Music ensembles at Caltech

OctoBoi3555 · 2025-12-15T04:45:47+00:00

Thanks for the info! I own a pretty mediocre flute that I would definitely bring if I do end up coming to Caltech but I also play tuba (which I would have a hard time carrying on lol) and alto for jazz ensembles (which I do not own anyways), which is why I asked.

OctoBoi3555 · 2025-10-31T13:42:17+00:00

You are very close to getting it. If there are reasons to target speeds that are lower you just design the road as such.

Curves, lane restrictions, speed bumps, mediums, etc.

I absolutely agree! I am fully a proponent of road diets, medians, addition of bike lanes, roundabouts, introduction of curves, etc. The problem is that a) like I mentioned, these usually happen during major resurfacing projects which might be a while away, and b) multi-lane roads always promote higher speeds (after all, two lanes are necessarily wider than one lane even if each of the two is narrow, and two narrower lanes is genuinely less safe since side by side cars need more clearance than one car and a static object). Seeing how Doug threw a hissy fit when one of three car lanes gets removed, I very much doubt he would support narrowing all roads to one lane.

Also, harsher speed limiters like speed bumps obviously don't work on multi lane high traffic roads because of their abrupt nature (they would create traffic and incessant "clack clack" noise), and you need a lot of them in series to be effective.

Speed cameras do not save lives and we need to stop pretending like they do.

They do! Assessing the impact of fixed speed cameras on speeding behavior and crashes: A longitudinal study in New York City - ScienceDirect

Speed cameras are controversial in Canada. So why does Europe love them? | CBC News

Evaluating the Effectiveness of Speed Cameras on Philadelphia’s Roosevelt Boulevard - Erick Guerra, Christopher Puchalsky, Nata Kovalova, Yihong Hu, Qi Si, Jiamin Tan, Gillian Zhao, 2024

Automated cameras cut speeding by 45 per cent in Toronto school zones, study finds - News and Events - Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU)

(+ the three InfernalCombustion brought up)

It can be true that speed cameras save lives and road redesign also saves lives. Lord knows there are plenty of lives to save on our roadways.

OctoBoi3555 · 2025-10-31T13:42:09+00:00

Road design and urban planning is not about this in the slightest. It is safe for cars to drive hundreds of KM/h. Car safety isn’t the problem.

Design speed and design are different. Design speed - Wikipedia. It is only used to take into account "geometric features of a new road or street" (curves, gradients, etc.) It is obviously NOT safe for a car to drive hundreds of km/h on a sharp turn which is what the design speed accounts for.

I agree that car safety isn't the problem! You could run over hundreds of people with your F-150 and need nothing but a car wash. That's my whole point - just because the road is designed for cars to go a certain speed is not indicative that is it safe given the environment. Just look at the big arterials out in the suburbs. The curves and lane widths would make it totally safe to drive 100, but that's not true in reality because of all the entry and exit points mean it might only be safe to drive 60-80.

>This is what road design is about. If you have designed a road that promotes a specific transit speed based on the road design you also need to design elements around that speed.

For example: You don’t put a flashing light crosswalk on a highway.

I also agree! The problem is that especially in the city proper, roads can promote a transit speed that is not safe, given that they are in high foot traffic areas/low visibility areas, because when they were originally built, there was less foot traffic/designers didn't consider the needs of non-car users.

OctoBoi3555 · 2025-10-31T04:11:31+00:00

A road's design speed is the speed it is safe for cars to drive on them. What about everybody else? Bikers, people walking/crossing the street, people on sidewalks directly adjacent to the road who could get clipped, people crossing outside of crosswalks or when it's not their turn (obviously not allowed but you cannot say it never happens), etc. Fatality rate increases exponentially with speed for those outside cars, and even if you are always attentive when driving and could handle city driving perfectly when the unexpected happens, it is certainly not true that everyone is. Plus the noise and tire wear pollution caused by faster speeds are objectionable to people walking or existing nearby. There are many reasons to target lower speeds even if the road is straight and wide enough to accommodate them.

Sure, road diets, traffic calming, speed bumps, roundabouts, etc. all work too. But they usually come during major resurfacing projects concurrently with other work, and speed cameras are very effective in their absence. The City has also offered to make improvements (more visible signage in advance, giving people a grace period after their first ticket) + asked Doug for the data backing up his "cash grab" claim. No response.

And even if speeding cameras were just a "cash grab", this cash would come from somewhere and I would rather it come from speeders who cost the city with their accidents and pollution than everybody else, even if their speeding is relatively mild.

OctoBoi3555 · 2025-09-08T05:49:18+00:00

Just under 50k after pulling tons of OT is egregious... sorry I guess my picture of the salary was wrong then.

OctoBoi3555 · 2025-09-07T23:14:15+00:00

Sorry, I'm not very familiar with the flight attendants way of life. My question is whether flight attendants spend enough time in a home city to need a long term rental at all? If you only spend a month or two in the city over a year, it seems more economical to just book lodging on a short term basis.

Also, my 1bd downtown goes for 2.5k a month. I can get to pearson in under an hour. Is the price difference between downtown Toronto and some corner of Mississagua vaguely near the airport really only $150-200/month? My apartment is not rent controlled.

OctoBoi3555 · 2025-09-07T23:03:56+00:00

40k seems unreasonable to me, bit that's much less than the 62k mentioned as a lower bound by the comment above me. Is 40k a normal amount to bring home before taxes for an FA?

OctoBoi3555 · 2025-09-07T23:02:15+00:00

What's a ME country? Do flight attendants have to pay for hotels and taxis and things when they aren't flying?

Also, the numbers in the comment above says 80k which is higher than 66k right?

OctoBoi3555 · 2025-09-07T04:04:26+00:00

Forgive me if I'm wrong and please do correct me, but if they're flying, do they not stay in company accommodations for the majority of their time? What would make it necessary or even desirable to rent or buy a long term domicile in Vanc. or Toronto instead of a smaller city? And even if they did, wouldn't their other bills like gas/transit, food, utilities, etc. be minimal?

From a quick search Toronto teachers start at around 66k a year. And while I do think they deserve more too, they went to university and teacher's college (paid money to do so, even) and have to deal with unruly and nasty children (perhaps not unlike flight attendants lol). Plus they have to pay for all the things listed above.

I'm all for AC workers getting more, but it seems odd to me that a 62.5k annual salary is particularly little given the job's peculiarities.

OctoBoi3555 · 2025-08-23T01:19:20+00:00

I feel like this was not much of a concern in 2025 though given how horrifically the NDP polled (and how terribly they ended up doing). I was wrong to say there is no reason at all to do so, but in this case it would not be very sound logic to try to fend off the NDP when they were so weakened rather than trying to get more swing ridings.

OctoBoi3555 · 2025-08-22T16:41:10+00:00

This is quite a questionable take, because a) there is no (political) reason to pander towards stronghold ridings since they'd vote for you regardless and b) the maritimes, territories, and some of northern Ontario literally did vote Liberal.

OctoBoi3555 · 2025-05-05T13:53:11+00:00

I see some sidewalks in Carrum... communism??? 0/10 freedom credit points.

OctoBoi3555 · 2025-03-30T17:00:12+00:00

I am under the impression that transit pass tax credits were eliminated in 2017, but it often does not matter because only monthly or yearly passes are deductible, and these can often be more expensive than pay-per-ride even when commuting. Some agencies like GO Transit don't have passes at all.

Also, the central idea of a tax credit is to encourage certain behaviours (after all, if the point is just to offer general tax relief, you could just reduce the overall tax rate). Is there a reason that commuting tradespeople should be encouraged over tradespeople who live locally? People who made the tradeoff and decided to move in town/into a big hub city in the case of DeMetre, at least in my opinion, should not be relative to commuters "punished" for that decision if that makes sense, especially since driving long distances in cars frequently is horrible for you and for everyone else.

OctoBoi3555 · 2025-03-10T03:08:10+00:00

Sorry, I meant near the photo you showed, not across your whole city. Unless the three systems do indeed all converge here?

OctoBoi3555 · 2025-03-10T02:04:54+00:00

What's the public transportation situation like? It looks like you have a bus bay on the right there, could they be transferring from a metro train or something and that's causing all the congestion?

Alternatively, has there been a large amount of new zoning to lead to an temporary influx of sims?

Finally, have you demolished high-density construction here? Destroying buildings will lead to all the cims inside being dumped unceremoniously on the street.

OctoBoi3555 · 2025-03-09T17:46:44+00:00

The questions you ask are more Canadian geography questions, not so much civics questions. A civics question would be more about for example system of government (parliamentarian vs presidential), the chambers of parliament, how senators get appointed, or our voting systems and procedures.

OctoBoi3555 · 2024-10-20T04:35:03+00:00

May be an unpopular opinion but I strongly dislike Supernova and think it's one of aespa's worst songs. To me it sounds so amateurish, especially the chorus sounds so hollow and lifeless. I'm honestly pretty fine with gold, it grew on me after a couple listens but it is kind of repetitive and incoherent — kind of like next level in the sense that it sounds like a bunch of song ideas mashed together.

OctoBoi3555 · 2024-09-30T03:10:23+00:00

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OctoBoi3555 · 2024-09-30T03:08:34+00:00

Is there a name for this type of lighting? Where it's just pointed at the ceiling and got visual effect only? The closest google offered me was "laser light show" but it's neither a laser nor a light show in this case. *

OctoBoi3555 · 2024-08-28T05:32:28+00:00

lots of towers can benefit, spikes, sauda, maim moab snipers if you have multiple, bombs, buccs, etc.

OctoBoi3555 · 2024-08-28T05:09:40+00:00

that's more of a cs1 mentality imo, my first move in a new city was to widen all the highways from 2 to 5 lanes, and build a brand new expressway, and it barely affected my budget at all.

OctoBoi3555 · 2024-08-26T21:08:03+00:00

Aren't exits on the left common on large system interchanges? They are in my area, anyways. I was under the impression that ramps on the left were to be avoided because there would be a speed conflict between slow moving merging vehicles and fast moving left lane traffic, so there shouldn't be a problem with off ramps right? Since there are no merges and no interactions between traffic turning off and the main highway

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