If you live in a city, parking tickets are fairly inevitable. I am sure some folks get away with none but at least in SF I have gotten tickets that were not even for the correct meter and it’s takes more time (at least used to) to fight it than pay the money.
I've never lived in Los Angeles but the one that gets you in San Francisco if you do street parking is the street cleaning, and the random vandalizations.
Great? Too many variables such as not having to park on the street or bad/good luck. If you live somewhere that has street cleaning, street parking and meters there is a good chance of getting a ticket. Not everyone but the likelihood increases and most of LA does not really check most of those boxes at least in the areas I have been.
Zooming out in what sense? Those rolling charts don’t mean much imo. Year over year change is a pretty good perspective and a tick up like this is not great.
Zooming out tells you this tick up to 4.2% is not nearly as bad as the post-covid inflation, and drastically better than the 70s. Not a good sign, but also not too far outside the historical mean and probably no need to panic in and of itself.
Obviously more inflation is bad almost always. The question is how bad. By looking at a graph, you can get a sense for the mean and standard deviation of inflation over time, and this looks to be a small deviation in the grand scheme of things. Of course, no one would call this good, but it's just good to put stuff like this in context.
Again I don’t think it says anything. Yes inflation was worse during Covid and before I was born, that just sounds silly btw. There is no perspective to be frank, energy is up a lot, that will impact other goods over the next few quarters.
China is probably more capitalist in many respects than the west these days. AI, robotics and automation is a way to push into the future. In the west we have endless researchers stuck in a psychosis that they are talking to a sentient being.
Other than the data of road fatalities that disproves this anecdote, my own anecdote is this is the false sense of security people get in other countries that don’t have traffic laws. Oh see the people have to look all the time so it’s much safer. When you start to live it for a long time you realize it’s not true. Many more fatalities.
Now I do think the science shows if you design roads and systems to make drivers more thoughtful it can improve outcomes. Size roads for the speed limit, roundabouts, etc. these can make a difference as it balances the system.
Having lived, driven, and crossed roads in both -- what I find is essentially that drivers from poor systems pay far more attention, but the system is a lot more effective than attention.
The difference here is one of stability: in a developing country, I can just walk across a street (often there is no traffic light) by essentially signalling with my body language -- both I and the drivers are paying attention. And if one party fails, the other has a good chance of catching that mistake.
Now, in a developed country, neither side is paying attention. If I walk across the street, I'm in danger, no matter how clear my body language (I tried it on British streets a few times -- it works in some areas, but usually very poorly!), and no one expects a crazy driver to come barreling through a red light.
The developing countries fall behind because in the crazy * sane intersection, sometimes the sane person is just not fast enough -- whereas the crazy * crazy intersection is extremely dangerius and happens often enough.
On the other hand, a developed country makes every interaction sane * sane regardless of the personalities or moods of those involved -- but God forbid a bit of crazy leaks out!
>Other than the data of road fatalities that disproves this anecdote,
You can't make that assertion (well you can, it's called "lying with statistics" but that's beside the point) without knowing if the fatalities the result of the accident rate or just a higher conversion ratio as a result of reduced safety equipment, reduced seatbelt usage, more motorcycles, etc, etc, worse emergency services, etc, etc.
INB4 other people start whining on your behalf, I'm not saying those countries aren't less safe to drive, just that you can't do a straight comparison of accident rates and fatalities without considering the conversion ratio.
Of course you have to consider confounders. That’s why transportation data usually includes best efforts.
But at some point you have to look at the totality of the evidence. Countries with better road infrastructure, enforcement, vehicle standards, and driving behavior generally produce better safety outcomes. The fact that multiple factors contribute doesn’t make the observed outcome meaningless.
As I already stated there is absolutely systems that increase the perceived sense of risk that can help outcomes (road width sizing, roundabouts, minimal signs/lines) but those typically work best in a system where there is already some sense of order.
Not sure why this would downvoted. Go to a less developed nation where traffic laws are not important and it’s one of those sense of false security ideas.
When I lived in India everyone would always tell me how everyone drives so much safer there because they're more aware etc (similar reasoning as we're seeing in this thread), but man, the national crash statistics say otherwise.
Not to mention I lost count of how many dozens of accidents I witnessed in my year there. I've personally been in 3 rickshaw crashes.
My experience as well in Vietnam. the first time I was there I figured they were right but it’s just a false narrative people sell to make themselves feel safe. Don’t even get me started on methed out American size semi trucks speeding with no concern of running you over.
Good luck reading an article about Meta Raybans without running into the term. That said, the whole smartglasses thing seems to be pretty dead as a concept - at least in part because public opinion is not on the side of folks wandering around with stealthy cameras on their faces
I have actually looked into meta glasses a number of times. Never saw the term. Learn something new everyday thanks for sharing this old term with the group!
It has had a revival with the Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses. I don't know about Silicon Valley, but you frequently see it in tech-oriented forums when the topic comes up.
I have his blog in my RSS app and I click every pelican test because it's fun. I think criticizing it for lack of scientific or technical rigor kind of misses its point. It's a fun curiosity.
As he likes to share often, "He ranks among the top 2% of scientists globally (Stanford/Elsevier 2025) and is one of GitHub's top 1000 most followed developers. "
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