clairity

yah, that's exactly the kind of change i advocate as well. it's low cost and high bang for buck. LA instead spends millions of dollars doing studies and community outreach and anything else before they actually implement these kinds of changes. and when they do, it's small, isolated and disconnected, and low utility as a result.

he was one of the few because the idea that monopolies were good for consumers is about a 5th grader's level of thinking. in a perfect world where monopolies serve a single, narrow segment, don't overreach into adjacent markets or sociopolitics, and there's no general uncertainty or strife, you might argue they'd be a more efficient than multiple market participants, but we live in a dynamic and ever-changing world where that kind of thinking is laughably simplistic. monopolists can't resist distorting markets for their own benefit.

and that's why i commented. thiel is an idle opportunist, not an innovator or thought leader, and should be disregarded in such confines.

yes please. i have these conversations with people here in LA and they look at me like i'm an alien. but LA is really the perfect city for dense, multi-modal, mixed-use neighborhoods because of the perfect weather (esp. low humidity) and relatively flat terrain.

all we need to do is convert street parking into bike lanes, and build a few parking structures in the oldest neighborhoods that were built before onsite parking was common (this mitigates the biggest legitimate objection for getting rid of street parking).

customers don't all want the same single vendor though, as we have varying needs (outside of true commodities).

> "Everyone...Peter Thiel..."

no, not this fake thought leader. business school literally teaches cornering markets (in strategy, but also marketing), and has for decades before those guys were even born. they literally recycled this information and presented it as if they were geniuses who came up with this miraculous approach all by themselves.

> "...like driving to Joel Salatin's Polyface Farms and buying broiler chickens directly from him."

reading omnivore's dilemma when it came out impulsively made me want to do that, but of course the impracticality of that quickly dawned on me. it's similarly why reading a book is a better than going and getting first-hand accounts for all our information. we've created socioeconomic structures for very good reasons, so we shouldn't want to burn them down for the tradeoffs, but rather we should address the negatives directly.

> "...very difficult technological problem."

it's not a technological problem at all. it's a sociopolitical "problem", of wanting to influence others for personal gain. it's more practical to consider this an axiom of the human condition to be channeled rather than suppressed (much like greed in relation to capitalism). we'll never be rid of the desire to influence, and more extremely, to coerce, others.

you can invert the perspective and think about ways to obviate the core need for marketing, which is to match idiosyncratic needs with pre-determined solutions. then you could apply technology to that aim, for example creating a search engine than anticipates all your desires (google's ultimate goal). there are dystopian traps all around though, so it's not clear that technology is a net-good approach.

i'd love to taste yours in the hopes of finding something enjoyable. i've tried cold brew at some of the fanciest cafes in LA (with foam even) and none of them made me want it again.

it reminds me of the IPA fad with beer. i tried a bunch and they were generally extra bitter (and strong) rather than tasty. still don't get that one.

it's not faster or more straightforward though. you still have to grok and hack it, so might as well grok and hack it cleanly rather than adding superfluous elements (especially considering accessibility, which is a whole espteric can of worms).

yes, and it's dismaying to say the least. we also do high-speed rail to nowhere for political not civic aims. ~85% of californians live near the coast, and/or wants to visit the coast, and we put rail through the central valley. even worse, the service is not going to be cost/time competitive with flying, not only because of the route but also inflated real estate and construction costs lining the pockets of all the favored rentiers with hats in hand.

i was actually reading a bit about oslo the other day. i'd wanted to see maps and pictures of the underground roads/parking but the article i was reading didn't have any.

that’s not practical for cross-country travel, but it’s imminently possible in cities. think how much greener and human scale cities would be if all cars were underground, including parking.

also, the question is how much structural elements influence outcomes (not merely decisions), not whether they do or not. that’s the extra complexity of a social system built atop a biological system built atop a chemical environment built atop a physical one. we’re complicated. physics is nigh child’s play in comparison.

yah, to me, spacers and extra non-semantic elements smell like a hack, so i try to refactor those out. sometimes you can't do that with the current state of css (which thankfully is now changing, albeit still slowly), but most of the time, it's possible to remove those extraneous elements.

but flexbox already has that built in, with space-around or space-between. you also have gap for more regular spacing needs, and margin on the flex items as a last resort.

yah, i've heard something like that before. competition wasn't the only factor, but it was a meaningful contributor. the tokyo operators compete on service and amenities (differentiation strategy), which is what allowed them to find profitable niches beyond just ticket sales (complementary/flanking offerings), and buoys the marketplace itself.

in capital intensive infrastructure businesses like rail travel and telecom, it actually makes sense for the government to provide the high upfront capital to build the common infrastructure and lease it to the competitors (but not sell or give it away) to create viable markets like this.

that's fair. to each their own.

yah, i can drink it, but it tastes old so i don't prefer it. at a cafe i'd much rather get a hot espresso drink (latte, mocha, or cappuccino) since i can't make those at home, and at home, delicious fresh hot coffee. i really don't 'get' cold brew, in either sense.

i'm really not a fan of the spacer example, as it reminds me so much of early 00s layout (in this case, adding a bunch of empty spans/divs to represent the spaces). there's a recent proposal for custom functions in css that i believe would allow one to write a simple iterator for this type of use case (use the nth-of-type element count as a multiplier against a set spacer width).

LA's metro, like MTA, also currently has fares and doesn't keep out the homeless, as fare enforcement here is a complete joke, so i hear what you're saying. i think the point was that being unvalued would mean that people would be even less likely to do or say anything about it, and it spirals into an even worse tragedy of the commons situation (the unintended consequences).

i'd personally like to see metro raise base fares, and provide larger discounts to lower income riders via their LIFE program to offset that potentially regressive burden. in the best of times (before covid) fares only covered about 20-30% of operating costs, i believe.

use that money to implement better service (more and more punctual trains), more social/community officers to help the homeless, peace officers on the trains themselves (currently they mostly just walk around stations every once in a while), and more rigorous cleaning and general maintenance.

this all needs to be coordinated with getting housing and services to homeless folks, removing roadblocks to density along transit corridors, and emphasizing multi-mobility (like converting street parking to bus & bike lanes).

it's infuriating. LA would be 17th by GDP in the world if it were a country. for comparison, tokyo would be 10th (if it were a country) and mexico is 16th. we have perfect weather for 8 months out of the year, and for the other four, it's a bit hot or a bit cold, but humidity is mild and we never get snow.

yet, we can't have world-class transit because it's only for poor people. the only reason we're building any transit right now is because the olympics are coming here in 2028 and the rich folks sponsoring it can't deign to be embarrassed by the dearth of viable transit here.

my experience of tokyo was as a tourist some 10 years ago, so i can't speak to the breadth of the transit experience there. i just remember being very impressed with the quantity and punctuality of trains and don't remember any homelessness. that's not to say i saw no homelessness in tokyo, but it seemed tiny compared to LA. i also rode the shinkansen between tokyo and osaka, which felt almost like flying, in contrast to amtrak's acela train on the east coast, which feels only slightly faster for a few short periods.

yes, we should better price in the cost of free roads rather than try to rebalance by making public transit free. i'd suggest making registration fees even more contingent on length and weight of vehicles, on a superlinearly escalating scale (e.g., some folks suggest to the 4th power due to that being the factor of weight on road wear).

yes, free inevitably means unvalued and creates distortions in markets that lead to unintended consequences (like homeless people using trains as makeshift housing). in contrast, market competition is one of the reasons cited by the tokyo transit system for why they're so good.

also, economists are capable of estimating the ratio of private good to public good for a transit system, and we can simply apportion the funding of the network accordingly. if 40% of the value of transit accrues to the public, then pay that part out of taxes and set fares so that they pay for the other 60%. i'd rather have a system that responds in some proportion to market signals than one that is entirely immune to them.

in LA, they're trying to make transit free, and while i'd benefit from this, i oppose the initiative on these grounds.

you should also try the LA metro for how bad a transit network can be under poor management and corrupt city government. we have some of the best weather in the world, where multi-modal transportation is imminently viable, and yet we've built for cars and sprawl instead.

i remember in tokyo that train headways during rush hour is as little as 90 seconds. and it's punctual as hell. in LA, we're lucky if we get down to 10 minutes, plus or minus 20 minutes. LA is not quite as big or rich as tokyo, but it's on a similar scale, yet we have an order of magnitude worse public transit. it's so frustrating.

i'm honestly baffled by the cold brew fad, as every cold brew i've tried tastes like the day old, cold coffee that it is, not rich and nuanced like freshly hot brewed coffee.

but i'm with you on the grinder. i have the sette 30 and it's fast and consistent, with little waste. i primarily do single serving grinds for brewed coffee with it. the gearbox broke but baratza sent me a new gearbox for free (i believe there was a manufacturing defect in the early models). i got the 30 (the number of grind settings) because i wanted it primarily for pour over rather than espresso. the great thing is that the grind adjustment mechanism can be upgraded (along with the controller faceplate to get presets) and effectively turns the 30 into the 270, which i may do if i ever decide to get an espresso machine.

edit: i also got the courser burr, taking the grind size up to roughly a medium grind, which is perfect for pour over. the included burr is better suited to the fine grind needed for espresso.

i know what it is. it's still random internet opinion rather than academic research.

you're exactly describing medicalization, where relatively common human variation is pathologized so it can be separated and treated, without asking to what ends?

a diagnosis becomes an excuse for the inconvenience of having to deal with differences among ourselves. it's ok that we have to deal with discomfort and even (some) conflict. that's an essential part of life, otherwise we may as well be robots.

the likes of foucault and nietzsche would be better source material than random internet opinion for this sort of thing. this is sociopolitical push-pull between the average and the relative outliers--as old as time, just with different jargon.