Until people develop a workable alternative, all this narrative does is annoy people who have no choice but to use cars.
When electric buses start making round trips from every main city to every suburb on a set reliable and convenience schedule, then you can start shaming people for having to drive a car.
I have to drive a car because my city is barely traversable otherwise. I hate it. So, I’ve been working with the city council and other committees to start building a modern transit system. It can be done, but it takes motivated people to make it happen.
I’m very curious about this. Did you go into this with some allies or were you able to drum up support by sharing stats and other city/country success stories? Was the council already amenable to the idea? Any resources you could share?
This could be an entire post on its own if you can spare some time to write about it and your experiences.
I’ve used a combination of coalition building, finding allies on the city council, and reaching out to neighborhood leaders.
Much of it has been reaching out to government officials, having conversations, and identifying where decision making is done within the various transit agencies.
So far, most of the resistance to actual progress is just kind of weird noise (complaints & general “I can’t see how having transit would help”) from misc citizens and realtors who don’t want to have changes to their development plans in the city, even if adding in the transit would make regions around it boom. The city council members are surprisingly responsive to even a small number of vocal people. I don’t think they hear from many coherent arguments in any given year. Showing up with data, an even reasonable idea of what can be done, and evidence that you’ve got a coalition of interested groups seems to get traction.
It also helps that we recently voted out a ton of conservative assholes and replaced them with a younger progressive city council. Yes, I worked on campaigns to help make that happen.
We’ve also been getting allies on various transit advisory committees, mostly citizen advisory committees. Then making sure there’s a similar message along with data that supports our goals.
We do also gather up other cities’ long term transit plan documents because they often have some great ideas and examples of what a city can build out given some interest in the public’s success.
I know that I’m also on track to be tapped to help write up materials for federal level proposals in the future. Grant writing isn’t much fun, but it’s how you get the money for a $100 mil project.
Yeah, I’m sure there’s plenty of material for a whole posting in its own right! This isn’t a simple problem to solve. It’s a combination of government systems, managing individual’s needs, reaching out to lots of groups, and a real vision to get people dedicated to. You’ve got to have something people really want to have the buy in for years of work to make it happen.
I mean antagonistic shaming can be awful, obviously. But getting people to care is important, and meeting people where they are sometimes requires making sure they know they should care.
Caring doesn’t mean feeling bad and guilty though. This is part of the toxicity that personal responsibility has created. Not everyone can be equally responsible for their individual contributions. But we can all be much more equal in how much we care about issues.
Something like the bus you describe won’t just appear out of no where. People have to want it, commit to it, consult in its design and then use it.
When electric buses start making round trips from every main city to every suburb on a set reliable and convenience schedule,
How fucked up is your city that this doesn’t already exist? That’s not a pipe dream, it’s the bare minimum. Your local government has failed, please go riot in the streets.
The alternative will not appear out of thin air. More people need to have a sense of the long-reaching consequences of car-dependent urban planning and that’s what propels them to vote for better planning in their cities.
Nothing is going to change without a shift in political leanings, and that’s what this sort of advocacy is doing.
Toner’s role is being underplayed by the video. She’s potentially calling Altman out, for underrating the dangers of AI.
At least Altman is lying about something - about how much OpenAI is going towards AGI in the short term. The above might’ve bought the bullshit fully, while Sutskever knows that it’s bullshit.
I’m not sure if the board is also lying or not.
The boiling point was likely OpenAI potentially receiving some cash grant from some scummy party, that would be in a moral grey area considering the "non-"profit goals of the company.
Everybody will get a bit more of free popcorn for a while. 🍿 This mess is far from over.
That was hilarious! Thank you for calling out big corps on their fake solution which in fact is a monopoly nightmare! I love the innovative solutions offered by the host at the end.
I remember when people would be shamed for recording in vertical. Now, videos that were originally recorded in landscape mode are being cropped to fit vertical play. It’s insane
I’m actually using Ardour as my daily daw, very powerfull (check my profile if interested in libre music). Consider I made electronic music for many years with proprietary software.
I think so. The “on a date” scenario gives us a framework, two strangers who WANT to like each other. I don’t think that makes it creepy, it just saves him the trouble of creating a background for these characters. Then she starts saying these wacky things, and he’s showing disappointment that this obviously won’t work out, while also trying to be polite as they are having dinner together.
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