The Off Topic Topic

[Sheilbh]

My sisters rich friend has took her to Florida.
Another friend of mine has visited Florida in the past too.
This strikes me as mad.
Like visiting Britain and just going to Middlesbrough.

Yeah British people really love Florida. I think it's 90% Orlando and Disneyworld/land, plus a bit in Miami - which doesn't sound too bad (I really want to go to Miami).

[Grey Fox]

My sisters rich friend has took her to Florida.
Another friend of mine has visited Florida in the past too.
This strikes me as mad.
Like visiting Britain and just going to Middlesbrough.

You can't really visit NYC, Vegas and Florida on the same trip.

[grumbler]

My sisters rich friend has took her to Florida.
Another friend of mine has visited Florida in the past too.
This strikes me as mad.
Like visiting Britain and just going to Middlesbrough.

More like going to Europe and only visiting England.

[Valmy]

So, Brian Ferentz, son of Iowa head coach Kirk Ferentz, is Iowa's $900,000/year offensive coordinator.  And when I write "offensive," that's what his coaching is.  His is the worst P5 offense in the country (two years running now) and the third-worst in all of football.

His performance is clearly a reason why he doesn't give press conferences more than twice per season or so, but today's press conference revealed another reason:  he is as bad at press conferences as he is at football.  Here's his answer to a question about whether he would consider stepping down for the good of the team:

"There's two options in life in any situation. You can surrender, and if you surrender, then I think the results are pretty much guaranteed. Or you can dig in, you can continue to fight, and you can try to improve and do things better. I will always choose option A. Done it in my personal life. Done it in my professional life. I wouldn't be able to go home and look my children in the eye if I wasn't an option B person. I think I said option A. I started with option surrender, right? That's not me. Let me be crystal clear about that. That's number one."

 

So much about the Iowa State game makes sense now.

[Syt]

Byline on Kronenzeitung's (Austria's biggest "paper"/tabloid) about ex-chancellor Sebastian Kurz's new book:



"The ex-chancellor protects his private life in the books as well, for the most part. His girlfriend since student days, Susanne Thier, only came once during his entire tenure."

 

I file this under "they definitely knew what they wrote."

[Richard Hakluyt]

Poor Susanne 

[celedhring]

The Spanish government made all state-run commuter rail free as a way to contain inflation and compensate rising fuel costs. The measure was expected to run until the new year, but now has been extended to run through the end of 2023. I wonder what effect this will have on public transportation usage. A throng of Spanish cities are also rolling out LEZ's in 2023 (Madrid and Barcelona already had theirs).

[Tamas]

Yeah I guess the big problem with such subsidies is that it is much easier to start than to stop them, the bigger they are the more so.

[Zanza]

The German 9 Euro ticket was rather successful and attracted many people to public transport. It ran out now. They want to replace it with a 49 Euro ticket now. 

[celedhring]

Yeah I guess the big problem with such subsidies is that it is much easier to start than to stop them, the bigger they are the more so.

It doesn't help that 2023 is an electoral year over here (regional, municipal and general elections) 

But if it pushes more people to use public transport, I'll be happy with it. In the end, our current mobility model of "everyone and his/her car" is bursting at the seams, moreso with the current energy issues.

[Iormlund]

One problem I see with it is it leaves blue collar workers behind.

Manufacturing and logistic centers tend to be outside cities, and unless you work for a handful of big employers, you'll still need a car to get to work.
And even when there's that option, the time you spend in transit is a huge price to pay. For example, I would lose 90+ minutes each day if I took the company bus instead of my car.
Even in a city like Barcelona with great public transport going from, say, my ex's place to our plant in Martorell would take two more hours each day.

[Josquius]

One problem I see with it is it leaves blue collar workers behind.

Manufacturing and logistic centers tend to be outside cities, and unless you work for a handful of big employers, you'll still need a car to get to work.
And even when there's that option, the time you spend in transit is a huge price to pay. For example, I would lose 90+ minutes each day if I took the company bus instead of my car.
Even in a city like Barcelona with great public transport going from, say, my ex's place to our plant in Martorell would take two more hours each day.

With less people taking the car and a focus on actually improving bus links it can improve quite a lot.

You'd be surprised on excluding blue collar workers. My cousin is a joiner and never learned to drive. He manages to get to work even by our crap public transport.
In Holland it doesn't seem that uncommon to see blue collar workers getting about by bike.

And then for those for whom public transport or cycling will never be an option, moving tonnes of other cars off their route will be a boon to them.

The big problem that I see is that things currently suck because the world is currently designed around the idea everyone has a car. Quite a catch 22 situation where people won't take public transport because its awful but then it's awful because people insist they don't want to take it and are only interested in driving. It needs a brave government to really push through towards critical mass.

[Iormlund]

The best solution I can see is the combo train/tram + electric scooter. But many cities don't have anywhere near the required infrastructure (mine, for example)

[Tamas]

All I know is that after the short commute I was doing in Hungary I adopted to increasing commutes in the UK gradually and contently even if not happily.

But thanks to the pandemic I have got the chance to realise what a massive drag on my general well-being it was. I am now going to do my best to stick with work from home jobs and if I can't manage that I'll probably be content with losing some salary if it means I won't have to spend two hours a day commuting.

I can only liken it to the "wake up" moment I had when I was promoted out of shift work after 4 years into regular office hours (more than 10 years ago, goddamn). While doing the shifts I did not realise how much it drained my energy and turned me into a zombie. I thought I was fine (and I was ok with the work and enjoyed the company), but it turned out I was not.

[Jacob]

I'd be pretty happy with a "public transit is a public good, and thus free (or inexpensive)" model.