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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 27th, 2023

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  • That is true, which is why most of the reports have to have some meta-analysis on them to be useful, but where dog breed and injury type/circumstances are broadly available within the report, breeds like labrador, spaniel, chihuahua, poodle, etc (and other, reasonably recognizable breeds) the injures are almost overwhelmingly related to non-life-threatening injuries and/or unusual circumstances (feral dogs, part of packs, extreme neglect or abuse) while deaths or serious, life-threatening instances where breeds seem reasonably documented, 60%+ are from the three commonly expected breed/types, which very heavily outweighs the percent of those breeds in the population.

    If type of dog commonly labeled ‘pitbulls’ made up 60% of the population and were involved in 60% of attacks, that would basically mean they posed no more threat than any other breed…if they only make up 1% of the population and are involved in 60% of life-threatening attacks, it’s fair to say that ‘breed’ is extremely dangerous. It’s much closer to the second example than that first. If you wanted to make a good argument, if you could identify some specific breed that is commonly identified as ‘pitbull’ but which arguably are ‘not’ involved in life-threatening attacks, that might be worth highlighting, but unfortunately, just like everyone ‘calling everything that looks vaguely like a pitbull, a pitbull’…the instincts that earn then the poor reputation are just as spread out across the group as the physically recognizable traits.

    Basically, the response to your comment is ‘yeah, but…’ because even though you’re right that we probably will never know exactly what breed caused which injury, there is an obvious enough pattern that pretending there isn’t a pretty heavy relationship between dogs ‘significantly mixed’ with pitbull and rottweilers and serious attacks is either intentionally deceiving or ignorant.



  • I think you are stretching the semantics pretty far…the US is primarily rural geographically and urban only in very sparsely spaced cities…where Europe is urban in more condensed areas. The US doesn’t make everything ‘more inconvenient’ for the most part, most things are simple more inconvenient by nature.

    On the other hand, within cities themselves, the US does shoot itself in the foot with it’s policies and what it subsidizes. Overall, though, most people don’t realize how really big the US is, space vs population-wise, compared to Europe or Japan.


  • There is no way a US federal high speed rail would look anything nearly as successful as ones in europe or other highly populated locations. I think people fail to realize that for the most part the US is very sparsely populated. with the exception of maybe 2-3 ‘regions’ that might look close to the population density and public transportation feasibility of Europe, there just wouldn’t be enough people going between each individual point to make it profitable, even if subsidized. Imagine putting up 300 miles of high speed rail that cost many millions of dollars to build, millions of dollars a year to maintain, and thousands of dollars to run each round trip, and then finding out there are only a few dozen people that need to go between those particular terminals each hour. Trying to adjust by running less often just makes things worse because running less often means fewer people yet will find it convenient…running more often makes it less profitable…so you end up like the US and basically don’t bother making routes and stations without enough traffic.