omaenanimonoda

[omaenanimonoda]

The elite belief in Uberized, Muskized cities is at odds with fundamental, irrefutable facts of geometry

The appropriately named Jarrett Walker is the author of Human Transit, a seminal text on transportation and cities that draws on his decades of experience in urban planning; he has the distinction of being called “an idiot” by Elon Musk on Twitter, when he pointed out that Musk’s Boring Company tunnel proposals could not possibly work due to their low capacity.

Walker’s overarching thesis is that city transit is undermined by “elite projection,” where rich people pretend that the way they like getting around – in private vehicles that go from door to door – can possibly work at urban scale, despite the fact that simple geometry shows that this is a physical impossibility.

As in, “It doesn’t matter how tightly you pack self-driving Ubers together on our roads. If all the people who make your coffee and empty your wastebin are in private vehicles rather than on buses and trains, the roads will be at 5 or 10 times their physical capacity.”

This emphasis on private vehicles leads people to seize on technological fads to defend the indefensible – hence the vogue for describing the smartphone as the key technology for transportation, or self-driving cars, or data-driven custom shuttle routes that re-route themselves based on demand signals from riders’ phones.

These all share the geometric flaw: even the smallest cars, packed as tightly as possible, multiplied by all the people who rely on buses and trains, will overflow all the roads we have now and all the roads we could ever build.

There is another flaw: when you make it cheaper to ride private vehicles (rather than public transit), you siphon transit riders out of the buses and trains, and put them on the roads, increasing congestion: so adding “efficient rideshares” actually makes transit worse, not better

Walker tried to explain this to Elon Musk on Twitter, discussing how his proposed Boring Machine tunnels’ narrow bores meant that on the one hand, they couldn’t carry enough people to make an appreciable difference in traffic, and on the other, that his proposal for allowing private cars to run through the tunnels is nuts: “The amount of the city that you would have to level to create enough of those elevators to get everybody’s car into the tunnel at 5:30 in the evening, it’s preposterous; it cannot help being. Anything that is that inefficient has to be only for elites.”

Musk called him an idiot.

https://boingboing.net/2018/01/26/elite-focus.html

#aaand the tokyo subway system making me burn w/jealousy #as usual

[omaenanimonoda]

#wang yang #that faaace

[omaenanimonoda]

《 晴雅集 》The Yin-Yang Master: Dream of Eternity (2020)

#The Yin-Yang Master: Dream of Eternity

[omaenanimonoda]

this made me cackle it’s so true

#pot kettle #镇魂 guardian

[omaenanimonoda]

The Nigatsu-do Hall, Nara, by Kawase Hasui, 1934

#kawase hasui

[omaenanimonoda]

we're goin' under, pull up the covers...

ANYWHERE BUT HERE - Pvris

#😭😭😭😭 #镇魂 guardian #weilan

[omaenanimonoda]

Here, have a spark of hope.

The reality is that no single person can fix the entirety of the current ecological imbalance that has been literally centuries in the making at this point. Yet there are so, so many of us who care, and who are doing what we can to make a difference in whatever every day to day ways we're able. I often think of conservation efforts like the Loren Eiseley story "The Star Thrower" (aka, "the starfish story"). Amid a beach full of stranded starfish, one person cannot possibly save them all, but they can spend what time they have saving those they're able.

And this study shows that these efforts do, in fact, make a difference, not just for starfish but a myriad of species. This meta-analysis of almost 200 studies definitively proves that conservation preserves and restores biodiversity, keeping more species from going extinct. It's all too easy to get entangled in the losses, but we even more need to allow ourselves to celebrate the wins.

That success is crucial to convincing governmental entities and other stakeholders that putting funds toward conservation efforts makes a significant difference and is not only worth the investment, but worth increasing. And, on a personal level, it's necessary for those of us who care so deeply for this world to know when our efforts are having an impact, to buoy us up when the anxiety and grief over ecological destruction wears us down.

There is hope. Keep it up, folks; it's helping <3

[omaenanimonoda]

欢迎来到，门的世界。

THE SPIREALM 致命游戏 (2024) 1.69 adapted from the danmei novel Kaleidoscope of Death 死亡万花筒 by Xi Zi Xu 西子绪

#god poor lingling #i mean there's no way for rnz to defuse the situation so i felt bad for him too #but man #the spirealm #kaleidoscope of death

[omaenanimonoda]

a post-doc was doing a guest seminar at my institute and at the beginning of his presentation he was explaining why he chose birds for his evolutionary analysis - so he said "well first of all, because birds are the best and most interesting animals and it's fun to study them" and a few professors in the room gave him a very serious nod

[omaenanimonoda]

“Your honour, he is just a baby.”

#shen wei #镇魂 guardian #this man changed something in me forever #gah

[omaenanimonoda]

#every fucking day #wake up dreading what that asshole's done next

[omaenanimonoda]

[omaenanimonoda]

Di Feisheng, talking about Li Xiangyi: Stinky Fang Duobing: Noooo! Don't be mean! Di Feisheng: Stinky bastard man Fang Duobing: NO!!!! Li Lianhua, not looking up from cutting vegtables: Arrogant boy, awful sect leader Fang Duobing, distraught: NOOOOOO!!

#mlc #liansanjiao

[omaenanimonoda]

boop

[omaenanimonoda]

#in their pajamas #tsomd

[omaenanimonoda]

You’re welcome

#ridiculous #snoring hummingbird

[omaenanimonoda]

Everyone’s posting their favorite vines, so I thought I’d hop on this bandwagon.

#can we trade tiktok and get it back