I believe paying taxes is a fair tradeoff for living in a society. My concerns are that those taxes be applied fairly, even if that impacts me, and that they be used to improve society for its people, even if it costs me more.

I know people who are elderly or have lower income, I have kids in college, I have been between jobs in parts of my career, I’ve had major medical emergencies in my family …. And I have the empathy to want no one to go through that without assistance. I know the only way for people to “pick themselves up by their bootstraps” (I know, I know), is that when they fall off the tightrope they are caught before hitting the ground. I know the only way to break the cycle of poverty and crime is for kids to start with the same opportunities as their peers. I know that technology and science can be directed and accelerated by targeted investments. And yes, even if it costs me more. My successes are a product of my society and it is fair for them to feed back into society

GPS is knowledge of the city. Most cities publish detailed street map data that is immediately imported into gps maps. The car relies on the gps not just for navigating, but even deciding things like what lane. And of course gps’s have much more complete traffic data than your human taxi driver ever did.

While I don’t want to fanboi too much …… as long as nobody is able to do self driving, any approach has potential. Teslas approach has the huge advantage of starting with millions of potential vehicles and they will soon be able to crank out a quarter million robotaxis every year, whereas Waymo is not ready to scale up. They’re going all in with a potential approach and if it succeeds are in position to disrupt the industry.

It might not succeed, but no other company has succeeded yet either. The difference is they went all in, and they were willing to try something different than Internet wisdom

(Actually, as a big fan of what Tesla used to represent, this worries me about their future: Cybertruck flopped, robotaxi may not succeed for years, semi is a very conservative market they may not be able to break into or will be slow take up , and Optimus doesn’t yet have a market. They’re making some extremely risky moves at the same time their profit margins are under a lot of pressure. )

This is not news. It was always the plan to start using model y’s with drivers. Consider the timing - they are supposed to start offering the services now or soon, but are not yet building robotaxi.

Cool, thanks

Wow, even the Cross Bronx is seeing less traffic? That’s amazing!

I haven’t driven through there lately but will have to dig into it a bit: GPS tends to take me through the city if I travel south and I have no idea if it crosses over into the congestion pricing zone. And it’s not like I can set GPS to avoid tolls - no one has that kind of time

They’re not ruining their economy by fighting what makes them great or their people healthy. They have their grift and corruption more under control. They’re not cutting back on investments for their future in favor of investments for their past. They have the attention span to commit to a plan for more than four years at a time.

Or at least waste and abuse

Altitude of 300m …. This is older than 8 years, this corresponds to the first SpaceX tests …. I don’t see that level of historical detail, but Wikipedia lists a milestone of a recovered falcon 9 after launch to orbit. Hondas technology is somewhere over 15 years old …. And the article doesn’t say whether it’s comparable size or power, so no.

But was it in the beginning? I’m not old enough to remember what it was like when it started but clearly there was a lot of propaganda. The unpopularity seemed to manifest over time, as there was no goal and people dying over something most americans didn’t care about.

Or at least that’s my impression.

And human rights. Due process. Rule of law and respect the constitution. Less inflation. More progress on our environment. Rebuild some infrastructure. Invest in some technologies of the future rather than the past. Leadership that understands basic economics and actually the art of the deal

The problem is we’re over-consuming now, over-populating now, but will feel the effects of lower birth rates in 50+ years. There’s extremely delayed feedback on population trends, but that doesn’t make it untrue.

Even conservatives sometime start from a point of truth. The problem is their solution is to turn back rights for women, opportunities for women. Technically correct, if you have no morals or empathy.

For the rest of us concerned about this possibility, society needs to change a lot to remove obstacles from people who do choose to have children. And this would take a couple generations to take effect so we need to start now, to stabilize the dropping population in 50-100 years

US has the cheap solution: higher immigration than most developed countries. I’m sure we’re going to encourage that while we try to figure out how to make having children more appealing. No one would mess that up, right?

I look at long term trends where the global population peaks in a few decades then heads down all too quickly, and find it important to act to stabilize that at a level a bit below here we are now

Yeah, what are those damn commies going to demand next, human rights?

It will be interesting to learn the exact conditions for each of the tipping points, if only it wasn’t our environment. Tipping

Once jellyfish become the only remaining sea creature, just eat those

Even if he weren’t a Russian simp, why would Ukraine tell anyone? An 18 month long attack is just tooo much invested to risk losing the surprise

This is why we can never have good things. There’s always someone who doesn’t care about their fellow human beings, doesn’t care about acting shitty, doesn’t care that their choices impact others. Run into enough anti-social people who will not cooperate with society and the natural reaction is to establish a rule.

I would much prefer we have a civilized society where people care about their impact on others and equally care that others have a right to their preferences and we can all figure out how to live with each other. But people suck. Or too many people do

And yes, people do complain about excessive perfume, body odor, and flatulence. I personally would not legislate these because it’s a lot less frequent, a lot less potential lung damage to bystanders and people show shame. If I complain about someone having too much perfume or it triggers a perfectly normal allergic reaction reaction, you can bet they’ll be embarrassed and likely to try not to reoffend. If I complaint about smokers too close to an entrance stinking up my clothes, making me inhale their ashes, ruining my dining experience, do you really think they’ll be as accommodating?

If you’re a smoker you may be surprised at the distance your smoke impacts other people. The smell, the cloud, The ash extends far beyond a mere ten feet. Where I live the law is 20 feet from an entrance and that’s just not enough.

The problem is you can’t change your path from an entrance because you may have to enter and exit. The problem is further that multiple smokers tend to congregate at the mandated distance so the smoke is much worse. It needs to be significantly farther.

But then it’s worse again in a city area, where the sidewalks are also a bottleneck. I can’t always cross the street to avoid smokers but frequently have to pass right next to them. And I’d like to point out they are the ones inflicting their vice/addiction on others. It should not be my responsibility to get out of the way of their bad habit when their reasonable accommodation would not inflict it on others