We’ve turned airports into shopping malls, because airline passengers aren’t an airport customer they’re the product to be sold to. Longer dwell times to fill with shopping, therefore, have become a feature not a bug.

Restaurants, too!

Even if you resist the urge to buy books and souvenirs at the airport, arriving 3 hours early will probably mean you need to eat a meal that you would have otherwise eaten at home or at a cheaper restaurant.

And even if you’re not hungry, you might choose to sit in a comfy seat at one of the airport bars, having a few drinks and appetizers.

Or: Everyone decreases their discretionary spending to invest in companies that make consumer goods.

As a result, few people are buying the products these companies sell, like books and iPods, and they don’t become successful.

I know this is terrible, but I find it fascinating in a sort of juvenile, teen magazine personality quiz, collect all the dolls type of way.

We’ve got our Businessman, Jock, Normcore main character, Sensitive Grunge Musician, Dweeb and Rebel.

Ignoring the manosphere bullshit and blithely viewing this as a team of characters planning a heist, or potential matches in a farming game or dating sim, how is this not kind of cool?

I’m only in that category because I don’t drink coffee every day.

When I used to drink it daily, it did nothing for me except remove my irritability and prevent a headache.

Now, I take at least two non-coffee days between coffees. I don’t depend on coffee on any given day; I can wake up with energy and go about my life without it.

But when I do have coffee, it has a huge effect on me. I get super caffeinated. And it tastes delicious.

It’s Saturday morning and I still feel energized from the coffee I had at noon yesterday. I could hardly sleep. It’s kind of a problem.

in all nine species of female snakes they examined

I’m sure they actually did the study in an organized way, but I imagined them checking the snake species one by one. “Okay guys, that’s eight out of eight so far. If the next snake also has a clit, we’re calling it - all snakes have clits.”

I choose guilty sex.

It makes it a little raunchy, without explaining why.

It’s not the same exact plane, but another article mentions a Boeing employee who did have nightmares about specific planes being sold to Air India. This plane was produced shortly after the time when she was keeping track of those ones:

Cynthia Kitchens, a former quality manager who worked at the Charleston plant between 2009 and 2016, has a binder full of notes, documents and photos from her frustrating years at Boeing, one page of which lists the numbers of the eleven planes delivered between early 2012 and late 2013 whose quality defects most kept her awake at night. Six of them went to Air India, whose purchases were bolstered by billions of dollars in Export-Import Bank loan guarantees. The plane that crashed was delivered in January 2014 from Boeing’s now-defunct assembly line in Everett, Washington, though its mid- and aft- fuselages were produced in Charleston.

Thanks for answering.

“I don’t have any evidence, I just think so, and I’m old” is enough for me to understand your mentality.

I don’t see it as a cage at all.

I know my comment was long, but you haven’t answered:

• Why you think that the same people who advocate for services within 15 minutes also advocate for confining people within a certain zone as part of that goal - have they ever said so? Why would they want to do so anyway? What do they get out of it?
• Why you think that traffic calming is a slippery slope to confining vehicles, or all modes of transport, within a certain zone, instead of just trying to balance the ease of access between vehicles and bikes, scooters, skateboards, buses, pedestrians, etc.

If you want to believe in a conspiracy, why not look at the ways in which the auto industry has suppressed other modes of transport, from inventing the term “jaywalking” to suppressing electric trams to building giant highways through poor neighbourhoods?

Yeah, fictional romance is more interesting when it’s forbidden in some way. Otherwise, who wants to read a romance novel about a nice couple who meets at the library when they’re both single, and proceeds to have a wholesome relationship? Great for real life, but boring to read about or watch a movie about.

Many of the traditional reasons for forbidding a romance are gone in the contemporary world. Different race, different social class, same gender, rival families? Not convincing.

So you’re left with stuff that’s plausible but icky, like being in a relationship already, or being teacher/student or boss/employee. Or pornographic stuff like step-family. Those are problematic and people will criticize them.

You could set your story in a historical setting in which the countess and the gardener are truly forbidden from passion, or a fantasy world where the ogopogos and sasquatches are sexy rivals.

Or just have a lukewarm type of forbidden-ness, like “his family’s greeting-card store is in competition with my family’s greeting-card store” or “we’re coworkers.”

I looked this up and found this information about it:

In its Local Plan 2040, Oxford City Council proposed installing elements from the 15-minute city urban concept in neighborhoods throughout the city over the next 20 years. These plans included proposals to improve accessibility to local shops and other amenities for residents so they didn’t have to always drive. Separately, Oxfordshire County Council announced traffic-reducing measures throughout the city, with infrastructure to encourage car travel around the city by using the ring road rather than already congested roads. Initial opposition to the plans led to proposals to introduce permit schemes to facilitate car travel at certain times, allowing car access to areas that the council planned to restrict to motorists.

First, the article says it was separate. Nobody said, “We are blocking everybody’s access to this road because the goal of 15-Minute City is to restrict people and forbid them from leaving their zone.”

Second, it was just traffic-calming. They put up some planters blocking roads to vehicles to encourage access by bike, pedestrians, etc. That’s not restricting access, that is INCREASING access. By bikes.

They decided that a different, busier road was more appropriate for cars. How on earth does that equate to restricting access? So your car had to drive further, using a big busy road instead of a local quiet street - boo-hoo! This, to you, was a sign that the government wants to confine you to a 15 minute area and never let you leave?

Are the following measures, to you, a sign of nefarious “restricting access”?

• An ambulance can drive the wrong way down the street, but you cannot
• A bus can travel in a bus lane, but you cannot
• A commercial vehicle can park in a loading zone, but you cannot
• A vehicle with several people can travel in a special HOV lane, but you cannot if you are driving alone
• A toll bridge reads your license plate to check if you paid a fee to access that route, and charges you a fine if you did not
• The city takes out a vehicle lane to build a dedicated bike lane and plant some nice shrubs
• The city closes a street temporarily for a neighbourhood block party
• The city installs speed bumps on a quiet street
• The city builds a traffic circle at a quiet intersection
• The city puts up a sign limiting the speed you can travel
• A highway cuts through an existing quiet suburb, meaning your car cannot cross it on a quiet street; you have to use an onramp and get on the busy highway

All of those technically “restrict access” by your seeming definition. Well, at least by vehicle. Is it your assertion that private vehicles reign supreme, and if the government does anything to slow down, discourage, or increase the cost of vehicle travel, it means their future goal is to create walled mini-cities that folks can’t leave?

Edit: also, you say that people threatened to hang the city council to get them to renege - are you proud of this? Your “side” is threatening to murder people if they don’t govern the way they want, and that’s just “being vigilant”? To prevent planters from being placed on a street? What the hell?

It really is. You’d think they’d choose a positive news story.

Has anyone ever actually said, “I think we should have all services within a zone of 15-minute travel, and we should restrict people from leaving their zone, and this is called 15 Minute Cities and I support that idea”?

“Having services readily available” is the entire idea. “You’re not allowed to go to another area” is nonsense that someone else tacked on to the concept to make people hate it.

The eyeballs are a good example. But perhaps an ignorant pro-vag-washing man could retort, "Well, nobody jizzes in my eyeballs!’

Maybe the issue is self-loathing as well as misogyny - they think their cum is disgusting, so they assume it contaminates a vag?