They say there are two kinds of tired: one requires rest and the other requires peace.

There is a third secret kind you get as a trans person reading news coverage of trans people.

Portugal's infrastructure minister gets it:

“If we simply replace all combustion cars with electric cars, we will end up with the same kind of congestion, the same huge amount of lost time in traffic, the same unsustainable levels of road accidents, and the same struggle for public space."

“The car overwhelmed city life and it is something that must change.”

https://www.euractiv.com/section/electric-cars/news/shift-to-electric-vehicles-will-not-solve-urban-transport-woes-says-portuguese-minister/

Whether or not we build online social spaces that allow us to de-program capitalist-encouraged ways of interacting, there are still some other psychological limitations to thinking of online space as community.

Online space is disembodied and spatially disconnected from place. Scrolling and dissociation go hand in hand. And since we are operating from a place of bodily disconnection, it stifles our ability to actually connect. Lacking physical connection, it's hard to develop real trust. So any connection we feel here does not get embodied, it stays in our heads. From that, when we venture out into the real world, we can still feel really disconnected from our surroundings, distrustful of our actual neighbors. There is little way to connect with people who are geographically near you either. Perhaps this grew out of security culture, and perhaps it keeps you safe from some threats, but in the long run I think we shoot ourselves in the foot. There are a bunch of local-themed instances in Europe, why not the US? Are there differences in fear of repression/it being used against you somehow?

I understand that disabled comrades rely more heavily on online interaction because irl spaces are inaccessible, but that doesn't mean we can't critique it. Really we could and should be critiquing the inaccessibility of irl space that caused disabled people to have to search elsewhere to get needs met! It shouldn't be ok to have certain folks be relegated to disembodied forms of comnection. Problem is that's a bigger, less immediate challenge - one that requires massive systemic change. So for now we find ourselves putting up with this band aid.