Not Just Bikes / r/fuckcars / Urbanists / New Urbanism / Car-Free / Anti-Car - People and grifters who hate personal transport, freedom, cars, roads, suburbs, and are obsessed with city planning and urban design

[Chuck McGill]

It's infected because there are a choice few individuals who think that because a bird may walk like a duck, quack like a duck, hang out with ducks and have a lot of admirers in the form of ducks, that they are still chickens because they are fans of their work and can't imagine for a second other people can and will call them ducks.

Getting real tired of them fowling up the thread.

I'll let myself out.

 

[Beautiful Border]

Getting real tired of them fowling up the thread.

I'll let myself out.

"Why are people talking about urban planning in a thread about people who talk about urban planning?"

 

[LinkinParkxNaruto[AMV]]

Car dependance is pretty gay, hating cars just because is also pretty gay.

It shouldn't be controversial that in a good urbanism people should be able to move around easily without a car if they want to. But reddit being reddit always turns everything into the most absurd levels of soyboy ideology so naturally people who hate redditors will now hate public transport just because too.

 

[DDBCAE CBAADCBE]

In a car-centric city, your only option to get around is to drive. In a normal city you can still drive, but you also have the option to walk, cycle, and take public transit. How are you more free if you have less choice?

I’ve been to 48 states and I have yet to find a city where you don’t have the option to walk or take public transportation. What you are describing so far as I can discern is a fantasy.

 

[Spunt]

I watched a fair bunch of videos and read a high amount of posts written by these people and they seem to have a very retarded conception of history that is on par with the average cartoon about cavemen living with dinosaurs.
They actually believe that all modern cities were directly designed and built by car manufacturers lobbies.
I shit you not.

You can make a semi-convicing lie about that being true about the United States and its suburbs, but Europe, China... come the fuck on!

Cars weren't a common sight in my country until the 1960s and yet the claim cities like Barcelona, Madrid, Bilbao, Oviedo, León, etc... that exist since the dawn of time are designed the way they are because car manufacturers.

As someone who had to drive in London for a decade, my message to those who think European cities are designed for cars is that they very much fucking aren't.

 

[Becky McDonald]

I’ve been to 48 states and I have yet to find a city where you don’t have the option to walk or take public transportation. What you are describing so far as I can discern is a fantasy.

What's happened is the Internet, and their own selective personal experiences providing confirmation bias, along with opportunistic grifters selling them on the idea of a pipedream which will either never happen, or if it does, it ends up being way behind schedule and for far more money than originally anticipated (see: Brandenburg Airport).

They've all seen idealised videos of places like metropolitan Netherlands or some Far Eastern bugmunching country whose population cycles out of obligation, and proceed to wonder why their first world country hasn't done the same. They'll ignore every other variable and socio/geopolitical event which happened to lead up to the present situation, such as roads existing for horsecarts for centuries prior, the local area having a thriving car industry (i.e. Detroit), or the area being a major traffic thoroughfare that needs to have the infrastructure that it does otherwise the surrounding area will suffer significant economic effects (i.e. Breezewood).

It's like the plight of the Baizuo (aka white leftist). These people live their lives under the earnest belief that whites such as themselves have a societal stranglehold over everyone else, and it's their duty to self-deprecate and flagellate as much as possible to atone for this, inconveniencing their lives for others who don't give a shit about them. Except instead of other races, the bugman sees car drivers as less fortunate and genuinely believes the only reason they drive is because the public transport infrastructure isn't good enough, otherwise they'd be on a bus or a bike. They cannot physically comprehend the idea that people might prefer to drive, or *gasp*, enjoy driving. To them, it's like a kid voluntarily working in a coal mine or a woman who likes her husband to control her life choices. "These people have been brainwashed", they'll say.

And as they've proven multiple times in this thread, they are unable to see things in shades of grey; it's black or white for them. If you don't want your entire city's roads ripped up so that its entire infrastructure can be replaced by various types of rail transport, overhead electric cables, monorails and L-Trains blocking out the sunlight, E-Bikes and E-Scooters clogging up the roads and cars to be either outright banned or taxed so heavily that anyone trying to buy one might as well give their wallet to a findom (like in Norway for instance), as they won't get fucked quite as hard in the long run, you're a nazi who's an agent for Big Oil.

Personally, I myself am a staunch believer that many people who drive do not belong on the road. I would be overjoyed if all the women, drunks, nogs and careless drivers started using the bus or other means of alternative transport so enthusiasts could use the road more and make the roads safer since these are people who care about their cars as much as they do themselves. But realistically, this is not what the bugmen want. The very choice of driving a car is an affront to them, and that is why they are lolcows. When someone presents a political view on the internet, it is almost never what they actually believe at first. They spoonfeed you pieces of their doctrine, slowly radicalising you, and turning off a handful of long-time viewers who see you for the freak you are. Those that stay radicalise further.

None of these people believe in co-existence; they want control.

 

[FlipTopBox]

I hate to backseat janny, but can the NJB fanboys and other people arguing please stop shitting up the thread? If you want to argue about cars and public transit go to these threads:
https://kiwifarms.net/threads/public-transportation-free-travel-and-the-cult-of-the-urbanite.115974/
https://kiwifarms.net/threads/i-hate-pro-bughive-channels.120626/
This thread is supposed to be about making fun of crazy anti-car activists and shitty urbanist video essay YouTubers.

---

So, Alan Fisher. He's somebody I talked about already in another thread. (post quoted below)

Would Alan Fisher count as a bughive channel? YouTube is currently spamming him in my recommended after I watched a single video of his. He seems to have your typical internet "urbanist" opinions. I refuse to watch him since I find his meme filled thumbnails obnoxious as fuck.

Spoiler

View attachment 3434408View attachment 3434415View attachment 3434420View attachment 3434428View attachment 3434432View attachment 3434436

He also just kinda comes off as a smug condescending asshat. This is even more apparent if you look at his Twitter. (Then again, everybody is a smug asshat on Twitter.)

Also, a lot of these anti-car urbanist YouTubers remind me of the cyclists from Monkey Dust:

Alan has gotten into some minor "drama" in the past if you can even call it that. Mainly him making videos on other YouTubers, such as RealLifeLore and OBF. He even still makes fun of OBF on Twitter. He seems to enjoy calling out other educational YouTubers.

 

[Agarathium1066]

i dont disagree with the general message of public transit in america is pretty bad and could be improved and that a lot of towns and cities post ww2 were built with cars more in mind and that adding some sidewalks or something would probably lower the need for some cars on the road

but ffs dont vandalize peoples cars. you wanna lose sympathy from the normies watching your content? dont condone that kind of behavior.

Adding sidewalks and the like has been a pretty constant thing in the city I live in and I think it's just generally a good idea. Doesn't really take away from the cars and makes everything more pleasant since you don't get pedestrians lurching along the sides of the roads like a mentally deficient cryptid.

Someone who's aiming to vandalize or damage cars is just using it as an excuse to vent their aggression.

 

[DDBCAE CBAADCBE]

What's happened is the Internet, and their own selective personal experiences providing confirmation bias, along with opportunistic grifters selling them on the idea of a pipedream which will either never happen, or if it does, it ends up being way behind schedule and for far more money than originally anticipated (see: Brandenburg Airport).

They've all seen idealised videos of places like metropolitan Netherlands or some Far Eastern bugmunching country whose population cycles out of obligation, and proceed to wonder why their first world country hasn't done the same. They'll ignore every other variable and socio/geopolitical event which happened to lead up to the present situation, such as roads existing for horsecarts for centuries prior, the local area having a thriving car industry (i.e. Detroit), or the area being a major traffic thoroughfare that needs to have the infrastructure that it does otherwise the surrounding area will suffer significant economic effects (i.e. Breezewood).

It's like the plight of the Baizuo (aka white leftist). These people live their lives under the earnest belief that whites such as themselves have a societal stranglehold over everyone else, and it's their duty to self-deprecate and flagellate as much as possible to atone for this, inconveniencing their lives for others who don't give a shit about them. Except instead of other races, the bugman sees car drivers as less fortunate and genuinely believes the only reason they drive is because the public transport infrastructure isn't good enough, otherwise they'd be on a bus or a bike. They cannot physically comprehend the idea that people might prefer to drive, or *gasp*, enjoy driving. To them, it's like a kid voluntarily working in a coal mine or a woman who likes her husband to control her life choices. "These people have been brainwashed", they'll say.

And as they've proven multiple times in this thread, they are unable to see things in shades of grey; it's black or white for them. If you don't want your entire city's roads ripped up so that its entire infrastructure can be replaced by various types of rail transport, overhead electric cables, monorails and L-Trains blocking out the sunlight, E-Bikes and E-Scooters clogging up the roads and cars to be either outright banned or taxed so heavily that anyone trying to buy one might as well give their wallet to a findom (like in Norway for instance), as they won't get fucked quite as hard in the long run, you're a nazi who's an agent for Big Oil.

Personally, I myself am a staunch believer that many people who drive do not belong on the road. I would be overjoyed if all the women, drunks, nogs and careless drivers started using the bus or other means of alternative transport so enthusiasts could use the road more and make the roads safer since these are people who care about their cars as much as they do themselves. But realistically, this is not what the bugmen want. The very choice of driving a car is an affront to them, and that is why they are lolcows. When someone presents a political view on the internet, it is almost never what they actually believe at first. They spoonfeed you pieces of their doctrine, slowly radicalising you, and turning off a handful of long-time viewers who see you for the freak you are. Those that stay radicalise further.

None of these people believe in co-existence; they want control.

The experience of getting in a familiar vehicle with which you have become so proficient that it acts like an extension of your body can only be described as something beautiful in my opinion. It saddens me that some people will never get to experience that.

 

[DeadwastePrime]

Adding sidewalks and the like has been a pretty constant thing in the city I live in and I think it's just generally a good idea. Doesn't really take away from the cars and makes everything more pleasant since you don't get pedestrians lurching along the sides of the roads like a mentally deficient cryptid.

i wish i could say the same here. for instance, and im powerleveling here a bit, im actually pretty lucky. i live near a grocery store. its about a 30 minute or so walk there which is probably fine for most items, but less so for items like frozen foods or meats and other short term perishables. it'd be more doable by bike which would be about 10 minutes give or take and i could live with that. however, there are only 2 ways out of the area im in and they all lead to the highway where people regularly go 40 or more and right beside that highway is a drainage ditch because it's swampland and it floods real easy here.

 

[talk talk talk]

What's happened is the Internet, and their own selective personal experiences providing confirmation bias, along with opportunistic grifters selling them on the idea of a pipedream which will either never happen, or if it does, it ends up being way behind schedule and for far more money than originally anticipated (see: Brandenburg Airport).

They've all seen idealised videos of places like metropolitan Netherlands or some Far Eastern bugmunching country whose population cycles out of obligation, and proceed to wonder why their first world country hasn't done the same. They'll ignore every other variable and socio/geopolitical event which happened to lead up to the present situation, such as roads existing for horsecarts for centuries prior, the local area having a thriving car industry (i.e. Detroit), or the area being a major traffic thoroughfare that needs to have the infrastructure that it does otherwise the surrounding area will suffer significant economic effects (i.e. Breezewood).

It's like the plight of the Baizuo (aka white leftist). These people live their lives under the earnest belief that whites such as themselves have a societal stranglehold over everyone else, and it's their duty to self-deprecate and flagellate as much as possible to atone for this, inconveniencing their lives for others who don't give a shit about them. Except instead of other races, the bugman sees car drivers as less fortunate and genuinely believes the only reason they drive is because the public transport infrastructure isn't good enough, otherwise they'd be on a bus or a bike. They cannot physically comprehend the idea that people might prefer to drive, or *gasp*, enjoy driving. To them, it's like a kid voluntarily working in a coal mine or a woman who likes her husband to control her life choices. "These people have been brainwashed", they'll say.

And as they've proven multiple times in this thread, they are unable to see things in shades of grey; it's black or white for them. If you don't want your entire city's roads ripped up so that its entire infrastructure can be replaced by various types of rail transport, overhead electric cables, monorails and L-Trains blocking out the sunlight, E-Bikes and E-Scooters clogging up the roads and cars to be either outright banned or taxed so heavily that anyone trying to buy one might as well give their wallet to a findom (like in Norway for instance), as they won't get fucked quite as hard in the long run, you're a nazi who's an agent for Big Oil.

Personally, I myself am a staunch believer that many people who drive do not belong on the road. I would be overjoyed if all the women, drunks, nogs and careless drivers started using the bus or other means of alternative transport so enthusiasts could use the road more and make the roads safer since these are people who care about their cars as much as they do themselves. But realistically, this is not what the bugmen want. The very choice of driving a car is an affront to them, and that is why they are lolcows. When someone presents a political view on the internet, it is almost never what they actually believe at first. They spoonfeed you pieces of their doctrine, slowly radicalising you, and turning off a handful of long-time viewers who see you for the freak you are. Those that stay radicalise further.

None of these people believe in co-existence; they want control.

lol calm down

 

[quaawaa]

Why make a weekly grocery shopping trip when you could go to the store every single day instead?

The very idea of the weekly grocery trip is car propaganda!

Don't buy in bulk to save money!

Just get everything delivered (what happened to being walkable?):

Use a bike trailer instead:

Of course there's a reference to a Not Just Bikes video:

Who gets stuck in gridlock going to the grocery store?

Source (Archive)

 

[NerdShamer]

Don't buy in bulk to save money!

Nice to see that I can add "slept through math class" towards describing reddit.

 

[Becky McDonald]

Nice to see that I can add "slept through math class" towards describing reddit.

Maths isn't one of their natural skills. They think you can just print more money and that all of their radical plans can be subsidised through raping the paychecks of the truck-driving blue-collar bourgies so they can take the bus to the Funko store.

 

[NerdShamer]

Maths isn't one of their natural skills. They think you can just print more money and that all of their radical plans can be subsidised through raping the paychecks of the truck-driving blue-collar bourgies so they can take the bus to the Funko store.

Most leftists are like that, unfortunately.

 

[WhiskeyJack]

Because it’s not about cars; it’s about drivers. It’s about people having the audacity to do whatever the fuck we want to do and not approaching the authorities cap in hand for permission to live. To these types, that is simply unacceptable.

A lot of it seems to stem from class envy or hatred, especially when you see how much of their hatred is pointed specifically at pickup trucks and the people who drive them (a bit of that has propped up in these bughive/urbanists threads), or soccer moms with their SUVs/minivans in the suburbs. If blue-collar workers regularly used Amtrak instead of driving an F-150, these bughivers would probably hate trains just to spite them.

 

[Chuck McGill]

"Why are people talking about urban planning in a thread about people who talk about urban planning?"

My God, it was a cornball pun you fucking autist. You see, I spelled it as fowl(as in water fowl) when it should have actually been spelled foul. They sound alike but they actually have different meanings.

 

[Cyberpunk Panatela]

I mentioned the Transition Town "movement" earlier on in the thread and promised more information. I had the day off work and did some reading. Now everyone else can.

Two points of importance before I start:

1. This post has absolutely nothing to do with trannies.

2. When I use the term "Peak Oil", I am specifically referring to a catastrophist theory widely popularized in the 1990s, which holds that global oil production will increase and rapidly (months to years) decline to a small fraction of peak volume reached.

I am  not writing about the more widely accepted theory that one day maximum global oil production will be reached after which volume extracted will gradually (decades or more) decline. The only people who have a problem with this are abioticists(oil makes itself faster than we can pump it) and cornucopianists(We'll never run out of oil for another reason, like the earth is hollow and full of oil). I'm not a bloody fool.

That being said:

What are Transition Towns?

Transition Towns are an essentially anti-urbanist 'back to the soil' idea promoted using many of the same talking points used by the New Urbanists in the OP, just with a greater disdain for technology. They appealed to a similar demographic - upper middle class hipsters with New Age views.

Despite the efforts of the founder interest in the concept peaked with Peak Oil hysteria and what remains of the "movement" is rather moribund.

A site touting Transition Towns
Archive
What one of the buttons links to. Others also broken.
Archive

IIRC, the "peak oil" button used to link to a hard prediction that the oil wells would run dry by 2015. Now there's just the vague "next 10-20 years" at the bottom of the page.

If you strip away the buzzwords and "intersectionality" gibberish you're left with the following:

"Petroleum addiction" - we can't do without oil any more. Too bad, as we're going to have to do without, what with "peak oil" coming up very soon.

So what do we do? We spontaneously get together with similar right-thinking folks in our local community and start a Transition Town!

That way, we are able to work together to build personal and community energy resilience, prepare for the inevitable upcoming energy shocks by getting back to the soil and growing your own (food?) in our community garden-share initiatives or communal farm. We even issue our own local currency which we can use locally before and after the energy crisis strikes and dollars stop being printed! Everyone will have to "reskill" so that they're still relevant after the "big switch-off", of course. Unless you're an artist! In that case you get to be "big, bold and celebratory"!

To me, this sounds like prepping for hipsters, just without all those nasty bomb shelters and guns .

It also sounds like a corporate focus group brainstorming session on how to convince Americans to emulate some shitty agricultural village in Upper Volta and think that they're living well.

You can't just "do Transition" in any old way, though. You have to rigorously follow the Twelve Steps To Transition!

The website giving the steps is dead, but here's an old copy (From Wayback Machine)

12 steps to Transition

12 steps because Transition Towns are inpatient rehab programs for the poor benighted "oil addicts"? I can but guess.

And laugh.

Who is the man behind the Transition concept?

The guide to Transition didn't write itself. Someone put his back into that arduous labour.

The first website I linked speaks about some Brit place called Totnes. Totnes is a very important place, as it is not only the original Transition Town but the dwelling place of the Man behind the Movement.

Mr. ROB HOPKINS!


​

He now has wavy grey hair and is a lot fatter, but those pictures are blurry.

If you search Hopkins' name on any search engine a lot of corporate fellatio and puffery published by obscure think tanks appears. If there's anything Mr. Hopkins is good at, it's networking.

This Renaissance man even has his own Wikipedia page:

Wikipedia page
Archive

But wait. It has issues? Surely they're minor?
Issues
Archive

Talk page
Archive

Author has conflict of interest.

Ridiculous! Only Rob Hopkins knows enough to make sure all the details about him are correct! Nobody else should be allowed to edit his page!

Why not Transition?

Besides the fact that neoagrarianism is inherently ridiculous and couldn't possibly feed the whole population even if done efficiently, Hopkins has an attitude problem when it comes to technological innovation. In short, the man is a Luddite.

Many arguments can be made that the end of oil need not be the end of civilization. They are all met with one of two retorts.

Fischer-Tropsch process? Making oil out of coal or gas! That runs completely counter to Transition thought. (Anyway, what about a possible Peak Coal? The Horror!)

Nuclear power plants? Won't be complete by the time the Peak hits, after which they won't ever be completed. Rather reskill nuclear energy technicians to become farm workers or something.

So that I'm not suspected of being just another oil junkie knee-deep in car company shares who doesn't want his supply of crude oil stopped as I need it to lube up before wanking to films of big oil strikes (or, even worse, a registered REPUBLICAN) I found some criticism of Hopkins.

I also didn't produce this criticism myself.

The first, and most easily readable, criticism comes from the Left. The author seems a bit further to the left than the US Democratic Party. Then again, he is British.

Rob Hopkins - Transition to what?
Archive

This amounts to a straight out accusation of astroturfing. Transition Towns, the author alleges, are intended to divert the action of people who might otherwise be a threat to the status quo into meaningless nonsense. Hopkins is paid back in obscure awards and sinecures at little-known think tanks.

To put it more crudely, Hopkins fucking glows in the dark.

This analysis is more astute than I expected and certainly explains why institutions which should detest Hopkins for seemingly planning for their demise hand the man accolades rather than try to bankrupt the little shit (or at best ignore him).

Fortunately I used Yandex to search and got a result from the Cult Education Institute's forums dating back to 2010.

Somebody attended a few Transition Town meetings and got a bad vibe. The mileu, kind of people attending and the specialized jargon serving more to isolate members than clarify the subject made him think of cults, so he asked if Transition Towns was associated with any cult.

Those forums' resident autists decided to make finding out their business. A 18 page thread was the result, featuring miscellaneous ex-members, proud Transitioners white knighting for Hopkins, Hopkins himself, the resident shitposters and the local turbo-autist.

I archived the first 10 pages. I'll give the link to the first page with archive, then just archive links for the next 9.

P1: https://forum.culteducation.com/read.php?12,83474,page=1
Archive
2: Archive
3: Archive
4: Archive
5: Archive
6: Archive
7: Archive
8:Archive
9:Archive
10: Archive

If you don't want to read all of that (I don't blame you, that forum is difficult to use. Also has a high noise:signal ratio) I summarized the pages I archived.

Summary spoilered below, in case someone wants the full experience.

Note: TT = Transition Towns

Spoiler: Summary of thread to p.10

P1
(Guy wants to know WTF is up with TT, thinks they sound crazy and act like a cult)

p2

(Claim that the stated aims of "Back to the land" TT ideology will make agriculture extremely inefficient, lead to famine. Also you apparently have to aver belief in 3 "principles" [peak oil, climate change and the 12 steps of TT])

p3

(Info on Hopkins and his sleazy sidekick Heinberg, who are into Hyperboreanism, Pan-Eurasian Russian shit, Hopkins got a degree from some diploma mill college and Heinberg is politically connected to Big Oil)

p4

(Hopkins went on local radio to debate retired petroleum geologist. Got owned, his lackeys then harassed radio guy for not showing him enough respect. Also True Believers coming into thread to white knight).

p5

(Complaints about obfuscating jargon used by TT. A source TT uses almost exclusively [Energy Bulletin] is examined, publishers are industry figureheads and useful idiots as well as an ex-CIA type. Sounds like it glows so hard it fluoresces. Hopkins turns up, sneers. Claims that he knows good science when he sees it, both in petroleum geology and climatology. Weaselly half-answers some stuff. Some regulars shitpost afterwards)

p6

(Speculation about where TT gets its money from, suggestion that it's basically an astroturfing campaign. Long post about the origin of "peak oil" scaremongering as an attempt to open up areas where drilling is forbidden.

Mention is made of a Mr. Cambpell from the energy newsletter, a rich fuck who wants to use peak oil ideology as a way to scare people into accepting extremely restrictive social controls and promotes the ideal of a "great die-off". TT ideology is very compatible with this - reduced mobility and hyperlocal focus.

Hopkins slithers in again. Denounces the shitposters. Campbell is a great guy, just old, anyway he doesn't really mean that shit he wrote, just "shaking things up a bit." He's not going to defend Heinberg but the guy really knows his shit, reason is"'cause Hopkins says so". Look at all these other people who agree with him on peak oil, just because some of them are nuts doesn't mean they all are! Says nobody brought TT to the US, it "just started popping up" Yeah, TT might well be sufficient to deal with climate change on its own. Our members are all upper class and white cause that's who's interested in the environment. Oh, and TT is self-funded except for a few grants from the "usual bodies that fund such things"

Dude gets called on his shit, tries to defend himself.)

p7

(Hard disagreement with Hopkins' defense and rationalisations. Some postmodernist spergs at length about TT not really being right wing[ok, W/E], but later makes a good point about the organisation being shat up with all sorts of pseudoscience and being rooted in essentially urban ideas about "going back to nature" - basically means the naturalistic fallacy. Also thinks if everyone else starts thinking more critically TT will be forced to change.

PoMo dude's excessively long crap is harshly criticised by some autist.

Same autist casually points out that TT issued a "localised currency" in some UK place, which you could buy into or earn by working for them, but not cash out of, and only spend at shops that were involved with the local TT scene. Does not realise that this is technically "scrip" which is illegal almost everywhere.

Forum owner tells the wankers to behave and stop threatening each other)

p8

(Hopkins posts for "positively the last time" - praises the PoMo sperg who seems to be a sort of buddy of his. Also "Other poster" doesn't believe in peak oil and is just trying to find dirt on me and my pals so whatever he says is irrelevant. Then says: Oh, by the way I lied earlier about not being into Rudolf Steiner's BS but I was bullied at government school and going to a Steiner school saved my life. I still don't know anything about that Steiner stuff though.
Defends his dumb scrip "speculators bought it all to sell to collectors but we printed more".
He's really very tolerant, he says. Even of people in inner cities[niggers, pakis etc].
His "Working Paper" is totally not New Age because he has coauthors or something. Also not all his local conspiracy nuts are on board with TT so that makes it ok.
They'll tell people to think more critically in the 2nd ed. of their "Handbook".
Ends with condescension - It's been fascinating looking at your forum, and if any of you know a better way of handling the Impending Crisis, go do it instead of criticising ME and my TT.

Someone posts a link to a discussion calling out TT's lack of internal democracy.

Hopkins posts again in reply, despite the "last post" shit, whines that the "democracy" discussion is 3 years old.

Turbo-autist shreds Hopkins' bullshit. [I'm glad I'm not on the receiving end of this "Shakti" person's scrutiny. That guy would fit in very well here on KF!])

p9

(Our turbo-autist isn't finished. Posts 2 articles, the first one being an opinion piece stating that Transition is nothing more than a bunch of upper-class losers wanking about and will do jack shit to change anything about what it claims to address, and more importantly, that Hopkins seems to have a "casual eagerness for the death of others". Second one is a terrible take from the NY Times euphorically describing a Transition meeting in a place called Sandpoint, Ohio despite the rather ghoulish behaviour of the individuals involved.

PoMo guy returns, says his stuff is being deleted. Forum owner says "No".

Discussion of Triodos Bank, which seems to be funding TT. Basically a bank which will lend money to people who are into Anthroposophy (dumb German drivel dating back to the 1920s, founded by Rudolf Steiner) because nobody else will.

PoMo guy manages to post, wants to exonerate something someone did because "that was 7 years ago".

Extreme unrelated sperging about some irrelevant Indian bullshit.

Guy with good sense joins, says he got out of this Transition stuff because the group he was in was doing straight out retarded shit like Magick, Wicca etc. Also idolised the Amish way of life. Sounded like the lunatics were running the asylum.)

p10

(Another new poster. High quality post. Attended one of TTs meetings, thinks the goals are noble but the methods are shit. Organisation claims to be "collaborative" but is actually authoritarian. Also are not at all interested in having their ideas questioned.

Described the low quality of the people attending - they sound like typical US urban hipsters. Guy says a lot of them were previously in other cults. Also decries the emphasis on "positive thinking" and "no matter what you do, you're making a difference". Said this is pernicious, encourages slacktivism.

Two other guys chime in, mainly agree that they fucked off because the organisation was either duplicating or trying to subvert existing, elected structures such as municipal government. One also questioned the need for issuing scrip.

Tard TT fangirl has dumb opinion that the economy will collapse and the municipalities along with it, and there's evidence that because local initiatives can help during disasters proving TT will do OK when the oil suddenly stops. Also the scrip will insulate the community from exchange rate fluctuations in the meantime.[How, if its value is locked to the USD?]

Autist Shakti rips into the tard fangirl for citing Anarchist literature, asks if she is an anarchist. and generally dismembers the argument.

Stupid arguing and tard rage. Best quote from Margaret: "One person's anarchist is another person's visionary!"

Shakti tries to get Margaret to stop changing the subject, asks if she agrees with the Hopkins/TT prediction of a 2015 economic collapse due to the oil running out.

Sped from earlier on in thread posts wall of text delineating the precise differences between Permaculture and "Biodynamic Agriculture".

PoMo Guy returns. It seems that he's with the BBC. He pooh-poohs TT's 2015: "Don't you know we're already in the throes of an almighty economic collapse" This was written in 2010, so he's talking about the recession caused by the housing bubble bursting. PoMo guy, however, sees the big picture. How much the recession was caused by the Peak is "still up for debate", but he knows the truth - this was the onset of Oil Scarcity. You can believe him, he made a documentary about Peak Oil for the Beeb in 2004 called "The Collapse"

I only summarised the 10 pages I archived. The rest of the thread became very autistic until more and more disillusioned ex-Transitionists turned up to give accounts of their experiences.


There was a very good post late in the thread by a guy who bailed as soon as he heard of the scrip issuing. He had had experience with "localised currency" initiatives before, which always seemed to fail in the same way: Virtually nobody but the issuer can be convinced to accept it, so you can only buy things off the issuer, which in this case is the local Transition Initiative (who have nothing useful to sell, unless they start a shop themselves).


He also discussed the history of scrip and its former use by corporations operating "company stores", and how the abuse of this system led to it being outlawed in the United States (This practice is actually illegal pretty much everywhere except for a few Central African countries).


I would like to add that if you are skeptical about the value of fiat currencies, the last thing you want to go into is some self-styled "green" group's "local currency", designed to be useless anywhere outside the area which that group is active in. I am pretty certain that this is deliberate - attempting to prevent people from travelling far from their Transition Town.


After all, travel is said to broaden one's mind, an undesirable state of affairs for the "Thought Leaders" of the Transition movement who so fetishize rural living and primitive agriculture. What is more stereotypically "rural" than narrowmindedness?

Of course, I'm just some reprobate of a "Petrojunkie" who urgently needs to take the "car cure" and embrace the "energy cold turkey" that will be forced upon us by "Peak Oil" - which, of course, is "imminent, if not upon us already".

Every good Transitioner knows that!


It's actually astonishing how people with similar politics and backgrounds can reach mutually exclusive conclusions using identical evidence. I would say that Transition Towns are more likely to fail than New Urbanism, mainly because "back to the land" takes actual effort to do.

End of post, now "transition" unfortunately means trying to change sex again.

 

[Car Won't Crank]

A lot of it seems to stem from class envy or hatred, especially when you see how much of their hatred is pointed specifically at pickup trucks and the people who drive them (a bit of that has propped up in these bughive/urbanists threads), or soccer moms with their SUVs/minivans in the suburbs. If blue-collar workers regularly used Amtrak instead of driving an F-150, these bughivers would probably hate trains just to spite them.

There used to be a time where us car enthusiasts would loathe those early SUVs back when Honda kicked off the trend with the gen 1 CRV. They were big, ungainly, fuel inefficient, and barely more practical than a proper wagon. However, even we have come to terms with SUVs and CUVs especially now that all their shortcomings have been addressed with newer engine and suspension technologies. The rise of super SUVs from the likes of the BMW X3m and X5m also helped change opinions on them. That being said, suburban soccer moms and their SUVs do deserve some ire, just not the kind from the anti car reddit smoothbrains.

 

[DumbDude42]

suburban soccer moms and their SUVs do deserve some ire

why
im not familiar with suvs and the main reason i see people hate on them seems to be climate change