bradchris

I actually view 2012-2020 as peak “PSA messaging” era more, which a lot of people would probably coincide with the liberal optimism from Obama and course-correcting anxiety of Trump term 1. I think since covid Hollywood has “toned it down”, because the US has by and large moved on from that social phenomenon.

I’ve been in Los Angeles for over a decade, and I disagree with the premise that Hollywood has some overarching plan to shape how we think— more people watch TikToks than movies and network TV. I view Hollywood, and the creators/writers/producers of films themselves, moreso holding up a mirror reflecting the current circumstances we’re in rather than manufacturing it out of nowhere.

These robots cover Los Angeles’ walkable areas, because they’re the only places they work for delivery. My understanding is oftentimes they’re piloted by someone overseas for less pay than the local delivery person market rate. To me, this seems like the worst of both worlds:

It takes up public space in the US, but the operator oftentimes doesn’t benefit from actually living and working in the US. At worst, it literally removes gig jobs from the US while still maintaining the physical presence a delivery person here could do, puts downward pressure on labor pay, costs stay the same for the customer, with no improvement (often worse, imo) to the customer delivery experience. So why do we allow it?

Do we really have to outsource something that inherently requires physical and local presence?

Metrolink’s multi-county governance structure bums me out, as a majority of them are actively against expanding it, improving it, or even funding it. At least Metro has Los Angeles in control of a majority of the votes to squash any anti-transit shenanigans on what is supposed to be an organization tasked with expanding transit. Metrolink has no such mechanism to protect itself from the inside.

via a 75-year EIFD, which the city successfully lobbied the state to change California law to allow them to enact. Talk about city support!

It may not look like it, but most residents in LA are literally begging for an option to navigate the city that is not car-bound. Cost isn’t even a concern at this point, for better or worse, it’s just the current situation of 30 min traffic to drive 3 miles at rush hour is untenable in a region that is about 50 miles in each direction. And WeHo has no direct highway access anywhere, so they’re really feeling the brunt of it.

Exactly. This line was actually planned for in the approved Measure M Ballot Measure in 2016 to be “shovel ready” [environmentally cleared, funding identified, etc] by 2022, with optimistic projections hoping construction would be finished by 2028. Clearly, we’re at least 6 years behind schedule, considering the final funding votes and route design specifics won’t be set until then, much less construction. It was not a surprise, so I consider any further delays on that front by detractors to be in bad faith, and I am happy that Metro has started to put its foot down and force progress, albeit I wish they would have done so sooner.

Nevertheless, I think it’s a good sign of government inertia that we won’t run into a 60 year delay ever again, especially as Metro prepares to finalize approval of the Sepulveda Pass Subway from LAX to the Valley.

Some of this was covered in the article, but it’s not actually Los Angeles’ leadership’s fault (rare praise for a city I love and call home), it was shovel-ready and funded to be built in the 80s. Then there was a ballot measure due to ongoing construction problems of a separate line in the 80s that banned tunneling in Los Angeles. This wasn’t overturned until 2007! Then Beverly Hills (which is also not part of Los Angeles city government) fought this line for another 10 years, again with tunneling concerns, because they didn’t want it under them (not so fun fact, Doug Emhoff, Kamala Harris’ husband, represented them). It went to the California Supreme Court and then the Federal Appeals Court, and finally, in 2017 was allowed to commence construction. Then Beverly Hills decided they wanted (and got) not one but TWO stops (and the only ones outside of downtown with turnstiles). Funny.

An indictment of the state legal system’s slowness, yes (see CAHSR), but the city consistently has fought many of its own nimby residents, other cities, the state, and the United States trying to claw back funding for this for those 60 years. It would not have been built without generations of support from city leadership. So there is hope!

With hundreds of miles funded and planned for or already under construction in the next two decades, the city’s rail future may be the brightest in the country.

Well, if we’re comparing CA infra costs, for a more 1-1 comparison you can look at the $9.7B Los Angeles is spending on building out a long-awaited subway line (phase 1 of 3 opened Friday!) and see how tunneling underwater looks like a bargain in comparison.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2026-05-07/los-ange...

Primarily the US’s approach is: “we know our system will never be perfect [and the system we have is actually a hell of its own making], so we will ensure an escape hatch for BOTH innocent/guilty from the shortcomings of the system until a definitive verdict has been reached”

While Japan’s/many other countries approach is: “We intend our court system to be a perfect representation of our culture, history, and policy objectives. Therefore it should apply in every case, regardless of individual circumstance, so there is no escape hatch, because why deviate from a perfect process.”

The former is how you get the wildly inconsistent US approach to the criminal system, while the latter is how you get a kafkaesque nightmare (or worse, a system weaponized to intentionally target innocent undesirables, like El Salvador’s CECOT)

Both are simplified, none are perfect, of course. But I know which system I’d rather be accused under.

You clearly have a different view of “innocent until proven guilty” than most US citizens, which is fine, maybe you aren’t one, but that line of rhetoric is going to be anathema to most people on this website.

Not that the US criminal system isn’t its own complete mess, but thank God for the concept of bail (going about your life outside of jail until trial or dismissal, within certain parameters) and right to see a judge within 24 hours, to avoid any kafkaesque nightmares like this.

It's wild how much curricula within high schools must differ, because my school went out of its way to teach and encourage/require its use on nearly every quiz and exam. We joked sometimes class felt more like calculator class than math class. This was Texas, too, which I hardly consider a pioneer in education. Maybe TI pride?

Now that I think about it, this could have been a strategy my high school drilled into us as a way to increase SAT scores, since TI-84s were allowed to be used there.

> Nothing CEO Carl Pei said at SXSW that apps will eventually go away.

Apps will not ever entirely go away because brands will not ever go away, which is what most popular apps are. Not ads, but brands: if someone were to exactly replicate Coca-Cola, it would not existentially replace Coca-Cola— people drink it not just for the taste but because they like the brand. In the same way we all have that one neighborhood restaurant we trust, we trust a brand.

Especially because in ruby

[0, nil, nil, nil, …x100, nil] is the same as [0] in terms of access.

In both cases, trying to access the 100th element (e.g. [0][100]) will give nil.

That’s fun, because I’m from a third generation Dallas family :) I hope they enjoy Dallas and all Texas has to offer.

Dallas, TX has continually voted in expanding its DART Rail funding the past 40 years. It has the most miles of intercity rail in the entirety of the South. It has the most light rail, by mileage, built in the entirety of the US. It just opened up an entirely new rail line through the suburbs (and only the suburbs) in March, and is its third(!) line which connects directly to DFW airport, which makes it the most rail-connected airport in the United States, and tied with Shanghai, Tokyo and London for the world.

I also personally currently live on a farm in California, and am an advocate of HSR. I believe many of those in similar areas are afraid of rail because they have never experienced its benefits, and change without knowledge is scary.

So please forgive me if I say that you are incorrect in both your assessment of how the majority of Dallas, Texas supports rail and your assumption of what I value.

And regarding your point about Disney World, I believe you are actually agreeing with me. Disney is one of the only places in the US it makes more sense to use the train or shuttle than a car. It does not in most of the US. Many people go to Disney World and experience for the first time how well trains can work for day-to-day transit, if designed well and intentionally. People will use what is most convenient, immigrant or not — most people (including me) do not take trains out of some principled stance, they do so when it’s more convenient. And my argument is we should make it more convenient, safety and all.

Because [] is an array with nothing in it, and [0] is an array with something in it.

So saying “give me the array containing the first 100 elements of this array with one element” would obviously give you the array with one element back.

Saying “give me the array containing the first 100 elements of this array with zero elements” would follow that it just gives the empty array back.

On top of that, because ruby is historically duck-typed, having something always return an array or an error makes sense, why return nil when there’s a logical explanation for defined behavior? Ditto for throwing an error.

Seems thoughtfully intuitive to me.

Yes, but with caveats.

Culturally, though, it’s because that over half of the population doesn’t know that they would benefit from trains? In the same way outside (just as inside) the US there’s an age-old divide between farmers and city folk (see Denmark or France for the most recent protests).

In China, >66% of the population lives in urban areas. In the US, <30% live in proper urban areas (a vast majority, 60%, live in historically car-centric suburban areas mostly developed post WWII).

The issue is not that those areas that would benefit the most don’t support it, it’s that the areas that would benefit the most from it are surrounded by areas that currently have no viable alternatives (and thus knowledge that something else is possible) other than a car. They’re already driving >1hr to get to work or an airport. Therefore, of course they think anything that takes away resources from wider roads is a waste of their own time and tax money, as it does not benefit them.

The reason the California HSR, if ever finished, will actually mark a cultural shift is that it’s the only megaproject attempted since the 21st century that actually puts modern alternatives to the car in rural areas: vast amounts of money could’ve been saved by connecting LA to SF and SD by electrifying and tunneling on the current Amtrak route, but that would’ve left out about half the state.

Was it too ambitious? Maybe. But in 50 years, maybe everyone will be talking about how it changed California, and the US’s, entire attitude toward rail.

And we would not need rules at all if everyone was perfect all the time.

So like what California did, which resulted in only a couple hundred thousand units over half a decade when they were hoping for/needing a couple million statewide.

Not the mention that ironically, the private owners with the space to build an ADU on their lot are the ones most likely to already be wealthy, and not actually rent it out to anyone below their socioeconomic bracket.

I can’t agree with this statement because One Battle After Another is actually a movie about fatherhood and the lengths you go to to raise a child, and very explicitly makes fun of how many “fight the power” movements are often ineffective or devolve into making the problem you’re fighting against worse.

It’s a movie about family loyalties transcending and persisting through all else, which is a pretty universal message.

Well, Hollywood is not the end all be all of Los Angeles (though that is the image Hollywood projects out onto the world).

It’s not even Los Angeles’ biggest industry. Everything from China enters through the Port of Los Angeles, which is the biggest in the United States. In fact, the top two busiest ports in the USA are both Los Angeles and Long Beach (which directly borders Los Angeles).

This is just one example, but Los Angeles, despite its own external projections and self-mythology to the contrary, is much more than just a one industry town. Aside from shipping and logistics, it’s also a center for auto+aerospace manufacturing, and a major healthcare hub. Downtown Los Angeles, which actually serves as a glorified rail freight hub, is still far and away the nation’s capital of garment manufacturing, with over 80%(!) of the nation’s made-in-USA clothing produced here (this is downstream of being the biggest port in the US). Los Angeles has always existed as a center of industry and agriculture before Hollywood, and while the decline of Hollywood certainly hurts the city, it will not kill it.

SF, ironically, is actually moreso a factory town: if one day its tech champions decided to up and leave, there wouldn’t be much left relative to its current GDP. But one thing that may protect both SF and Los Angeles from ever becoming Detroit are their beautiful weather and geography. People will always want to live here, despite the costs. See Santa Barbara, a real city with no major industry to claim as its own, yet it still boasts some of the highest real estate prices in the world.

Fundamentally the issue, aside from lack of density, is Prop 13. In LA, and every other part of California, your tax rate will get frozen (forever, essentially) at what you buy your home for. So you have some people who now have a $7m home paying taxes as if it were $300k, because they bought it in 1978.

With a setup like that, of course SFHs, no matter how high they’re valued, will not provide enough tax revenue on their own

I’m pretty sure Los Angeles is a city in which residents would _gladly_ vote to tax themselves for better streets if they’d actually get done, like Orange County has.

In 2024, when Measure HLA passed via ballot measure (basically, legally requiring that the city must adhere to its own already decade-old repaving and mobility plan that had only been 3% implemented), the city tried to spook the public by saying it could ultimately increase taxes and cost $2bn over 10 years. That only increased support, with almost 66% of the city voting for it in the end. It’s worthwhile to note, measure HLA did not actually mandate anything new, just saying that the city must follow its own street plan, because for a decade the city has been pulling stuff like this rather than actually building ADA ramps or repaving.

People want their sidewalks and streets and will gladly pay for them, not to mention the city already lost a Federal ADA lawsuit requiring this too. The city just won’t do it. I’m hoping this is the year the city finally gets sued under HLA (which carries a bounty award for any litigant who lives on a street ignored by the mobility plan if they do a faux repaving and don’t adhere to the law), now that the 2-year grace period is up.

That was based on the $7.5k EV subsidy. California will still give you $2.5k, though, so just over $20k.

Crazy to think had the federal subsidy not been cut, that car would be possible to get for around $15k. Unheard of.

4 years gets you, historically, an 8-plex built in San Francisco. If you’re lucky. The ship is slowly turning, but that’s what institutional investors would call a short-term win in the most economically productive state in the USA.

I’m a supporter of it regardless of the cost, but for a “long term” project look at the California HSR, which was directly approved by voters 19 years ago and we’re still debating how to fund the majority of it, let alone actually build what we voted to construct and open in its entirety within 10 years.

Texan here. There’s still ways to get in if you don’t make the top X% of your class (the percentage is shrinking every year as the school climbs up the rankings and more people want to go… I think it’s near top-4% now? It used to be top 15% I recall), and many of those high achievers go onto other out of state schools, so it’s in the interest of UT system to offer automatic admission to the top achievers from across the state.

Just because the top X% is guaranteed admission, that does not mean all (or even most) of the school is from the top X%.

For long distance trains, sure. But there’s plenty of shorter Amtrak routes outside of the NE Corridor where it could make as much or more sense than flying, to be fair

Los Angeles - San Diego: 2.5hrs downtown to downtown (less if you’re going to one of the many suburbs or beach towns in between), which is on par with driving and sometimes even faster than traffic. Also, a ticket is only $30-50, so about a tank of gas. This is likely why it’s Amtrak’s busiest and most profitable route outside the NEC. If the second phase of the California High Speed Rail ever gets built (lol), this trip is to take somewhere between 30-45 minutes.

Check out Mrs. Davis (2023)

> nobody wants this

I do.

Being subject to unreasonable searches likely does, still. Depends on what is “reasonable” or not, but just because they’re applying for a status does not mean they give up their right to unreasonable searches and detainment.

Note: US Embassies, where interviews are often conducted, are still considered US soil subject to US laws (otherwise the latest declaration from Trump pausing them would not apply to them)

I don’t disagree, but you would think the citizens of such a country would want to check that tyrannical power, not expand it

You're misconstruing what I said— nowhere in the constitution is a student visa a “right” to a citizen or not. But subjecting a non-citizen to a potentially unreasonable search while exempting regular citizens is likely against the 4th and 5th amendments (due process + unreasonable searches). Of course, “unreasonable” depends on the court’s interpretation.

Some Supreme Court decisions—

Bridges v. Wixon, 326 U.S. 135 (1945)

> freedom of speech and of press is accorded aliens residing in this country.

Plyler v. Doe, 457 U.S. 202 (1982)

> constitutional protections extend to “all persons” within the U.S, including undocumented immigrants.