@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
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Conspiracy theory: Ebrahim Raisi's tragically untimely death (36 years too late) was caused by rogue Mossad agents who are hoping Iran retaliates in kind and gets Israel better leadership.

Alon,
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@acb Yes, alongside the wet work of Mossad assassins Eli Copter and Avi Ron.

New_Narrative, to random
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Trump’s envoy Richard Grenell is meeting privately with disaffected Arab American activists in Michigan Tuesday https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/05/20/trump-muslims-arabs-michigan-election/

Alon,
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@New_Narrative "Yes, we're going to deport some of your families, but we also hate the Jews really intensely, you people like that, right? Please vote for us - you voted for Bush in 2000 and nothing bad happened."

Alon, to random
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The ICC is based today. https://apnews.com/article/icc-khan-netanyahu-070941d21ccd1f2b9611032b88527575?taid=664b31fad9bd100001761a9e

Alon,
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@Colinvparker It matters, yes - the war crimes are committed in the territory of Palestine. This is why, awkwardly, the ICC refers to the State of Palestine (since it's a party) but only the Territory of Israel (since it's not).

raf, to random
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Hey, it seems like it lapsed a bit, but would people be into a monthly book club?

Alon,
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@raf Are you thinking more obscure things, or rereading/reinterpreting canon? The latter would be things like Maus, The Painted Bird, Bloodlands, Arendt, Benny Morris...

Alon, to random
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October Rain > Hurricane don't @ me. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TEtoEhrAQg

Alon, to random
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Via @kechpaja, I'm learning of a proposed tram project in Turku: https://www.turku.fi/en/tramway

The projected cost is 344M€/12 km, which is sort of okay for France or Germany in the 2020s but higher than I'd expect given how low Nordic costs used to be.

Projected ridership is 22,000/day by 2030 and 43,600 by 2050; 15,636€/rider is fine for a tram these days (for a metro, it's very good).

Alon,
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@notsoloud @kechpaja In PPP terms it's 37M€/km - the Danish krone is stronger than the euro relative to PPP.

Alon,
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@violanders I can't find ridership figures anywhere. Wikipedia says it was 1.5 billion kronor for 5.5 km but nothing about ridership.

gavi, to random

Play factorio with me please

Alon,
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@gavi I need to buy that game...

Alon,
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@gavi You should see how much of my time I'm already spending playing online chess in the vain hope I can get my Elo back above 1700.

Alon, to random
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This update in Der Spiegel about anti-Bibi demonstrations shouldn't tells you much that you haven't seen in my feed, let alone in more detailed news, but it's notable for the tone: mainline German media is sympathetic to the protest movement. https://www.spiegel.de/ausland/israel-der-druck-auf-benjamin-netanyahu-waechst-im-kabinett-und-auf-der-strasse-a-e4eb0e63-e1c3-4ae3-86a5-d6f6be44efa0?sara_ref=re-xx-cp-sh

Alon, to random
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TIL Uncle Tom was based on a real slave who managed to escape the plantation, made it to Canada, opened a sawmill, and repeatedly traveled back to the US to free more than 100 slaves. His name was Josiah Henson and he was treated as a hero of abolitionism by some black Americans, who criticized Harriet Beecher Stowe for not sharing her considerable profit from writing the book with him.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/story-josiah-henson-real-inspiration-uncle-toms-cabin-180969094/

Alon, to random
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Germany wyd?

https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1791412202219446614?t=9ERbVKt-ZacPKT2Ct6QnwA&s=19

Alon,
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@thias No, because population growth is not entirely exogenous to housing growth, and is not at all exogenous at the metropolitan level. Australia's population growth is a combination of liberal work visa policy (obviously not at all liberal asylum policy) and aggressively building housing to put new people in.

DiegoBeghin, to random
@DiegoBeghin@mastodon.social avatar

Still can't believe how much of a slog it is to leave Brussels by the train to North or East. 10 min to do the 5 km nonstop to Schaerbeek, then acceleration to 200 km/h but slow down to 110 to cross Leuven station.

Alon,
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@DiegoBeghin Can I blame Scheuer for this? cc @jon

Alon, to random
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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.

Alon,
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@DiegoBeghin @soycamo Yeah, and in contrast, AI art seems like a dead-end, since artists can't use it to generate any base that they can iterate on. (Re search: ChatGPT obscures its sources so sometimes it gets things wrong and you can't easily tell.)

Alon, to random
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Pedestrian Observations: Fares on High-Speed Trains https://pedestrianobservations.com/2024/05/17/fares-on-high-speed-trains/

Alon, to random
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Noun compounding works strangely: catgirls and cat ladies are not at all the same.

ww3real, to random
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By the end of the day, the four divisions trapped between the Karen Army Group and the Ayeyarwady are at 60% fighting strength, and their commanders are asking for evacuation, not reinforcement, even if it means stranding replaceable equipment.

Alon,
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@timbray @ww3real So, they're not properly encircled, but the river is unbridged where they are, and they can get evacuated by helicopter but their heavy weapons cannot be; the narrative isn't explicit on how much the Type 34 weighs, but the Type 15 that it's based on is 33-36 t, which not even a Chinook can transport. So what the division commanders are saying is, in effect, that the Type 34s are replaceable with Chinese industrial power, so they might as well cede the territory and reposition.

scott, to random
@scott@carfree.city avatar

"There is no other definition of bigotry in the world that equates criticism of a state, even harsh and unfair criticism, with discrimination or bigotry against the state’s people. If one claimed that denunciations of the violent foundations of the Russian empire are 'anti-Slavic'[...] we would immediately see through that as just an instrumentalist defense of Russian state interests."

https://thehill.com/opinion/education/4666860-the-antisemitism-awareness-act-bars-the-teaching-of-modern-jewish-history/

Alon,
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@esther_alter @dynamic @scott Well, Ratz didn't exist until 1973. In the 1960s, the Bundists' take on Six-Day War was similar to that of Labor Zionists. The Meretz invocation is of Marek Edelman's criticism of Israel's behavior in the Second Intifada.

The prewar Bundists were, well, prewar. It matters how their ideology evolved later (again, Edelman), just as it matters that as Stalin's crimes became better known, Mapam (a party that had always IDed as Zionist) dropped the Stalin worship.

caseynewton, to random
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When social justice protests swept the country in 2020, tech companies mostly welcomed employee activism. The Gaza demonstrations are getting a much different reception. @zoeschiffer talked to folks at Apple, Google Amazon, and Coinbase about it: https://www.platformer.news/tech-protests-gaza-israel-workplace-activism/

Alon,
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@Jonathanglick @idan How to protest: in general, in a case like this, solidarity with domestic protesters is the best. This means protesting the Occupation and Bibi personally, and calling for a hostage deal, e.g. the campaign. It means forging connections with Jewish-Arab partnerships like Standing Together.

Alon,
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@Jonathanglick @idan How not to protest:

  • Complain incessantly about liberal Zionists
  • Spell Hebrew left-to-right and then say your movement represents Jews
  • Announce a boycott of Standing Together
  • Treat boycotting an American hummus brand as praxis
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