cars are indeed a huge problem in Toronto (like most cities), but the tunnels are nice to have even when there are no cars outside. I used to live in a building directly connected to the subway and could, on rainy or very snowy or grossly cold mornings, get to work without ever being exposed to the elements.
While Toronto does have a lot of traffic, and certainly the suburbs are entirely car-centric... Toronto is ridiculously cold, snowy and icy in winter. Reducing cars on Yonge St (for example) wouldn't make winter go away.
Other than during particular cold snaps or storms, Toronto is VERY far from "ridiculously cold, snowy and icy". Perhaps it's ridículosus compared to the tropics, but it's tepid compared to most of canada and much of Europe/Asia.
How in the world can you have a discussion about DVD packaging and special features without mentioning the Lord of the Rings trilogy extended edition box sets? Not only did the movies come in beautiful collector’s cases with two DVDs per movie, they were also completely packed with special features, the run time of which exceeded that of the movies themselves. Hours and hours of in-depth making-of documentaries. I used to watch the special features for all the movies in a row when I was home from college during the holidays. Probably because before the advent of streaming, this was the longest, highest-quality content I had access to.
But the special features themselves… man. Getting to see the craft of filmmaking and propmaking was one of the biggest inspirations for me in pursuing a career as a maker. That was the first time in my life anyone had pulled back the curtain to that extent on what it took to create something as complex and powerful as Peter Jackson’s LOTR. You could tell the profound love and dedication that went into every inch of that film. To anyone who was involved in creating those special features and deciding to include them in the extended edition box sets, thank you.
I can hardly sit through The Two Towers, extended or otherwise, without cringing constantly at nonsensical plot changes.
No, Faramir was not a moody nihilistic relativist who changes his entire outlook without any character development.
No, there was no alliance, and getting from Lothlorien to Helm's Deep in the span of a few weeks, with a full army, is physically impossible even if the army were already assembled. (This was only in the movie after a last-minute cancelled attempt to turn Arwen into a warrior; seriously.)
No, Treebeard didn't spend 2/3s of the book stalling.
No, Frodo did not offer a wringwraith the ring, even for a second. And if he did, there's no way he would've survived afterwards.
Treebeard did spend what seemed to Merry and Pippin an interminable amount of time deliberating, including a full three days in agonizingly plodding discussion with other ents, and it is emphasized that this is THE defining character trait of ents. The shape of the interaction between the hobbits and the ents was of the hobbits becoming extremely bored and impatient. It is more important in a film adaptation to capture the feel rather than slavishly copy the book blow by blow. There is only so much screen time to go around, and the character trait has to be conveyed somehow while still moving the plot along. If the movie faithfully compressed the entire ent episode into its runtime, including the 3 day entmoot, it would be both incredibly boring, and spiritually less accurate because it would feel rushed and cramped.
There's a difference between adaptation; and retelling the story in a way that damages the integrity of the original. Many of the above changes don't make sense even within the movie's own material. Even if the books didn't exist, Faramir's filmic story arc (as just one example) would be a badly executed example of character development.
That's the real problem - nobody really cares about Arwen at the Ford vs Glorfindel; it doesn't change the story much at all.
And even changing characters somewhat but still having a development or purpose is arguably fine - it's the changes that aren't good in the context of the movie that are most baffling, especially considering the dedication shown in other areas of the films.
The retelling of a story can never damage the integrity of the original, and it is very foolish of you to even suggest that it could. The original is always the original, and is unimpacted by anything that comes after...
This is as silly as suggesting that Tolkien's work somehow tarnishes or damages nordic/germanic mythology. utterly ridiculous.
I get what you're saying but art doesn't exist in a vacuum. Newer works can add context and alter our perceptions of older works. Especially when people's first exposure to a work is an adaptation. Someone who has never read the lord of the rings, but has seen the movies several times will never be able to read the book without picturing Elijah Wood.
Strong feelings for an adaptation or a sequel can taint or enhance how someone feels about the source material even if the original was experienced first. For example, it's understandable if someone who really loved star wars before the prequels and disney acquisition found that they can't help but experience a sense of loss and disappointment while revisiting those original films knowing about midi-chlorians and how the franchise ended up.
The original works are unchanged, but in many cases the way we view and experience them isn't.
I also dislike the way Faramir was adapted but it makes sense. It puts a greater emphasis on the exceptionality of Aragorn by removing the complexity of the Faramir character and basically making him a second Boromir. Considering that the movie is necessarily a more condense experience than a book, it's a good choice.
A general one. And if you think about that its sad that a story has to be rewritten in order to ensure maximal appeal to generate maximal profit. The story isn't rewritten for the screen, it's rewritten for the investors polluting the story with money.
But on the flip side the story reaches a large audience, perhaps larger than the books might have, though not in true form. Double edged sword really.
That is how Hollywood does movies. Other film traditions will more accurately adapt the source material. For example, many animes are a shot-for-shot recreation of manga.
>For example, many animes are a shot-for-shot recreation of manga.
This is something of a newer phenomenon in the grander history of anime as an artform. Osamu Tezuka, one of the founding fathers of the modern anime industry, notably created the filler-heavy formats of yesteryear that were the dominant form of popular televised anime well into the 21st century. There are notable early outliers like Yu Yu Hakusho and Death Note, but most of the popular anime had their runtimes padded all to hell in order to continually cash in on the unpredictable zeitgeist popularity of their source material. This trend of creating manga-accurate adaptations was largely spawned during the mid-80's OVA boom (wherein many one-shot OVAs were functionally made as high-production-value advertisements for their corresponding manga), but it largely didn't make the leap to TV anime until well after the turn of the century.
> This is something of a newer phenomenon in the grander history of anime as an artform
It's hard to argue about 'a newer phenomenon' which is now closer to Astro Boy than our current time.
> most of the popular anime had their runtimes padded all to hell in order to continually cash in on the unpredictable zeitgeist popularity of their source material
You can't 'faithfully recreate shot-for-shot' an ongoing title, you would be out of the material way earlier than out of the runtime.
This is not even diving on the differences between the manga and the manga eiga.
>It's hard to argue about 'a newer phenomenon' which is now closer to Astro Boy than our current time.
Last I checked, the 2010s are closer to now than to the 1960s. This didn't become the norm until the 2010s. I called out Death Note and Yu Yu Hakusho as notable exceptions and did note the initial start of it in smaller OVAs. I guess if you're going from the earliest OVA that did this then your comment does make sense. I was thinking more in terms of when the trend to do so became dominant.
>You can't 'faithfully recreate shot-for-shot' an ongoing title, you would be out of the material way earlier than out of the runtime.
Right. The modern trend is to wait until a series is done, or at least until it has enough plot/action in the manga to cover a full season before entering production. Chainsaw Man was over before the first season of the anime came out. Demon Slayer finished around the time the anime started. This is a new-ish trend among big popular TV anime. So as I said, it used to be that anime would be produced while the manga was still ongoing and popular, which lead to filler as a much more common phenomenon.
>This is not even diving on the differences between the manga and the manga eiga.
By all means, feel free to split hairs. I was just trying to give newcomers a more zoomed-out view of the history of anime, but if you'd like to delve into details, have at it.
> Last I checked, the 2010s are closer to now than to the 1960
That was a quip to "trend of creating manga-accurate adaptations was largely spawned during the mid-80's OVA boom"[0]
> until it has enough plot/action in the manga to cover a full season before entering production
Yes, though this is still not universal and still things go south with anime-original titles (WEP is 10/13, sadly)
> it used to be that anime would be produced while the manga was still ongoing and popular, which lead to filler as a much more common phenomenon.
> By all means, feel free to split hairs
Yes, I don't object this, though I was thinking more in how the media does not/translate. I even re-read Kaji/Akagi first story from Tsuredzure Children as this is the one best examples of a media adaptation.
[0] Gokushufudō would be an extreme modern 1:1, btw
PS:
ah, read the sibling comment
imma in the bar RN, if you want a hear an opinion on that sweet cash - drop a note
In some cases, the runtime being padded with filler was less about cashing in and more about trying to not catch up to the manga too quickly.
FMA (2003) is a fun example of this not happening, where they basically wound up creating a custom ending to the series because they got ahead of the manga.
>In some cases, the runtime being padded with filler was less about cashing in and more about trying to not catch up to the manga too quickly.
Right, so rather than stopping production on the anime until the manga had time to get ahead, most anime created filler to cash in on the popularity of the ongoing manga, rather than to try to make the most faithful adaptation. Nowadays it's more common for anime to halt production and release a follow-up season years later when the manga has gotten farther ahead.
shot-for-shot recreations are a waste of time. a robot or algorithm could copy. we watch adaptations to see a new perspective on an old tale. if you want a copy, just read the original.
I'm also swiftly bored by interminably long epic "battle sequences" - I usually find the choreography to be bland and uninspired, which I think partially stems from a childhood of golden harvest Hong Kong cinema.
I want something that is small, May be Mini-CD size but with TeraByte of storage. That is able to fit that whole LOTR and all the Extra, in 4K Ultra High Quality in one disc.
It took a really really long time for Vinyl to make a come back. I hope we could one day innovate enough and bring physical media to the market again.
Most of the people I know who talk about LOTR movies are women who watched them once, but mainly rewatch the making of parts, because they don't care about the story as much as they care about seeing a group of dirty-looking men be friends with each other in ways that sort of look homoerotic but aren't explicitly.
Should be familiar if you know any anime fangirls.
I think this was the point where they started looking not at ticket sales, but overall lifetime earnings per family...sure, it's the ticket, then the DVD, then the BluRay, then the Extended BlueRay, then the Criterion Edition (with Sting)
The "rules of the road" argument here assumes that giving up huge amounts of public space for car infrastructure is inevitable and right, and that it's the fault of people walking or riding bikes if they get injured or killed since the system is not built for them.
Roads in the US are designed almost entirely around the speed and convenience of cars, and don't account for the externalities they impose on everyone else. As cars get larger and more dangerous, and as drivers get more careless, the cost borne by society is only going up. Asking people walking and riding bikes to be even more extra careful not to get killed is not the right solution. Changing the design of our roads and public spaces to make them safer for everyone is.
Sorry, I’m speaking from a European perspective (UK/London).
When driving I’ve had idiots on e-scooters dressed in black with no lights zooming towards me on a one way street at night, I’ve had people walk out in front of me when distracted by their phones. When cycling I’ve often seen other casual cyclists with headphones on, in their own dreamland, no helmet either, and I’ve seen the same when walking about. People are too careless and distracted thinking others are going to look out for them, everyone needs to pay more attention.
I think a lot of people actually believe that kind of thing.
I was rather impressed with the nurse practitioner at a CVS Instant Clinic a couple of months back. I could have tried to get an appointment with my primary care when I got home. But when I actually saw her a few weeks later for a scheduled appointment, she basically shrugged and said she'd have done exactly the same thing the nurse practitioner did. (Keep taking Tussin and there's a prescription for an inhaler at the pharmacy counter.)
Pre-COVID (and the test I took was negative for what little that was worth), it would have been eh you have a virus. Which ended up basically the diagnosis.
Your car bias is showing here. The reason bike lanes and traffic calming measures get installed is because people are literally dying due to poor road design that prioritizes car speed over everything else.
You might not want traffic calming, but everyone else who has to deal with your driving does.
And isn't it really about how people are driving? In my state, we drive like maniacs, constantly speeding at least ten MPH over the limit. The term, "drive friendly" is scoffed at. Slowing down to let someone on the highway is unseen.
On city streets, tailgating is common, jacked up pick-ups are drenching the interior of your car with their headlights after dark, making all your mirrors a blinding image. Can we please put our phones down for safety's sake? Sometimes I ride a motorcycle, so I'm hyper aware and see all kinds of just plain terrible driving practices. Most of it is simply a lack of patience behind the wheel. On the turnpike, when that car passes doing twenty over, do we really think they think about the possible consequences?
The solution is easy, I just saw it implemented in a nearby town (8k people): make the road curb a little, never fully straight, add bollards everywhere on the side of the road, and narrow the road at every crossing (with metal/concrete bollards). Bollards are great: they protect pedestrian and are intimidating it seems. According to the mayor (I ate with him, friend of my mother) the architect who gave him the idea was a nudge expert, and they tested it first with thin, plastic bollards around the town (it worked, but wasn't protective enough). The city is halfway between two economic 'centers' (28k and 50k population) and see a lot of traffic as those cities grow. No pedestrian death in the last two years AFAIK, when pre-covid you had half a dozen injuries every year and a mortal accident every other year.
So the bollards do seems to work. Install bollards!
Absolutely this. If people are maniacs and can't control their speed themselves, design the roads so they can't drive at insane speeds on them. I live right across the street from a school. During school times, the speed limit is 25 miles per hour. The road is perfectly straight with clear sight lines and the lanes are literally as wide as freeway lanes (12') with bike lanes on both sides making it feel even wider. If you had no context of the road and what was off of it, you'd comfortably cruise at 55+ because the road is designed for that.
Throw in some strategically placed bollards or chicanes to change the geometry of the road and people will be forced to slow down.
Yes, people in general are terrible at driving. Teaching them is hopeless that's why we need solutions that works. There are two right now: infrastructure that makes it hard and very inconvenient to go fast and heavy handed enforcement. The latter option only works in very well developed civilised societes like Switzerland or Nordic countries have. Most others are stuck with traffic calling measures as their population has too little too lose to care about safety.
The YouTuber Not Just Bikes made a great point in one of his videos: why in the world are public safety improvements up for debate? If people keep falling off a walkway, we don’t hold town hall meetings to debate the merits of pedestrian safety, we don’t do studies on the impact to traffic flow, we just put up a railing.
Here in Philadelphia, advocacy groups spent years fighting to have a wide, lethal stroad that runs through the middle of the city put on a road diet. Residents were polled, and something like 70% of people in the surrounding neighborhoods were in favor of it. The city spent millions in planning and engineering, and then right before paving was about to start, a local councilmember blocked it and canceled the whole project on the half of the road that runs through their neighborhood. So half of the road was narrowed to two lanes and has no speeding, no fatalities, and generally sane driver behavior. The other half is a reckless free-for-all that’s exhausting to drive on and terrifying for pedestrians and cyclists.
Millions in taxpayer dollars and the political will of a majority of citizens were wasted because our system allows one NIMBY to stop everything. A year later, there has already been a cyclist fatality on the road.
>why in the world are public safety improvements up for debate?
Because, as every engineer knows, everything is a tradeoff and good intentions can lead to bad outcomes.
I can't comment on your specific case, but obviously any measure that wants to improve safety needs to be evaluated based on whether it is actually effective, whether it is cost effective and whether there are negative consequences.
That tracks, south broad at that height is also pretty bad and only gets worse the more south you go and the same way north as you get further away from center city.
> The YouTuber Not Just Bikes made a great point in one of his videos: why in the world are public safety improvements up for debate? If people keep falling off a walkway, we don’t hold town hall meetings to debate the merits of pedestrian safety, we don’t do studies on the impact to traffic flow, we just put up a railing.
In my opinion, this isn't a great point, but a naive one. Literally anything can be argued for or against on the grounds of safety, and the fact that a safety-based argument exists isn't grounds to remove it from public debate. Also, blindly putting safety above all other concerns is just "safetyism", rather than a balanced argument. In the case of the railing, apart from a minor expense, there isn't impact to others. In the case of anti-car road diets, an attempt to create more safety will cause most users of that road to lose lots of time (to reduced speed limits, increased traffic). To most people, a few road fatalities a year simply does not matter in the grand scheme of things - it's a minor cost compared to the huge time savings of fast and convenient driving infrastructure.
> Here in Philadelphia, advocacy groups spent years fighting to have a wide, lethal stroad that runs through the middle of the city put on a road diet. Residents were polled, and something like 70% of people in the surrounding neighborhoods were in favor of it.
Mind linking to the poll? I find it hard to believe since the reality is that most people favor roads that are wide and have high speed limits, so they can get around quickly. A small but loud minority tends to argue, often successfully, for road diets. But most people aren't in favor of a war on cars because they get a lot of use from cars.
Additionally, what you're claiming about the poll being ignored is the opposite of what I've seen in west coast cities. Here, anti-car activists get into the transportation department positions and then try to implement their ideological plan regardless of polls or studies. Usually, they run dishonest polls that provide justification to whatever view they already have - for example, an online poll that only activist groups are aware of, which lets them get whatever numbers they want. If a poll disagrees, they don't talk about it or act against it anyways (example: https://crosscut.com/2018/04/seattle-city-hall-listen-consti...).
i think safetyism would be one thing if there was no safety problem to speak of, but road fatalities in the US are increasing again, and that is being driven by a 68% increase in pedestrian and cycling fatalities since 2011. https://smartgrowthamerica.org/pedestrian-fatalities-at-hist...
> To most people, a few road fatalities a year simply does not matter in the grand scheme of things - it's a minor cost compared to the huge time savings of fast and convenient driving infrastructure.
Especially if they get to kill poor people in bad neighborhoods on their way from suburbs to CBDs.
> why in the world are public safety improvements up for debate
Because of political culture and human nature; everything is driven by FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) so you can basically spin anything to scare people or to line your own pockets, living standards be damned.
>Narrowing a road makes it worse for its' primary purpose
That's kind of the problem with urban planning in many cities in the USA -- the "primary purpose" of roads is assumed to be to serve cars, rather than to serve people.
>You would definitely not just narrow a footpath on a busy high street without considering the impact.
Happens all the time in my city for construction projects - an entire sidewalk will be shut down for years for construction, forcing pedestrians to the other side of the street (which means 2 extra waits for stop lights). Often the closed sidewalk is used for nothing at all except to hold a construction fence.. a more pedestrian friendly solution would require a covered walkway.
> That's kind of the problem with urban planning in many cities in the USA -- the "primary purpose" of roads is assumed to be to serve cars, rather than to serve people.
Serving cars is serving people. Who do you think is driving the cars or being driven in them?
As an aside, I am surprised that this exceedingly shallow point is still being made in 2024. Let's be honest - it never made sense, and was only ever brought up as an empty slogan to dishonestly dismiss those who depend on and benefit from cars (which is most of the public in most cities).
If you have a budget of $x, do you want to move more or fewer people? Because private auto transportation ("cars") moves the lowest volume.
Further, cars interfere with things that may not have alternatives, like trucks that make deliveries. There tend to all sorts of options for individuals (and the average occupancy of a car is like 1.0) to move hither and thither and yon, but if you want to deliver a refrigerator or a sofa, that's a lot harder to do on public transit—though not unheard of:
So is better transit, and biking, and even shutting off entire streets to cars and making them into pedestrian-only districts - and those can often serve more people than when it was just a road for cars.
Insane argument. Serving giant death mechas is serving people. Serving Houthi raiders is serving people. Serving Adolf Hitler is serving people - he's a person, right?
I get it, we like public transport. It's just daft to go all in the other direction and pretend that cars aren't useful or don't count or something, though.
Cars are great. I like cars. I like driving as a mode of transport.
But there's a lot of potential ways to use space other than cars. The problem is, in seeking to accommodate cars at the expense of all else, we've made all other forms of transport -- like walking through a cute downtown on a spring day -- less practicable and common. In turn we drive more, spread businesses out for more parking, and created a never-ending feedback loop for more driving infrastructure.
In turn, the infrastructure has grown to a point that we can't really afford it from tax revenues, and where the mixed use of a thoroughfare for accessing businesses and going long distances does well at neither.
Unfortunately, getting us out of this loop is going to make things less convenient for some people for awhile before we can get to something better. There's no avoiding that, but continuing to make the same decision and hope it gets to a better outcome would be nuts.
> It's just daft to go all in the other direction and pretend that cars aren't useful or don't count or something, though.
Useful for what? More useful than what? Less useful than what?
How many people does private car transportation move? How much can a car lane move per hour? How about a bicycle lane? Bus lane? [0] What do private cars interfere with? Goods transportation / delivery perhaps? People's health (through pollution and/or lack of active mobility)?
It's not that cars cannot be useful, but are they more or less useful than other options? What does leaning towards cars inhibit?
Is there any city that's done that and has completely banned cars to replace with transit? I haven't seen any except in very small pedestrian-only districts.
But I've seen a lot of fighting in my city anytime any transit or biking project reduces road space dedicated to cars, even if just removing on-street parking.
>People are in cars.
All too often, a "person" is in a car, which is a pretty poor use of space.
The entirety of the Netherlands used to look like the US in the '60s and '70s, albeit not at Super Sized(TM) scale. Look up their urban design in 2024, it's quite pleasant and human-friendly.
Private automobiles and in some cases other motorised vehicles are banned in Mackinac Island, MI, and Halibut Cove, AK, in the US, Giethoorn, Netherlands, and Lamu, Kenya (possibly old town only). And a number of others. Several seem to be vacation spots or resorts, so have unusual usage and aesthetic patterns.
> A good two lane street can have similar or better average speed than a bad four lane stroad.
Can you provide a more specific argument or evidence? To me, it seems obvious that two lanes has less capacity than four lanes. Therefore, a two lane road will have worse traffic, all other things held equal.
It also doesn't matter that the other two lanes might be repurposed for something else like bike lanes. In my experience, when bike lane projects are forced onto a city by activists, without authentic support from the general public, it ends up just creating a lot of underutilized infrastructure. In many west coast cities it is common to see clogged up car lanes next to permanently empty bike lanes. So even if in theory you could pack those bike lanes with more people (although moving at low speeds), it's never true in practice. The real throughput only gets worse.
> Can you provide a more specific argument or evidence? To me, it seems obvious that two lanes has less capacity than four lanes. Therefore, a two lane road will have worse traffic, all other things held equal.
While it's true that two lanes have less capacity than four, it's also measuring the wrong value - throughput is what you want to optimize for. This means you have to take a bunch of additional factors into account, for example:
- How many lanes do the connections to other roads have? Any time you're reducing the number of lanes, you're creating potential bottlenecks. If you have one lane, then widen up to four, and narrow back to one, you'll most likely have worse throughput than if you'd just kept one lane.
- How much space do you have for switching lanes? The more lanes, the more time people need to get into the correct one for their destination. You need to telegraph exits etc. much earlier.
- Do surrounding roads have space for the additional induced traffic? Time and time again, extra lanes have made traffic problems worse instead of better.
There are of course also disadvantages, e.g. the impact of any single lane being blocked. It's a complex and fascinating topic, especially considering the similarity to other networks (e.g. computer, biological).
the common diet is from four to three (a left turn lane), which is actually better for traffic flow, since left turners now have a dedicated pocket and don't block traffic, fewer people get rear ended, etc.
the problem with how the US does bike planning is that the payoff doesn't happen unless you have a bike network; biking is so unsafe on regular roads that a partial journey on bike lanes doesn't cut it. so often bike lanes get poor usage than they would otherwise get due to lack of connectivity.
Even if we make the tenuous assumption that the bike lanes are implemented correctly, you cannot expect that people that have lived with car-only infrastructure their whole lives will change their habits overnight. It's going to take some time to reach cycling volumes of even the less developed european cities.
https://www.mikeontraffic.com/numbers-every-traffic-engineer... says one lane peaks around 1,900 vehicles per hour. Even if we assume each vehicle only carries one driver, we need 38 busses per hour (one every 95 seconds!) to match that capacity. In practice we're lucky to see two busses per hour scheduled.
Drivers need the freedom of plowing through pedestrians without consequences to their lives or their cars. It still puzzles me my whole neighborhood is full of stroads with large interesections and bollars are nowhere to be seen. Every single one of these intersections should be fully surrounded by bollards to provide safety to pedestrians but who cares about pedestrians, right?
> Putting up a railing is the equivalent to putting up a guardrail next to a road.
Which people do object to:
> In a twist that could only happen in the world of cycling politics, a city councillor in the New Zealand town of New Plymouth is making headlines for an eyebrow-raising reason — he’s worried about his beloved sports car. Murray Chong, owner of a Chevrolet Corvette just 160mm off the ground, has raised concerns that a proposed $14 million protected cycle lane might wreak havoc on his precious ride.
> Chong’s main gripe? The 100mm-high concrete separation barriers, meant to keep cyclists safe, apparently pose a dire threat to the underbelly of his sleek sports car. In an extraordinary meeting, despite Chong’s objections, the council voted in favor of the cycle lane plan, sending shockwaves through the world of low-riding vehicle enthusiasts.
If you actually cared about safety you’d require airbags, crumple zones, licensing, insurance, and crash testing for cyclists. You’d also ban them on roadways with speed limits far above what a human can reasonably propel a bike to, since dV is a major driver of accidents and lethality.
Expecting a 15MPH ~250lb bike with none of those features to interface safely with 55MPH 5,000+lb traffic is moronic. You’re better off building parallel infrastructure and taxing cyclists to pay for it via licensing.
> If you actually cared about safety you’d require airbags, crumple zones, licensing, insurance, and crash testing for cyclists.
I've crashed on a bicycle, more than once. I've crashed even on a motorcycle (on a racetrack). The damage that is caused to myself, to my machine, and the surrounds, is tiny compared to the damage that is caused by an automobile with (at least) an order of magnitude more mass: a friend of mine had a car go through the front of his house, and the physical carnage was impressive (no person was injured thankfully).
And every time licensing has been looked at for cyclists, it has found to be a dumb idea:
The problem is that roads are now practically monopolized for private vehicle use to the exclusion of everyone else, and the costs are not fully paid for by drivers. Higher density areas subsidize lower density ones, and road infrastructure is a big part of that:
> You’re better off building parallel infrastructure and taxing cyclists to pay for it via licensing.
I think it's worth talking about taxation here. Roads are generally in the top 3 costs for most municipalities along with police and firefighting.
Even when you add together tolls, gas tax, vehicle excise taxes, it doesn't cover the costs of road maintenance, and needs to be supplemented by sales tax, building property tax, etc.
If bike infrastructure reduces the number of cars, SUVs, and pickups that are on the road just to carry one person around, the reduction on road wear means it's a total cost savings.
(For what it's worth, I think the same argument applies also to buses.)
My smallish town budgets less than $14M/year for streets and $300M/year for K-12 education. I would not be surprised to find that ratio generally repeated anywhere in the US.
250lb bike? Wtf are you talking about. The heaviest e-bikes are like 50lb. Bikes are so safe that they require none of these extra steps that cars require, because cars are much more dangerous. It’s simple physics. There have been dozens of pedestrians and cyclists killed by cars in my city this year, and none by bicycles ever, to my knowledge. More evidence that cars require more strict licensing and safety measures.
Not safely interfacing on existing roads — that’s 100% true. And cyclists would love parallel infrastructure. Problem is, in the US, it’s seen as anti-car (and therefore anti-american), and so is much less common than it should be. But in the Netherlands, this is how they make biking one of the primary transport modes.
> You’d also ban them [bikes] on roadways with speed limits far above what a human can reasonably propel a bike to ... You’re better off building parallel infrastructure
They are and we do? You know those signs when you get on a highway that say things like pedestrians/bicycles/horses/etc prohibited? That's what those are for.
If you're proposing that the rest of the roads' speed limits be lowered to what's achievable by the average cyclist, then why not just advocate for that directly? Personally I don't appreciate the oversigning trend, generally preferring to drive at a decent clip as conditions permit most of the time, but also being content to follow the rare bicycle at that vehicle's speed until an opportunity to pass with a wide berth and clear oncoming visibility.
The real problem here is drivers who expect to be able to continue driving at whatever speed they want regardless of who else is using the road. Apart from when I was cycling myself, I used to experience this pretty harshly while shoveling snow. Half the drivers would treat me as a human being and slow and go mostly into the other lane. The other half would continue their speed right at me, ostensibly thinking it was acceptable to create close call danger for fun and spray me with shit from their tires (ie not just assault but outright battery). Similar situation with a dinky ride on lawnmower. It's funny how the ratio changed when I started doing the snow/grass along the road with a compact farm tractor - apparently the prospect of assholes' cars being significantly damaged effects their ability to see!
As far as taxes, municipal real estate taxes more than pay for the meager wear bicycles cause to the road. And as a general proponent of freedom I certainly wouldn't want to implement multiple new draconian papers please mandates just to assign taxes a few percent more accurately.
> "You’re better off building parallel infrastructure and taxing cyclists to pay for it via licensing."
yes, a parallel infrastructure would be welcomed by current cyclists and by many of those who now abstain from cycling because of persecution and threat of death on the roads.
If everyone can agree that a parallel infrastructure is needed, the funding question is trivial. The overall costs could even be negative due to the reduced need to subsidize car usage (also health benefits of cycling, etc.). If it makes you happy, we can let little kids slap a sticker on their bike to take of the "licensing".
Because the solution to a housing shortage caused by overly restrictive zoning is urban sprawl. To support urban sprawl we have cars and long commutes. Cars create problems for other cars so we need bigger cars for crash worthiness. In response to traffic jams caused by too many cars we double down on cars. This effectively turns valuable urban land into de facto highways: 45 MPH 6-8 lane wide stroads that heavily deprioritize alternative traffic modes and safety. Don't worry citizen, we'll widen the road even if we have to bulldoze some homes that are in the way of our SUVs getting downtown 1 min faster. For a few months before more people drive.
I had an account at this bank for a few years, and didn’t know about the collapse until reading this in Hacker News. I did receive a weird email from the bank today that my account was being migrated to a different bank.
Republic First was kind of a crappy bank. The website was bad, the customer service was bad, and most of their marketing prominently featured their CEO with his dog sitting on his lap in front of a new branch they’d just opened up.
A few years ago the bank started making it difficult to withdraw money from your accounts. They had ridiculously low limits for free transfers, and I ended up having to pay wire transfer fees to get my money out of the bank.
It was a weird place. Always got the vibe that some old money family ran it poorly.
This has not been done in a single US city. We only have patchwork networks, and a patchwork network of safe infrastructure is by definition unsafe infrastructure.
This 432 Hz theory is sort of like saying that if we measured the meter as being slightly shorter, people would have an easier time running a 5k.
Music exists in multiple keys, and a song can be in a high or low range regardless of what key it’s in. Changing the standard tuning wouldn’t fundamentally affect anything.
Also, did the study authors simply taking a recording and pitch shift it down to 432 Hz? That would affect the tempo of the song as well as the pitch. Even if they performed time stretching to keep the tempo the same, it shouldn’t be surprising that lower pitches make people slightly calmer than slightly higher pitches.
> Music exists in multiple keys, and a song can be in a high or low range regardless of what key it’s in.
Changing key is not the same as tuning A to another frequency. There is a long struggle between harmonic tune (rational relations between key's frequencies) and equal temperament (irrational 12th degree root of 2).
> Also, did the study authors simply taking a recording and pitch shift it down to 432 Hz?
It is an interesting question. Their language suggest they didn't just shift pitches, but I didn't read the article.
> Changing the standard tuning wouldn’t fundamentally affect anything.
And this statement is the most interesting part. If they really changed tune then nothing should change. But the authors claim that something changed. Probably our models are incorrect.
By the way it expands question about their methods. Did they use midi or synthesizer? If not, did they use violins? Guitars? Piano? These instruments are different enough to lead to different hypotheses.
>did they use violins? Guitars? Piano? These instruments are different enough to lead to different hypotheses.
Also similar enough to where they all have a bolder sound and somewhat different response when the same gage of strings are tuned more tightly to a higher standard pitch compared to a lower pitch.
From what I understand 440 was about the highest they could go on vintage violins once modern steel strings were invented.
Different musical compositions do reach different characteristic "high notes" so it must be accepted that very old works were originally played (and sung!) at noticeably lower ultimate frequencies than the same legendary pieces today.
Tension makes a huge difference but I still think heart rate in particular would be more tempo-responsive.
Now with the modern world standardized on 440 for so many people's lifetimes everyone gets accustomed to it after a while.
A bandleader who transposes everything down a half-step so they don't have to sing as high is not any different pitch than tuning to A=415.3 which is the relative frequency for G#. Either way you're playing notes that are still directly relative to A=440. The thing here is that most traditional and pop music is played in natural keys rather than sharp or flat keys, and generations of listeners become accustomed to hearing natural notes act as tonics rather than sharps or flats. But it still sounds completely normal and most people never notice.
Because out of all the infinite frequencies there are to choose from as a standard that are close to 440, at A=415.3 you're still only playing the same 12 exact carefully selected frequencies as everybody else tuned to A=440. The same 12 frequencies that have bombarded all consumers from all directions from any source of curated music for generations, to the near-exclusion of all other frequencies. When you think about it.
And 415.3 is a lot further away from 440 than 432 is, but if you tune to A=432 every sjngle note you play is one that almost nobody has been hearing on the radio, probably since there has been radio.
Maybe if people can’t walk around your city efficiently because there are too many cars, it’s the cars themselves which are the problem.