@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.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

capntransit, to random
@capntransit@urbanists.social avatar

RT @streetsblognyc Only in Streetsblog: @ndhapple is back in print — and with a banger of a story about how late LIRR trains turn thousands of commuters into sprinters to catch their connections at Jamaica: https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2024/05/24/late-island-rail-road-lirr-on-time-stats-obscure-rider-fury-at-thousands-of-blown-connections

w7voa, to random
@w7voa@journa.host avatar

ICJ reading Rafah decision. Livestream: https://webtv.un.org/en

w7voa,
@w7voa@journa.host avatar

ICJ reiterates Hamas should immediately and unconditionally releases its hostages in Gaza.

wollman, to random
@wollman@mastodon.social avatar

Really disappointed that the 's path forward for making commuter rail stations accessible is "let's figure out how to build as little as possible to avoid triggering FTA requirements for full level boarding" and not "let's get our construction costs under control so that we're not spending $50 million to install two elevators and a ramp."

lowqualityfacts, to random
@lowqualityfacts@mstdn.social avatar

That makes sense.
https://patreon.com/lowqualityfacts

hanse_mina, to Bulgaria
@hanse_mina@mastodon.social avatar

Greek and Polish leaders asked European Commission President Ursula Von der to lead a charge to create a common air defense shield that would be financed by the bloc.

Von der Leyen blessed the idea in a post on X Thursday as she renewed her call for more common defense projects.

The two leaders are also asking for the issue to be discussed at the next summit at end of June.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-05-23/greece-and-poland-ask-eu-to-create-a-common-air-defense-shield

owasow, to random
@owasow@mastodon.social avatar

“Black social movements face a dilemma in that the public often perceives nonviolent Black disruptive protest as violent…we find Congress is generally more accepting of nondisruptive protest but nondisruptive protest is only roughly one-tenth as effective for Blacks” https://academic.oup.com/sf/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/sf/soae073/7676333?redirectedFrom=fulltext

BenRossTransit, to random
@BenRossTransit@mastodon.social avatar

Ostracizing "Zionist" students is anti-Semitism. Period. Whether or not the anti-Zionist opinion of the ostracizer is itself anti-Semitic.
Discrimination against Jews based on their Jewish opinions is anti-Semitism, even when it's not anti-Semitic to hold the contrary opinion.
Example: A Catholic priest who believes Jesus is the son of God is not thereby anti-Semitic. But burning Jews at the stake for disagreeing is.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/22/style/jewish-college-students-zionism-israel.html?unlocked_article_code=1.t00.M_tX.zYA2gy-TIZwm&smid=url-share

theGreaterMarin, to random
@theGreaterMarin@urbanists.social avatar

The deeper I get into indigenous political geography around the Eel River in Mendocino and Humboldt, the more it feels like I'm trying to grasp sand, or do the work that nobody fully did when they should have in the 1950s.

The fact that there whole manuscripts lost and that I need to dive into hundreds of boxes of field notes to find basic information is a travesty.

theGreaterMarin,
@theGreaterMarin@urbanists.social avatar

I guess I can show you where I'm working - almost Eureka to Clear Lake. 11 different nations speaking 11(ish) languages from 3 different language families.

APHClarkson, to random German
@APHClarkson@mastodon.social avatar

This week for World Politics Review, I look at how nostalgia, or perhaps better Westalgia, among centrist and conservative voters in Germany for a supposed golden age during the Helmut Kohl era can help Friedrich Merz and the CDU win the next electionshttps://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/germany-cdu-merz-politics/

beyerstein, to random
@beyerstein@mastodon.social avatar

Congratulations to @sjmichaels of @MotherJones on winning the May Sidney Award for probing a vanishing tribal police department after a tragic death. https://bit.ly/4bEJiyu

DiegoBeghin, to random
@DiegoBeghin@mastodon.social avatar

Thanks to my usual awesome luck, it seems that the Frankfurt-Köln high speed line is not operational precisely at the time my ICE was supposed to take it. We're travelling via the slower Rhine line via Koblenz. Which means I'll miss my connection to the Eurostar in Köln.

Since this is a missed connection between 2 high speed trains, can we just take the next train to Brussels, even if it's an ICE and not a Eurostar?

pbump, to random
@pbump@journa.host avatar

A good indicator of how fraught Israel is for Biden: about a quarter of the country says he's too pro-Israel, a quarter says he's not pro-Israel enough, a quarter says he's getting it right and a quarter says they aren't sure. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/05/21/biden-israel-gaza-polling/

DiegoBeghin, to random
@DiegoBeghin@mastodon.social avatar

It's kinda funny that one of the most prominent buildings in Liège, a glass tower by the river, is the employment agency (Forem).

dgar, to random
@dgar@aus.social avatar

The existence of Norway implies...

me_,
@me_@sueden.social avatar

@dgar Wait... this is the correct NORway flag 😂

BNONews, to random
@BNONews@mastodon.social avatar

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi confirmed dead after helicopter crashes into mountain

BNONews, to random
@BNONews@mastodon.social avatar

BREAKING: Iranian government confirms Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian also killed in helicopter crash

w7voa, to random
@w7voa@journa.host avatar

Israeli war cabinet minister Benny Gantz, who heads the National Unity party, says his group will quit the emergency coalition government if Prime Minister Netanyahu doesn't agree to his requests, including a six-point plan for the Gaza conflict that will include post-war governance for the Palestinian territory.

Alon, to random
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

Machine learning is prime for a "what people think I do" vs. "what I actually do" meme, where the public discourse about it is that it's some kind of AI revolution that will change the nature of work, and what it actually does is provide better modeling for predicting public transit ridership.

kechpaja,
@kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com avatar

@Alon Maybe:

I'm a machine learning algorithm!

What society thinks I am: magic wand erasing pile of work

What science fiction writers think I am: picture of Terminator

What rationalists think I am: God

What tech companies think I am: $$$

What people who know me know I can do when used correctly: optimizations such as OP's transit example

What I actually do 99% of the time: take your pick of currently popular funny LLM garbage output

CelloMomOnCars, to thailand
@CelloMomOnCars@mastodon.social avatar

Indonesia is moving its capital to Kalimantan island. And now,

" may have to consider relocating its capital because of rising sea levels.

Bangkok’s city government is exploring measures that include building dikes, along the lines of those used in the Netherlands, he said.

But “we’ve been thinking about moving”, Pavich said, noting that the discussions were still hypothetical and the issue was “very complex”."

https://borneobulletin.com.bn/climate-change-could-force-bangkok-to-move-official-warns/

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@CelloMomOnCars (A third reason to move the capital in some countries is to insulate an authoritarian government from popular pressure; Naypyidaw and the planned new capital for Egypt are both designed for this. The urban planning in such cities is designed to make it hard to protest and easy for the military to repress protesters. Nusantara has the same urban planning, but I don't know if that's part of its purpose or just convergent evolution in bad urban design.)

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@CelloMomOnCars Nusantara needs to be understood not as a reaction to climate change, but as a combination of two different trends, both negative: the Transmigrasi program sending out Javans to the rest of Indonesia to act as, essentially, settlers amidst the local population; and the general hostility of both nationalists and populists to large cities, which violate their sense of rural-national values. "We must decentralize, the capital city is too big" has been a common trope for generations.

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@CelloMomOnCars @DiegoBeghin @Colinvparker Some articles online about Naypyidaw:

https://www.yangongui.de/thematic-essays/naypyidaw-built-by-lonely-kings/
https://disegnojournal.com/newsfeed/naypyidaw-urban-design-myanmar-junta
https://averyreview.com/issues/24/auspicious-urbanisms
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/02/06/myanmars-military-built-new-capital-haven-power-other-countries-have-tried-that-too/
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/mar/19/burmas-capital-naypyidaw-post-apocalypse-suburbia-highways-wifi

And on Egypt's New Administrative Capital (NAC):

https://www.rosalux.de/en/news/id/50877/cairos-panopticon-20
https://dawnmena.org/egypts-new-administrative-capital-is-another-desert-folly/
https://www.nyusternedg.org/blog/the-new-administrative-capital-smart-city-vanity-project-or-military-stronghold
https://edition.cnn.com/world/egypt-new-administrative-capital-spc-intl/index.html

alter_kaker, to Israel
@alter_kaker@hachyderm.io avatar

@omdimbeyachad Standing Together is an Jewish/Arab Israeli org, they are forming a citizen guard to protect aid trucks going to from attacks. Here is where you can donate to fund the guard and legal defense.

Please boost and share widely and donate if you can. If you are in or have contacts there, see the reply for a link to volunteer.

https://my.israelgives.org/en/fundme/aidprotection

DiegoBeghin, to random
@DiegoBeghin@mastodon.social avatar

Green NIMBYism is a mindset of "let's make our city really pleasant to live in... but let's not share it with anybody else". If you create a nice place but don't build housing, rents rise, excluding the poor. Sure, some of your housing may be public/subsidised but those will get waiting lists if you don't build more of them.

(Sorry about the rant, thoughts triggered by my election thread)

TaliaRinger, to random
@TaliaRinger@mathstodon.xyz avatar

Any mathematicians looking for CS partners for the NSF proposal on AI for Math? We are thinking of doing something related to discovering relations as well as automatically formalizing proofs from both natural language and diagrams drawn by hand. We have a few other ideas too.

DiegoBeghin, to random
@DiegoBeghin@mastodon.social avatar

I don't like it that in Belgium, you have to choose which social-green politics to support, because the parties only propose half of the package at best.

Socialists: believe in building housing (especially public housing) and metros. But skeptical about traffic calming and bike lanes.

Greens: Very enthusiastic about traffic calming and new tram lines. Skeptical about new housing and the metro.

The regional/federal/EU elections are approaching and I still don't know which way I'm voting.

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