@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

Let's see if I can finish my post on resilience and climate apartheid before stream in two hours. No, people, keeping urban land undeveloped is not a solution to climate change, it's building a wall of high rents around your little enclave and calling it praxis.

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@bkeegan I actually am - I thought a lot of the early NIMBYs in the 1960s and 70s stayed left-wing :(.

futurebird, to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

Reddit had some good moments.

Remember 13 Latvias?

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@futurebird I don't think it's quite right - East, South, and Southeast Asia alone have half of the world's population, and their side of the red line also includes most of the Middle East and East Africa.

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@futurebird They need to add multiple Frances.

Alon, to random
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

Is there any place with up-to-date Fediverse/Mastodon usage statistics? Everything I see on Google is from late 2022 or at latest early 2023, and I'm interested to see how numbers like active users and daily number of toots have fares this year.

jon, to random
@jon@gruene.social avatar

I’m off on the rails again!

#CrossBorderRail Extra Day 09 coming up today - Berlin Südkreuz to Nuits-sous-Ravières - and checking a bunch of borders around Basel on the way

And - unusually - I have a regular bike with me, not the Birdy

Here’s today’s intro
https://urbanists.video/w/iDAB3Jd4jYiPucXbpxn6F2

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@acb @jon Wait, if you have that plus a D-Ticket, is it legal to travel across the border?

Alon, to random
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

My video about French regional rail and what should be done about it is up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCF6Zb7IdkM

subterraneanradmoderate, to random

Something was just brought to my attention. In 1930, during the Great Depression, the average American made $4887 per year. When you adjust that for inflation, that's more than $88,000. That was during the worst part of the worst economic downturn in history. There's a reason why the oligarchs wanted us too stupid to understand how much we were getting shortchanged for our labor.

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@subterraneanradmoderate @qkslvrwolf The per capita income figures I'm seeing for that era are nowhere near that. Personal income per capita was $700 in 1929 and $373 in 1933 per https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/2004/compendia/statab/123ed/hist/hs-35.pdf and inequality was about the same as today (the big decrease in inequality was during WW2). To have made $5,000 a year in 1930 was not at all average; it was a mark of upper middle-class privilege.

coffeepine, to random

Well, what an evening.

1.) I am an idiot when it comes to navigating Berlin.

2.) @jon is a sweet being to meet in person.

3.) Fascists will interject into your conversation uninvited, try out a shitty attempt at Whataboutism, and then act the victim when you call them out and ask them to leave.

And no, lady, I did not forbid you to speak. What I did was judge you for your obvious opinion.

All in all, it was a nice meet'n'greet with Jon, who verifiably is NOT a train himself.

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@coffeepine @jon @keefeglise Ugh, I'm sorry this happened. Was there ever fear of physical violence by her or by supporters, or was it just one rando fash being rude?

skinnylatte, to random
@skinnylatte@hachyderm.io avatar

Bengali food is one of my faves and this blog is great. Here, a recipe for ‘Filipini chicken’ which is definitely an Indianized version of chicken adobo. You can also find many influences from Burma and Thailand and vice versa in Bengali cuisine. Burmese biryani, for example, is almost exactly the same as Bengali biryani. And I often hear of friends’ grandmothers cooking khao soi on both sides of Bengal. The historical links are strong. Also check out BongEats on YouTube

https://the-calcutta-kitchen.blogspot.com/2023/06/filipini-chicken-from-tagores-kitchen.html?m=1

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@skinnylatte Every time you post about food, I regret that I live in Germany :(.

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@skinnylatte I have not! Any recs?

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@skinnylatte Not the main point of the piece, but "drove three hours from The Hague" makes me sad that international trains in Europe aren't good. It should be a 1.5 hour high-speed rail trip even with the Hague not being on the mainline.

jon, to random
@jon@gruene.social avatar

@partim @smveerman What I am trying to find is border stations that have full integration into the tariff system of the neighbouring country.

The same way as Salzburg works - in German ticketing - exactly the same as any German station, but it's in Austria.

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@jon @partim @smveerman Ventimiglia is part of the French rail network, I think? I haven't been there but the TER timetable lists it as a regular station, with regular service (I think a half-hourly Takt more or less) to Menton, Monaco, Nice, and Cannes, and it's deemed to be part of the French network and not just the Italian one.

notjustbikes, to random
@notjustbikes@notjustbikes.com avatar

deleted_by_author

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    Alon,
    @Alon@mastodon.social avatar

    @notjustbikes What are you even looking at the Bluesky is more useful to you? Every time I try to follow important news, like the attempted coup in Russia or the AfD election win in a German county yesterday, Bluesky ranges from crickets to one cryptic shitpost, whereas here and if I check the right accounts on Twitter I get what I'm looking for.

    jon, (edited ) to random
    @jon@gruene.social avatar

    As someone not born in Germany, who learnt German in the Mittelrheintal, has spent a lot of time recently in forgotten places in Brandenburg and Sachsen, and is happy to call Berlin home… I find all this increasingly shrill east-west argument in Germany annoying.

    I’m not of one side or the other, Ossie or Wessie. I’m just mighty frustrated by what I see, what I hear, the lack of understanding and tolerance on both sides.

    You don’t get far by turning up the rhetoric of blame.

    Alon,
    @Alon@mastodon.social avatar

    @jon What do you mean, both sides?

    AfD: Holocaust denial should be legal; we hang more than coats
    Jews: AfD are pro-Holocaust
    AfD: how dare you

    Alon,
    @Alon@mastodon.social avatar

    @jon Sure, but Döpfner is the one who thinks all Easterners are fascists and communists (and thus spent years delegitimizing Merkel). I will tell you fascism in Germany is more East than West but there's a lot of it in Bavaria by people whose alternative is CSU rather than not voting or voting Die Linke; the original AfD intended to get Bavarians, not Thuringians. In either case, the solution is to make it clear there is no alternative to democracy, NATO, and the EU, and not to mollify, ever.

    jon, to random
    @jon@gruene.social avatar

    How do you get out of this cycle?

    West Germans to East Germans: we’ve invested billions in infra in the east, and you in the east you’re damned ungrateful

    East Germans to West Germans: we’re still poorer than you, all our young people moved away, and (aside from a few cities) we think we have no prospects

    West Germans: stop being so ungrateful

    Repeat, repeat, repeat

    Alon,
    @Alon@mastodon.social avatar

    @jon So, it's not exactly "East Germans." It's "East Germans who have stayed in the rural East." The queers I know here from the ass end of Brandenburg or Saxony or Thuringia no longer count in the statistics of voters in East Germany, because they're in Berlin. Whiners who are motivated by animus for other people always exist and are generally the base of fascism - and those are not unemployed people, which group doesn't really vote for fascists (see e.g. French election polls).

    Alon,
    @Alon@mastodon.social avatar

    @jon Right. But the point is that workers at ward-of-the-state factories remain incredibly resentful and populist; keeping the Trabi factories open would not have defused any of the extremism. Fascism doesn't appeal to people who have been proletarized, only to people who haven't been but fear they might be. (Again, this is not me speculating, French polls are reliable and have crosstabs, and I've also seen Cas Mudde mention a study to that effect out of the Netherlands.)

    jon, to random
    @jon@gruene.social avatar

    A good portion of those voting AfD in #Sonneberg are not racists or extremists or nazis. The battle is to get those people to vote for respectable parties, not be so disillusioned they kick the system by voting AfD.

    Saying Sonneberg will now get what it deserves, that people should now avoid the place is wrong. You’re never going to win people around by telling them they’re wrong, by excluding them, belittling them.

    Alon,
    @Alon@mastodon.social avatar

    @jon Nor do you win them by telling them they're valid. Best thing that can be done is to blackpill them - make it clear that nothing they do will ever reduce immigration to Germany, slow down EU-federalization, or stop the support for Ukraine. In other words, the opposite of Merz's strategy. (This is how a lot of UK extreme right went away under Maggie - she didn't do anything the Enoch Powell fans wanted and was clearly the most right-wing government Britain could have, so they despaired.)

    Alon,
    @Alon@mastodon.social avatar

    @jon No, you don't offer them an alternative, because that tells them that their resentment of democracy is valid. The way to respond to Nazis is with bayonets, not economic validation. The one time Macron fought back against extreme right protesters instead of trying to mollify them - in mid-2021 with vaccines - he got a big boost in the polls both personally and against Le Pen. Meanwhile, every time he panicked and tried to buy them off (e.g. 2019), they got more emboldened.

    Alon,
    @Alon@mastodon.social avatar

    @jon In fact, even talking about them as some of kind of forgotten people is already falling into a trap. East Germany's per capita income has meteorically risen since 1990. In 2008-19, German nominal per capita income from work rose 22,300€ -> 29,100€. But in Thuringia it rose 16,200€ -> 21,600€, still converging by a few percentage points. This is a region the German state's spent enormous sums on subsidizing; their response to this generosity has been to say "hang the Greens."

    Alon,
    @Alon@mastodon.social avatar

    @jon That's just vibes; the actual living standards have never been higher in those places, thanks to subsidies provided by the taxes paid by those young people who the AfD voters would love to abuse. And if for some reason, a degrowth state forces those young people back, the AfD voters will be emboldened - hey, the state gave me back my queer kid to beat up - and demand more. It's why migration restrictions just embolden these people rather than defusing them, too.

    Alon,
    @Alon@mastodon.social avatar

    @jon I don't look at just the stats but also the discourse. The battle cry of FDP, CSU, and AfD is opposition to heat pumps. From this we can conclude,

    1. There are no real economic problems for them, or they'd mention them (e.g. in France they used to mention unemployment).
    2. The mainline right is mirroring far-right language, validating far-right animus.

    You mention Görlitz; it hasn't gotten any worse in the last year, but mainline right validation has, hence AfD's climb in the polls.

    Alon,
    @Alon@mastodon.social avatar

    @jon Yeah, all the parties in the Bundestag are throwing elections right now. (AfD needs to de-diabolize; so does Die Linke; SPD needs to be more and more visibly pro-Ukraine; the Greens need to drop the anti-nuclear and consumption theory nonsense; FDP needs to stop being a bunch of wreckers; CDU needs to throw away Merz.) But on the SPD and Green side, it's really important to be anti-fascist early and not try to reduce this to American Trumpist fantasies centering economic anxiety.

    evan, to random
    @evan@cosocial.ca avatar

    It's OK to talk about things that you're not an expert in.

    Alon,
    @Alon@mastodon.social avatar

    @evan It's even stupider than that. One set of people with expertise in engineering and safety were talking about the Titan, and people were quoting and amplifying them. Now, another set of people, with expertise in Russia and geopolitics, are talking about the attempted (aborted?) coup in Russia, and people are quoting and amplifying them.

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