urbanism

A summary...

She was driving drunk 25+ mph over the limit on the wrong side of the road. She killed a guy and she went to the hospital. While she was there - she tried to get an IV to dilute her blood alcohol concentration with an IV.

She got 15 years for pleading guilty to vehicular homicide, but will not serve any of the time after her sentence was suspended.

https://transitcosts.com/projects/ – a few cost under $50 million per km, a few cost over $1500 million

Here's there final report (424-page PDF lol): https://transitcosts.com/wp-content/uploads/TCP_Final_Report.pdf

They recommend that the State (note that, the State, not a contractor) appoints an experienced project manager who knows enough to know what the costs should be, and who controls the pursestrings.

They looked at high-speed rail as well as subways: https://transitcosts.com/high-speed-rail/

The 2040 plan is mainly an ending of single-family zoning. Anecdotally, I've seen a lot more apartments going up around the Twin Cities in the last few years. The Frey regime are neoliberal ghouls, and this is a classic YIMBY approach to tackling housing shortages. The opponents of this plan are somehow even worse, an astroturfed army of KKKarens.

Choice quote: "Residents of color already face significant barriers to home ownership, which would have been exacerbated under the plan as a result of reduced access to and availability of single family properties," said activist Nekima Levy Armstrong, a member of the plaintiffs' legal team, in a statement calling Tuesday's ruling a "major victory."

What are the Hexbear thoughts on this whole situation?

While you wait for your train, you can admire the beautiful station design, murals, and artwork. If that's not enough, there are also several newspaper displays in the center so you can read the news! No advertising, of course. The trains are former Berlin U-Bahn stock.

Cozy interior, cushy seats, nicely made grab rings to hold onto, a window so you can look out the front of the train. This is a particularly nice example on the Nose railway.

It's got a vaguely fascist look to it though, something about those guys holding the lights rubs me the wrong way.

Take a moment to consider all the resources used in the United States regarding automotive transportation since 1945. Think about all that metal that’s used on something that becomes obsolete and junked after only a decade or two. Think of all the labor involved in manufacturing them. And think of all the time individuals must spend on long commutes where they can’t do anything other than drive (because our time is a resource too). Think about how many more automobiles are needed than trains and buses. And then think about all the oil that’s needed to run those cars.

Now think about how little resources are needed for public transportation vehicles. How they last a lot longer, are more fuel efficient, and allow you to spend your time doing other things. It’s truly amazing how wasteful automobiles are. The automobile is the product of the free market and “individualism” run amok. A socialist country run by central planning wouldn’t dream of creating a society that’s based around the car because it’s so needlessly inefficient.

Let’s expand this a little further. The modern capitalist culture around cars is largely a post-WW2 invention. Look at a map of where you live. Try to figure out what your metro area looked like in 1945 and what it looks like now. I know for my hometown, the post-1945 part is several times larger than what was there before. And that all was built around automotive infrastructure. It boggles the mind the resources involved in that. All the concrete used for highways. All the land paved over for parking lots. All the inefficient single-family homes and strip malls. It’s hard to wrap your head around how much resources were used to build that.

Now think about the alternative: how few resources would be used in building housing for need with space efficiency in mind. How you need so much fewer roads and how you can connect cities with rail instead of highways. Think about how much less commercial areas you need under socialism. The later is just so much more efficient.

But in the debate of free markets versus central planning, all this seems to get skipped over in favor of “but socialism means no bananas in the winter” or “how will I be able to get the exact color iPhone case I want if it’s all centrally planned?” But the sheer waste of capitalism is overlooked because there was profit made the whole time. People never consider how those resources could have been better used.

I think if you took the US post-WW2 and made it socialist with central planning, we’d truly be living in a post-scarcity society by now. Even acknowledging how much of a “boost” the capitalist US economy gets from imperialism and environmental destruction, with socialism and just the resources within the US, we’d have so much that our society would have no choice but to massively reduce work hours. How wasteful capitalism is gets ignored because the waste is dealt with by a willing buyer and willing seller at a market clearing price (ignoring overproduction, I mean). The anti-communists don’t want to think about in terms of finite resources, and how those resources are used.

Idk, just something to think about.

Local Law 18, which came into force Tuesday, is so strict it doesn’t just limit how Airbnb operates in the city—it almost bans it entirely for many guests and hosts. From now on, all short-term rental hosts in New York must register with the city, and only those who live in the place they’re renting—and are present when someone is staying—can qualify. And people can only have two guests.

A few days ago comrade /u/InevitableSwing posted an astounding graph of automobile deaths per capita in different countries.

Obviously America was number one by far but what was amazing to me was that Canada's rate is nearly three times lower.

The countries are not that different in many ways .

Certainly things like aggressive driving and speed limits of course play a role, but I think the key is probably something a lot more simple: public fucking transit usage.

Example A:

USA

• Own car/drive: 85%
• Public transit: 12%
• Bike: 11%

Example B:

Canada

• Own car/drive: 67%
• Public transit: 23%
• Bike: 11%

So overall 18% fewer Canadians drive, and nearly twice as many take pubic transit.

A lot of our population is centred around the major cities that have decent public transit, and even some of the medium sized cities have decent bus systems too.

• Toronto
• Montreal
• Vancouver

Subheader

A program that rents homes to low-income residents, and helps them build equity as homeowners, was rocked when one of the initial participants was evicted.

It's really annoying how often the NYT has comments off.

As recent as a few years ago, many felt Texas had a promising chance to advance their career ambitions in tech. Gov. Greg Abbott courted Californians by promising "less government" and "smarter regulations," and in 2021, Houston ranked No. 2 for growing tech markets during the pandemic. However, the policies Abbott has pushed have led some to think Texas is now among the worst states to live and work.

But old Austin attitudes have clashed with the enterprising mindset of bosses in the tech industry. Founder and angel investor Mike Chang lamented to Insider that "Austin is where ambition goes to die."

Chang also shared his disappointment over a talent disparity between San Francisco and Austin, and other reports tend to agree. CBRE’s list of the top tech talent markets put Austin outside the top five while San Francisco enjoyed the No. 1 spot. A major reason for that is tech talent being almost 12 percent of total employment in the San Francisco Bay Area, whereas the average is 5.6 percent in other cities.

Disgusting BBC article goes happily along with the framing that this is due to equal pay settlements, nothing to do with the dozens of real-estate-industry backed money pits that took the place of building infrastructure for anywhere besides the city center. Nothing to do with the pandemic. Nothing to do with decades of austerity-driven privatization. Nothing to do with anything, so nothing to be learned. Prayers up for Brum

Useful if you ride in urban areas, as air pumps fitting for schrader valves are plenty because like every car uses them, sclaverand or even dunlop - not so much. Just screws on, fill tyre, go about your way

Are they high quality? Nah, wouldn't really use this in a workshop setting. But to put on your keychain or something in the event you might need it? Pretty good! And they're cheap enough if you find a miserable soul with a slow leak who didn't plan ahead you can just give it to them

Real question, I'd like to hear takes.

For years I lived in the same place so I knew how to get around. I also got around on bike/foot/transit. I rarely needed a navigation app.

But I recently moved to a new area, and the logistics of the move required me to get a car. With all the new places to learn, I started leaning on google nav more.

But every time it makes a route for me, it seems like it's fighting against city planners. It will constantly direct me through little 1 way streets through residential neighborhoods if it thinks it can save .1 mile or 30 seconds.

As a concrete example, in my neighborhood the city planners have set up one road as the obvious exit, all the other roads have no lights or restrictions on turns. Navigation never uses that route, and prefers darting across lanes of traffic and turning during times it's not allowed.

My partner and I joke about how many uturns it suggests. There's a route I sometimes take where it suggests I make a 270 degree turn off a highway exit across 4 lanes of traffic.

In short, google drives like an asshole. It makes erratic decisions. And it routes people down roads that aren't meant to carry lots of traffic.

I'm sure there's some counterargument that this kind of navigation is load balancing and more efficient. But to me, I feel it makes things unpredictable and less pleasant to exist in a neighborhood.

is there any consensus on this stuff?

Why do lantern flies congregate next to modern commercial buildings, specifically those with aluminum storefront system facades and black granite?

I just killed thirty in front of a high rise. The next block, a neoclassical building, had none. Crossed the street to a grocery store on the ground floor of another high rise and killed probably 40 in half the time.

Is it warmer at the base of these buildings? The two modern buildings faced each other so were in very different sun.

Something about these hulking titans of industry just innately appeals to me