Post a controversial opinion

Looking at the development the last five years, it's getting clearer and clearer that the West should have bombed Syria in 2013.

Do you have a detailed plan for how that would have worked and what the consequences would have been?

No, but I'm assuming things hasn't turned out according to your plan either, so that point is moot.

possibly the "let's bomb shit" plan has to reach a higher standard of theoretical efficacy than the "let's not" plan

Even so, at this point the 'let's not' plan has gone so catastrophically wrong, that it's moot as well.

I'm just wondering how ballsy a controversial opinion is being proposed.

"Syria would be better off if Assad had been forced from power even if it meant ISIS and Al Qaeda taking over a much larger portion of the country" would be a bold one I'd be interested in hearing defended. "Open conflict with Iran and Hezbollah (and possibly Russia) would be a price worth paying for attempting regime change" would be another. Even "I trust the US to get it right in Syria despite the catastrophic failure to plan for consequences in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya" would be good. I'm not even saying they're wrong so it'd be interesting to hear them thought through in detail.

"In retrospect, something should have been bombed"(what? where? to what end?) is both meaningless on its own and not particularly controversial if it can apparently unite Clinton, Rubio, latter day Trump, CNN, MSNBC.

All that is just counterfactuals. I'm saying it was worth the risk of regime change, of regional war, of whatever, because we did the opposite and it has failed disastrously, and whatever would have happened it would have been handled by Obama instead of Trump.

^^^literal garbage from the biggest fool on ilx

^^^he posted controversially

was gonna say, "leaving Trump to step up to the plate in the middle of open conflict in the whole region"

The west should have bombed Denmark last year.

the west should have bombed Ed Sheeran's house last year

That's quite probably the least controversial opinion posted in this thread so far.

imo all those supposed non-payers in NATO could put some peacekeepers on the ground, right

around Ed Sheeran's house, I mean

If that had been the mission back in 2005, I might not have been a conscientious objector.

who lives near Sheeran? think we need to scope out whether collateral damage is a concern.

if it's Jedward I say bombs away

the clear (well, translucent really) glasses frames currently in vogue are ugly as fuck

Absolutely clear glasses

I regret my lasik surgery, 17 years ago, that allowed me function without glasses. For better or worse, the coke bottle glasses were part of my identity, and without them I was forgettable.

Cyclists in cities that are not especially bike-friendly and have yet to adapt to a rise in number of cyclists make the streets 100% more dangerous for drivers and pedestrians

Pedestrians, yes. Drivers, no.

Fuck drivers IMO

Pedestrians > Drivers > Cyclists

Wimmels possibly OTM, in which case, this should spur cities like this one to adapt and become more cyclist-friendly.

so if there were no cyclists in those cities there'd be a 50% reduction in accidents/injuries/'danger'? it's a good controversial opinion anyway

pedestrian friendly much more important

Number of drivers killed by cyclists continues to be zero for the foreverth year in a row.

Lol

Fuck pedestrians. Luddites of our times.

Removed from their modes of transportation, I'm sure a person that occasionally rides a bike has murdered a person that occasionally drives a car.

Cyclists certainly have killed pedestrians. Just be grateful these wankers aren't driving cars imo.

and pedestrians, drivers, and cyclists have all been killed by this guy

http://cineplex.media.baselineresearch.com/images/300437/300437_full.jpg

yes, some pedestrians have been killed by cyclists -- on average, somewhere around 1-2 a year. Motorists kill more than 5,000 pedestrians and 800 cyclists every year.

speaking as a driver (and frequent pedestrian), I can say that it makes driving far more difficult when you are not only on the lookout for pedestrians, other drivers, traffic lights, cabs, potholes, street signs, construction, and all the other things you've learned to pay attention to in your decades of driving experience, but also a rising number of frequently death-defying cyclists who don't follow the rules they so emphatically demand that everyone else follow. I've watched cyclists blow red lights and stop signs, make illegal left turns, not signal, and ride against traffic, and this was just yesterday.

and obviously when I said 'dangerous" I didn't mean 'dangerous to me and my car' and only someone who doesn't actually drive would automatically jump to that conclusion. I meant dangerous to everyone, because cyclists are in danger whenever drivers don't know how to adapt to this growing trend (or won't), pedestrians because of course, and drivers because they begin driving like assholes when they're constantly freaking out about the obstacle course that has become modern city driving

I get rural areas that haven't modernized but the area I grew up in totally adapted to be cyclist friendly, so don't get some of the more reluctant cities that don't.

an observation:

in most cities, the overwhelming majority of people are at various times both pedestrians and motorists (incl folks who take rides in cars occasionally) and so we empathize with our fellow walkers and drivers a bit more and can more easily discriminate i.e. "that guy is a terrible driver," "that person in the crosswalk on the phone is an idiot," versus "drivers are terrible," "everyone crossing the street is an idiot." Meanwhile, cyclists are a self-selecting minority and thus most folks, having never been an adult urban cyclist, readily stereotype them with a broad(er) brush.

basically the same phenomenon with people in overwhelmingly white communities having much harsher views of other ethnicities than people who actually live among them

there's probably some consistent threshold of proportion of cyclists in the population that, once crossed, makes things safer all around. This paper goes into much more detail about it and references Smeed's Law which is another one of my favorite eponymous laws

http://www.vehicularcyclist.com/safeinnumbers.pdf

This is partly a knock on cyclists, partly on city planners, partly on people like me who are set in their ways. They've added all these bike lanes in downtown Toronto, and I'm worried that as I pull into a parking space one day, there'll be a cyclist clipping past on my right (which some will do and is completely stupid). That's not something I've ever had to think about in almost forty years of driving, and I keep catching myself pulling in without checking my right blind spot.

it's ok, I think the cyclists know about you

I've watched cyclists blow red lights and stop signs, make illegal left turns, not signal, and ride against traffic, and this was just yesterday.

I see motorists do each and every one of these things every day. Every single day. So spare me your indignation.

only annoyance i ever have w/ cyclists is that we don't have bike lanes in my neighborhood so when there's a bicyclist ahead of you it sometimes takes a few minutes for there to be an opportunity to drive around them (tho they'll be pretty good and get out of the way when they can), but it's really a mild inconvenience in the scope of things and i've never felt endangered by them (or been afraid of endangering them). i would never cycle on the street in the philly area tho bc drivers here are terrible. the other day a driver made a U-turn in front of me from the right lane. that was only moments after they signaled left at an intersection and then instead of turning moved into said right lane right in front of me. i thought "this person is definitely getting into a car accident today and i am glad i survived this leg of that journey"

drivers because they begin driving like assholes when they're constantly freaking out about the obstacle course that has become modern city driving

I don't know how to break this to you, and I truly hope you're sitting down, but a large plurality of motorists, if not a solid majority, drive like assholes most of the time even in the absence of cyclists.

as bad as drivers are here tho ime bicyclists def blow red lights much more often than cars. motorcyclists don't tho.

Motorcyclists have to have a license, which can get points, and be taken away

Not a judgement on cyclists but just as one main thing a motorcycle operator has to think about at traffic lights that bicyclists don't

Also cameras can catch the plate on your motorcycle and you'll get a ticket in the mail

We could solve this problem by creating catapults that fling people to their destinations (or comically to their deaths)

The idea that drivers, who up until recently have all adhered to strictly by-the-book driving habits, have suddenly become more dangerous because "LOL WHAT DO I DO ABOUT ALL THESE DAMNED BICYCLERS" doesn't even rise to the level of "laughable." It's just stupid.

xxp To the extent that I and other cyclists I know blow red lights or stop signs, we do so for what is generally a rational reason -- e.g. not to get stuck at a light in front of or next to a line of impatient motorists who might do something dangerous. Cyclists are most unstable when starting from a complete stop, and it would be trivially easy for a motorist gunning it at a light to cause a real -- even fatal -- collision. But MOST cyclists, just like MOST motorists, don't do it as often as anyone thinks. Everyone's engaging in a whole lot of selection bias.

Here are a couple of links on this, from different countries and sources, all showing that a) there isn't as much red-light running going on by any class of road users as people think, and b) most of it is done by motorists:

https://averagejoecyclist.com/cyclists-running-red-lights-infographic/

http://irishcycle.com/2016/05/26/only-1-in-8-cyclists-run-red-lights-says-study-of-60-irish-junctions/

https://www.washingtonian.com/2016/09/01/people-on-bikes-should-obey-red-lights-but-that-wrc-story-was-still-wrong/

And not to get all Jack Nicholson "You want me on that wall" or anything, but there was a story I'm too lazy to dig for right now from recent years in which a group of about 20 cyclists, riding together, strictly followed every single traffic law including coming to complete stops at every signal and so forth, and it held up traffic in all directions for minutes at a time. Bikes are not cars, they shouldn't be subject to all the same rules and regulations despite sharing the same roads, and hopefully one day the law will catch up to that fact.

I just went and counted on Google Maps -- when I commute to work, by car or bike, over the 8 mile distance there are 36 stop signs or traffic lights. There is only one (1) that I do not stop for every time despite the fact that I'm often riding at 5:30 am and there's nobody coming.

OTOH, I ride with a bike camera for my own safety, and I can show you two downtown intersections where multiple motorists run the red lights every single time I'm stopped at them.

i'm v skeptical of that averagejoecyclist piece. cyclists could easily be jumping red lights more and causing fewer accidents. first you'd need to compare numbers of cars on the road to number of cyclists to get a real usable number and even then cyclist accidents would presumably be reported far less bc they end in serious injury or death far less often. to your last pt i don't disagree - i don't really care if bikers break the law, esp if they think doing so makes them safer. they're taking their lives into their hands and the worst thing they can do to me is scratch up my car.