You have a problem right there. There is no faction in Venezuela that wants to help the general population. It's not a democratic country, and the entirety of its ruling elite is simply focused on holding on to power. They didn't even bother with messaging anymore.

Now the factions that formed its armed enforcer wing ("colectivos") will fight one another.

All you have to do to avoid being infected is just be healthy.

I used to read a fair amount of books when I was younger. Wide variety of subjects from fiction, science fiction, history and a few biography types. I still have boxes of books I've read in storage. Many others I've redonated to a library for them to sell.

However, within the last decade I haven't bought many books compared to the past. The ones I have bought are mostly history related with only a handful of fiction/science-fiction. When I pick up a new book (new to me) I go to page 100 and start reading. If the story at that point doesn't interest me I put it back. I just can't get into what people consider good sci-fi such as The Expanse series. And forget about the Three Body Problem.

The last books of such type I remember purchasing were Darwin's Radio and Darwin's Children by Greg Baer. At the same time, I can't get into his other works.

I'm sure this has to do with my tastes changing, but considering the number of books out there and how often I'm looking, one would think I would be able to find more.

As James Randy showed, make a vague enough pronouncement and it can fit whatever you want. The best illustration was when he handed out horoscopes to a bunch of people and asked them how well the description fit them. Almost all of them said it was a good fit.

Problem was, he gave the same "horoscope" to all of them. It was the wording which led these people to believe it fit them even though it was the same for all of them.

The same is probably what's happening here. Someone made a vague enough "prophecy" that when something happened that "prophecy" could claim to have come true.

Meaning the people were devotees of all things AI. They'd taken the pill.

Which is funny to hear coming from the guy who headed the AI program at Meta. Did he think they should hire people who didin't care about AI?

As more and more information is moved to the digital realm, vast quantities of that information will be lost over time. Not the big stuff such as political or international news, or the passing of some well known person, but the middling every day things such as notices for events or local interest stories.

Without a physical paper product, time capsules become mmore difficult to create. Not that they can't be created, but it's always been a part of the process to include a newspaper with the capsule so in 100 years, people can read what took long ago.

With digital, how do you do that? People on here always talk about data degradation coupled with something to read the data. Stories are regularly posted on here about media with data on it in a format no longer used and the trials and tribulations to try and read the information.

With a newspaper, there is no such issue. You never need a fancy piece of equipment to read the information (aside from maybe glasses).

On top of which, while a newspaper does cost money to buy, it is easily transferrable to someone else. Finished reading? Here you go, stranger. Have at it. Find one in a bin? It's yours at no cost.

As always, paper information cannot be changed. Once it's on paper, it's set. Not so with digitial. Changing digital information is one of the easiest things to do and as we all know, is done on a regular basis. How do we know a year from now, when looking for an article you remember reading, it's the same article? Are you certain its wording hasn't been altered?

And finally, what about all the conspiracy wackos? Where will they get their newspapers to tear out articles, pin to the wall and run strings to each story to weave their delusions? Sure, they can print the article, but it's not the same effect as having torn sraps of newspaper to show off. Won't someone think of the conspiracy theorists!

When you have Republicans saying they want things to be like their were in the 50s, then put an anti-vaxxer in charge of the nation's top health agency, what would you expect?

Whooping cough cases are also seeing a similar increase as well as deaths.

Not personally, although I did hire cabs quite a lot.

I often was staying with my friend in Chiswick, and it often took me almost 90 minutes to get to the British Museum. By car it was barely more than 30 minutes.

It actually doesn't matter as much as you think it does. Go on, play with the isoline API or with Google Transit. Transfers kill the average speed, even if they are streamlined.

Indeed. Transit can ONLY be optimized to transfer people between The Downtown and the outlying living areas. It mathematically can't do anything else efficiently. This creates malignant runaway centralization by providing incentives for companies to build offices in The Downtowns. In turn, driving up prices within the distance of comfortable commute.

Random lon/lat selection from the bounding box (ignoring the curvature of the Earth, not important at this scale), then filter them using the bounds of the city area (Greater London or London Postal District). Then plot the routes using Google Transit API. There's also a great visual tool: https://www.geoapify.com/isoli... - select a point in Downton London and check the isochrones for transit and cars.

The key to look here is the _areas_ of the zones. Cars can reach more points compared to transit within the given time, even with all the congestion. This is indeed a highly counter-intuitive result, but it's actually in textbooks for urban planning.

Why everybody doesn't use cars then? Because of the cost of parking in cities.

Now? Sure.

Here's the map of Brexit votes: https://www.bbc.com/news/polit... Do you see anything unusual? How majority of people outside of the London area voted to leave?

I'm not conflating anything. Transit enables higher and higher density. Higher density causes more misery for _everyone_ (and not just for minor towns outside of large urban areas). The causation chain is there.

I used to go to London every weekend for almost half a year when I was living in Amsterdam.

Correct. With the caveat "on average". And this is true of London, btw. Try dropping 100 points in London randomly and plot routes between them, during the rush hour for buses and cars. Then compare the average times. I just did that (I'll upload scripts to Github) and cars are faster by 2.5 times during the rush hour.

On the contrary. Without the transit system, London would have been much better, as fewer people would have moved there. With more jobs in smaller cities, resulting in less inequality between rural areas and London.

Yes, and it works so well that most of these 3 billion passengers can't ever have enough money to buy a house anywhere close to their commute destination. With the average commute time now creeping up to 1.5 hours.

While smaller cities just 3-4 hours away are dying. Great success. BTW, how's that Brexit thing going?

Can you provide me examples of well-designed large European cities that have oh-so-great transit? Here are the facts: the average commute time for small American cities is almost TWO TIMES faster than the fastest commute time in large European cities. Even the average US commute is faster than the fastest European commute in large cities. Cars also provide greater variety of possible employers and accessible businesses.

Yes, I have citations and data. But you live in a world of "alternative facts" that just _feel_ right. And you just dismiss anything that disagrees with them outright, just like our dear MAGA friends.

It would be hilarious if it weren't so sad. Western democracies, strangled by bike lanes.

Apart from climate change, the rest of the issues are just symptoms of the decreasing quality of life. And it's the universal reason in the Western world, from the US to Germany. And it provides fertile ground for all kinds of populists who offer easy solutions. Like Trump, or AfD in Germany, or Le Pen in France. Or now Mamdani in NYC who campaigned on rent freezes and state-run groceries.

In some specific cases? Sure. On average? Nope. This is especially true for cities that were not designed during the Middle Ages.