RustyVenture

I was saying "boo-lets"

Now he's back in the US working for Amtrak on high speed rail, but haven't heard much about his progress since he started last year beyond corridor studies (and I know he's once again been handed a pretty shit deal, since HSR wasn't a funding priority in Amtrak Joe's vaunted infrastructure bill).

Also, how does the Governor have any say over the city subway system?

The MTA is a state run agency that was formed in part to undermine the downstate political machine led by Robert Moses who is like the archetypal 20th century carbrained racist that was instrumental in the destruction of poor and minority neighborhoods to build highways and who purposefully sabotaged the development and operation of New York's mass transit systems for literal decades. His legacy lives on in the lack of rail connections both in NYC proper but also across most of Long Island. There's also a rich history of belligerence between the state government and city government, and like a lot of places especially in the northeast US a product of that is a spaghetti bowl of adversarial, duplicative, and parochial governing and rulemaking bodies that all get to have a say and dip their beaks.

Bill de Blasio and Andrew Cuomo constantly fought over shit like petty children. Cuomo's enormous ego tripping was especially noxious, leading to high-profile controversies like the last-minute shitcanning of the repair of an old but crucial subway tunnel that ran under the East River that got flooded during Hurricane Sandy. This also resulted in nixing a really promising busway pilot the MTA had planned after an extensive, nasty community engagement process that would've seen 14th Street in Manhattan closed to mostly everything but buses that would replace subway service during the 18 months it would take to do the repairs. This, among other political encumbrances, was likely a large factor in Andy Byford's resignation barely two years into the job. Cuomo is that much of a shitheel that he sandbagged and ostracized a guy his own board appointed either as a way to stick it to the NYC mayor or because Byford was actually trying to turn things around, getting recognized for it, and putting pressure on Albany to act.

All of this type of shit has left scars all over the state and it's just sad in the end. So many communities decimated by poor planning and political dick-swinging. As much as I miss living there—because it is truly a cool place to live/work/visit and riding trains and buses everywhere is dope and it's one of the only places in Amerikkka you can actually do that—I don't think I could ever hack it in NYC today. It just seems like it's become so much more of an oppressive place since I moved out a decade ago, but maybe it's also that I'm not a carefree lib anymore lol. Either way, fuck all these pigs and fuck this absolute clown shit.

Can’t lose what you never had to begin with

Everything that doesn't present the American fascists as absolute sweethearts who are totally concerned for human suffering but aww shucks we just can't stop exporting it because reasons must be perpetuated by bots. I am very smart.

Yes, actually. At least for the USB-C thing. John Gruber has always been one of the most insufferable Apple sycophants out there. When I was a teenager and in my early 20s I had thought he caught a bit too much flak for his takes and thought most of his justifications were sound (this is also likely because I was an Apple user myself and wanted the things he said to be true), but around 2016-17 he also started weighing in more on politics (massive turbolib) and it broke me out of that bubble right quick.

Since the pandemic started he's become an even more unbearable asshole with bad takes, and it looks like they're only getting worse.

There are too many people on that sub who are waaaay too old to be watching The Daily Show in 2024. If they're making excuses about Obama's supermajority, they are ancient. Literal baby brains.

This followed up by an unironic "that Biden isn't Trump is the only reason I need to vote for Biden!" is just so

The number of people I've already seen (and have seen in the last 4-5 years) do the whole "I'm 20-something and don't remember everything about what happened last week, duh-hyuk" bit is hilariously sad. Like on top of making excuses for the rancid milk inside your genocidal cult leader's brain, isn't it a little embarrassing to be this proud of having barely any recollection of your life or the events that happen in it? Isn't that a damning indictment of how overworked and overstimulated you are, or how life under capitalism has fried your brain and erased all meaningful connections to yourself and others? I also can't help but wonder if there's some collective Covid-related memory loss going on with all of this.

Not saying everyone ought to have an encyclopedic knowledge of their entire lives or would under socialism, but sheesh this "tee hee I don't even remember the date of my own father's passing" shit is rather sad.

Frankly I don't think most people will ever want to strap goggles to their head to check their fucking emails or even do any real creative work, and that's why this is one of the dumbest products ever to be shat out of Cupertino. No amount of iterating on the design will change this fact, and no, this will never all be contained in a contact lens or a normal pair of glasses because physics will still exist in the future lol. What we're seeing is the usual hype from fanboys, stockholders, and paid reviewers that will fizzle out within a couple of months.

People comparing it to something like the first iPhone or a smartwatch is also stupid because A) while one can spend a whole day with their face pressed up against a screen, it's not mandatory in order to use them, and B) those devices had inherent value to people right out of the gate. It's almost a no-brainer to see the perks of having a full web browser and responsive touch keyboard on a phone when you're coming from the awful hellworld of the "mobile web," static physical buttons, and the shitty touchscreens of yore. The fuck does a pair of ski goggles do to improve computing compared to my existing laptop, phone, or tablet? On top of it, the Vision Pro seems like the most isolating, lonely, and dystopian sort of device that, like all of the similar facehugging gadgets that came before it, will people off just by looking at it. Just can't see how this gains traction in any form outside of the nichest niches, and Apple doesn't build shit for niche markets for long. This isn't 2001 anymore; they're a multi-trillion dollar phone company that sells computers on the side.

Really wish Apple instead poured their dragon's hoard of cash into optimizing their existing hardware and software instead of this garbage. Hell, there's actually some cool gestures and conventions they've demoed with AVP that could be developed into a device that helps people who require alternate input methods. Imagine if they actually made the Magic Leap but it wasn't just astroturf! I fear other product lines will languish because capitalism is a fuck and they "must" go all in on "the next big thing" or else Tim Cook won't have a "revolutionary" product category under his belt to retire on and/or they'll be facing the repo men by the end of the quarter unless line go up 🙃.

In short, I wouldn't worry about it; this too will flop. The only way people are going to stop using their existing workflow and drop it for this shit is if manufacturers/developers stop supporting them entirely and go all in on goggle computing, which would be suicidal for the industry and probably be met by tremendous backlash from anyone who does anything even mildly productive on a computer or who values doing what they want with the gear they own.