Austin 🚎

The clouds in that 3rd image are amazing!

This is incredible!

Tonight I did my part to keep San Francisco goofy and weird

It's kinda funny how they're also indirectly opposed to the underlying technology (computer chips) that makes the most hyped technology (AI, not the most important imo) possible because Biden did the CHIPS act

Wow that's so cool!

Oh yeah, this is 100% true in the United States. I'm curious about the role this might play in the rest of the anglosphere, because I'm under the impression it isn't as big in most of Europe?

I'll admit all of my opinions here are pretty US-centric. Continental Europe has definitely rolled out speeding cameras much faster than the US, but idk anything about attitudes towards transit or speeding cameras in the UK, so I don't have a great explanation for the anglosphere aspect

It's much easier to enforce parking fees than fares, but more importantly, a greater number of voters see themselves as someone who might park without paying the fare than as someone who might take transit, let alone without paying the fare

In contrast, in the US, most voters don't view themselves as transit riders, especially as ones who don't pay their fares. It's easier for politicians and police to talk tough about fare evaders because the median voter views them as an other, unlike speeding drivers

A more comparable example (from the enforcement standpoint) is speeding. Society generally agrees speeding is dangerous and bad, but in practice, any efforts to crack down on speeding are met with mass opposition because most voters view themselves as drivers who speed sometimes

We've got people who seem not fascist at heart but were elected as recently as last November on pretty pro-policing platforms and they're just totally incapable of adjusting to what seems like a massive shift away from or even against their goals due to fury about ice and trump

It's a teeny bit funny (but mostly terrible) how many Democrats and centrists spent late 2021-early 2025 getting off on how culture was shifting rightwards and are now just completely out of position to do anything useful.

No??? It looks interesting and the cast looks great

I appreciate that both metro areas had good movies with pivotal scenes on their heavy rail systems in the 2000s

I also don't think it's wise to believe a non-electoral strategy to turn around the current state of the nation would work with such an adversarial and completely powerful national administration

I really think at some point there's got to be some equivalent level to which national Democrats knuckle down and respond in kind because they're well on the way to becoming a permanent minority as long as they keep respecting norms

I've spent most of my life in red states that have very secure gerrymanders, and it's incredibly frustrating to see new efforts to worsen those met with stern disapproval and "well maybe electoralism isn't the solution anyways" type sentiment

I mean cuomo rejected efforts to do partisan gerrymandering in NYC and that was pretty directly tied to losing the house in both 2022 and 2024.

What's your favorite boy band song

Wait I tuned out and then tuned back in and it looked like they were wearing championship shirts? Huh

They did!

Man I've got too many ideas here. My lead 2 are The Touch (Stan Bush) and Right Above It (Lil Wayne), but there's a whole host of songs from the Fast and the Furious (like Go Off) and there's a reason A&M has been playing Kanye West's Power for stadium entrances since like 2014

I feel like the overall food scene is one of the best in the country (and globally good), but it's not exactly clear for a random tourist where to go and how to get there

LMAO I thought it was a copypasta of that until I read your caption

🥳🥳🥳

They may safeguard against undue large corporate interests in those 3 counties, but there's undoubtedly a lot of suburban influence coming from the others regardless of elections. Elected officials in Santa Clara county were meaningfully at fault for blowing up the 2024 regional transit measure!

It feels like we've got a similar issue in the bay area with MTC in charge of much of BART's funding and also being the nominal authority when talking to the state, but they're made up of mostly suburban and big business interests

Same! I got a timbuk2 spire back in 2016 and it's still doing great, the new ones don't have as many loops and replaced the metal clasp with a plastic buckle though

From IBM, 1979

This is the society I want to live in