Cena, Homer can eat a bag of dicks. He's a piece of shit that, just because he happens to enjoy my little pony as well, is not a decent human being.

You are not defending poetv's raison d'etre by shitting all over yourself to attempt to defend him. He's one of the people that's busy shitting all over this place, as he has been for years now, even as you attempt to justify his shit.

Now the EvilHomebola is spreading to more users! This is alarming. We've had outbreaks before, but this time seems more severe. The virus seems to be afflicting the vision of some users, causing temporary blindness? I should think at this point that everyone would be immune from exposure...

I've been ignoring homer for like two years now, I don't know why you guys aren't capable of doing the same without programs or arguments.

He wants attention.

This stupid drama over his garbage is probably making him hard.

Cena and EH can be annoying, they can be fine, they're almost always civil (to a fault, if anything, I'm actually liking the bite cena's displaying here), and anybody who actually feels a need to put this much effort into blocking them should probably just chill.

I'm chill dude, just sharing the idea with anyone else who would rather not see EH's (or any other specific users') walls of text/garbage in every thread.

Walls of text garbage in every thread? Then why'd you block me ballgag? I don't post text walls. I hardly post in every thread. You just blocked me to be an asshole to me. The very thread where you announce your actions show's you in full king shit mode.

"Yes, truly riveting EvilCenaHoMark. Not at all part of the usual schtick that made me block you in the first place, and now your alt account too. Shame really."

Does this say "chilldude"? No, it's king shit jerk on a power trip.

Anyway, once again EvilCenaHoMark has managed to make this thread all about them.

Take back control, Make PoEtv Great Again. :o)

Oh SolRo, how little you know me!

I don't want "attention". I want *intellectual stimulation*. I want a good argument, with loads of bulletpoints, on a subject I've never in a million years even consider before. I want people to challenge me; to throw me facts and figures, so that I can turn around and throw them BETTER facts and figures, if I can find them. I want someone to eviscerate my most cherished conclusion, as I in turn, try to do to theirs. I want someone to say something so ruthlessly logical and utterly reasonable that I have to spend my entire half-hour bus ride to work in the morning mentally drafting a response. It's not about attention, hell it's not even about me (and I really, truly wish you and bawbag would stop making it so). It's about the argument! About the thrill of knowledge!

Have you ever noticed that the people I engage with the most are the people who can actually carry on a spirited debate? Not the ones who agree with me, not the ones who get offended by me, but the ones who get pleasure out of discussing things in glorious detail?! I get more than enough attention IRL as it is; never really liked it, incredibly shy. But I am incredibly *bored*, and to me, there is nothing quite like John Holmes offering a bizarre male-feminist perspective on a subject which seems pretty cut-and-dry, Oscar Wildcat making hopelessly obscure literary metaphors, or having to change my views on the fly because Cena_Mark agrees with me again.

I know I'm going to regret getting involved in this thread, but--
To Homer, Cena--why do you even care if people block you? So fucking what? I usually skip over Homer's novels in the comments, am I "ruining" the "culture" here by not reading him? What's the difference?

Teenertot, it bothers them because they thrive on believing they have all of our attention (even if we claim otherwise) and this UBlock solution is more of a public statement (and certainty) that they will no longer receive it in the same amount -from all of us- no matter how hard they shitpost.

They seem to labour under the illusion that people are somehow obligated to read their opinions.

I'm sure in their world it's 'literally the end of free speech' and I'm basically MaoHitlerStalin for taking away some eyes from their endless iterative glossolalia but if they were this interminable IRL, I'd have been ignoring them just the same and probably far far sooner.

Or they just, you know, love their kids and want to spend as much time with them as their busy lives allow possible, so they drop them off at school to have that little bit of extra time with them.

But I know, I know, parental love is so uncool these days and everything your parents ever taught you is wrong, antiquated and evil.

thanks for consistently being an example of the problem.

No, dude, Dairy Queen's right on that one.

Can someone point out the year when being a needy helicopter parent became a virtue instead of an complex?

>> Can someone point out the year when being a needy helicopter parent became a virtue instead of an complex?


250,000 BCE - 1980 CE, and then again between 2008 - current year.

"1980 CE"

Have you ever talked to anyone who grew up before 1980? If anything, that's when it STARTED.

There looks to be about 20 people organizing this single drop off location.

I'd argue it would be more efficient to have multiple drop off locations spread out and using those people as crossing guards to make sure kids get across streets safely. You could probably have it work with less people organizing things and teachers would be freed up to do something more useful.

Most schools have single drop off points, I'll bet there are a lot of good reasons to keep it that way.

*raises hand*

It feels like hardly all that long ago until I actually count it. Fuuuck.

I've felt old since around 10th grade.

giggle

Kids only use hand sanitizer for the alcohol buzz anyway.

highly confusing

He's a bit like tinkerbell, John. You need to _believe_ in evilhomer for him to exist. Why don't you make and post a magick video clip to summon him back? I believe you have the power within you, it'll be more fun than making a moon child. How about it?

Well, I just hope he's okay. I don't necessarily want him back.

Come on, John. Let's resurrect evilhomer from the dead. It'll be lots of fun! This is the Portal of Evil, for god's sake, not the Rotary Club. Let's get our Arthur Edward Waite on.

I love all of you awful faggots. Even the worst ones.

Did he die? Or did this vid come up and no one noticed it was in 2016?

I'm assuming he's not dead. I remember this thread, he left after this. I like to think he's writing 3,000 word dissertations on yelp

He was the most brilliant troll I've ever encountered, a true artist. I eventually became immune to his machinations, but it sure took me long enough. For years, he played me like I was the world's biggest theremin. . He knew how to get me ranting. My favorite analogy was that Homer was Dennis the Menace, and I was Mr. Wilson.

My theory, which is at least as likely to be wrong as right, is that the election of Trump took the wind out of his sails. He'd trolled the Trump side during the election, about as eloquently as anyone could. When Trump was actually elected, and the reality sunk in, maybe he didn't want to do the backpedaling. Maybe he just got weary of the whole Evil Homer persona. Maybe he had a sense that this wasn't going to be fun anymore.Surely his considerable talents could be put to better use.

My stars are for you, Homer.