daedalus's recent activity

  1. Comment on ‘A profound betrayal of trust’: Why Jackson’s water system is broken in ~life

    daedalus
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    This article has some good things to say, but ultimately misses the mark. Charles Marohn does a great job of breaking down the issue. Between 1960 and 2020 Jackson has tripled in size while adding...

    This article has some good things to say, but ultimately misses the mark. Charles Marohn does a great job of breaking down the issue. Between 1960 and 2020 Jackson has tripled in size while adding only 6% more people. There has been barely any growth in the tax base while there has been an absolutely massive increase in the amount of infrastructure. Yes racism and climate change are an immense danger and causing many issues, but they aren’t the core of the problem here.

    Our spread out, car centric suburban design is the core issue. This type of city building is unsustainable long term, and rots our cities from the inside out. “In the pursuit of jobs and economic development, American cities have spread themselves out beyond their abilities to financially sustain themselves. All those roads, all that sidewalk, all those pipes....they are really, really expensive. We're starting to understand that building it all was the easy part. Maintaining it generation after generation is hard.”

    7 votes

  2. Comment on America is running on fumes | In film, science, and the economy, the US has fallen out of love with the hard work of ushering new ideas into the world in ~humanities

    daedalus
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    I'm sorry, but your comment is not connected to reality. Wanting to afford rent is not entitled. The average rent in San Francisco is $2,900. If you make 100,000 a year in SF which is about double...

    I'm sorry, but your comment is not connected to reality. Wanting to afford rent is not entitled. The average rent in San Francisco is $2,900. If you make 100,000 a year in SF which is about double average annual US wage, you're paying going to pay around 30k in taxes. You would literally pay half your post tax salary into rent. How are people supposed to contribute to open source when they are just trying to survive. So many of the people you mention were only able to create these companies because they had support systems to lean into. You might not be from the US, but here wages have been stagnating for decades. If anything, today's generation is the one that is finally demanding what it deserves.

    13 votes

  3. Comment on Your two-day shipping is causing potholes in ~enviro

    daedalus
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    The heavier the vehicle, the more damage done to the road on an exponential scale. The average truck does over 400 times the damage to the road as the average car. 99% of road wear is caused by...

    The heavier the vehicle, the more damage done to the road on an exponential scale. The average truck does over 400 times the damage to the road as the average car. 99% of road wear is caused by large trucks, but they only pay for 35% for tolls, causing the average US taxpayer to be subsiding private trucking companies.

    The author author offers train shipping as a much better alternative, solving most of the physical problems trucks have, as well as having a fourth of the greenhouse emissions. To truly combat climate change, I think we need to challenge rampant overconsumption and the need to have anything your heart desires in two days or less. But we will always need some sort of shipping infrastructure, and trains are vastly superior to trucks in almost every way.

    9 votes

  5. Comment on Electric cars are less green to make than petrol but make up for it in less than a year, new analysis reveals in ~tech

    daedalus
    (edited )
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    I feel like you misunderstood the majority of what I said. This article frames EVs as more green than gas cars, and I don't think that's helpful because cars as a mode of transportation...
    • Exemplary

    I feel like you misunderstood the majority of what I said. This article frames EVs as more green than gas cars, and I don't think that's helpful because cars as a mode of transportation hilariously inefficient and by extension not green. That is what my comment was all about. Many people view EVs as these incredible devices that virtually eliminate your environmental impact in transportation, and for most people transportation is the biggest part of their individual impact. You are correct in saying that no one is explicitly saying that EVs are the sole solution to climate change, but EVs are put on this pedestal when they do very little to help the environment. Let's use the last six months for example with the build back better, a plan that was called by many news outlets America's most progressive climate legislation. And coverage after it failed to pass that called climate change policy doomed. Almost every article I could find talking about the climate parts of the bill highlight the EV investments at the top. So much of the climate parts of the bill are for EV subsides, EV chargers, energy grid infrastructure to handing more EV charging, purchasing EVs for federal use and more. But again, this investment is just not well placed. We need to be making massive changes to curb our emissions and to do that we need to not just consume more efficiently, we need to consume less. EVs are not consuming less, they are consuming a bit more efficiently with a couple of nasty side effects.

    I find comments like yours really frustrating because they use logic so incredibly twisted that the only way they make any sense is if they came from the fossil fuel industry or if you simply live somewhere dramatically different from where I live.

    How is pointing out the issues with electric cars and wanting to move as much car usage to more sustainable forms of transportation something from the fossil fuel industry?

    Don’t get me wrong. I know where you are coming from and I’m just as concerned about the environment as you are. But having our cars convert to electric is a step forward, and it’s counterproductive to fight it.

    What I'm saying is that obviously there are use cases for cars, but the vast majority of trips that are taken by car or by EV should be taking by more efficient transportation. For cases that need a car, absolutely it should be an EV. I'm fighting settling for just switching gas cars to EVs, because that isn't enough to stop climate change. Not even close.

    For one thing, car culture is never going to go away. The US is literally built around it. Look at how shitty it is to be a pedestrian in Houston. All of Texas is built that way. Do you think it’s realistic to flatten all of Texas and force them to rebuild in a way that they would probably not be happy with?

    Are we watching the same notjustbikes? Slaughter often talks about how American cities weren't built for cars, they were bulldozed for them. He also shows how good design in the Netherlands enables people to ditch cars. But they haven't always been like that. The Netherlands was also very car dependent, but they chose the welfare of people over the throughput of cars, and the whole country has benefited from it. We can do the same in the US. I don't think car culture is a given, gen z is much less interested in driving than past generations because it costs so much, they see other transportation as an option, and they see less of a need with the internet.

    Texas is huge, and the urbanist in my dies every time I visit family there (another lane did not fix traffic). However, 83% of the US lives in cities. We don't need to eliminate all car usage in Texas, we need to make Houston, San Antonio, and Dallas less car dependent. Yes, a lot of the US needs to be built better, but the situation isn't nearly as dire as you might think. I know it's an uphill battle, but it's one we need to fight for our survival as a species.

    This whole thing about weight and tire wear is also extremely unrealistic and doesn’t take into account what is actually being sold in the US. Did you know that the entire light truck category has basically disappeared over here? That’s because given the choice Americans always choose the larger ones. Outside of metropolitan areas it is almost like lightweight compact cars don’t exist. And why are we worrying more about the state of our roads when it was clear long ago that we cannot afford to maintain the roads we have already?

    That's my point. Car and trucks have gotten comically large for no good reason. People buy big vehicles not because they need them for better towing or for more space, but because they like the look better. This is horrible for the environment, people are driving around a 5,000 lb and all they are transporting is themself and a purse or bag. Also, EVs tend to be 30% heavier to their gas counterpart, not just a random car. The last gas hummer, the H3 was 4,883lb. The new Hummer EV weighs in at 9,046 lb (Not totally equivalent but still 85% heavier). That's insane. Using the math from before, that would cause about 2,000,000 times the damage to the road that an ebike would cause. The infrastructure bill has 110 billion for roads and bridges. That's a ton of money we are spending or infrastructure, and because these EVs are exponentially more damaging, we will have to spend more money that we didn't have to. That isn't green. Furthermore, the act of repaving roads causes emissions, and again, it will happen more often with heavier EVs.

    The idea that electric cars create more consumption is frankly a laughable concept. Who on earth thinks “There are electric cars now, I guess I need to add one to my collection”? There are people who collect cars but they are extremely rare. Most car purchases are made because they are replacing an existing one, and unless you are fairly rich it’s usually because it has reached a point where the maintenance is more expensive than the car is worth.

    You really didn't understand what I was saying on this one. I said nothing about people purchasing multiple cars. I said that when a person changes their vehicle from a gas to EV, they are going to be incentivized to drive more. I'm in Seattle, electricity here is very cheap, so it costs about $.023 to drive a Tesla a mile. To drive a gas car a mile assuming the 25 mpg average and the $4 a gallon gas has been hovering around you get $.16. If you have an EV, you are much less financially obligated to be wise with how much you drive because you are spending 1/7 of the cost on fuel. An EV enables people to make environmentally destructive choices like moving far away from work because cost of fuel is much much less of a factor.

    Now I am not saying that there isn’t wasteful car buying in the world, but they also have the side effect of creating a used market that lower income people can afford. So even if electric cars being produced are somehow “wasteful” they are not being wasted because they are going to go to people who need it and it is likely going to replace a car that has a far heavier environmental impact.

    One of the biggest pushbacks when you advocate to move away from car dependency is the question about lower income residents. You saw it a ton when New York was debating congestion pricing. Cars should be a luxury not a requirement. If you are poor, cars are a crushing expense, running thousands of dollars a year. Creating a used market for poor people isn't how to best car for them in terms of transportation needs, building cities with proper public transportation is how we care for lower income people. Of course that's going to take a long time with how US is built, but again, we need to do it for the sake of our world.

    We are living in an illusion in the US. Our way of life is completely unsustainable. Our need for convenience is poison. We have the audacity as Americans to think using thousands of pounds of car to get a person and their few belongings from one place to another is reasonable. That driving 30 miles to work is normal. That wasteful single family homes in the suburbs miles away from any business is society should be built. EVs prop up this system of waste and make the owner feel like they have done their part to stop climate change.

    18 votes

  6. Comment on Elon Musk’s ‘Vegas Loop’ called a ‘death trap’ as Las Vegas traffic piles up in ~transport

    daedalus
    Link Parent
    I mean, it makes sense that people prefer to drive, because we subsidize every step of the drive. With the way that the US subsidizes suburbs, roads, highways, cars, gas, and parking, of course...

    I mean, it makes sense that people prefer to drive, because we subsidize every step of the drive. With the way that the US subsidizes suburbs, roads, highways, cars, gas, and parking, of course people are going to prefer to drive. Most people don't enjoy driving, they have to because the city is designed for it. I live in the heart of Seattle, considered to be in the top five in public transit in the US, and a trip yesterday that took me an hour on the bus with two transfers would have taken me 10 minutes by car and the parking was free. This isn't a cultural problem, it's simply cars are way more convenient and the costs of cars are hidden (like with depreciation of the car's value) or just covered by society. Car use costs society about $.2/passenger mile while cycling and walking had a net social benefit of $0.32/pmi and $0.67/pmi

    We have alternate solutions, they are bikes and subways and buses. If we are actually concerned about climate change, we need to radically reshape the way our cities are designed, not wait for new tech that is much more inefficient. We need to make cities walkable, tax gas according how much it hurts our world, put an end to the insane practice of free parking, invest in proper public transportation, build protected bike lane, ect. When we start to make progress in these areas, we will see many more people in the US ditch their cars.Only 22% of Manhattan households own a car because it's more of a liability than an asset. We need to make owning a car more inconvenient and expensive and make other forms of transportation less convenient and less expensive. It's not an issue of culture, it's one of convenience.

    7 votes

  7. Comment on Electric cars are less green to make than petrol but make up for it in less than a year, new analysis reveals in ~tech

    daedalus
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    I find articles like this to be extremely frustrating because they are trying to justify EVs for their environmental benefit. Electric cars are fun to drive and filled with cool features, but if...
    • Exemplary

    I find articles like this to be extremely frustrating because they are trying to justify EVs for their environmental benefit. Electric cars are fun to drive and filled with cool features, but if you should never justify the purchase by thinking it's green. EV's are just a new tool to justify our insane consumption that is threatening our existence as a species and most people don't care because they value convenience so highly. About half the trips in the US are under 3 miles, something that could be easily done on bike, transit, or walking. There are so many other ways EVs pollute that are never talked about. For one, they tend to be 30% heavier than their gas counterpart, and since road wear and tear scales exponentially with weight, it would cause about 60,000 times the amount of damage to the road for someone 200lb to drive the same trip on the lightest Tesla (3,500lb) vs riding a heavy ebike (40lb). Furthermore, we are just beginning to understand the particles released by tire wear, and some studies find that even more damaging to the environment than gas emissions. And again, because of the increased weight of EVs from the batteries, their pollution is even worse in this area.

    Finally, EVs don't reduce our car dependence, they increase it. Cars have enabled so many environmentally horrific patterns like the suburbs, which use an order of magnitude more energy because things are so spread out and inefficient. The US has 8 parking spots for each person and the energy to create those is bad enough, but on top of that, the asphalt traps an enormous amount of heat which just causes even more warming. Also, because electricity is much cheaper than gas and because EVs are perceived as "green", they are actively incentivizing people to drive further and more often - the last thing we want to encourage if our goal is curbing emissions.

    I'm sorry if I'm coming off harsh, I don't intend to and tone is hard to communicate in writing. But we need to be making major changes as a society if we are going to do something about climate change and EVs aren't a change. They make people feel like they are making a difference, when their environmental impact at best is lessened a little bit. If we really want to solve climate change, we need to greatly reduce our consumption but people don't want to sacrifice, so they turn to false promises like EVs instead.

    25 votes

  8. Comment on Where do you get your sense of community from? in ~talk

    daedalus
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    Church has always been the place where I have found the most meaningful community. I have made multiple deep, and it feels natural getting to know new people because there are certain underlying...

    Church has always been the place where I have found the most meaningful community. I have made multiple deep, and it feels natural getting to know new people because there are certain underlying beliefs that we share. It's also the only context where I have made intergenerational relationships.

    4 votes

  9. Comment on The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles will be released in English on July 27, 2021 for PC, Switch, and PS4 in ~games

    daedalus
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    This is super exciting, it's the first time these games will be available outside of Japan. They are directed by Shu Takumi who also directed the first 3 Ace Attorney games, as well as Ghost...

    This is super exciting, it's the first time these games will be available outside of Japan. They are directed by Shu Takumi who also directed the first 3 Ace Attorney games, as well as Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective (which might be one of my favorite games ever). I'm hoping there will be some sort of physical release, as many of the mainline Ace Attorney games have not gotten one in the west.

    6 votes

  10. Comment on Maquette - Gameplay walkthrough in ~games

    daedalus
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    I'm really looking forward to this one, it's such an interesting concept that could lead to a lot of cool ideas for puzzles. I love the idea of using gameplay to represent how the smallest things...

    I'm really looking forward to this one, it's such an interesting concept that could lead to a lot of cool ideas for puzzles. I love the idea of using gameplay to represent how the smallest things in relationships can become huge obstacles. Annapurna Interactive has quickly become my favorite publisher: What Remains of Edith Finch, Gorogoa, Donut County, and the Outer Wilds are some of my favorite games in the last few years.

  11. Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games

    daedalus
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    As awful as this quarantine has been, the one bright spot for me is I've been able to catch up on a lot of games in my backlog. Though with all these great humble bundles, I've also managed to...

    As awful as this quarantine has been, the one bright spot for me is I've been able to catch up on a lot of games in my backlog. Though with all these great humble bundles, I've also managed to increase the total number of games, can't win them all.

    I had heard about Kind Words before, but with the pandemic, it seemed like the perfect time to try it. The basic concept of it is you can send out a letter about what's on your mind, and people can see it and respond with a letter of their own. Conversely, you can look through different letters people have sent and reply to one if you wish, but if something is too heavy to respond to, there is no pressure to make a response. You would think such a system would be infested with trolls, but I have yet to find a single toxic person. I've found it incredibly cathartic to express feelings that I haven't been comfortable expressing to friends and family. It's really incredible how a platform like this gives people a space to talk about things you don't feel safe to talk about with anyone else.

    I've played a couple of Blendo Games, but Quadrilateral Cowboy has to be one of their best. I'm a sucker for cyberpunk worlds and punching commands in a terminal is just so satisfying. It made me feel like a coding genius when I would think of some crazy idea and then be able to see it come to fruition. Normally I'm not one to complain about a games length, I normally prefer quality over quantity. Some of my favorite games clock in under 5 hours. But it felt like Quadrilateral Cowboy had so much more to explore. It feels like almost every level is introducing a new kind of mechanic, and there is never a final level that tests everything you have learned.

    I played through A Way Out with a friend, and it was superb. I've never played a game that took advantage of two player coop so well. The story was super engrossing, and I loved the way the game forced you to rely on your friend to make it. It's an expensive play through, I paid $30 and it took us about 6 hours to make it through. While I don't see myself doing another run through of it, it was so interesting both mechanically and story wise that I don't regret my purchase at all.

    Tomb Raider (2013) was free on steam the other week, so I tried it out. It's interesting, I don't think it's anything amazing, but I enjoyed my time with it. It felt like a bit of a hodge podge mechanically, just wanting to throw a bunch of mechanics in and see what sticks. At the beginning when I had to hunt and kill a deer I though there would be some sort of survival element with hunger, but I never had to kill another animal in the game. I'm not a huge fan of the way games love to tack on an light rpg system, it really didn't seem to fit here. But all in all, I enjoyed my time, and will check out the next ones once they go down in price.

    4 votes

  12. Comment on Apple introduces second generation AirPods, with Hey Siri, H1 audio chip, & wireless charging in ~tech

    daedalus
    Link Parent
    It looks like these new AirPods do address the input source switching lag: I totally agree that this is very much needed. It's sometimes as much as 15 seconds when switching from my iPhone to my Mac.

    It looks like these new AirPods do address the input source switching lag:

    "Switching between devices while listening to music on iPhone, Apple Watch or iPad is more seamless than ever with two times faster connect times."

    I totally agree that this is very much needed. It's sometimes as much as 15 seconds when switching from my iPhone to my Mac.

    5 votes

  13. Comment on GOG Summer Sale 2018 now through June 18 in ~games

    daedalus
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    Also, a bunch of games were added to GOG connect. This has to be one of my favorite features of GOG, I own almost 100 games on it, and probably 60 of those were free from it. It feels like they...

    Also, a bunch of games were added to GOG connect. This has to be one of my favorite features of GOG, I own almost 100 games on it, and probably 60 of those were free from it. It feels like they just really care about the customer.

    3 votes

  14. Comment on What are good optimised games for a cheap gpu of 2013 in ~games

    daedalus
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    I think your best bet is to explore some of the classics of pc gaming. Some of my favorites are Deus Ex, Half Life, System Shock 2, Grim Fandango, or Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines. All...

    I think your best bet is to explore some of the classics of pc gaming. Some of my favorites are Deus Ex, Half Life, System Shock 2, Grim Fandango, or Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines. All incredible games, but with spec requirements that any pc these days can meet. While these games haven't aged the best in terms of graphics, there are things about these games that are timeless. The original Deus Ex is my favorite game ever, there are things that it does that I haven't seen in any other games.