@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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kechpaja, to linguistics
@kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com avatar

I'm at the in Prague, for the first time since right before the pandemic (2019).

One highlight so far: "If you think Indonesian and Malay are easy, you haven't met the rest of the family" - Brian Loo, in his talk on comparative phonology and grammar of Austronesian languages. This also holds if your primary exposure to Austronesian languages was Polynesian (Hawai'ian, Māori, etc).

Unfortunately, I seem to be the only person trying to wear a mask in indoor spaces, even at an event with over 800 people. I haven't gotten any pushback on this, but the combination of mask + queer hair + bad at pretending to be neurotypical does occasionally draw looks.

Overall, the feel of the event is definitely different from when it was 200-some people jammed into a youth hostel in Berlin, but similar to the Bratislava years (I never got to the Polish instances).

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@kechpaja I'm surprised the other people at polyglot conferences are neurotypical...

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 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 (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

@Colinvparker @CelloMomOnCars "Develop the interior," I believe? @DiegoBeghin

JonnElledge, to random
@JonnElledge@mastodon.london avatar

Never mind Starmer's speech - the one pledge on MY card is to double the size of Plymouth and give the southwest the major city it deserves.

https://jonn.substack.com/p/wanderlust

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@JonnElledge What's wrong with Bristol?

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@JonnElledge Several hours? Do we need to crayon better interregional and intercity rail connections?

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@JonnElledge Ouch. Is rail electrification at all in the works? I know Network Rail's working on it elsewhere, but has it gotten itself to the point of being able to build for the same 2-3 million €/km that it costs to electrify a double-track railway here?

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@JonnElledge Yeah, that's why I'm bringing up electrification - EMUs can change speed faster than diesels, same reason why it's become a priority to electrify commuter lines with many stops (e.g. in and around Cardiff). Just in general, Britain has little electrification by European standards, let alone Indian/Chinese/Korean/Japaneese ones.

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@JonnElledge I doubt the viaducts slow things down - there are some bridge-related slowdowns in the US, but that's a) very poor bridge construction standards whereas the UK built to high standards in the 19th century, and b) the Americans are being too conservative on top of that.

The curves look pretty bad, yeah. But the one randomly selected tight one I checked, at South Brent, looks like R = 480, so it's doable at 100 km/h. Not high-speed or anything, but should be faster than this...

ww3real, to random
@ww3real@mastodon.social avatar

Battle lines as of 2037-05-15. Higher-resolution images of all maps can be found at https://pedestrianobservations.files.wordpress.com/2024/05/ww3euroland370515.png, https://pedestrianobservations.files.wordpress.com/2024/05/ww3levant370515.png, https://pedestrianobservations.files.wordpress.com/2024/05/ww3thailand370515.png.

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@Truckasauruslex @ww3real One thing I could do is share all the maps in a single folder; then if you load them on your computer and click the arrow buttons they'll go one at a time, in chronological order per front (since the file names go front then date).

Alon, to random
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

The only campus organization I want to see challenge Hillel for Jewish religious life had better be named Shammai.

scott, to random
@scott@carfree.city avatar

that's... a lot of money raised against @deanpreston

only way to beat it is with personal conversations, esp. early. get out there and door-knock for him if you can https://dean2024.com

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@scott Is Preston still NIMBYing any building larger than a luxury single-family house?

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@edgeworth Why do you need environmental impact studies for apartment buildings?

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@edgeworth It's the delays and modifications produced by the system, producing less housing as a result, more than outright denials.

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@edgeworth Building code regulations in the US are not the same as environmental reviews, and also don't reduce accident fatalities but rather increase them because of the prohibition on single-stair mid-rises.

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@edgeworth Not when he keeps delaying housing applications saying additional reviews are needed.

qkslvrwolf, to random
@qkslvrwolf@mastodon.social avatar

I like to follow rational lefties because I often get good news from them that I don't see even with my fairly left leaning, definitely not centrist set of stuff. But they seem to go off the rails at a fairly high rate.

Palestine has them jumping the shark at like 5x the normal rate, though.

Russian influence ops are just reveling in this shit.

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@qkslvrwolf I don't think it's even Russian influence ops - there's a lot of anti-Semitic conspiracism in any group that self-IDs as radical, and one of the things that can set it off is anything about Israel. It can also set off for separate reasons, like anything related to the Rothschilds or finance in general (compare how much "Goldman Sachs is destroying the economy" meming there was in the Great Recession with how little there was about banks without Jewish names, like Morgan Stanley).

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)

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@DiegoBeghin But Riviera cities are not run by the New Left - Estrosi is thoroughly right-wing...

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@DiegoBeghin @failedLyndonLaRouchite @djasa Yes, and this is bad - Tempelhofer Feld is adjacent to real parks already.

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.

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@DiegoBeghin I'm voting Green because they're better on digital issues and those have EU-level regulations whereas housing doesn't.

failedLyndonLaRouchite, to internet

I will take reporting on anything at all numeric by , , and the seriously when each post or article clearly states if an "average" or a "median" was used, and if it is average, what the skew and kurtosis are

folks, that last bit about [ and is a lame inside joke ]

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@failedLyndonLaRouchite I blogged a bit about kurtosis in urbanism, mentioning that Paris is a low-kurtosis city and New York is a high-kurtosis one...

lowqualityfacts, to random
@lowqualityfacts@mstdn.social avatar

2024: OpenAI releases a free virtual assistant with a weirdly flirty voice.

2025: Millions of men become emotionally attached to the AI.

2026: OpenAI threatens to delete your virtual girlfriend if you don't pay a monthly subscription. You must also buy her digital flowers or she will hate you.

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@lowqualityfacts So, Tamagotchi?

philipncohen, to random
@philipncohen@mastodon.social avatar

It's the very rare writer whose unedited work I will pay to read. That's a blog, and it's free for a reason. If you want me to pay, polish it up and get it past an editor like a professional. And don't tell me you need the support - real publications and their workers need my support.

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@philipncohen I guess it's bigger in Canada because tuition is more subsidized there, so in-province tuition at the flagships is still four figures a year and not five?

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@philipncohen Canadian unis also don't have the room and board racket - at UBC the norm is for students to live with their parents and commute, or rent an apartment with other students in the city on the open market. So those $300 licenses per class are a significant chunk of the total cost of attendance.

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

What will happen first?

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

In the Holocaust, 75% of Dutch Jews were killed. The Dutch state just kept functioning and followed orders to surveil and deport.

Anyway, the Netherlands just announced a new extreme right coalition. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/new-dutch-government-look-opt-out-eu-asylum-rules-2024-05-16/

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