jmkb

As a walker in NYC I've been hit by cars twice and once by a bike. All three incidents happened while crossing legally, in a pedestrian crosswalk with a walk signal. The biggest difference is how the operators of the vehicles acted. The car drivers were worried, polite, stopped and got out to make sure I was okay. The cyclist (who was running a red light) cursed me and rode off with a raised middle finger.

It's a small sample set, obviously.

When I see cyclists approaching a red light, I generally assume they will run it. I'm not judging this one way or the other; it's just what I've come to expect by observation. Usually they're polite and attentive enough to aim behind crossing pedestrians, but it seems that many feel they have an overriding right-of-way regardless of signage or signals.

The cyclists I've spoken to about this shrug it off as a necessary evil -- biking in NYC is difficult and dangerous, and meticulously following the traffic rules makes it more so not less so. And once you're accustomed to breaking the rules for safety's sake, you begin to do it for convenience's sake as well.

Many of the bike lanes in NYC are nothing but a stripe of paint along the side of a single-lane road, whose curbs are lined with parked cars. Cars double-parking for loading, etc will inevitably either block the bike lane or block the auto lane, causing cars to swerve into the bike lane.

eg, https://www.google.com/maps/@40.7784195,-73.9470116,3a,75y,2...

In NYC in early 20th century, long-term street parking was uncommon. As cars became more common, street parking was considered a blight and made illegal. The American Automobile Association successfully lobbied to get this regulation overturned in 1950.

The streets are now lined with parked cars, which means that police, taxis, contractors, and delivery vehicles double-park, often blocking bike lanes and bus lanes.

Date of birth and address history (in addition to SSN of course) are often used by financial organizations to verify user identity online and on the phone.

Recently I called to report a lost credit card, for instance, and the operator read through a list of 10 addresses. I had to confirm which ones I'd lived at at some point in my life, in order to verify my identity.

For anyone doing a double-take on the essay's title being outlandish for 1954, that's her year of birth and this essay is an excerpt from her 1994 book Bird by Bird.

A url shortener like tinyurl maintains a database of original urls linked to the shortened versions. Only they can translate between them, so 1) there's a risk the links will die if they die and 2) there are tracking implications.

This shortening scheme simply uses lossless data compression, like a zip. As long as the decompression algorithm is available, the link can be translated by anyone.