• 5 Posts
  • 526 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 2nd, 2023

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  • I’ve now been to Berlin at least 5 times in 28 years. I say at least because I now have to start rebuilding what happened when to have a truly accurate accounting. Once it gets above 10 I’m going to have to keep a note card reminder to have the number around.

    Someone with Governor Walz’s travel history would be just a blur unless you get official records or work really hard to remember exact trip counts.

    Ask Felon Trump how many times he’s been to Russia and see what guess he makes. This is a nothingburger of a story.


  • I turned down a professorship position at a uni in part because they used windows for the whole curriculum. It would have driven me crazy having to use windows given how annoying it is for dev work. I put value on my sanity and it wasn’t worth the modest pay bump to be driven batty every day.

    I likely get to teach an IoT class next term. It’s going to be so much fun with SBC systems running Linux and Arduino sensor systems! That’s worth a ton to me.




  • Ranked Choice Voting (or ANYTHING with preference polling) would be vastly better than our current system. It would enable 3rd parties to thrive without being nearly the spoilers they are now.

    Every voting system as it’s flaws and edge cases, but our current First Past the Post system is a trainwreck crushing the Republic by degrading into two majority parties (as it demonstrably always does) and then letting other countries and dark money prop up spoiler candidates to hurt their opponents.

    We either fix our voting system or we eventually lose the Republic.





  • The Amtrak system in the US shares rail, and is low priority, than freight trains. Basically, passenger rail has always been a side business for the train companies the US. It is subsidized and used as a bribe by the federal government to even try to keep a passenger rail service alive.

    That means our trains are often kept as slow speeds to stay behind freight trains, and will be stopped to wait for freight trains if some is off schedule. The routes are also mostly only rated for 60mph speeds, so even at full speed you’re barely keeping up with cars on the highway, and then you add in stops at every podunk town that slows it down even more.

    Until the US invests in a separate passenger rail network that can support consistent speed and schedules, it will remain on par with similarly under developed nations for rail service.




  • With varying degrees of regret. Some cities named to keep the right of ways, so rebuilding is more reasonable, others gave/sold it off and now they’re double plus fucked.

    Most of the pre-1950’s trams were private, and not city run. The cities that took them over and kept them running are looking really smart at this point.

    My city is about as smart as a box of rocks.





  • International relations are often tough to build, especially when one side is quite rude and then wanting special benefits afterwards.

    The UK cut the ties, so the EU has more say in how relations are rebuilt. The UK had a ton of special exemptions and their own national identity in the EU then many other members and the UK still freaked out about how oppressed they were.

    The EU doesn’t really owe the UK anything that’s not in still existing agreements and if the UK wants a relationship they’ll have to come to the table bringing something, not just hurling demands.

    I’m just really glad that the UK leaving the EU didn’t devolve into armed conflict. That’s a pretty normal arc for such a big relations change.