Morgan Eckroth

It’s about God damn time. They have known about these problems for years. The travesty of this story is that it has taken this long.

To be fair, I think it’s really more specifically an indictment of his management skills. I doubt he said everything up himself, but a good manager knows how to attract actual experts, not just college flunkies

It’s the first I hear that there was even a riot in the UK. I was specifically interested in finding out musks involvement. Since the article was drawing the comparison, it’s on them to actually explain what they are comparing properly. And yes, randomly finding an article is it perfectly valid way of trying to catch yourself up on a news story. If the author can’t be bothered to post summary, they should at least hyperlink to something that does.

Any article that draws a comparison like that should explain both ends of the comparison. I’m not from the uk, and while I do try to follow UK politics somewhat, there are some things that slip under my radar, like apparently a riot that Elon musk was involved with.

This article is slop. I read it to try to find out what was going on in the UK, and how musk was involved and there were less than two sentences about the event being covered. All the rest was about the US and how we are about to imminently fall. If you’re going to make a headline like that at least explain to readers what happened. You can’t assume that the entirety of your audience already knows.

You are being willfully obtuse. Atheists didn’t choose the definition of the word. Magic is a catch all for things that are not explained by a scientific process. Computing is not one of those things. You don’t understand computers because they are a black box. Therefore it is tempting to call the result magic. But you had better sure as hell hope that the effect of computers are reproducible, every single time, because if they are not, the world as we know it ceases to function.

No they aren’t. Not all protests are good. It is essential that political disagreements don’t capsize the society we live in. Any protests that can’t be ignored is essentially mob rule

I mean, there’s a big difference between not being popular and being dead. Nothing really happened to it, it just didn’t grow at the rate that Facebook did.

I thought the whole point of starlink was that it provided cheap and dirty infrastructure basically anywhere. What’s the point if they’re going to individually license areas??

I don’t think a generic building that is suitable for all purposes is possible though. Inevitably the needs of a housing unit and an office are fundamentally different, going all he way down to the plumbing. It wouldn’t make sense to build an office building with enough plumbing to easily become an apartment, or vice versa, because taking a down-the-middle approach could just as easily lead to a building that serves no useful purpose at all. It’s not “just” about the money. He goes into the plumbing issue in particular in great depth. I highly recommend watching the whole video

Correct on both counts.

It’s so weird, do they think handicapped people can bike and walk everywhere or don’t exist?

As a handicapped person myself, it really baffles me how people think car oriented infrastructure is so much better for us. I am a wheelchair user, and I live in a 15 minute neighborhood. Getting around in my wheelchair is a million times simpler there than in my old car-centric suburb, because the same disabilities that make me wheelchair bound also prevent me from driving. Which mean that in a car-centric environment I do one of the following:

a) Rely on the generosity of friends and family to cart me around at their convenience, or b) Utilize shared access rides, which are door to door, but take longer than using public transit, or c) Roll myself to underserved suburban bus stops over badly maintained sidewalk, and pray I make it on time.

None of which are appealing.

Meanwhile, in my 15 minute city:

• The buses often run at 10 to 15 minute intervals (vs 30 to 60 minutes in the suburb),
• Sidewalks are larger
• I have less distance to travel in the first place

I say this as somebody who cannot drive. And I say it with all the love in the world for public transit. Public transit absolutely cannot get you everywhere, at least not if you expect to be there in a timely manner. The vast majority of America is suburbanized, the worst possible environment for buses.

There’s a big difference between identifying yourself to a neutral ISP versus identifying yourself to the government. In general, I’m not that skeptical of government, but this is one issue where I worry about the right wing loonies getting their way. God help us if it’s ever criminalized

It is extremely disquieting how one individual is getting away with having that much power over so many aspects of what should be a role played by public institutions. Space exploration should be a public endeavor.

Unfortunately, I say this as a train lover. They require a lot more infrastructure than planes and will always be at a disadvantage because of that. You can set up an airport pretty much anywhere and make it reachable by pretty much anyone. Whereas with the train, you need a dedicated line from point to point that you will commit to maintaining through hell and high water.

There’s also the problem that in many countries, we are deliberately neglecting our train infrastructure and not investing in high speed alternatives that could compete with an airline over shorter distances.

All of these factors combine to make individual trips less efficient over train. I had to cross the United States this week. To do so by train would have taken me 4 days. Doing so by plane took me 6 hours. Nobody would choose a 4-day trip over a 6-hour one unless their goal is to look out the window a lot. Which is perfectly valid. But most people don’t look at traveling itself as the experience. And in this case, I had a particular event that I had to attend.

To be fair, I think it is reasonable to rate things you have no complaints about as high as possible. If I see a rating with three stars, I assume that it was okay with a few rough spots. I like the idea that all products start out as five stars unless there is something really wrong, and you start knocking points for problems.

To be clear on this, I AM an urban core dweller, and I LOVE it. I am never more than 15 minutes walk from a grocery store, and significant cultural events are right on my doorstep. But there are downsides, and I understand why it is not everyone’s cup of tea.

Hate people? sucks for you, your only refuge will be your apartment. Clean freak? get used to some grunge, because there is oderous shit everywhere. Need to get to more sparsely populated areas? Expect to spend double the time on the road using transit, or pay through the nose to keep a garage with a car you barely use otherwise.

S/He is not. Even one blocked sidewalk means that I need to double back on the block if I am using my wheelchair. One scooter is all it takes, and depending on the length of the block, it can easily add 20 minutes to a commute.