Profile avatar
struthious.bsky.social
Applied scientist working on LLM evaluation and publishing in AI ethics. Formerly: technical writing, philosophy. Urbanism nerd in my spare time. Opinions here my own. he/they 🏳️‍⚧️. https://boltzmann-brain.github.io/
2,123 posts 1,455 followers 1,105 following
Regular Contributor
Active Commenter

Sometimes I hate being right. In my thesis I ID'd conservative management as one of the pillars of the iron triangle that underlays the political economy that has mostly prevented us from transitioning to a modern regional rail model in North America. itineranturbanist.wordpress.com/masters-pape...

I’ve encountered such IRL

I’m convinced it’s because free fares appeal to the misguided altruism of people who *don’t* ride the bus. “Yes, let’s help the poor by making it free!” (rather than improving the service of something they’d never take)

Another in the ledger of “lack of money is not the only problem”

Went to the Parco della Rimembranza in Trieste and the memorials were almost all of people doing bad things in WWI/WWII with one token memorial to Italians who died in dachau/mauthausen that was obviously added on as an afterthought. They refer to wwi as “liberating” trieste

When I get home, if you hear me referring to “cave people,” I got it from Gil Peñalosa.

I wonder how much of why tourists might enjoy Venice is because it doesn’t have cars. The quiet is noticeable (even the motorized boats are quieter than I expected). The way the city feels fake is not great but now I’m in a “real” city and having cars around again is not great

Awful communication from TrenItalia about cancelled segment of train. Got email that last segment to Trieste was cancelled while I was on the train. No announcement on train whatsoever. A conductor comes along and some North Americans happen to ask him what’s up so he explains 1/n

reminder that many people’s politics are nearly indecipherable

Why do some have a shit time with LLMs for programming while others love it? To succeed, the latter group tacitly creates tons of scaffolding and gain weird new skills. While it works, this posts explains how doing all that is an incidental consequence of bad interaction design in coding AI agents.

Saw this poster shortly after trying and failing to enter a restaurant* b/c it didn’t open on time. *which was named ba’ghetto. There are a lot of bad puns in the Venetian ghetto.

www.liberalcurrents.com/the-crisis-o...

Air Canada’s entertainment system puts Everything Everywhere All at Once in the “World Cinema Asia” category 🙄

Most of the reason Pearson sucks is because Canadians love to fork queues unnecessarily

These rules amount to a de facto ban on heat pumps on balconies, which are the best place for heat pumps – easy to install and maintain, short linesets (especially important now with restrictions on penetrations for new more flammable refrigerants). Siting rules are a big barrier in North America.

Another favorite of mine: An Austro-Hungarian soldier descent into the "city of ice" underneath the Marmolata/Marmolada glacier, 1916.

I think I have a winner for "least likely social media app I'm now seeing people organize anti-ICE protests on":

was talking with a journalist about energy codes and building practices in the EU v. US - when the discussion of flat facades came up. this is an issue that plagues everything from ADUs to midrise buildings.

the roof here is a really good microcosm of why housing in the US costs a lot. complex roof w/ multiple plane changes: increases material costs (overlapping, complexity), increases labor - with ↗️ maintenance/risk the number of gutters here is insane. look at how short some of these lengths are.

The Times is a big paper. There are many thoughtful writers there doing really good work. Unfortunately most of your subscription goes to paying for the people who soft-focus nazi pedophiles or write op-eds titled “I Personally Respect Trans People, Just A Little Less Than Dogs.” Cancel your sub

Funding for affordable housing is limited and we should carefully consider the wisdom of spending it on the frivolous amenities, bureaucratic complexity, and well-intentioned but expensive contracting requirements that drive per-unit costs north of $1 million. www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/202...