Xolos and Calupohs have some of the most intimidating façades in dogs. Absolute sweethearts with the face of something you’d hear about in cryptid stories.
This title is under a few layers of irony, there are similar pictures floating around of green spaces converted to highways in the US with the same title, OP is suggesting the European version actually is progress
I remember as a kid hearing this vague ideological warfare around it. The Boston Science Museum had a big exhibit on it, as a kid I learned nothing about it. Then it was lamented for being wasteful spending - and only now do I hear about how it was meant to give us back urban areas.
That’s surprising to me. I remember at the time, NBC Nightly News and PBS Newshour (my family’s news diet in the 90s) did stories about it, and they both definitely mentioned reclaiming city space as one of the benefits.
I think the Big Dig, while it ended up costing several times what it was supposed to, will go down in history as one of the best highway projects of its era. It also proved infrastructure naysayers wrong. A lot of people insist that any highway projects always just induce demand, resulting in even more congestion, but the Big Dig did nothing of the sort. To this day, 30 years on, Boston traffic is still not as bad as it was pre-Big Dig.
A lot of people insist that any highway projects always just induce demand, resulting in even more congestion, but the Big Dig did nothing of the sort. To this day, 30 years on, Boston traffic is still not as bad as it was pre-Big Dig.
Induced traffic does not mean that traffic on a specific place inevitably goes back to what it was before a new highway. It means that total traffic, including old and new infrastructure, always goes up if the total road capacity goes up.
Do you think the total car traffic in the Boston area today is greater than it would have been had the Big Dig not been built? If yes, the ‘infrastructure naysayers’ were correct.
Of course, this means new highways can be locally beneficial, for example when they are used to divert car traffic from a city center. But they still deepen the overall car dependency. Investing in rail-bound transportation while imposing heavy fees on car traffic into the city would likely be a better use of resources.
Do you think the total car traffic in the Boston area today is greater than it would have been had the Big Dig not been built? If yes, the ‘infrastructure naysayers’ were correct.
It’s probably gone down, actually, at least in per capita terms. Boston’s population is a lot bigger than it used to be, so that has to be taken into account.
Keep in mind, the Big Dig actually reduced the total number of highway ramps, which is part of why it increased traffic flow. And by reclaiming neighborhoods from elevated highways, it reconnected areas. You can easily walk places that were not possible before.
But they still deepen the overall car dependency. Investing in rail-bound transportation while imposing heavy fees on car traffic into the city would likely be a better use of resources.
Boston is far from car dependent; it’s probably one of the worst cities in America for drivers, and best for cyclists and pedestrians.
It’s probably gone down, actually, at least in per capita terms. Boston’s population is a lot bigger than it used to be, so that has to be taken into account.
The comparison is between today and ‘today but without the highway’, not between today and before the highway was built. If the population increase is greater with the highway there, that’s still part of the induced demand.
Boston is far from car dependent; it’s probably one of the worst cities in America for drivers, and best for cyclists and pedestrians.
A city being “bad for drivers” is not a great indicator of it not being car dependant. Cities in the Netherlands are probably the most walkable and bikable on the planet, and also great to drive in because there are hardly any cars.
How about comparing the before, where rush hours totaled like six hours a day of bumper to bumper, stop and go, just sitting there polluting, wasting so much time, money, health. Today, while rush hours is still too long, traffic continues to move, no stop and go, much less time sitting there, raging. Today, on the surface in Boston, there is likely much less traffic, benefitting everyone
Because the point of the comparison is to determine if the infrastructure investment was cost effective. What would traffic look like today if the money had instead been used to build public transport, bike lanes, and walkable streets? If the alternative investment had improved traffic even more, building the highway was the wrong thing to do.
– just look at those pictures someone linked, and they don’t actually do it justice. Before, you might have to cross under a six lane elevated highway with surface streets. Now getting from one part of the city to another is a literal walk in the park. Reconnecting parts of the city to be walkable was one of the main goals, and it achieved
– part of the mitigation was required transit improvements. Of course, some of that was delayed by politics, but I believe it did happen.
The comparison is between today and ‘today but without the highway’, not between today and before the highway was built. If the population increase is greater with the highway there, that’s still part of the induced demand.
I wouldn’t suggest that highways never induce demand, but the idea that people are driving more in Boston because of the Big Dig seems doubtful to me.
A city being “bad for drivers” is not a great indicator of it not being car dependant. Cities in the Netherlands are probably the most walkable and bikable on the planet, and also great to drive in because there are hardly any cars.
The Netherland has pretty robust car infrastructure too.
And I agree; a city can be bikable, walkable, and drivable all at once. That should be the goal.
I installed G-HUB the other week, and my only annoyance with it so far was the amount of times it informed me of the mouse DPI settings. Thankfully that was easy enough to turn off, but what other things about it are troublesome?
I don’t really care for profiles, or RGB settings… is it bad in other ways? (Genuinely curious, not meaning to sound snarky)
GHUB likes to wipe my keybinds and onboard settings every few weeks for no reason, and then sometimes it just completely refuses to open, so I have to reinstall the program just so I can reconfigure everything again.
Imagine having set up keybind for our mouse, ND then the game updates and creates a new executable or two somewhere else, and no matter what you do, it never recognizes the game ever again. So no more keybind, and the only way to fix would be to set up a profile and disabled the auto switch running all other games and profiles you have…
That’s my experience with ghub, otherwise apart from clunky unintuitive ui, it at least worked.
(the game is rainbow six siege by the way, haven’t been able to use a profile in that game all year. Part of the blame is naturally that siege does things very shitty when you can include like 5 different executables that are run)
I had trouble with my Logi G935 Headset. Whenever I muted myself by flipping the mic up, I couldn’t unmute ever again. Had to replug the receiver. Once I uninstalled G-Hub I noticed the mic immediately unmuting. Now it works without any problems.
I could even reactivate the Virtual Surround Sound by installing the respective audio software (DTS:X Headphones iirc).
Since then I have migrated to a dedicated Wired Headphone/Microphone Setup, which works flawlessly (and sounds way better).
These things are called skinny pigs. They’re sort of like the pugs of the rodent world, in that they were designed like this because some people think they look cute. Like pugs, their life is eternal suffering. They will never know what it feels like to be warm. They will get sick easier since their body is already battling the freezing 70°F air we prefer, and they also are as inbred as a purebred dog. Their life is short and sad and not worth the $300 per hungry scrotum (and you must get at least two or they will get lonely; for reference, a normal piggy cost about $20-$40)
To make matters worse, one of the ways that piggies argue is by tearing out each other’s butt hair. These little bastard children of somebody’s discarded foreskin have no butt hair. Thusly, you will find out that your little scrotumlings had an argument when you see one of them bleeding, which will need immediate medical attention and might get them infected with something.
The best way to allow your little shivering scrotum to temporarily be not miserable to provide a heating pad to warm themselves in (and pee/poop all over) and lots of loose blankets or cloth to burrow in.
That is interesting, I never considered that these would be bred this way, mainly because it’s still such a novelty to see one. Love the “shivering scrotum” description too 🤣
Especially appropriate since every piggy’s goal in life is to become the most rotund specimen. I imagine this one’s fitness goals involve him being the biggest ballsack in existence, with four little legs sticking out of the side and a food hole in the front
Fun fact: Guinea pigs display dominance by shaking their ass menacingly. They have no depth perception, so they make themselves look bigger by waving their ass back and forth while staring their opponent down. I suspect it is only called “rumble strutting” because pet owners don’t want to say their little boys are in a thunder thigh competition.
Prince Siyawush built the Ark of Bukhara and was eventually buried there.
Ok, saying a fortress in Sogdia was built by Siyavash is like saying a fortress in Britain was built by Arthur or a fortress in Greece was built by Hercules—it’s what the locals say when they forgot who really built it.
As an American I’m just assuming that road was moved to be widened and a bunch of low income housing and many blocks worth of historic buildings were demolished in the process.
Low income housing is a far better use of space than preserving “historic” buildings that are actually just out of code, poorly designed, and slowly decaying old houses that never actually had any historical significance.
The needs of people who are alive and struggling today are infinitely more important than your nostalgia for the homes of dead rich cunts.
The whole thing is basically a wall-clad hill. heaping one stone onto another is something they managed even thousands of years ago. And the climate (it is an oasis in the desert) is dry enought to keep it from eroding.
So it’s not walls then I suppose. Just the slopes of a flat topped pyramid like thing. I mean, it still provided a height advantage, but it feels like they have lesser cover from arrows than they would have if it was like a conventional wall.
Pure speculation - a typical siege strategy was to dig under walls to cause them to collapse. First, the earthen mound would make the tunneling to collapse a much more labor intensive effort. Second, if an enemy was at the base of the wall it could actually be easier to hit them with projectiles at this angle rather than leaning over and aiming straight down.
Again, I have zero evidence to support these points, just spitballing here.
The tunneling issue makes sense. The wall will be much more stable because of the greater base area, and the sappers will need to dig a much bigger cavity under the wall for all the additional material to fall into - if the holes too small the wall might not collapse well enough for the ground forces to have a good opening to assault.
The second point is less convincing though. Forts and castle walls had mitigation for that extra issue - machicolations are an example. Often, arrows wouldn’t be used for killing the people right at the base of the wall, instead rocks or hot sand would be used to fuck up their day. These also took out armored units - rocks just, well, crushed them, and hot sand got in the gaps and visors and burned the shit out of them. They could also often not get rid of it without taking off the armor, so they just burned till the sand cooled down.
Also arrows were a manufactured commodity. Rocks were just taken from the land, or could be waste from quarries etc, and sand is rough, coarse, and everywhere.
Well clearly it’s because the castle defenders of that era were quite sophisticated, but simply don’t dance they just pull up their pants and do the rockaway.
You’d think there’d be a reason beyond construction requirements, though—otherwise someone in the past 1,500 years would have replaced it with a more conventional wall.
mildlyinteresting
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