@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

Alon

@Alon@mastodon.social

I write about public transport and do research for NYU's Marron Institute. I've previously lived in Tel Aviv, Singapore, the Riviera, New York, Providence, Vancouver, Stockholm, Paris.

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Alon, to random
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

New poll from Israel by Lazar, the most consistent pollster since the war started, has the prewar coalition back at 47. They were polling in the 45-48 range for most of the war, went up to 50 after the Netzah Yehuda sanctions and walkback, and are now back down.

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@failedLyndonLaRouchite No, I mean the pro-Bibi people; the anti-Bibi people are the opposition, and are now back at 73 seats (arguably just 68 because Hadash-Ta'al is too radical, but for all intents and purposes Hadash-Ta'al is part of the opposition bloc).

18+ futurebird, to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

I have a list of 3 python objects w/ 4 attributes. If exactly 2 are identical (not all 3, not none) I want to return False.

mylist=[ob1, obj2, obj3]

if len(set([x.attribute1 for x in mylist]))==2:
return False
if len(set([x.attribute2 for x in mylist]))==2:
return False
if len(set([x.attribute3 for x in mylist]))==2:
return False
if len(set([x.attribute4 for x in mylist]))==2:
return False
return True

feels clunky. what am i missing?

(can you guess what card game?)

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@futurebird The cool thing is that this property is invariant under S_3 actions on the underlying set of alternatives, even if it is expressed in Z/3Z language. Now I'm trying to think if there's a reasonable 4-dimensional extension, in which four cards with four alternatives per attribute form a set iff they are coplanar in (Z/4Z)^n and no three are collinear.

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@futurebird Thinking about it more clearly: the property of being coplanar with no three points collinear is not unique even over Z/3Z: for each set of three non-collinear points in (Z/3Z)^n, n \geq 2, there are three points on the plane they span that are not collinear with any two.

There already is a game based on this property. It's defined as, four cards form a *set if there is a way to divide them into two pairs, such as that each of the two pairs forms a set with the same card.

hikoukihikouki, to random
@hikoukihikouki@mastodon.social avatar

@Alon I was reading the VRE's current future plan and it stuck out to me that they often talk as if mode shift where they already serve is impossible, only able to grow ridership with population growth and system expansion. This explains why they are focused on peak-capacity expansion and only considering all day, all week service until 2030's at the earliest. How common is this attitude elsewhere in incompetent agencies?

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@hikoukihikouki What's the modal split for their core market of peak trips to DC?

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@hikoukihikouki There's OnTheMap...

failedLyndonLaRouchite, to mastodon

Just because you, all your friends, and everyone you are friendly with on line think one way does NOT mean that most people think like that

eg, is, as far as i can tell, very pro

yet most people have, at best , mixed feelings

https://apnews.com/article/democracy-climate-survey-migration-eu-43e67aee7669521167d48891afcd2788

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@failedLyndonLaRouchite People in theory have mixed feelings and then in practice vote against extreme right parties by very large margins. If anything the filter bubble goes the other way - there was few immigrants in politics, so politicos are missing out on big pro-immigration constituencies (and also on pro-EU ones, since intra-EU migrants don't usually go into politics either) and then don't know how to enact immigration reform that actually speaks to us.

asayeed, to random
@asayeed@zirk.us avatar

they know their market lol

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@asayeed I want to say that inflation is out of control, but the prices in Sweden in 2016 weren't much lower - this crap would probably be 100 in Stockholm.

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@asayeed IIRC in Stockholm the range was 90-100 in 2014-6?

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@asayeed I found them expensive but, more than anything, I found them bad. I was used to spending that kind of money on a neighborhood restaurant lunch that I was picking (I was teaching 1/1 at UBC and my office was uninhabitable so I worked from home), not at the KTH hospital cafeteria.

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@asayeed Yeah, in Stockholm we'd also go to off-campus restaurants sometimes and they were alright, but then we'd have to get there 12:00 because by 12:05 they'd be full, because everyone eats lunch at exactly the same time and there are only so many decent restaurants near campus.

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@asayeed KTH is fine if you walk 10 minutes from campus - it's a very middle-class neighborhood of the type that was voting M/L/C back in 2014 (maybe still is, I'm not sure), with a lot of good (i.e. not-made-by-ethnic-Swedes) options. One such place even had very spicy Indian food for dinner, which I have yet to find in Berlin.

Alon, to random
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

At #Amaze2024, at a talk about solarpunk and Games for Future. Speaker talks about positive change needed for decarbonization and gives the historic examples of women's suffrage in 1918 (1971 in Switzerland), indoor public place smoking bans starting 2017... and the closure of the nuclear plants last year. In a talk about the future and climate change.

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

There's an exercise about imagining a better future in 2048. Speakers talking about urbanism were all pastoral about it - small towns, not large transit-oriented cities. @cidney, who was the only woman speaking publicly, talked about reduced electronic clutter - no need to go through 10 generations of XBox by then. Talking privately to me, she pointed out how tech is changing analog gaming in that most tabletop RPGs are done on Roll20 or Discord right now.

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

We broke into groups and now people are summarizing for everyone, and in one group people lamented the decline of third spaces. This is getting me thinking - at least in my experience, there's a bigger third place culture in the North American cities I've lived in than in the European cities - the neighborhood-scale cafes in Berlin close earlier than in New York and Vancouver and aren't as set up for multi-hour socializing or working. There are bars, but drinking is expected.

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

I should say, I did mention @jon and his board game about cross-border rail in Europe as a way of using games to encourage and inform environmental activism.

Alon, to random
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

This elevator is making me think - all the elevators I keep seeing here on the U-Bahn have doors open in one direction on the street and the opposite direction on the platform, even when it's possible to have same-direction opening as is the norm in most buildings. Is this an intentional decision to allow wheelchair users to get in and out without reversing direction?

TonyStark, to random
@TonyStark@progressivecafe.social avatar

I’ve said this before but apparently it hasn’t sunk in but if you say “Biden has lost my vote”, don’t expect anyone to listen to you or be surprised he’s not out gunning for it. The election is 6 months out. If there’s no way you’re voting for him, nobody fucking cares what you want.

You can enjoy likely a 7-2 or 8-1 conservative SCOTUS that will be grinding down our rights for the next generation or three. Enjoy that.

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@samiamsam @lovelylovely @PamelaBarroway @TonyStark Not only is it not Biden's fault, but also Biden's policy toward Israel has been led by an overarching goal of disempowering Netanyahu and acting in the interest of pro-democracy protesters in the country.

Alon, to random
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

Pedestrian Observations: American Myths of European Poverty https://pedestrianobservations.com/2024/05/09/american-myths-of-european-poverty/

Alon, to random
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

End the genocide! 🇸🇩

https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/09/darfur-atrocities-ethnic-cleansing-human-rights-watch-report-rsf-sudan

Alon, to random
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

So, @cidney and I are thinking of famous literary and historic incels, to see if Young Werther was the original example... and then Cid pointed out that Sappho was femcel millennia earlier.

Alon, to random
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

"There's no way to return the hostages without stopping the war," says Aviv Kochavi, the most recent IDF chief of staff, and the architect of the strategy of consciousness searing, in which Israel makes moves to deny the Palestinians any theory of victory. He must be another Israel basher... https://www.haaretz.co.il/news/politics/2024-05-08/ty-article/0000018f-593a-d348-a7bf-ffbbcdcd0000

Alon, to random
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

Sharan Grewal on why some militaries support self-coups but others do not:
https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/online-exclusive/why-militaries-support-presidential-coups/

Alon, to random
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

Happy European civilization day. Here's to another 79 years of civilization.

cshentrup, to random
@cshentrup@mastodon.social avatar

the best litmus test for whether someone is crazy is if they call israel's actions "genocide".

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@cshentrup I don't have time for this bullshit.

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