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decimalenoughon PR spam today looks like email spam in the early 2000s

Not necessarily. Orgs exist in GitHub, and it seems reasonable that if the $BIGCORP org limits membership to employees, you can automatically trust all members of that org. Because this way, if one steps out of line, you have both an escalation path (contact admins) and a stick (revoke trust in entire org).

decimalenoughon The deadly rise of giant trucks and SUVs

While vehicle sizes are indeed trending upward in Australia and Europe, giant SUV and especially giant truck penetration in both countries is still far behind US levels, and particularly in Europe are unlikely to ever reach the same figures (good luck parking your Ford F-9000 Testosteroneo in Rome or Paris).

decimalenoughon The deadly rise of giant trucks and SUVs

Neither. The OP's point is that shootings consistently make headlines and occasion a lot of passionate debate, while grandma or toddler getting mowed over by a SUV or monster truck doesn't and as a consequence nobody really cares.

decimalenoughon The Commodore Callback 8020 smart flip phone

We're discussing the entirely voluntary insertion of mobile phones into your "prison pocket", not rape.

decimalenoughon The Commodore Callback 8020 smart flip phone

Three inches! Even the greenest punk should be able to bend over and take it.

https://www.unihertz.com/products/jelly-star

decimalenoughon Iran requires insurance on ships using Strait of Hormuz, fees likely to follow

There is zero commercial shipping through the Strait with US flags, everybody uses flags of convenience.

decimalenoughon Iran requires insurance on ships using Strait of Hormuz, fees likely to follow

They already did:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habshan%E2%80%93Fujairah_oil_p...

But it obviously wasn't designed to carry all the oil going through the Strait.

decimalenoughon How Japan's railways stayed one while splitting apart

Confusing, perhaps. Inconvenient, not really, the same Suica/Pasmo cards work everywhere and handle transfers seamlessly.

decimalenoughon How Japan's railways stayed one while splitting apart

The miracle of Indian Railways is largely that it operates despite the numerous challenges of operating any business in India. The sheer passenger volume of something like the Mumbai suburban railways (7.5 million passengers per day!) is mind-boggling.

decimalenoughon How Japan's railways stayed one while splitting apart

Pedantic note: the fastest Shinkansen is the 320 km/h Hayabusa service from Tokyo to Hokkaido, which you can ride for free with a JR Pass.

The fastest service on the Tokyo-Osaka corridor, Nozomi, maxes out at 300 km/h but is indeed not included in the pass.

decimalenoughon How Japan's railways stayed one while splitting apart

The JR Pass has never been (and still is not) aimed at locals, who are not even allowed to buy it. It's for tourists only.

decimalenoughon How Japan's railways stayed one while splitting apart

If you're interested in a deep dive into all this, Substack Bahn has a series on the history of JR:

https://www.substack-bahn.net/p/aura-of-success-the-first-ye... (and note the links to the earlier pieces at the beginning)

decimalenoughon McMansions 101: What Makes a McMansion Bad Architecture? (2016)

> Sales Mass ... witchin' crib

i_see_what_you_did_there.jpg

decimalenoughon McMansions 101: What Makes a McMansion Bad Architecture? (2016)

I always thought a McMansion was primarily defined by cramming too much house into a small plot.

An actual mansion is a mansion in large part because the grand building is set off by a vast expanse of lawns and gardens around it. A suburban McMansion dispenses with that and just crams the maximum amount of Roman columns, crenellated turrets and whatever else the designer thinks looks impressive into a cancerous-lookimg building that extends right out to the property line.

decimalenoughon Midjourney Medical

> It starts by stepping into a shallow pool of golden light. You then begin to descend into the water. Your body passes through a ring of underwater sensors, each acting like a dolphin, using its echolocation.

...what. You descend into water and it scans your whole body? How do you breathe? How do you come out the other end?

Have they actually invented some type of novel scanning technology, or is this just AI slop gone wild?

decimalenoughon Commodore Callback

Mildly interesting concept, but the price tag is US$500!

decimalenoughon Is Meta destroying its engineering organization?

This also works much better in the vast slabs of the world where roads don't have names, or if they do, they're signposted badly if at all. (India, Japan, most of Africa, etc.)

decimalenoughon Apple's weird anti-nausea dots cured my car sickness

The apps are targeted at a very specific but common use case: being unable to read while in a moving vehicle. It's not going to help you if you're on a sailboat in heavy seas for a day.

decimalenoughon The Manhoff Archives: Color photos of Stalin-era USSR taken by a US diplomat

Reminds me of the old Soviet joke of somebody going to the butcher and asking if they have fish. The butcher responds we only have no meat here, you need to go to the fish shop if you want no fish.

decimalenoughon Peopleless economy? Not technically impossible

Correct, they were mostly two bad harvests away from starvation. 240,000 people starved to death in Sweden because 1867 was cold and 1868 was dry.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_famine_of_1867%E2%80%9...

decimalenoughon A short history of Cerro Torre, the most controversial mountain (2012)

Yeah, I thought this would be about a border dispute or something.

decimalenoughon Foreign business owners are scrambling to raise capital to stay in Japan

Not even close. There's actual data on this, and more high net worth individuals go to UAE, Singapore, Switzerland, Australia and even Israel than the US.

https://m2now.com/this-is-where-the-rich-are-leaving-and-goi...

decimalenoughon Foreign business owners are scrambling to raise capital to stay in Japan

Also, the capital stays with the company! Wind down the company and (if it was profitable) you get your capital back.

decimalenoughon How to earn a billion dollars

thatsthepoint.jpg

decimalenoughon Pac-Man, but you're the ghost

"If Pac-Man had affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in dark rooms, munching pills and listening to repetitive electronic music."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-1PnNSF350

decimalenoughon The experience of rendering Arabic typography and its technical debt

There is no one "Arabic". Yes, formal modern Arabic (fusha) is based on (but not identical to) the classical Arabic of the Quran, but nobody speaks this in real life. The actual Arabics are the 20-odd spoken languages, many of which are effectively different languages at this point:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varieties_of_Arabic

A rough equivalent in both time and space is how the Vatican continues to use Latin, but the rest of the Roman Empire has splintered into Italian, French, Spanish, Romanian, etc.

decimalenoughon All 9,300 Japanese train station, animated by the year it opened (1872–2026)

No, it's not. The successful private companies all serve suburban commuters. The long-distance network was almost entirely JNR.

As of 1996, JR group still controls over 20,000 km of Japan's 30,000 km of rail, and that's after privatizing and closing a large slab of it (mostly those duplicated by Shinkansen).

decimalenoughon All 9,300 Japanese train station, animated by the year it opened (1872–2026)

This take is hilariously misinformed. Japan's long-distance network was almost entirely public until JNR was privatized in 1987, and its successors the JRs continue to be for all intents and purposes controlled by the government.

Some not-very-light reading about the rise and fall of JNR:

https://www.substack-bahn.net/p/aura-of-success-the-first-ye...

https://www.substack-bahn.net/p/the-death-and-privatization-...

decimalenoughon All 9,300 Japanese train station, animated by the year it opened (1872–2026)

Now we need a part two that shows how the rural parts of the same network are slowly being closed due to depopulation. As of 2025, Japan has lost 1366 km of track (about 5% of the total) since the 1990s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_closed_railway_lines_i...

decimalenoughon 7.8 magnitude earthquake shakes part of southern Philippines. Tsunami possible

It's a poor country with a lot of ramshackle housing and "informal settlements" (slums). Seismic codes exist, implementation and enforcement are an entirely different matter.