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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 21st, 2023

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  • Authoritarian communists, especially those not native to such a state.

    Currently it’s mainly the folks who believe China in particular can do no wrong. Historically it refers to supporters of the USSR in Britain

    Specifically, it was used to distinguish [CPGB] party members who spoke out in defense of the Soviet use of tanks to suppress the Hungarian Revolution of 1956and the 1968 Prague Spring, or who more broadly adhered to pro-Soviet positions.

    More recently it’s applied online especially to people who are knee-jerk anti-capitalist or anti-US, “if the US/‘west’/capitalism is wrong then anyone who opposes them must be right”

    More generally, a tankie is someone who tends to support “militant opposition to capitalism”, and a more modern online variation, which means “something like ‘a self-proclaimed communist who indulges in conspiracy theories and whose rhetoric is largely performative.’”

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie












  • It does.

    I find it doesn’t matter though which way you ride: riding on the sidewalk is unsafe.

    When (US) turning right from the right lane, drivers don’t expect you to be coming from behind to the right of them at any speed.

    When turning left from the left lane, drivers don’t expect you to be coming from behind to the left at any speed.

    When backing out across the sidewalk, drivers don’t expect you to be to either side at any speed.

    I’m seeing a pattern here, and it’s that drivers only see what they expect to see, where they expect to see it. I’ve fucked it up myself from time to time, and this leads me to the conclusion that the safest option for biking is to be where drivers are looking: in the vehicle lanes, going the same direction as other vehicles. It’s not perfect because they still aren’t expecting a bicycle, but it’s still the best choice we have.