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Nobody cares

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Re: Nobody cares

#831
post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My impression was that HPS lighting became so widespread not because of the supposed advantages of its light spectrum, but because it was simply the most light-efficient technology available at that time. Here in Germany, only main/multilane streets requiring more lighting were using HPS, residential streets mostly had lamps with white fluorescent lights, so switching those to LEDs wasn't as much of a change. But sti…

Low pressure sodium lights were more efficient, but they emit a single wavelength of orange light. These lights were strongly disliked by people who liked to admire their car in the streetlights (I suppose). > residential streets mostly had lamps with white fluorescent lights, … they used CFLs? The spiral fluorescents were invented in the 1980’s, I guess. I speculate the residential street lights used mercury vapor b…

> they used CFLs?

Nah, the lamps used (I assume) standard fluorescent tubes. Although honestly I don't know how widespread they were. They were (and still are in some areas) all over the place in Munich (and also e.g. here https://maps.app.goo.gl/M3RPqkN5MHZuPG7f7). Hamburg (https://maps.app.goo.gl/fPGfeEwWXtUGFnTL7) and Berlin (https://maps.app.goo.gl/kSemA2Md84AEJ9Py8) also have similar-looking ones.

Re: Nobody cares

#832
post #425

Its ironic, because this dude doesn't seem to care enough to even the slightest bit of research to understand why any of these problems he highlights are the way they are, and lazily attributes everything to OTHER people not caring. LEDs last longer, are more energy efficient, and also reduce light pollution because they are more directional[1]. Took me 30 seconds to google. There are enormous design standards for de…

The bike ramp example was insane to me. OF COURSE it's not built so cyclists can zoom up onto the sidewalk at 20 miles per hour without slowing down. That's how you turn a pedestrian into paste.

Really, you should be dismounting and walking your bike onto the sidewalk, but if you're going to ride your bike up that ramp, absolutely do not do it so quickly that you risk crashing.

Re: Nobody cares

#833

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cheaper lighting costs across an entire city are a very good reason. "Ugly architecture" is subjective. A lot of architects care very much, but they follow the academic line and lack the imagination and empathy to understand why elements of that aesthetic are unpopular and impractical - a completely different problem, even if it causes related outcomes. Bugs are easy to write and hard to fix. MBA culture as a whole i…

> "Ugly architecture" is subjective. I think this actually illustrates the author's point and gets at the heart of the cultural malaise we are experiencing. If everything is subjective, nothing can be improved because nothing can be better than something else. But this isn't the case. The Mona Lisa is objectively better than anything I have ever painted. Architecture is no different. Some buildings quite literally ar…

> The Mona Lisa is objectively better than anything I have ever painted.

No it isn't. If I saw one of your paintings and liked it better, there would be no way for you to prove me wrong. My opinion might be highly unpopular, but that wouldn't make it objectively incorrect.

Re: Nobody cares

#834

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WTF? What about pedestrians? Are they walking in full darkness? This seems to be totally oriented to cars. I find American cities incredibly dark by night. Walking around feels too dark and unpleasant.

Also it's terrifying for safety; way too easy to assault someone in complete darkness.

Let's put it this way. The fear is someone hiding in the shadows to jump a person, and then dragging the victim back into the shadows.

Bright lights on the street create more shadows. All you have to do is step out of the streetlight and no-one will see you, because the light-level contrast between the lit street and the surrounding space.

If there aren't any streetlights, so the surrounding space has the same illumination as the roadway, then that space is more present in more passerby's visual awareness.

So your proposed solution, "Streelights on every street" actually increases the risk you are so concerned about.

Re: Nobody cares

#835

One thing that depresses me is how ugly our cities have become. Buildings that go up are designed with a total lack of aesthetic intention. In Seattle, ostensibly there is a design review committee for multifamily and commercial buildings, but it doesn't appear to have made the city look any better, and their 2025 goals include "streamlining the Design Review process to be quicker and less costly for applicants, and…

In NYC at least, the low point of architectural beauty was in the 1960-2000 era. In the past decade or two I think there has been a lot of really quality architecture going up. The current aesthetic issue plaguing the city is the onerous regulations that result in unneeded scaffolding being put up around buildings for months or even years.

Re: Nobody cares

#836
post #682

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the less sharp angle of the described bike-lane would imply that biker can get into the sidewalk in high speed without issue and harm a pedestrian easier.

Yeah, that's why when pedestrians have to cross where cars are that there is always a stop sign to make sure their high speed won't harm a pedestrian /sarcasm.

…we do put stop lights at pedestrian crossings on high-speed streets. They look like this: http://www.pedbikesafe.org/PEDSAFE/cm_images/PedHyb1.png

Re: Nobody cares

#837
Rich (relatively?) software bro wants other people to care more. Does not reflect on the economics. Everything is economic. Tech has exacerbated the hyperfinancialization, enshittification, and general reduction to meaninglessness of every action.

Caring requires time and energy. Most tech companies aim to consume every freaking instant of your life (or else they serve the other tech companies that do that). For many people there is little time or energy left to care (or there is a sense that there is little time or energy left). Gotta hustle more, gotta hurry up so I can look at my phone.

Caring is not financially rewarded. Caring is generally penalized because no one else cares, so you're just wasting your time. How many ppl in this world can say this: "There are legal jobs I would not take, no matter how much they pay, because they make the world shittier." Caring doesn't make you money, and money is what the world wants. Until that changes, the problem persists.

Fix the values, fix the world

Re: Nobody cares

#838
post #674

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would even argue that the current design of the bike line is better than the one suggested by the author. It forces the biker to slow down and reduces the collision risks with others in the line. It is selfish to think only about the biker coming from the hill. The biker that thinks it is okay to drive 20mph in that situation.

Yeah, that's why we put sharp turns at the bottom of roads too. It is selfish to only think about the driver coming from the hill. The driver that thinks it is okay to drive 45mph in that situation. Do you see the irony of your statement.

We put sharp turns at the end of roads.

If you have a high-speed road merging into a slow one without some indication that it's ending and a sharp turn at the end, you have a road that kills people.

Re: Nobody cares

#839

As someone who works for a local government bureaucracy - not caring is a coping mechanism because if you let every sub-optimal thing bother you then you'd just burn out. Very few jobs are structured in a way that those directly involved can determine how things are done so there is no real value in caring about how long a process takes. Where people have some agency you might be surprised how much people do care eve…

That doesn’t explain the doctor who doesn’t care that they are misdiagnosing their patients though… Or am I missing something?

I assume the doctor was just wrong. It happens. I imagine doctors get patients coming in saying "look, I have this extremely specific syndrome. I diagnosed myself based on the Wikipedia page" all the time. Usually those patients are wrong and it's something simpler, but sometimes they're right, and this time the doctor's simpler explanation was wrong. Never attribute to malice what can be easily explained by stupidity, etc.

Of course, I don't know the actual situation, but this seems more likely to me than a doctor who doesn't care about their patient's health enough to spend 10 seconds diagnosing them. At the very least, I expect they're investing enough effort in their job enough to avoid transparent malpractice.

Re: Nobody cares

#840
post #250

Karl Marx talked about alienation -- we are alienated from our work, we are alienated from one another, and eventually alienated from our humanity. I disagree with Marx about a lot of things, but I do think that this theory makes a lot of sense. As we become increasingly mechanistic in our work, we feel less agency. Less control. Less attachment to the work. We stop caring about the product. You can pay people to car…

Ctrl+F'ed to see if anyone mentioned alienation, since this post basically seems to be OP talking about alienation without them knowing. I think fundamentally if we want people to care about things again, we are going to need to give them ownership of the things they produce. Otherwise, why would anyone care?

Yes. Give people the ownership of their job. Kaizen comes to mind.

What we have today are MBA's that tweak spreadsheets and see employees as replaceable cogs in a machine. No one cares in that environment.

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