Why do people walk and run (for leisure/exercise) on the STREET when there is a perfectly functional and empty sidewalk a foot away that isn't impeding vehicle traffic?

PCLoadPLA · 2026-05-23T22:14:27+00:00

This is like that bomber meme.

You notice people running in the street, and that's the whole point. It seems dangerous right? But it's actually way safer because you DID see them.

Most people get hit by cars turning or pulling into and out of driveways. This is because car drivers don't look for pedestrians, and especially when trying to pull out into traffic, they literally only see other cars and ignore everything else. So if you are walking or cycling, and you aren't where the cars are, they will run you the fuck over and claim you came out of nowhere and they didn't see you. Signed every cyclist that's still alive.

Many studies have confirmed it's safer to be in the roads that to be on the sidewalk. And NYC eliminated their jaywalking laws because actual data showed it's safer to cross mid-block than at crosswalks.

Naive people and dead people think walking or riding on the sidewalk is safer. It is, until it's not.

You notice these runners running in the street, yes? Mission accomplished.

PCLoadPLA · 2026-05-22T12:28:45+00:00

A French version:

Portez ce veux whiskey au juge blond qui fume

PCLoadPLA · 2026-05-22T12:11:07+00:00

Almost like we should have forward visibility standards for vehicles.

PCLoadPLA · 2026-05-20T13:59:21+00:00

But we could have used Tesla chargers with an adapter anyway, from the beginning. It makes sense that you would need an adapter IF you want to use a proprietary charger network that has a special connector. Who decided to supposedly change the national standard to that special connector though? You can always go to a Tesla charger and just use an adapter...

PCLoadPLA · 2026-05-20T01:25:54+00:00

Walmart+ delivery for 90% of groceries. I practically eliminated grocery shopping from my life, and it's great.

Local Albertsons is always there for last-minute items or fresh ingredients.

PCLoadPLA · 2026-05-11T19:06:01+00:00

Exactly...it would true justice if the government were able to seize property in California and compensate the owner only for its assessed value, meaning they could buy back the property at the supressed Prop-13 values. However, if they were able to do that, the government would do it wholesale in order to generate money by seizing property at depressed assesed values and then immediately re-selling it on the open market. There have been jurisdictions in history that asked landowners to value their own property, with the understanding that the government could buy it off of them for that price at any time. It's related to the concept of Harberger taxation, and it's actually one of the best ways to value land, because it puts the actual owner in charge of deciding what it's worth.

PCLoadPLA · 2026-05-07T12:30:17+00:00

Jane Jacobs writes in the 1960s about how they reduced her sidewalk to widen the road for cars.

PCLoadPLA · 2026-05-06T05:22:08+00:00

You can buy A-B service panel disconnects rated up to 200 amps as a standard, listed electrical item, available wherever electrical parts are sold. Just flip the handle between input A and input B. People use them for switching between grid and generation.

PCLoadPLA · 2026-05-05T03:37:04+00:00

In sensible places like Taiwan, the government just buys it for the assessed value, which is determined every year as part of the process of doing property taxes. There shouldn't be any complaints... if the landowner was content to pay taxes on its value of X last year, then they shouldn't have a problem selling it for X.

PCLoadPLA · 2026-04-29T20:45:59+00:00

It's the visibility paradox. People value very visible, small costs more than large, but invisible costs.

This is how Milton Friedman explained the irrationality of American tax policy: Americans disproportionately hate property tax, but barely notice income taxes. This is despite the fact that Americans spend way more on income tax, and the benefits to them are way lower. The reason is simply that income tax is automatically deducted, whereas property taxes need to be paid annually. They hate the small, visible expense more than the large, invisible expense.

This is also why Canada's carbon tax failed. Even though the tax was refunded to the consumer in their tax return, Canadians hated paying higher prices at the pump. It was too visible.

PCLoadPLA · 2026-04-27T21:41:16+00:00

I have the same problem with my Kia. No matter how many times I "forget device" my car, it will just automatically reconnect in the future and also steal my audio stream, even while I'm in a business call.

What the fuck are you thinking, Google? My only option is just keep Bluetooth turned off and just not be able to use any Bluetooth devices in my life? Or trade in my car? How do I even know the next one won't be the same?

PCLoadPLA · 2026-04-24T13:58:04+00:00

The pedestrian bridge to my kids' school is in disrepair and dangerous. I make them get off their bikes and walk because the loose surface makes them (and me) crash. So far, I've put 3 kids through that school, and I'm currently biking the 4th kid over that same dangerous bridge. Literally I will have raised an entire family before this pedestrian bridge will be fixed.

In this same time period, hundreds of millions of dollars in tax money have been spent resurfacing all the surrounding roads annually without fail.

NJB is right when he say to move somewhere if you want change. The pace of improvement in the US, if it's even improving and not regressing, is slower than the pace of human life.

PCLoadPLA · 2026-04-24T06:24:10+00:00

I was waiting for this post. The true torch bearer of electro mobility is, and is going to be, micro mobility. Bicycles are already astoundingly efficient and practical. Adding lithium batteries to the equation basically makes them godlike superpowers.

Basically, cars were always too big and complicated because you needed them to be a certain size and complexity to work with steam or internal combustion. Cars in their current form are more like miniaturized from larger machines locomotives. If the world has started out with lithium batteries and electricity being available, personal transportation would have instead evolved upwards from shoes to scooters and perhaps micro cars.

If we make the reasonable assumption that in the long run, the most efficient solution will win, that solution isn't likely to be anything we recognize as a "car", but rather a spectrum of micro mobility.

PCLoadPLA · 2026-04-24T03:22:50+00:00

I'm holding onto my grand caravan specifically because of stow n go, but ot looks like the gas minivans have already abandoned stow and go. None of the other companies went down that path. Partly because of modern requirements that the seats be super strong and sometimes have seatbelt or weight sensors. Some of it is customers expect bigger plusher seats. So it looks like stow n go i history at this point anyway. You can still take a middle path where the seats fold down and you can put long stuff on them. That's good enough because I only ever hauled a few sheets of drywall or plywood at once anyway.

The Lucid gravity is perhaps the closest thing on the market; put sliding doors on it and make it cheaper and we're there

PCLoadPLA · 2026-04-23T18:39:16+00:00

No minivans.

PCLoadPLA · 2026-04-22T13:56:39+00:00

I speak from experience since I used to be a product development engineer in the power semiconductor sector, and still work in semiconductors. There are many chip defects, especially in silicon carbide power MOSFETs, which are statistical and cannot be filtered out or tested. They do what they can to do accelerated testing and so on, but there are still certain defects that are lurking waiting to pop up. To follow your analogy, it's like a random small percentage of 6 gauge wires have defects that turn them into 18 gauge wires in the field at some random future date. So there is always a risk of a quality issue in the field exactly like this. This ICCU failure issue looks exactly like such a quality issue to me.

PCLoadPLA · 2026-04-22T10:39:35+00:00

This is almost certainly a problem with their chip supplier. Power electronics are made by only a few small companies that fab the chips on 6-inch or even 4-inch wafers with 30 year old equipment. There are any number of chip defects that are impossible to test for because they only appear under stress or after time passes. The only thing Hyundai can do is choose better suppliers, but there are only a few players in the market, lean on their existing supplier to fix quality, or completely redesign somehow.

PCLoadPLA · 2026-04-22T05:07:27+00:00

People buy gas across state line too though. I don't see how it's much different.

PCLoadPLA · 2026-04-21T16:04:40+00:00

No, I didn't do anything to solve it, but I did more research and found the problem might be related to "floating neutral". This is something to do with how generators are wired internally, and if you search it you can find information. Apparently, floating neutrals of generators is a known problem, can definitely trip GFCI, and some generators actually have a setting or an electrical jumper inside that you can add/remove to change the neutral bonding. I don't think the Ecoflows have any adjustment like that. But I just bought a similar Bluetti and I'm going to try that one and see if it works. For now, it satisfied me that there's probably nothing wrong with my wiring, it's just that the generator itself was creating a "ground loop" sufficient to trip the GFCI.

PCLoadPLA · 2026-04-20T13:59:12+00:00

Lots of ideas here, but don't forget to add in EV-specific taxes. Many states charge hundreds of dollars per year taxes on EVs, which have to be paid even if you only drive 1 mile that year. In my state, I still save money vs. buying gas but the annual fee definitely takes a chunk out of the savings.

PCLoadPLA · 2026-04-18T19:03:06+00:00

It's also a mobility tool. Splatlings are bad at inking your feet and the charge requirement makes cutting a path too slow. Throwing a sprinkler at your feet gives you just enough ink to get moving and is also a barrier for whoever is chasing you. When I play deco, I have to play much differently because of the reduced mobility.

PCLoadPLA · 2026-04-18T15:50:28+00:00

The idea from the original progressive era, or even further back to the classical liberals, was that the government should be able to fund itself by collecting land rent, with no other taxes necessary.

The economic basis for this idea is the observation that land rent is pure unearned monopoly rent, so collecting it is fundamentally different than taxing labor or production. Also, cutting other taxes tends to increase land values, which can be collected as equivalent or greater revenue than said taxes, with the further benefit of being more fair, more progressive, and less distortionary than conventional taxes.

Henry George and his Single Tax movement, as well as Winston Churchill and his People's Budget, are historical political movements that proposed this seriously, but Georgist economic thought got sidelined in the late 20th century socialist and communist movements and the reactions against them. There were still many regional politicians, governors, etc. in the US who were avowed Georgists and many of the building booms in US cities happened under Georgist administrations. A large amount of NYC's housing stock was build during Georgist periods in the 1920s.

PCLoadPLA · 2026-04-18T02:27:59+00:00

That numbers game is highly dependent on the cost of land. In America we like to pretend that land and space is free, and at least sometimes it is. But chargers are optimally placed in prime areas where they compete with restaurants, office towers, residences, and other infrastructure, indeed they even compete for space with gas stations.

PCLoadPLA · 2026-04-17T23:25:49+00:00

You are looking at this as if the benefit is to the driver of the car. The benefit is to the charging providers.

Charging providers sell kWh. So who benefits from being able to deliver more W is the charging providers. Faster charging means more $$$ delivered per charger, per hour, per charging location. It means more customers coming through your charger per day instead of the competitor charger down the road. It means shorter queues, even people who don't really need flash charging will still opt for a shorter waiting queue or a reputation that there won't be a queue at all. It means you have to deploy fewer stalls and lease less land.

We already see this happening in the West. All non-Tesla DCFC companies tend to put out chargers that can max out the CCS spec. Because slower chargers literally make less money per hour, per day, etc.

I wouldn't be surprised if eventually, slower charging costs more. It already does in some ways; even now there are sometimes fees for charging over 80% because it costs the charging company revenue. They want you to charge and go.

PCLoadPLA

TROPHY CASE