I don’t see what tourists helping the local economy would have to do with anything.

Well yes, that’s precisely my point. I read the tourism aspect as largely irrelevant, as I’ve tried to get across multiple times with the examples of switching tourism out for race or for heat. It could have been loads of things.

There were several upvotes in all comments where I said anything like this so it’s not just me.

Discussing vote totals is weird. But seeing as you’ve introduced it, I would remind you that not everyone uses the vote system as you seem to. I myself have upvoted your comments as I would anyone that continues a discussion. I wouldn’t downvote someone for having a different opinion, that would be a bit childish for my tastes.

Further, a handful of upvotes does not make your view correct and any dissenting opinion incorrect. If that were the case, you must be wrong as I only see one downvote on that parent comment we’ve been going back and forth about. I wonder who that could be. The surprising thing about a comment thread more than a few deep like this one is that evidently people other than you and I are still reading this far.

Anyway, I apologise for having such a long exchange. I’d thought we were having a decent discussion, not arguing semantics. It is worth noting this is sort of a byproduct of text based discussions. Had we done this verbally we’d have been concluded in ten or fifteen minutes.

Enjoy your weekend and your contributive upvote.

While it’s a significant jump over the last month, the United States and Canada are experiencing about the same price increase proportionally.

Just as the average price in Hong Kong would kill a European on contact.

The price per unit is less shocking than the percentage increase from February to now, which is more or less the same regardless of what continent you’re on.

See I think we have different interpretations of the parent comment. You’ve read it as a critique of tourism and consider it “obviously all this was”.

I read that same comment and see the pondering thought of ‘why not move if you dislike it so much?’ in the same way I would if this were a story of a tenth generation Texan being angry about the heat and expressing that anger via some violent measure.

The comment doesn’t read as ‘tourism is the problem’ to me at all, which has been why I’ve described it as a comment on motivation and see it as a valid discussion point. Even when I reread it and play around with where emphasis might be in the sentence if it had been spoken aloud and not written, it feels like a stretch to say it’s either pro or anti tourist.

Sort of a flaw with quick off the cuff comments in a text based medium, but oh well.

The discussion was ‘the motivation for this action is x’, followed by ‘talking about the motivation at all is weird’. The minutiae isn’t relevant to my initial point.

This seems to boil down to what is considered ‘weird’ behaviour. I guess I have a different view than you do as to what is strange to have a discussion about.

I can see the perspective you’ve laid out, though in a broad sense, when a person commits a wrongdoing of any sort, is it not reasonable to ask and discuss why they did the thing? Seems reasonable to me.

Weird to comment on the motive? If the driver had shouted a slur before hitting this person, would that be a weird thing to focus on?

a prorate fee will be billed to reactivate

To my reading, both ‘fee’ and ‘billed’ indicate the customer will be charged an amount to regain access. If it were as you suggest, I think it would have been worded differently, to provide more benefit to the customer. Maybe something along the lines of:

‘When you are ready to come back, your membership reactivation will be prorated to reflect freeze term payments.’

As it is, I can see both interpretations. Which might be on purpose to surprise people who turn up at the gym after a few months break, banking on an eye roll and the fee to be paid so they can get on with their workout.

Just wait until they link these to your position in the store, loyalty card, purchase history, credit score, heartrate, etc. Great future we’re heading to.

Yes I agree. I didn’t imply an SUV is somehow better than a few bikes. My comment wasn’t an argument for cars nor continuing car dependancy, only touching on a benefit from their manufacture - negatives often do have silver linings.

In a non car dependant future, I’d still expect the buses and ambulances and whatnot else to be electric.

Assuming people get electric vehicles when their combustion cars reach end of life and not just trading in a four year old SUV for its electric variant, the I think it is.

Ignoring the ideal wherein privately owned vehicles decrease over time, of course. Continued development of EVs will be a benefit in terms of battery technology and motor efficiency, among other things.

I agree, though there are buses and trucks in those panels, and I’d hazard a guess that if the national fleet of vehicles went electric, the gross weight limits might get bumped up a touch.

If I’m remembering right the United States federal limit is 80,000 gross, but there’s also a per axle specification. If electric long haulers started becoming more common, I could see the limits being bumped for the whole vehicle, while adding an extra axle or some such.

Am I reading this right that to reactivate they’d be charging the difference they ‘lost’ during the freeze term? Wild.

I like the comparison between the two car dependent panels being the ‘same picture’ meme, though the electric one should have a few extra columns to support the weight.

Otherwise, 15/15 comic.

I’m sorry you were exposed to that at a time when you should have been insulated from the cruel indifference of technology. For a profession that once took pride in the personal touch, providing such an impersonal experience is appalling.

It seems especially horrid seeing as an obituary specifically is sort of the most formulaic aspect of funerals. Anyone that’s read them in the paper could tell you they tend to follow a pretty similar structure. It’s so lazy to use these machines to do something so rudimentary.

You and your father have my sympathies for your mother’s passing. I hope you’re both finding ways to continue onward. Undoubtedly she would hope the same.

Unsurprisingly, the machines are already being used in the funeral business. The last couple years I’ve seen obituaries, service cards, even images created through a variety of tools.

Trying to live a life free of this technology is becoming as hard as trying to live without oil, and now even our deaths are tainted by it.