I've never understood all the headscratching on this topic. Everyone likes charming little streets, plazas, coffee shops, locally owned restaurants. Just let people have it!

Did anyone really believe this was a good idea? I feel like the developers' need to turn a profit and the government's need to impose itself don't leave any good ideas on the table. Instead they focus on packaging up the same bad ideas just with different marketing.

When it inevitably doesn't work as promised, they just say oops, and move onto the next project.

The police overreached here, and the only thing that protected the victim was, of all things, Twitter.

The police are supposed to be the good guys, but that obviously wasn't the case here. My comment was merely expressing surprise at the irony of the situation.

If you tell me that the Romans or Persians were good administrators, that makes sense. We know they implemented laws, tax systems, roads, construction projects, etc. Do we have evidence that the Mongols did the same and did it as effectively?

However, it was my understanding that cities that resisted them would sometimes be destroyed en masse. They didn't need to kill them all with bows and arrows. They would round everyone up and bury them in a hole or execute them.

Hulegu himself put the death toll in Baghdad at 200,000. I think that widescale murder was entirely possible at the time.

It would be difficult to name ethnicities or cultures that were wiped out, precisely because they were wiped out, wouldn't it?

The big property owners will get subsidies to repurpose the now useless buildings. Corporate chain businesses will simply close down and continue making money elsewhere. Corporate office tenants will negotiate lower leases for smaller spaces.

Meanwhile, small businesses close and never come back. Downtown areas get abandoned and taken over by homeless. Property taxes of remaining residents will likely go up to make up for shortfalls.

The rich and the big corporations are going to be fine no matter how this shakes out. It's the normal people who are likely to come out worse off.

They might range from super diverse and fun groups that also like to go for drinks after the meeting, to suburban professionals who race home the minute it's over. YMMV.

I also notice that a lot of the groups just act as feeders to bring people into the same one or two events.

Sadly Meetup is not what it used to be, even though I feel like it's needed more than ever.

Driving to a train station, then later taking a bus or cab when I get off the train is ridiculous. I would rather just drive.

Also, like the other person commented, there's another generation coming up for whom AI generated content will be the norm.

Using the examples of both adults and toddlers to make his point is apt. At least the toddler has no choice.

At this point the effects of this "knowledge" are neutralized by lack of trust in the sources of information and in one's ability to have any impact on the global issues.

It's not that people identify too much as meat-eaters, it's just that they don't trust the numbers or the solutions that are being sold to them, and so we become apathetic.

It's funny because whenever I read these books I feel like someone just took a bunch of bullet points and then added anecdotes and fluff to make it fill a book. Herd you're reversing the process.