@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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jon, to random
@jon@gruene.social avatar

Welcome to today's thread - South East Europe Day -02 26 May 2024 - Ravières - Montbard - Paris - Köln - Hamburg - Travemünde, onto night ferry Crossing these borders: Lille 🇫🇷 - Bruxelles 🇧🇪 HSL Aachen 🇩🇪 - Welkenraedt 🇧🇪 These borders on the borders map: https://umap.openstreetmap.fr/en/map/crossborderrail-all-the-borders_935041#8/50.766/4.263 Today's routes on the routes map: https://umap.openstreetmap.fr/en/map/crossborderrail-all-the-borders_935041#8/50.766/4.263

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@jon You've heard the excuses by SNCF for why they don't implement the system we have here for displaying which seats are available and for which segments, right?

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@jon Yeah, the excuse I've heard is that a system based on seat turnover and German-style screens would create conflict in case a passenger with a seat reservation asked a passenger in their seat to get up. French elites think the French public are barbarians who would start fighters over this and therefore what works in Germany can't work there.

philipncohen, to random
@philipncohen@mastodon.social avatar

Look at the list of amazing, brilliant sociologists who have served in the leadership of this organization. Now name one important thing that has changed in the last 10 years.
https://mastodon.social/@philipncohen/112505348903135949

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@philipncohen Does sociology not have a movement for nonprofit academically-run journals to replace Elsevier and such? Math has, in addition to the arXiv, a boycott-to-the-death movement against Elsevier, and a growing preference for journals that are run by academics as a service at low cost (for example, Algebra and Number Theory completely replaced Elsevier's Journal of Algebra as the premier selective journal in the subfield).

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@philipncohen This is distinct from OA - not sure about now, but when I was active in the field, Algebra and Number Theory was not OA, it was just much cheaper for libraries; a few journals were entirely free, funded by the service grants of professors, like the NY Journal of Math. Then there's the expectation that all preprints be on the arXiv and that professors post the full papers on their websites, so even if the journal charges money, anyone can get the papers for free.

RJB_Mallacore, to scifi
@RJB_Mallacore@socel.net avatar

Calling this one done.

160m long
144m wide
61.5m high

4 Missile Pods (3 missiles each)
2 Heavy Plasma Cannons
1 Keel Mounted Railgun
1 Dual Gun Point Defense Cannon
1 Signal Gun Point Defense Cannon

Crew: 28

image/jpeg
image/jpeg

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@RJB_Mallacore Re the name "corvette": is it related to the ship's role in a fleet? Or is it a term of the ship's size and the rank of its captain?

Alon, to random
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

The Bakerloo line extension is now (as of three months ago) budgeted at 5-8 billion pounds in 2023 prices for 7 km of new line, making it a very strong contender for most expensive subway built outside New York.

https://www.se1.news/bakerloo-line-extension-2040/
https://www.timeout.com/london/news/the-bakerloo-line-extension-just-got-a-step-closer-to-being-built-022224

Transportist, to random
@Transportist@mastodon.social avatar

Interesting study comparing commute mode (active, transit, car) globally reported in Economist. The headline is bad though, many of these cities are not Walkable but just Poor. https://www.economist.com/interactive/2024-walkable-cities Original data in this study: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412024001272#b0295

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@capntransit @Transportist You'd think, but even in very poor countries, enough elites own cars that the streets are dominated by the top few percent who can drive; I heard horror stories about Kampala and that was more than 10 years ago.

Alon, to random
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

Is FAZ nutpicking here (wouldn't surprise me, it's a pretty racist paper), or is "free Palestine from German guilt" an actually common line among pro-Palestine protesters? Because that line needs to be treated in the same way as Björn Höcke's line that Holocaust denial should be legal. (Remember, Austria represses Palestinians and other nonwhites a lot and nobody blames this on its lack of Holocaust guilt.)

https://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/kolumnen/muslimisch-juedisches-abendbrot/palaestina-protest-camp-an-uni-frankfurt-antisemitisch-oder-israel-kritisch-19736328.html

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@antonia Sigh.

sanae, to random
@sanae@carfree.city avatar

one thing I only just realized is why politicians perceive Asian people as being uniformly conservative, given that isn't my experience. I'd assumed I was just living in a bubble, but I realized -

It's gotten a lot harder over time to get citizenship in the US, and US immigration law specifically makes the process take way longer if you were born in certain Asian countries. So as a result, a huge demographic of younger people (who are generally more left leaning) are excluded from voting

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@sanae Does it matter what language or community the voters are in? I'm asking because here, there are ethnic groups that aren't especially conservative, but then in enclaves they are. For example, Russian-Germans aren't more conservative than other Germans - but Russian enclaves, where people watch Russian media, have high fascist vote levels. Is there a difference in your experience between Asian-Americans who mostly watch English-language news and ones who get their news from (sat) WeChat?

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@sanae Ah, yeah, this makes sense, thanks.

Alon, (edited ) to random
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

Miri Regev has been worst as...

https://www.timesofisrael.com/rot-and-corruption-ag-said-ready-to-investigate-miri-regev-after-damning-report/

Alon, to random
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

Pedestrian Observations: Militarized and Other New Capital Cities https://pedestrianobservations.com/2024/05/24/militarized-and-other-new-capital-cities/

Alon, to random
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

Live now, talking about solarpunk and public transportation. https://www.twitch.tv/alon_levy

Alon, to random
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

I'm streaming today (in two hours) about solarpunk and public transit. Come watch me on Twitch; link will be posted when I go live.

Alon, to random
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

I feel seen by @philipncohen's post on American girls' names coming from surnames over time: https://familyinequality.wordpress.com/2024/05/25/giving-girls-surnames-as-first-names-has-peaked-for-now/

Among the 12 names in this chart, four are used for four of the characters in A Second Chance for Wings (the fifth character is C.J.), because we wanted gender-neutral names and went with very modern ones.

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@acb @philipncohen I think it's common of a lot of -y names - Hillary, Lesley, Ashley. My crackpot theory is that the -y ending sounds diminutive, which could once mean "smol friend from school" but over time shifted to just mean "girl."

Alon, to random
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

Germany and Poland have sent over a (small) proportion of their modern Leopard 2s to Ukraine. Spain is only starting to do so and only its older tanks; Greece has not done so at all. Why?

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@JonBright There hasn't been a lot of Turkey-Greece tension lately. There is still the unresolved issue of Cyprus, but a) Cyprus isn't Greece and isn't even in NATO, and b) that would be a sea war, not an armored war.

owasow, to random
@owasow@mastodon.social avatar

“He used to tell me that the symptoms of a backward city are: one, homeless people; two, traffic jams; three, flooding; and four, polluted air,” Mr. Liu said of Mr. Lee, Singapore’s founding father. Gift link: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/24/world/asia/singapore-public-housing-urban-planner.html?unlocked_article_code=1.uk0.gGTi.vsjy9TDYbPZZ&smid=url-share

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@owasow Meanwhile, in the actual Singapore, inequality is the highest of any sovereign first-world country, even worse than the United States. The government is just better than American governments at keeping it hidden from the tourists.

Alon, to random
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

It's very likely that the majority, probably a large majority, of people who are considered to be hostages in Gaza were killed on or right after 7.10 and Hamas is just holding their bodies. https://www.timesofisrael.com/under-a-rug-in-gazan-home-idf-troops-found-shaft-leading-to-bodies-of-4-hostages/

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@Colinvparker It's not only a TV thing - real-life hostage takers do it too, and Hamas occasionally does it as well. But Hamas's MO has long been to demand prisoner releases to even give signs of life. Not for nothing, the agreement it made with Egypt (which for a few hours the media said was the ceasefire agreement with the US and Israel too) said that only during the first phase of the ceasefire would it tell Israel how many hostages it had exactly.

interfluidity, to random
@interfluidity@zirk.us avatar

cc @Alon https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-284-gaza-the-decade-after

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@interfluidity Yeah, I saw the pic. The isomorphic mimicry of Singapore is so stupid. It's especially stupid that Israel promulgates it, since its model of development is entirely different and it has enough ties with Singapore to know the difference ("villa in the jungle" vs. the economic center of Southeast Asia).

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@interfluidity I don't think of it in terms of that. Rather, since the Gaza Disengagement, there has been a fantasy among Israelis that Hamas could build Gaza to be like Singapore (and not, say, like Jordan) but constantly chose violence instead. Zero clue about what made Singapore tick, just amplification of the attitude that everything bad that happens to Palestinians is the Palestinians' own fault.

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@interfluidity Of course, the standard anti-Zionist and pan-Arab line engages in a similar fantasy that Palestine (or a pan-Arab state) would be a fully developed country if Israel were destroyed and the Jews sidelined, rather than, again, a middle-income country with the same social problems as Egypt or Jordan (or Lebanon).

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