tobychev @tobychev@qoto.org

The Times is right — e-bikes are a scourge and we must do everything we can to protect our fragile SUV-driving elites from these teen terrors. I propose we construct a nationwide network of separated e-bike enclosures to segregate these monsters from god-fearing motorists.

I’ve attached one such example from a European petrostate that has spent years valiantly protecting cars from the ravages of cycling. With work, we may be able to reduce the number of cyclist-on-motorist deaths to zero.

I'm going to try _a thing_. There are two related phenomena regarding #cars and #PublicTransport that I basically never see discussed. I wrote an article about these two things which includes two very clear definitions. I want to see if I can get some reach to disseminate these two things like a mind virus.

Boost if you like. Or don't. I'm not your boss.

The premise: when you own a #car, it is cheaper to drive the car. But: we want to get people out of their cars, even while they still own cars.

The definitions:

- Sunk cost discount: for as long as you own a car, it is cheaper relative to public transport to use that car for individual journeys, even though you would save money if you got rid of the car and exclusively used public transport.

- Trip cost scaling problem: for each additional passenger taking a journey together, the cost per passenger becomes lower when travelling by car, but higher when travelling by public transport.

The article: https://www.carmenbianca.eu/en/post/2023-07-27-the-sunk-cost-discount-and-the-trip-cost-scaling-problem/

Shamelessly tagging @notjustbikes @TheWarOnCars @ianwalker

#cycling #bancars #urbanism #train #bus #metro #tram #SunkCostDiscount #TripCostScalingProblem

As if giving water to asylum seekers in a heat wave is like giving bread to seagulls. Just incredible.

A breathtaking early morning timelapse of Comet NEOWISE rising over the Adriatic Sea behind undulating noctilucent clouds captured in 2022.

Video credit: Paolo Girotti / CC BY

* Isopods have 7 pairs of legs all pretty much the same length.

* 74** logic gates have ... 7 pairs of legs all the same length!

Coincidence? I think not!

Clearly, each isopod contains 4 logic gates. This Armadillidium vulgare has 4 AND gates. Don't forget to connect power & ground legs & use pull-down resistors on inputs.

(best practice is to simply ask the rollie to position itself in your circuit.)

Like most natural systems. they use micro-voltages, don't use standard 5V power sources.

Finlands regering skakar i fogarna. Om finansminister Riikka Purra (Sannfinländare) tvingas avgå faller hela regeringen. Men kan man ha en finansminister som fantiserar om masskjutning av invandrare på lokaltåget? Hon har nu bett om ursäkt för vad hon skrivit på nätet, men fortfarande inte tydligt erkänt att det är hon som står bakom signaturen "riikka".
Statsminister Petteri Orpo försöker sopa det äckliga under mattan nu när fina besöket från USA kommer när som helst.

https://svenska.yle.fi/a/7-10037860

New Crisis Group Q&A ahead of NATO summit. Something for everyone (to hate?). Highlights:
· Unrealistic expectations in Ukraine & Russia
· Transatlantic view that war critical for Euro security
· Russian misunderstanding of transatlantic resolve
· Global frustration
· Failing mediation
· Problems w/ pushing Ukraine to negotiate
· Problems w/ NATO membership for Ukraine
· Difficulty of changing Russian incentives
· Need for credible security commitments to Ukraine https://www.crisisgroup.org/europe-central-asia/eastern-europe/ukraine/why-war-ukraine-may-be-long-one

@andrei_chiffa
By reading it. Most student cheating is obvious to a specialist who knows what they have (and have not) been taught and has read millions of words of student attempts to write about it.

But there is a more fundamental point I need to write up in detail:

University teaching is basically a form of intensively supervised reinforcement learning on a carefully curated, small data set aiming to produce a specific capability.

It is obvious the AI didn't go to class *here*

"i use linux as my operating system," i state proudly to the unkempt, bearded man. he swivels around in his desk chair with a devilish gleam in his eyes, ready to mansplain with extreme precision.
"actually," he says with a grin, "linux is just the kernel. you use GNU+linux."
i don't miss a beat and reply with a smirk, "i use alpine, a distro that doesn't include the GNU coreutils, or any other GNU code. it's linux, but it's not GNU+linux."

the smile quickly drops from the man's face. his body begins convulsing and he foams at the mouth as he drop to the floor with a sickly thud. as he writhes around he screams "I-IT WAS COMPILED WITH GCC! THAT MEANS IT'S STILL GNU!"
coolly, i reply "if windows was compiled with gcc, would that make it GNU?" i interrupt his response with "and work is being made on the kernel to make it more compiler-agnostic. even if you were correct, you won't be for long."

with a sickly wheeze, the last of the man's life is ejected from his body. he lies on the floor, cold and limp. i've womansplained him to death.

The 117th & final launch of an #Ariane5 rocket is scheduled this afternoon.

Ariane 5 has played a crucial role in ESA's science programme from the very first flight, the failed launch of Cluster I, to almost the very last, with JUICE's success in April.

And between have come XMM-Newton, Rosetta, Herschel, Planck, BepiColombo, & JWST, all outstanding scientific missions 👏

Thank you Arianespace & CNES, & ad astra, Ariane 5 🙇‍♂️🚀✨

#Astrodon #SpaceFlight #EndOfAnEra #ItIsRocketScience

Apparently Zaha Hadid's firm are now generating design ideas by using "Zaha Hadid [building type] [location]" as image-generator prompts, and quite happy to say so publicly.

https://www.dezeen.com/2023/04/26/zaha-hadid-architects-patrik-schumacher-ai-dalle-midjourney/#

Howzat for efficiency, eh? The reduction of a starchitect's signature style to a tired cartoon cliche of itself used to take decades! What a time to be alive, etc etc.

Metrics
http://smbc-comics.com/comic/metrics (click for full comic)
#smbc #hiveworks

9. Why does it matter?

At a very basic level, it's important to point to the immediate causal sources of problems that one wants to remedy, because those sources are the best targets for interventions.

Telling women to cite themselves more frequently is not necessarily going to be a fruitful remedy to a self-citation disparity if men and women with similar numbers of previous publications cite themselves at similar rates, and the disparity is driven by an upstream cause (publication number).

This is hilarious. Twitter appears to be DDOSing itself.

Something's wrong with Twitter so feeds aren't loading. Nothing loads, but my Twitter feed is still trying to load, but it doesn't stop trying after so many attempts.

Notice the error message that I'm being rate limited. I haven't done anything more than attempt to view my home feed. Now notice the bouncing scrollbar.

I'm gonna guess there was an bug introduced that was resulting in an endless loop of trying to fetch results, but with no results available, Twitter would have basically been DDOSing itself.

#TwitterDown #MastodonMigration #Tech #DevLife

TIL that „beyond the pale“ actually derives from „pale“ as in a stake driven into the ground as part of a fence (think of „impaling“ someone or „palisades“).
So its meaning of going beyond acceptable behaviour suddenly makes much more sense to me