zahma

These things are a blight. Riders aren’t responsible when riding or parking them, and the companies aren’t efficient about clean up. The owners effectively forced Paris to make room by virtue of dumping them around the city. (How was that even legal?) Eventually there were hideous piles of them blocking parking and traffic, so the city made designated parking for them. It’s marginally better. Good riddance.

Teslas are nice cars. Owning one is a status symbol, but I don’t think Elon Musk is the deciding factor when it comes time to buy one or go elsewhere. Until other car makers get their acts together and produce luxury EVs with charger infrastructure, consumers will overlook Elon Musk’s antics.

I agree with you though that Musk’s brands are becoming too associated with his personality, which is mercurial and irksome. Caveat emptor.

Obviously the case even without Mysk’s research. Apple’s vision for the future is the walled garden of tech utopia. It makes sense that they want data to retain users and lock them in further to the brand. It’s so devilishly hypocritical to track users and pass it off as normal business practice when they have clearly positioned themselves as the defenders of user privacy against the likes of Alphabet and Meta. Alas, I’m typing this in an iPhone because I don’t know of another viable option for now.

This is kind of fringe medicine podcast territory, but I learned a lot listening to these two discuss breathing and its physiological impacts. There’s quite a big overlap here between stress and sport performance. Sometimes I try this when I go running and am always curious with the results.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/103-youre-probably-bre...

Box breathing is also a strategy I think was developed and used by special forces to control stress in critical environments. That’s not me, but it certainly has helped me regain composure when I feel my heart race or am distracted. Fascinating stuff.

The reality is that we need to not use plastic, but that is going to be such a hard transition.

I support making companies responsible for plastic waste and at least to produce it in a way that increases likelihood of recycling. As the article explains, there are thousands of plastics and they can’t be melted together for reuse, so the cost to sort and recycle is prohibitive. That’s a problem we can solve with regulation.

I’d really be interested to know what materials are out there that we can invest in to supplant plastics.

I cede your point on plastics and powerful corporate organization. But waving a magic wand and regulating away oil and plastics (amongst others) is your solution? Don’t you think end-users have a role in this?

Since when did eating meat and flying concern only the working class and poor? How is collectively cutting back on carbon-intensive activities going to create these rifts?

Also, and more to the point, if these sectors have such a large carbon footprint, then where did that demand come from? I don’t buy that cutting back on animal products or flying aren’t scaleable. Our global culture isn’t inexorably evolving to flying helicopters to work and eating meat 4x a day with a tall glass of milk, so why aren’t we talking about behavior change more in the West? We’ve always had a choice, and we know better now that these choices and path dependencies are destructive.

Furthermore, companies that produce these products are simply providing for demand. It’s silly to lay the blame at their feet when they’ve no incentive to stop.

Hey at least this way you don’t look back at 20 years and see how good you used to look in that suit.

Recently I switched to Verizon from a pre-paid service subsidiary of T-Mobile and had some porting issues myself. I totally commiserate with you, but there is hope.

I left the store at end-of-business before the porting was totally complete and the in-store rep couldn't contact the porting team because they'd already gone home. I had data and could receive incoming messages but couldn't make outgoing calls or texts. The in-store rep assured me I could handle this myself the following day. He didn't mention the hours of bullshit I'd endure. I persevered for the same reasons as our Bojangles Aficionado above, but, honestly, I don't know that I saved myself the time that would otherwise have been spent re-authorizing myself on my 2FA accounts.

The gist of the story is that the junky prepaid service didn't give me the right account info from the start, so when it came time to port, Verizon couldn't help me unless I produced account numbers, PINs, and zip-codes. The zip-code was from an address I haven't lived at for 10+ years. (That remains a mystery and is somewhat concerning.) At some point, I was trying to socially engineer the zip-code out of the T-mobile subsidiary rep, which eventually just turned into a plea.

I don't have a magic solution for you, but here are some thoughts about how I'd approach your situation:

* I would recommend continuing to call and escalating as high as you can go. My principle with customer service of major corporations is that if I don't like the response I get, I call back a maximum number of three times. If I get the same response 3x in a row, then that's a hard policy that I'm not going to bypass. Chances are though, whether by human error or a policy designed to be flexible, I will get some leeway.

* Related to the above, in calling back a few times, you might find that the technician you talk to in subsequent attempts is more qualified, experienced, or simply desires to handle your problem efficiently. Essentially, play the game more to win.

* I would also recommend getting T-Mobile and US Mobile on the phone with one another. They have the capacity to do this, and they might discover the problem together as opposed to being able to punt to the other side. Make yourself a nuisance. At the end of the day, you're in the right here.

* Last bit of advice I can impart is make sure you are absolutely speaking to the right team. Most customer service lines are structured in such a way that the first line (FLS) filters out people who don't need specialized help. The problem I faced with Verizon was being asked repeatedly by FLS who staffed the Porting hotline number to do the same troubleshooting steps (e.g. reset network settings on my phone) before speaking to the actual team who handled porting. Verizon might not be structured like T-Mobile or US Mobile, but at some point I was getting detailed information about the status of the Port from a Tech Support rep who ultimately had to hand me off to the Porting team to finalize it.

Good luck!

You explained Latour's ideas better than he was able to. I took a course of his on environmental politics a few years ago at Sciences Po. He had many interesting gems to share with us, but the narrative of the class was lost in the chaos of multiple speakers and unstated goals. Though it was frustrating to pick up on the thread that he knew linked so many topics together, I particularly enjoyed how he tried to drill down on what is "nature" and how we use the word "natural" to define so many things. Another one of his brilliant rhetorical questions was when we began to exploit nature for money, whether for gas or to charge people to enter parks. Of course we also touched on Gaia and Lovelock.

For those who are interested in learning a bit more about his work, the NyT profiled him some years ago[1]. It was interesting because he had been assailed by the scientific community for undermining some of their assertions about scientific fact as some kind of a tangible truth to be held, but he seemed to have had a late-career change of heart.

1- https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/25/magazine/bruno-latour-pos... (https://archive.ph/ULKzn)

Somehow we equate sparkling wine with champagne, but there are so many other sparkling wines in France alone that are at least as good as champagne. If the weather demands it, I am quite happy with a glass of crémant de Bourgogne, Vouvray, a Spanish cava, or otherwise the Italians make delightful prosecco.

If we are speaking in extremes, then yes, the nicest bottle of Champagne blanc-de-blancs might best the lot. However, that would indicate that we have largely fallen for the marketing trick. Champagne as an AOC has paid a lot to keep it exclusive. Meanwhile, neighboring vignerons with terrific bottles are locked out and can't sell their bottles for half what a mediocre champagne goes for.

If the objective of using a VPN is to dodge GCHQ or NSA, then that person is likely not properly accounting for the capability of those organizations. I imagine those two have the ability to tap just about any traffic irrespective of the parent organization's infrastructure. Would Mullvad be wise to consider this in their expansion efforts? Sure, but I have to assume that the vast majority of their market is not in the habit of getting on the NSA's target list. I use Mullvad because they have sound business practices, good performance, and don't conduct the same invasive privacy practices that I'm trying to stymie across the web.

NyT has a story[1] about how he’s applying for a Maltese passport as an escape hatch. He’s a transnational billionaire who complains about globalism. Interconnection is fine — just on his terms, so don’t be surprised when his cash starts flowing and his vision for democracy suddenly starts taking form in Europe. Steve Bannon started to pave this way by linking right wing and fascist groups years ago.

1- https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/15/technology/peter-thiel-ma...

https://archive.ph/hamV8

Yes it is.

I have one of these but haven't put it to the test. Combined with another type of lock for the front wheel (+frame), I'd say you're in a good place.

https://hiplok.com/product/hiplok-d1000/

Great news, but building the lanes doesn't mean it will be cyclable. Paris leadership suffers from myopia when it comes to equating bike lanes with how cyclable the city is. Yes, dedicated infrastructure is necessary to accomplish this goal, but it won't happen without accommodating the needs of others and changing how the city operates.

1) Stop giving carte blanche to taxis, ride-shares, and scooters. These vehicles are allowed unrestricted access, whether legal or illegal, to bus lanes, which tend to double as bike lanes and the unofficial express lane for scooters. They are aggressive and tend not to follow rules that ensure safety and circulation fluidity. We also have Uber Eats and the like for this shitshow -- so thanks to all of you for making it that much easier to order McDonald's at rush hour.

2) Stop pretending like everyone wants to bike. They don't, and that's OK. Real effort needs to be made to get cars off the road for those who do want to bike every day across the city. That means double down on mass transit so that it is desirable. I really mean that: fix the RATP. Gut it if need be. Leverage it until the mayor has to sell her second property -- I don't care. The metro/RER is a disgusting place fraught with maintenance issues, and certain lines at certain hours are not safe.

3) Change the way Parisian and suburban drivers behave around cyclists, which I really view as tandem to point 2 above. Safety is a major disincentive for would-be cyclists. There are any number of corners with painted bicycle memorial commemorating someone who tragically died on his/her bike. Unfortunately, it is the mentality of drivers that they are the rulers of the road, and I have seen this get worse with the pandemic's wide-reaching effects on mental well-being. But we can either get drivers off the road or force them to conform to basic respect for other commuters, which leads me to the following.

4) Actually enforce traffic laws. Paris police don't enforce much of anything, let alone reckless driving or even speeding. Recently the speed limit in paris went down to 30kph (~20mph). Nobody respects this rule -- indeed some commuting cyclists can even break 30kph on a stretch of boulevard. It is the nature of cars to try to pass a cyclist.

Parisians drive "n'importe comment" because they have to in order to get somewhere. There are simply too many people on the road and too much chaos, and cyclists are certainly part of this problem and then follow suit. I have done this far too many times, though I like to think I'm not harming anyone. Getting cars off the road and doing a better job to create a partnership between commuters to get everyone where they want to be is the missing piece here.

What I'm asking for here is everything -- infrastructure, mindset, enforcement -- to be fixed at once, which is not realistic. Drivers will certainly balk at this news, and they are right -- it's just that they are on the wrong side of history. The more bike lanes that pop up and retract space from automobile lanes will create more congestion unless people are given viable alternatives into the city. I would like to demonize them for having sought a better life outside Paris while the urbanites suffer with the effects of noise and air pollution and difficulty sometimes finding a place to walk. There's also a role for discussing telecommuting as a way of reducing the strain on the city's roadways, which is also an enormous budgetary constraint. A larger transition toward a city for its inhabitants is necessary -- not merely more bike lanes. I want to hear that articulated. Give people a chance to live outside. Paris is not what it used to be and building 100mi of bike lanes won't return it to former glory unless we start thinking more about what makes a city worth living in.

I posted a few others but thought of this one for cycling fans:

Line of Sight by Lucas Brunelle.

It follows messengers who compete in unofficial and risky alley cat races. The guy follows them with a camera rig on his helmet — this was before Go Pros.

Dr. Death by Errol Morris

Fog of War also by Errol Morris

The Barkley Marathons by Annika Iltis, Timothy James Kane

It is revolutionary for the fact that they’ve identified genetic activity associated with what has been suspected all along: inhaler aromatics are carcinogenic.

It’s worth noting that this isn’t a merely academic musing. The connection has profound implications on our society and economies:

“Another EPA study of the Clean Air Act36 found that a more complete accounting of health care costs would lead to greater reductions in the annual costs of respiratory and cardiovascular hospitalizations by up to $488 million for respiratory and $809 million for cardiovascular hospitalizations (in 2006 dollars).”[1]

Those costs are now worth well over $1 billion in 2022 dollars. If invested, that would alone pay for transformative amounts of renewable energy. What if instead of fintech bros piling their millions into the next get-rich-quick crypto scheme, we could think of ways to invest prior to chronic yet foreseeable health conditions? Some long-term investments for a cleaner and healthier future.

1-https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/10.1377/hlthaff.2020.00081

PM2.5 can come from any kind of combustion engine. It also comes from rubber-road contact, among other sources.

Even as the technology improves with decades of R&D, it’s inevitable that fine particulate matter results and potentially enters our bloodstream.

https://www.epa.gov/pm-pollution/particulate-matter-pm-basic...

I’ll be waiting for reviews and bug reports. I’ve found that for the last releases, subsequent patches have been worth the wait.

“The truth is reducing CO2 emissions is an emergency, and any other environmental considerations other than doing that is just arguing about deck chairs on the Titanic.”

This statement is wrong. Climate and collapsing ecosystems/biodiversity are connected, and one is not more urgent than the other.

I’m sure there’s a fairly large federal procurement budget allocation for those chips…

I think something that went unsaid here is that readers have fundamentally different reasons to pick up a book. Someone like Tyler Cowen, or indeed many commenters here, are quite keen to absorb knowledge, and time may be limited.

I enjoy reading for learning, but I also enjoy reading to quiet my mind, to practice focus, and to bring myself joy from the beauty of a tapestry of words. I agree with you that some of these objectives can’t be accomplished by ruthlessly discarding a book that doesn’t immediately captivate.

I mean I guess this has energy-saving potential, but isn’t it just nice to have some darkness for the environment’s sake? It’s pretty awful living in such brightly lit places that have psychological effects on humans and animals alike. For example in humans light pollution alters our melatonin hormonal levels, so sleep is impacted. It can also thwart animal migration.

https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/light-poll...

I agree that it’s textbook tragedy of the commons. It might appear that orcas are trying to outcompete with fishing boats, but this sounds like personification or an anthropomorphism of whales.

I figured it along the lines of diminished habitat leading to attacks on a perceived invader, which just so happens to be far worse than any natural predator. It might also take additional experimentation/observation to see if some orcas are predisposed to aggressive behavior when perpetually hungry, but this seems to me quite a natural impulse to starvation. In any case, it will lead to evolutionary adaptation … or extinction.

Ah yes the “work” to travel to a remote part of the country and stand amazed at the concrete erections of this is great man. The work that only few of the inclined can afford. Of course, this installation requires space, and choosing it to be “out there” affords it some additional conceptual credit, but who is this meant to impress except for a certain class of people who have the time and means to do “the work” and actually interpret its profound artistic message? Your comment seems to me to prioritize the artist’s prerogative, and with a $30 million endowment for this installation, I’d say quite a few people agree with you. But shouldn’t we also afford the beholder some respect? I’m quite skeptical of this installation, but I’d go see it if I was ever in Central Eastern Nevada, which I’m guessing, like many people, won’t be any time soon. We shouldn’t discount anyone’s opinion for having not seen it in person because who is it really speaking to in the first place?

On the heels of a news headline saying they’ve cancelled another 30,000 flights through November, I’d bet you’re on to something.

https://www.consumeraffairs.com/news/american-airlines-to-cu...

But the question is what is the victory and what or for whom is it good for? So I'm not sure I understand your astonishment as if it's so obvious that breaking into the software has inherent value.

There's a difference between rooting a device to stick it to DRM overlords, playing pirated games, or running your own homebrewed whatever on your phone versus enabling a platform through which someone can fix a complicated machine that's worth 1000x a PS5. The farmers taking out loans on these machines are betting their entire lives on it.

I'm definitely not saying this is inconsequential, but I really want to know just how many farmers are going to plug in, jailbreak, and get to tinkering with machinery that is their livelihood -- not just an expendable piece of hardware that gets discarded when its bricked...