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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 30th, 2023

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  • Catenaries can stretch up pretty high. This is a bit of gadgetbahn trickery, using batteries shifts cost from up-front capital improvement projects to operating and maintenance cost (managing vehicle charge levels and replacing batteries) and it eliminates one avenue for opponents of new transit to criticize (unsightly wires ruining the anesthetic of our beautiful car-choked city). It is a technically worse solution, but it’s a relatively mild departure from trains/trams as far as gadgetbahns go, and if they can leverage the novelty and the political benefits to build more transit to serve more people than they otherwise would have, good for them. Time will tell if this approach pays off, the world is littered with failed gadgetbahns, but also sprinkled with a few success stories


  • His skin does not look that healthy recently, plus he’s got the signature AI stare into the irrelevant distance despite clearly presenting something to the camera. His suit is a little too shiny too. No dead giveaways, but if this was a photo shop job, I’d bet that GenAI was one of the tools used in that manipulation toolbox



  • Is this not just “the free market of ideas”? Which has the same pitfalls as the free market of money where if consumers are not educated and motivated to prune out bad actors, the market is easily subverted by malicious actors? Relying on people to regulate their information diets is betting on individuals with limited resources and motivation to defend themselves and the collective against concerted, well-resourced, and well-organized efforts to abuse the market of ideas because there is immense money and power to gain from doing so
















  • It wasn’t meant to be an attack 🙂. Absolutely, those people should wear proper PPE (bright clothing) when running in the dark. But you have an elevated heart rate because your body is telling you you are in a dangerous situation. And it’s right. Too many drivers (not an accusation at you) either ignore those signals (and mentally normalize driving recklessly) or blindly focus on removing the triggers for those signals at the expense of the safety of themselves and others (by buying larger vehicles or by voting for politicians that make our infrastructure even more hostile to pedestrians than it already is). At the end of the day, driving a car is dangerous. Especially on residential streets where pedestrian interactions are possible or even common). And that won’t change as long as it is a residential street. Being aware of the danger is a positive, if inconvenient, reminder to drive cautiously.


  • They should. But also, good. You should absolutely feel anxiety operating a multi-ton piece of heavy machinery. Even if everybody was super diligent about making themselves visible, there would still be the off cases. Someone’s boss held them late and they missed the last bus so now they need to walk home in the dark when they dressed expecting to ride home in the day. Someone is down on their luck and needs to get to the nearest homeless resource and doesn’t have access to bright clothes. Drivers should never feel comfortable that obstacles will always be reflective and bright. Our transportation infrastructure should not be built to lull them into that false sense of comfort.