Lifted from the comments, it turns out that Transport For London is advertising assisted suicide. They seem to be giving it quite a push:

Westminster Death Tunnel sponsored by @dignityindying pic.twitter.com/fW0mbtqVRc

— Fleur Elizabeth (@fleurmeston) November 25, 2024

Very on-brand, I’d say. Almost too on-the-nose. I mean, if London’s buses and tube network were suddenly to be plastered with huge posters saying END IT ALL NOW, YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO, it wouldn’t be entirely inexplicable, or entirely dissonant with the customer experience.

It’s perhaps worth noting that Transport For London has a staff training centre, complete with fake station and platform, and “suicide pits,” where employees learn how to manage what are euphemistically referred to as “passengers taken unwell” or “disruptions to the tube service.” Events that occur on average once or twice a week.

In 2019, staff “intervened” in the self-destructive thoughts of 426 customers deemed “visibly in distress,” “up from 252 in the previous year.”

As EmC quips darkly in reply,

Update, via the comments:

The adverts for assisted suicide are now being partially covered, by persons unknown, with posters for a Samaritans helpline.

Update 2:

I don’t at the moment have strong feelings on the subject of assisted suicide, in principle, in theory. But the location of the adverts – and their sheer density, dozens of them, one after another – in a place where unhappy people regularly hurl themselves onto the tracks – seems a little, shall we say, tone-deaf. And walking down a tunnel in which every wall is plastered with repeated invitations to extinguish yourself does strike me as a bit of a downer.

Dicentra quotes this,

And adds,

As someone who’s experienced first-hand the soul-withering properties of attempts to travel in London – and would not care to repeat it – there is, I think, an unhappy irony. It’s also worth noting that TfL, supported by London’s leftist mayor, Sadiq Khan, has been quite eager to forbid adverts on the tube for foods deemed insufficiently healthy and life-affirming, including artisanal cheeses.

Oh, and this, from Clam:

I’ll just leave that there, I think.

Consider this an open thread.

Readers will, I think, recall this eye-widening altercation, shared in the Ephemera of October 11, between a laid-back driver and a rather wound-up cyclist. The latter being a candidate, as Mags put it, for the title of World’s Most Annoying Human Being:

Average cyclist interaction in Utah. pic.twitter.com/od5i6a9dSX

— Dr Manhattva (@Manhattva) October 9, 2024

If you haven’t seen the exchange above, I do recommend watching it, if only as an instructional tale. Or a test of your own self-restraint. In the video, the cyclist, the aptly named Mr Peacock, goes out of his way to generate conflict, repeatedly, then descends into some paranoid fantasy, in which he is somehow both the hero and the victim. His fabulist construals of what is happening are quite remarkable. 

As I said at the time,

The drama resulted in Mr Peacock, our high-maintenance cyclist, receiving a $160 fine for disorderly conduct, and the driver, Mr Kempton, initially being given a citation for passing too closely, which would have resulted in a $130 fine, based solely on the cyclist’s claims. This was subsequently dropped after reviewing the driver’s dashcam footage, which tells a different story.

Readers will, I suspect, note the almost comical difference in attitude. Mr Chill meets Mr Head-Full-Of-Crazy-Beans. In the video linked above, Mr Kempton, our low-key driver, says that he feels sorry for the cyclist being cited for disorderly conduct, despite his dishonesty and irrational behaviour, and even though at the time Mr Kempton felt in some danger. As one might when confronted by someone belligerent and neurotic, a raving fantasist.

Well, happily, Dicentra has brought us a second video, showing Mr Peacock’s exchange with the police officer. Again, it may offer both instruction and some amusement:

Y’all remember that Park City Karen cyclist that picked on that kid?

Enjoy this cinematic masterpiece. Nature is healing.pic.twitter.com/mj6SxeL4wA

— 𝕏ANDER GEOGRAPHIC | ᴛᴏᴜᴄʜᴇʀ ᴏꜰ ɢʀᴀꜱꜱ🏕️ (@actionxander) October 21, 2024

“Oh, come on, man,” says Mr Peacock. “I was the victim here.”

And as before, almost every breath is a lie.

Also, open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

Brace for turbulence:

Argentina’s first transgender pilot has debuted the new uniform designed for the female pilots of the country’s national airline.

Traniela Campolieto announced his “transition” to passengers during a flight last year, after which one person tried to get off the plane. pic.twitter.com/v1h3Iyl128

— REDUXX (@ReduxxMag) July 20, 2024

And hey, every passenger wants the pilot to be a bewigged, mentally ill fetishist who bangs on about the super-girly tightness of his uniform, and who takes endless, pouting selfies in the cockpit.

To say nothing of the heightened risk of suicidal inclinations. Ah, the thrill of modernity.

Before becoming a shimmering vision of womanliness, Mr Campolieto was a professional bodybuilder, a proverbial brick shithouse. Hence the bad wig, the transformative powers of which may have been overestimated.

Update, via the comments, where WTP adds,

From the above Publica link:

And so, the pilot in charge of 250 tonnes of Airbus A330, and on whom the lives of 400 or so passengers depend, is a man whose perceptions are wildly unreliable, at least regarding himself.

Previously: Banking and mental illness, together at last. Oh, and policing and mental illness. Because unstable personalities, such that a person isn’t entirely sure who or what they are on any given day, are very in right now.

Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

The World Economic Forum’s Ida Auken wants to correct your primitive lifestyle:

Embrace the upgrade, you filthy savages:

This is Ida Auken (WEF Young Global Leader) who wrote:

“Welcome to 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better.”

Here she is wanging on about using your neighbour’s car. pic.twitter.com/tbKT5MJzTR

— James Melville 🚜 (@JamesMelville) July 20, 2024

Because having neighbours and strangers, people you don’t know, taking your car, apparently at random, would be terribly progressive and super-convenient, and “fun,” and “not annoying.”

More on Ms Auken’s vision of tomorrow can be found here:

All these things, these beastly capitalist products, would be “free.”

And not yours.

Update, via the comments:

If the above sounds like an evasive, rather coy way of saying, “Everything will belong to the state,” or, “Surrender all territory,” then hold that thought.

Update 2:

In the comments, Brother John quips, rather pithily,

Indeed. We might also pause to consider the endless glamour of so-called “social” housing projects, where decidedly anti-social behaviour is not exactly uncommon, or public transport, or any number of other areas in which responsibility is dispersed and nebulous. Take away the territorial aspect, the ownership – the concept that Ms Auken finds so bothersome and passé – and things are generally much more likely to tend towards degradation.

Sometimes quite rapidly and to an eye-widening extent.

The human urge to have some territory over which other people – and the state – do not have total dominion is not a trivial thing.

Or, as Mr Muldoon puts it,

But hey, progress.

Lifted from the comments, a small point, on suburban versus city living. And those who would prefer that you didn’t have a choice:

I went out on my porch last night and there was a guy milling about in front of my neighbor’s house, sitting on their retaining wall, just, you know, hanging out on somebody else’s property at 11pm.

Freedom from that (and a million related things) is what suburbanites are… https://t.co/O94JKBdBv5

— wanye (@wanyeburkett) May 30, 2024

A thread ensues.

In the comments, Jacob adds:

Well, yes. Quite.

Not having to guess whether some stranger sitting on your wall at 11pm is a threat, or just someone with an impaired sense of boundaries – and not having to do that regularly – is freeing. Likewise, being able to park your car on the street outside without fretting, routinely, about whether someone may try to steal it, or steal some part of it, or just vandalise it out of moron spite, is similarly non-trivial.

And contra Mr Gifford, a thing one might wish to enjoy.

Update, via the comments:

Mr Gifford, since you ask, is a proponent of the “15-minute city.” He doesn’t much like car ownership, or people having the option of living in the suburbs. He’s also rather disdainful of the fact that some of us would rather not “live closer to all kinds of different people,” a proximity to difference – now there’s a euphemism – that is presented as some kind of unexplained moral imperative.

That some people prefer to have neighbours with broadly compatible values and expectations – say, regarding behaviour, noise, the observation of normal boundaries, things of that kind – seems to vex Mr Gifford. The word “privilege” is deployed in a rumbling kind of way.

A rumbling we’ve heard before, while marvelling at its implications.

Update 2, via the comments:

Regarding Mr Gifford’s enthusiasm for our proximity – that’s coerced proximity – to “all kinds of different people,” MattS notes,

Another non-trivial point, one touched on here, and about which readers may have views somewhat at odds with those of Mr Gifford.

Dicentra adds, not unreasonably,

YOU WILL CARRY THOSE FOUR BAGS OF SHOPPING ON PUBLIC TRANSPORT. OR DIE IN THE ATTEMPT. CITIZEN. 

And where, needless to say, you will delight in being surrounded by “all kinds of different people.”

At which point, this came to mind, along with this. And of course this infinitely charming scene. Among many others.

Update 3:

In the comments, Daniel Ream adds,

And if everyone involved has shared values and behavioural expectations – the kind of cultural common ground – and moral common ground – that Mr Gifford would presumably disdain as problematic, as mere “privilege.”

A while ago, I mentioned that for many years a neighbour has had an ‘honesty box’ on a small, home-made stand on the pavement outside their house. Passers-by can help themselves to surplus produce from the owner’s vegetable garden, or small plants, or unwanted toys, or whatever. People leave the suggested, very nominal charge or whatever they deem appropriate.

In a box. That doesn’t get robbed.

Almost every time I pass it, I’m faintly pleased that it exists. It does seem rather symbolic. And it serves as a reminder that I’ve lived in neighbourhoods where such a thing would very promptly be vandalised and thrown into the road, and where delight would be taken in its destruction – and in the misery of its owner.

And the difference between the two scenarios – or between this scene and this one – is not caused by poverty, or indeed “privilege.” It’s about being better people. The kind of people one might, say, prefer as neighbours.

Update 4:

Regarding the reference to better people, EmC replies,

To acknowledge the obvious does have an air of scandalousness. Such is the practised dishonesty of our times. But at risk of being thought “privileged,” or insufficiently egalitarian, I would prefer to walk down the street without someone doing this in order to do this. To me or anyone else.

Outrageous of me, I know.