HolySE

That art fixture's placement at the Mission Waymo Depot is kinda cool. It's evocative of a future in which humanity lives a life of indolence propped up by automation.

> Without the subsidy its more expensive and less efficient than carbon based fuel. In the long run we are worse off, because the subsidy can't last forever.

That doesn't seem to be the full picture.

1) The most recent FY 2025 budget (https://www.caltrain.com/media/30699/) has fuel and lubricant expenditures expected to be $5 million. With electricity expenditure estimates dropping to $16.5 million, that puts total expenditures at $21.5 million. The diesel expenditures remain because the long San Jose <> Gilroy corridor isn't electrified and requires diesel locomotive service. Contrast this against FY 2023 expenditures of $17.5 million. That's almost a 25% increase in movement power expenditures.

2) There is increased service now. About ~120 trains run on the latest weekday service timetable (https://www.caltrain.com/media/34716), and 8 of them are diesel service between San Jose and Gilroy. Compare this to ~90 trains for weekday service in 2023 (https://www.caltrain.com/media/30027/download?inline), of which 6 are diesel service between San Jose and Gilroy. Conservatively, we have a 25% increase in service.

3) The new trains are faster. Hitting every stop between San Jose and San Francisco is 101 minutes on diesel and 83 minutes on electric.

So we get an increase in movement power costs proportional to the increase in service, all while having faster trains. I think it's a fair trade.

The subsidies are just gravy on top for a job well done.

EDIT: fixed 2023 weekday service link

> BTW, to give this a software dimension: I was recently on a flight with an airline I hadn't used before, and I really liked a UI in their in-flight infotainment that showed the entire flight as a timeline with all meaningful events penciled in (when the meals are, etc.) and a recommendation during which blocks to sleep. That was really nice and thoughtful.

Do you recall which airline this was? Given similar pricing, this seems like a useful differentiator that would sway my decision of which airline to pick.

> This bourgeoisie -- the middle class that is neither upper nor lower, neither so aristocratic as to take art for granted nor so poor it has no money to spend in its pursuit -- is now the group that fills museums, buys books and goes to concerts. But the bourgeoisie, which began to come into its own in the 18th century, has also left a long trail of hostility behind it ... Artistic disgust with the bourgeoisie has been a defining theme of modern Western culture. Since Moliere lambasted the ignorant, nouveau riche bourgeois gentleman, the bourgeoisie has been considered too clumsy to know true art and love (Goethe), a Philistine with aggressively unsubtle taste (Robert Schumann) and the creator of a machine-obsessed culture doomed to be overthrown by the proletariat (Marx and Engels).

- "Class Lessons: Who's Calling Whom Tacky?; The Petite Charm of the Bourgeoisie, or, How Artists View the Taste of Certain People", Edward Rothstein, The New York Times

This article also discusses a painting called "The Most Wanted" which was drawn based off a survey posed to ordinary people about what they wanted to see in a painting. "A mishmash of images from it's training set," if you will.

Claiming that others lack taste seems to be a common refrain--only this time, instead of a reaction to a subset of the human population gnawing away at the influence of another subset of humans, it's to yet another generation of machines supplanting human skill.