I was thinking the same thing. It definitely broke ground first. This one, though, might be the first to operate, seeing as it has a much easier route to build on with fewer stakeholders to appease (i.e., pay off).

I can't wait to take a HSR to San Francisco from LA. Much more comfortable than driving or flying out of LAX.

I certainly hope this Brightline train has a better safety record than Florida's; fewer inhabited areas being traversed and fewer roads, so maybe it will.

This reminds me of Michael Pollan, who wrote that agribusiness and big food companies cornered the market on food in the US, but still needed to grow to satisfy shareholders. Clearly, they were limited by the size of America's stomachs and now had to make those expand to provide more returns. They did this by having scientists discover flavorings and combinations of fat, sugar, and starch that would make Americans obese.

Completely worked!

Here's the difference. A medical business has a number of goals: profit, care of the sick, employment of staff. Possibly others as well, such as being good neighbors. Because they are run by people who have an actual background and stake in the business -- someone wanted to be a doctor, went to medical school, maybe even cares about their patients to some degree. The power of Private Equity is that all that is seen as horseshit. They don't care about public health, about patients, about staff, anything. Only profit. That's why, even though they are both businesses, doctors offices are generally good for the public and PE is generally bad. Private Equity firms are the psychopaths of the business world. Every nightmare you've had about AI, PE is doing it now. Turning the world into paperclips.

I often have to wait two months to see my doctor, in the good ol' USA.

As an American who has spent a lot of time in Europe, I find that Americans want servers to be super-friendly -- smiling all the time, calling you hon, and acting like this is the best thing in their life. In Europe, waiting tables is a job with dignity, but it doesn't make them your bestest friend ever. Americans interpret that as cold and unfriendly.

When I visit a country I've never been to, I first ask two questions: (1) how do you order coffee, and (2) what are the tipping norms. When I went to Australia, I learned about the flat white and the long black. When I asked about tipping, the fellow told me this: "Here in Australia, we have something you might not have heard about in the USA. We call it a 'living wage'".

You know who else worried about her personal medical decisions? Typhoid Mary.

I know, this is hilarious. I wonder how many people watch TV and think the actors write it?

This will change EVERYTHING! Excuse me, I have to get on my Segway to go to work.

My kids are millennials and I'm a boomer. My education was in the French system, and was considered very high quality. All we did was memorize. I'm actually a big fan of memorization and lots of it, from times tables to poetry; not to mention mental arithmetic (that was part of math class in the 3rd and 4th grades). Nobody I knew ever learned "how to learn", whatever that might mean in practice. There were a lot of problems with my school, such as punishing initiative and the use of humiliation as a teaching tool. And it was much better for the average student than for the gifted student. Then again, I suspect (no data, just gut) that "gifted" or "AP" programs are basically handouts to families with parents who have resources and time on their hands. In other words, you guessed it, well-off families. So, predominantly White. Just another way to fabricate a leg up that can be read as "meritocratic" like "aptitude tests" that basically test how much prep your family bought you. My kids are well employed and highly functional, despite dodgy spelling skills. They use the various software tools at their disposal for that.

So is he against "dark money"? Should come out and say so, then, and propose a bill to eliminate it.

I wonder the same thing whenever I hear whining about Soros-funded candidates. Are the complainers against private funding of campaigns in general? I wouldn't think so, but eliminating that would solve the problem of billionaires funding candidates you don't like.

You can pick what you compare it to to make it look more or less safe. It might be much safer than traveling by motorcycle, for example. But I imagine the best comparison is with other rail travel, and by that metric it's pretty dangerous. Naturally, they're profit-driven and under-regulated, which will lead to unsafe conditions.

I would think that, thanks to OSHA, the factories where they *make* the trains have to have big signs pointing out how many mishaps have occurred this month. Maybe they should have the same in the train stations. But the cost for that would come out of executive's pockets and they're not about to relinquish that.

That's right. Note that reality shows do have writers, who decide what the story should be and craft the events and the editing to make that story happen. They're just not allowed to be called "writers," because then they'd have to join the guild. A nice (fictional) show is Unreal, about the production of a reality show.

It's a little more nuanced than that. It's pretty well-known now that when there are ads, the advertisers are the customers, the audience is the product. Because broadcast TV was (is?) designed to present ads at regular intervals, shows have to be structured around those regular intervals. That imposes certain constraints. A "half-hour" sitcom (really 22 minutes) is built into three main acts, with a teaser at the top and a tag at the end, all to fit around commercials. A professional TV writer has to write that form, with exciting act breaks that make the audience want to sit through the ads to see what happens next.

If you're breaking into TV writing, it will be on an existing show, so you have to demonstrate that you can write to that form and to the existing characters. That's a very particular skill. Only recently, because of HBO and The Sopranos, are aspiring TV writers expected to include an original script in their portfolio. And Mad Men was also sold based on an original script. Mostly, studios came up with ideas for shows and hired writers who were already experienced to run them.

Now, HBO is gone and Max is being run by an executive from AT&T who might as well be managing index funds or running a chemical company. He has no interest in or love for show business, and it shows in his decisions.

Well, that was only $400,000. Not really comparable to Bob Iger. And could expect to profit far more than that in foreign dignitary hotel stays, not to mention payoffs from China and Russia and Saudi loan forgiveness.