Recent submissions

Comment · 6 days ago
Screens are horrible. I am absolutely not on the side of screens in general and Amazon deserves this attack. But please don't comment to complain about bad parenting if you haven't had kids or had 1 or 2 neuro typical, easy kids and a wife who did most of the parenting. You really don't know. Really.
Comment · 6 days ago
I have 3 kids and it has dramatically changed my world view. They are all very different, despite being raised exactly the same. 1 or maybe 2 would do fine for 5 hours with colouring books and legos. The third absolutely would not. We still limit screen time to almost nothing so I'm not necessarily arguing with your overall point. But my honest reaction to comments like this or, worse, from people who aren't parents, is you really don't know. I'm not a single parent but, yea, imagine raising multiple kids who aren't as easy as yours on your own.
Comment · 6 days ago
It's also a slippery slope. And a function of our society. We went in with the best of intentions and I'm now letting my toddlers watch 30 or 40 minutes of TV a day. It started with one quick work meeting that I couldn't reschedule or skip. Then they started asking for it, demanding it really. It has taken incredibly strong will to limit their watching to 30 or 40 minutes in the early morning.
Comment · 8 days ago
We have higher numbers than those and live fairly far from any freeway. Maybe your high-rise is doing better than you think.
Comment · 25 days ago
FWIW, I thought that initial quote was very relevant but was also glad you didn't waste a paragraph explaining what everyone knows, that over-emphasizing publication and citation counts and grant money raised is killing academic research. I don't have good ideas either. In the age of AI, cheap metrics and metric hacking are only going to become more prominent.
Comment · 1 month ago
Just realizing the irony of me complaining about Narnia and recommending PJ Library in the same comment section. Yea, Narnia is probably fine.
Comment · 1 month ago
Just wanted to give a shout out to PJ Library for anyone (willing to claim that they are) Jewish. There is a free service where they send a free book a month. I'm ethnically Jewish but not religious at all. Don't support the current Isreali regime at all. Etc. And I love the books. They are not religious books. My kids favorite one is about a penguin and an elephant and going to grandma's house for dinner.
Comment · 1 month ago
I'm in the same boat with 2-year-olds. It's been years but Narnia is very Christian / bible coded right? I guess it's fine to read to a little one, but I'd be kind of hoping that doesn't become their favorite book series. Or am I overreacting? I'm not letting my kids near Ayn Rand when they are older :p. Phantom Toolbooth would be great.
Comment · 1 month ago
That system wouldn't have replaced the one that went down. It's good to see investment in this area but that system is not going to fix much TBH.
Comment · 1 month ago
It's so funny seeing most of the comments, plus the original article, implying that roundabouts are always better or always worse than traffic signals. As someone who used to be a Transportation Engineering professor, they have a time and place where they outperform traffic signals but it's definitely not everywhere. It is known and there are many traffic simulation software tools that will give you a pretty good indication of what will happen if you put a roundabout here or a traffic signal there.

This thread reminds me of when my libertarian friend was explaining to me how traffic shows how everything can work well when everyone acts in their own self interest. Well, sure, except for all the traffic laws, the difference between User and System Optimal that traffic engineers spend much of their lives trying to bridge, and, you know, the fact that it took an enormous effort by government to build smooth roads and put up signs everywhere. Sigh. I'm not saying Transportation Engineering is the most important, innovative field, but funny things happen when not transportation engineers talk about transportation systems.

Comment · 1 month ago
I just switched from a Whoop to the Fitbit Air. Whoop wanted $350 for a subscription fee which I just found really ridiculous. It's only been a few days, but the Fitbit Air might even be better at tracking sleep. And it looks like it can periodically, automatically check for Afib unlike the Whoop (?). The rest looks a little worse. But worth it to avoid a subscription fee. Not sure how Whoop stays in business TBH.
Comment · 2 months ago
When you think the only group we should allow to immigrate is white South Africans, then, yea, it's racism. At least be honest about it.
Comment · 2 months ago
You're probably right about (social) media being a factor but overindexing on Gini. Here's a chart that shows dramatically rising wealth gaps in the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_inequality_in_the_Unite...

If I got this right Gini measures inequality in either income or spending but as Piketty showed we have crazy rising inequality in capital / wealth.

Comment · 2 months ago
I wonder how much of this is caused by income inequality. There are some young people I talk to that are genuinely worried about whether AI will take all the jobs. But there are a lot more that rightfully realize that they probably can't afford the middle class life their parents had and are annoyed at all the money AI is hoovering up and how rich these CEOs are. And that's the surface level. There's all sorts of resentment that hasn't really been thought through and wouldn't exist if we had the sort of real growth in lower- and middle-class incomes that we used to.
Comment · 2 months ago
Worked in this area for a couple of years. We have automated collision avoidance systems and have for years. But things can go off nominal fast and you don't want passenger aircraft making drastic maneuvers that fast. Because conditions can change so fast, queueing theory isn't that useful either. It's useful for more strategic as opposed to tactical air traffic control, what we call air traffic flow management. There's been a ton of research in this area for decades, for example at the National Center of Excellence in Aviation Operations Research (NEXTOR) and at NASA's Aviation Systems division. I could say a lot more offline about why, in my humble opinion, progress has been unbelievably slow, but the short answer is that it's government plus modern day academia operating in an environment where funding is low and risk tolerance is lower.

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