@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 German
@jon@gruene.social avatar

TGV timetables 🤬

3 hour gap with no trains in the middle of the day between Strasbourg and Paris. Damn why can France not do Takt / clock-face timetables?

This would not happen on ANY ICE LINE ANYWHERE IN GERMANY

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@jon In Germany this line would run hourly and take around 3:40 instead of 1:47, so in the worst case scenario the TGV is about even and in the more common travel times it's way faster.

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@jon @partim The more I compare the scraps of data I have of TGV and ICE ridership to my model, the smaller the "one three-hour midday gap" problem seems to be. In contrast, 1:47 vs. 3:40 is a large difference in the model, a factor of around 4, and that's visible where new high-speed lines open, as in late-2000s Italy.

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@partim @jon Wait - I'm checking Strasbourg-Lille, and there's mostly hourly service, with two two-hour gaps, counting both trips with transfers (most) and direct trips. I don't know what the ridership is, but the market is pretty secondary to the core Paris-Lille and Paris-Strasbourg markets. My model, trained on Paris-Rhône-Alpes, says Lille-Strasbourg should get 340,000 annual pax with instant transfers, vs. 4.9 million Paris-Lille and 3.1 million Paris-Strasbourg.

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@partim @jon It's not even a special quirk of French population distribution - I ran the model on Berlin-Munich ICE ridership and assuming I'm interpreting the numbers I have right (i.e. that they cover passengers passing through the VDE 8 core), the numbers work out only if I'm ignoring the connecting markets and adding up Berlin-Munich, Berlin-Nurember, Leipzig-Munich, etc.

Loukas, to random Swedish
@Loukas@mastodon.nu avatar
Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@Loukas Why do you need to keep rural communities alive for this? Migrants move to the cities whenever they have free choice; build extensive housing in the capitals, not in places that have not much housing demand and are full of people who want to keep their white villages white.

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@Loukas It's not possibly to scale anywhere to take this population influx, but the influx that can be scaled is one that the capitals can handle - they're rich and people are trying to migrate to the Nordic countries anyway (and many succeed, Sweden is not the dictatorship of Jimmie Åkesson). The housing growth target in all Nordic capitals should be on the order of 12/1,000 people annually: the Seoul region and Tokyo are just below that and have way worse long-term prospects.

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@lotneuv @Loukas Europe exports food, as we're seeing with the Ukraine grain deal - and global warming means higher yields here and lower ones elsewhere.

Loukas, to random Swedish
@Loukas@mastodon.nu avatar

The Swedish government may have a majority in parliament, but they are polling 11 points behind the opposition.

They are polling not only below their 2022 election result, but below the 2018 election result for these parties. https://officiell-info.se/@svtnyheter/110823664196243877

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@Loukas @anderspuck Spain?

But also, for what it's worth, in Italy, the polls have Meloni's coalition staying in power. The "wait, we didn't vote for an extreme right coalition" shift to the left is specific to Sweden and now Finland.

Alon, to random
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

STOP talking shit about different cuisines:

Indian is AROMATIC

Chinese is DEEP

Southeast Asian is ECLECTIC

Middle Eastern is GLORIOUS

European

Japanese is RICH

skinnylatte, to LGBT
@skinnylatte@hachyderm.io avatar

This month is my 5th wedding anniversary. My wife and I grew up in conservative Abrahamic faiths in Southeast Asia and, somehow when we found each other all hell did not break loose; our families accepted us, and now we are able to build a life we could have only dreamed off, far far away from home.

The Kiwis married us, and the Californians gave us a home. We are thankful. Immigrant life has been immensely difficult, but ultimately worth it.

#LGBT #TootSea #LGBTQIA

A queer female couple in white dresses holding flowers, they just got married. Photo taken in Auckland
A queer couple in colorful clothes standing next to each other

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@skinnylatte All of your photos together are beaming with love :).

Alon, to random
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

Interesting piece over at @niskanen about how subgroup analysis in social studies often leads to wrong conclusions due to statistical artifacts caused by small samples.
https://www.niskanencenter.org/policy-challenges-from-noisy-subgroups/

Alon, to random
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

Hearing that @jon is planning to stand for EU Parliament election is cementing my decision to keep voting Green at that level. S&D has been way too comfortable with bullshit anti-privacy regulations, and G/EFA has pretty solid digital and foreign policy platforms. G/EFA has been pretty useless on transport issues but Jon is running to change that and build a more solid European network for intercity and regional rail.

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@VE2UWY Hey, I like the Fediverse.

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@DiegoBeghin @jon Qatargate? What is that? :(

F100, to China
@F100@mastodon.social avatar

Dictator led China GDP per capita: 12,700

Democracy led South Korea GDP per capita: 32,200

image/jpeg

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@F100 In PPP terms, South Korea has caught up with France, but its working hours are brutal. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.KD?locations=FR-US-DE-KR-CN

Alon, to random
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

What are some examples of positive, non-stereotyped portrayal of nerds or smart protagonists on television and in film? I'm thinking of Malcolm in the Middle, Prison Break, and maybe the Ross arc on Friends (except it has held up poorly) - what else?

Coming to think of it, these are all male nerds, not female ones. Chloe on 24 is portrayed sympathetically, but is a supporting character.

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@Colinvparker You can be a socially awkward nerd without being a total man-child; Simon's character works well this way (e.g. note how he's awkward on Serenity and on most planets it visits, but when he's in a familiar environment, like Ariel or the flashback at the beginning of the film, he's not).

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@Colinvparker I don't know Bones :(. Should I watch it?

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@InorganicFella Ross's portrayal doesn't really hold up nowadays, but he's also the protagonist of the A-couple plot (and it's even lampshaded in the season 1 episode with Chandler's mom).

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@InorganicFella The contrast is that Ross sleeps with a random woman while on a break (or not) with Rachel; your standard nerd stock character wouldn't be able to find someone to sleep with him.

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@15c3po McNulty is not at all a nerd! He's shown as a really sharp detective, but nothing else fits - he isn't intellectually curious and he doesn't have any niche interests. Ditto any cop who's portrayed as a good crime solver - someone like Jake Peralta is not at all a nerd character.

ww3real, to random
@ww3real@mastodon.social avatar

Battle lines as of 2036-08-01; the front in the Middle East hasn't moved since the 6-15 update. Higher-resolution images of all maps can be found at https://pedestrianobservations.files.wordpress.com/2023/08/ww3euroland360801.png, https://pedestrianobservations.files.wordpress.com/2023/08/ww3thailand360801.png.

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@Bray_ray132 @ww3real Fuck. I fixed them - the URL dates were wrong and are now corrected.

Alon, to random
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

German political factions by stance on development ("in my backyard," or IMBY):

SPD moderates: YIMBY
SPD left: YIMBY (Kevin Kühnert is amazing)
FDP: YIMBY
CDU moderates: don't care
CDU base/CSU: NIMBY
Greens: NIMBY
Die Linke (where relevant, e.g. Berlin): NIMBY
AfD: gas chambers-IMBY

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@antonia Berlin Jusos call themselves YIMBY and propose adding more housing; the party writ large is in support of redeveloping Tempelhofer Feld and adding more housing elsewhere. The previous coalition's target of 20,000 units/year (of which nearly all are built, something like 18,000) was an SPD-Green compromise where SPD wanted more and the Greens less.

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@antonia The Berlin-wide party opposes the main development projects under discussion and opposed the SPD-Green deal on building 20,000 housing units a year on the grounds that it was too much.

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@antonia Yeah, that's just the anti-urbanism of a lot of the left :-/ (and CDU but they're not on Fedi). The number of people I met at queer events and such who told me "you don't really believe new construction reduces rents, do you?" is pretty sad.

Alon,
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

@antonia "Tempelhofer Feld is a beloved community space because it is treeless."

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