Simon Farnsworth

In that vein, whenever I've looked at the accounts of a school that went under "because of VAT", they were burning through capital to avoid raising fees.

Not sustainable in the long run, and VAT on fees is just the final nail, not the cause of failure.

The other part of the context is that this intervention is cheap; if it's also low risk to non-pedestrian flows (as established by the experiment), then it's an easy win while you fight for budget for a big shift.

I blocked him, because he was going on about how change is pointless unless it fixes everything in one go.

I have no time for "can't improve unless you make it perfect". Especially in the context of cheap and easy improvements.

Cheap for the implementing authority. The whole cost to them of the change is under £100,000.

Compare to redoing the system, which has to start with law changes in Westminster.

Don't let the perfect prohibit improvements from happening.

That involves time travel - the system we have has been built up over 200 years, and redoing it is incredibly capital-intensive, thus you're arguing for motor vehicle dominance for life.

Incremental improvements are cheap, and can happen the moment someone asks for them.

This experiment is about a cheap change (easy to do) that significantly improves walking. What else could you do at no capital investment, and very little operational expense?

The gestalt is a consequence of the system that exists; part of doing good science on the system is working out what changes have outsized impact, and that needs you to test changes in isolation.

This change, for example, is counter-intuitive; it benefits one flow with no impact on others.

I don't ring my bell after three separate incidents in which pedestrians gave me a beating for doing so. Police advice is not to ring my bell because "it could be seen as provocation".

The study itself had some nuance, in that they had two thresholds; below threshold 1 (about $50k), you're always worried by money. Below threshold 2 ($100k), a single bad event makes you worried about money. Above that, it's about what improves life.

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The study that I recall said it's logarithmic (roughly) from $100k; to get the same impact as $100k to $200k needs you to go to $400k, then $800k etc.

Which makes it practically not possible to buy happiness.

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It becomes a "high score"; the goal is to accumulate money so that when Time Magazine (or whoever) do a "Richest Jerks" list, you're at #1.

It's of note that there's lots of places with lower tax rates than the UK around the world. If tax rate was really the deciding factor for a lot of the wealthy, they'd have already left.

As a result, you hear "thousands" in an area where you get 1 or 2 a year, and it's a huge increase on what you see; indeed, in parts of the country, you can never see an external migrant.

Easy to make people afraid by removing the context.

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Migration is also affected by the distribution of people. Most immigrants end up in London (Census data shows 59.4% of Londoners born in the UK, next lowest region is at 84.2%), so London-based media looks radically different to your lived experience.

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There was an experiment done by Transport for Greater Manchester - @rantyhighwayman.bsky.social had a link - where they changed controls to count pedestrian wait time from when the motorists got green instead of button push.

Virtually no impact on car times, great for ped times

🧵Spotted on Market Day in Aotearoa New Zealand:

A tiny human (1?) is helping Mum sell things. While Mum is greeting customers and taking payments--all one-handed. Tiny Human is propped on her hip, blowing big raspberry kisses of thanks. Giggle-snorting when people blow kisses back. (1)

If you have concerns about a relative, www.iamroadsmart.com/courses/matu... is a useful thing to know about.

Basically paying an expert to assess them, give them hints if they're OK for now, or save you the stress of telling them they aren't safe any more.

It's based on the idea that in the physical world, we strive to make the world safe for unsupervised children at all times, and take action to ensure that ages are checked before you expose a child to risk.

Similar levels of realism in that idea, too.

Yep, but the OSA creators expect that, over time, all sites will proactively comply with UK requirements for all visitors just in case a VPN or Tor user is based in the UK.

I leave it to you to decide how connected to reality that is…

That was considered, but concerns about children using unfiltered WiFi etc won out (e.g. connecting to a childless neighbour's WiFi).

The fundamental fault of the OSA is assuming that everyone should be restricted to make my task as a parent easier.

So you're of the opinion that a print shop can recover the blurry mess I made by using manual focus (back in 1990) and not focusing at all, but can't do the same from a phone picture?

Odd opinion to hold…

Yeah, but my experience was (back in the film days), you'd get people who expected you to take their out-of-focus shot, and produce a great looking canvas from it.

It's not the gadgetry that's the problem - it's the attitude that you can fix it to look good.

My point and shoot *is* from a decade ago, and produces worse photos than my phone. It's a 12 MP sensor (phone sensors are 50/48/48 MP), same sensor size as phone's smallest sensor, and has similar sized lenses.

My dSLR is much better (12MP sensor), but only when I have it with me.

But a photo from my phone is going to look better than no photo at all.

And sure, my dSLR produces better output at 12 MP than a 50 MP shot from my phone. That's no use if the dSLR is 200 miles away, and the phone's in my hand.

I can't find a pocket point and shoot that's better than my phone, and cheaper than a mirrorless system camera.

And a system camera is much bulkier than the phone - if I'm packing for weight/size, I'm not bringing my Canon dSLR, even though it takes better photos.

There's also systems like the ChargePoint CPF50 that's designed for panel sharing. Lets a landlord install one charger per space, and a limited circuit, then gives 6A per active charger, going up as chargers are idle.

Also manages the problem of 20 spaces on a 30A circuit for you.

That's not what the statistics show - gas tanks catch fire way more often than batteries (but aren't as newsworthy).

Stops me working in the office, too - we use per-user VPNs to get from laptops to systems in other offices, so that an IT security fail in one location isn't a complete breach of all company systems.

There's a chunk of people not getting the UK's Online Safety Act.

The core problem is that the OSA assumes that (a) any device or connection might be used by an unsupervised child, and (b) that the world has to be child-safe by default.

Virtually all the issues with the Act fall out from this.

One big difference is planning rules; IIUC, Japan generally allows home owners to use their primary residence for retail (including restaurants), as long as they are present when the business is open.

That leads to quirky locations being normal.