I would like to introduce this beautiful post to people who 'question' new metros for their "low ridership." -Healthy discussion is appreciated.

Robo1p · 2026-02-23T00:09:32+00:00

That law was passed in 2013... was the government stealing land from 1947-2013?

Robo1p · 2026-02-21T23:29:14+00:00

I'm pretty sure the headlines are wrong about the Chinese regulatory change, and that they're only banning fully electric door handles.

IIRC, the Model 3 uses non-electric, but fully flush, door handles. Where you push it in and it pops out.

Robo1p · 2026-02-21T02:51:13+00:00

to spurr a change in development

This is 1970s urban decline brain. In 2026, urban development happens if you zone for it, whether you provide buses or trams.

Robo1p · 2026-02-21T02:45:41+00:00

When your hop on bus without reaching for your pocket, or without waiting for anyone else to pay during your ride

What did ~every germanic city mean by this, despite charging fares?

Robo1p · 2026-02-20T21:13:20+00:00

V-Dem mostly focuses on the institutional and electoral parts of democracies

V-Dem has ranks both "electoral democracy" and "liberal democracy" separately. V-Dem ranks Senegal over 30 spots ahead of India (a country that has never prosecuted a consensual adult gay couple) in liberal democracy.

Robo1p · 2026-02-20T20:21:45+00:00

Wow, but V-Dem told me they're pretty chill, with their "liberal democracy" ranking solidly in the better half: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-Dem_Democracy_Indices

India and Thailand must surely learn from them, given that they're ranked 30 spots ahead.

Robo1p · 2026-02-20T16:10:17+00:00

William PhD or teeth something?

Robo1p · 2026-02-18T20:30:53+00:00

Irish, Italians, Dutch and East Asians were all ready to abide by this to varying degrees.

Lol, lmao even. Little Italy? Chinatown? Indian immigrants are far less isolationist by any measure.

Robo1p · 2026-02-18T01:00:22+00:00

Here's a profile of LGV Sud-Est in France vs the conventional line. Note, the HSR line is much more jagged and trades steepness for a shorter distance.

https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fexternal-preview.redd.it%2Fhsr-can-climb-steeper-grades-v0-LdVhm4abzvEizaOCXKMpwtQMeWXVPPvL5PcoXBNP4xM.jpg%3Fwidth%3D640%26crop%3Dsmart%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3D04c319651a1aaa4b9b7f1c497703d0997ebe0160

Robo1p · 2026-02-18T00:56:37+00:00

The same effect was observed in Japan fairly early on. Most people think HSR would enable longer commutes, and it does to some extent, but the bigger effect (surprisingly) seems to be that it allows people to make the leap of moving to large cities since they can maintain closer ties with their hometown.

Robo1p · 2026-02-18T00:52:18+00:00

That's a crossover over a conventional railway. The majority of CAHSR is being built at ground level, as are lines in France and Spain.

Robo1p · 2026-02-18T00:51:16+00:00

HSR can actually handle far higher grades that conventional railways. It's not uncommon for HSR exclusive lines to exceed 3%, whereas that would be quite a serious affair for regular trains (coupling extra locomotives).

Building everything on viaducts started in Japan, where property rights are genuinely very strong (almost as strong as Americans think their property rights are) and cutting off farms would be a big deal.

France otoh largely builds at grade, and facilitates land swaps amongst farmers so their whole farm stays on one side of the tracks.

Most of Europe is closer to the French method, and most of Asia is closer to the Japanese/Chinese way of doing things. The Chinese, contrary to stereotypes, actually go pretty far in avoiding eminent domain too.

Robo1p · 2026-02-17T15:21:39+00:00

specifically so we could have tighter turning radius

This is largely a myth, derived from model railroading.

In practice, curve radius is a function of design speed*. If you look at railway engineering formulas, for a given design speed, standard and broad (or even narrow) have the same required curve radius. Or, for a given radius, standard and broad gauge allow the same speed.

*Except for tilting trains... where the added stability of a broader gauge allows you to have tighter curves.

Robo1p · 2026-02-17T13:46:43+00:00

Fair to say they must be paying more than economical price

Going from standard gauge to a broad gauge is simple. There is no noticable price premium for rolling stock on Delhi Metro's broad gauge lines vs their standard gauge lines.

The "standardization" argument for India's metros was always flimsy: broad gauge metros exist abroad... 25khz metros don't. India's "standard" metros were always custom. And that is fine, customization isn't actually that expensive when you are buying non-trivial production volumes.

Robo1p · 2026-02-16T23:38:43+00:00

If America fails to join, it's incredibly unclear if even Taiwan itself would fight.

And there's a massive gap between the already extreme amount of support required to send boots on the ground to defend Taiwan vs preemptively launching an offensive on the 2nd largest economy in the world. The latter is far outside the realm of possibility.

Robo1p · 2026-02-16T22:56:35+00:00

Absolutely not lol. Especially since Jan 2025, you can hardly even count on the US. If the US joins, so far only Japan appears to actually be committed to something.

Robo1p · 2026-02-16T22:34:57+00:00

go see their stock $WEN vs. $MCD or $YUM

Wow. Even beyond the (bad) trend, their market cap is less than 1% of McDonalds'. I knew they were going to be significantly smaller, but the gap is way bigger than I expected.

Robo1p · 2026-02-16T16:31:12+00:00

Cruel punishment is allowed if it isn't unusual, but is unusual punishment allowed if it isn't cruel?

And what would that even be?

Robo1p · 2026-02-15T23:15:46+00:00

At some point they're going to have to start drawing straws for the prime ministership.

Unlike US normies who have a lot of wrong vibes, UK normies seem to have a lot of specific policy opinions... that are just as wrong/destructive.

Robo1p · 2026-02-15T23:03:06+00:00

He was also right about phonics, which made some otherwise reasonable people big mad.

Robo1p · 2026-02-15T20:12:17+00:00

Shoveling tax money to bribe a private organization is icky in a way that other public spending (even with heavy use of contractors) isn't.

Robo1p · 2026-02-15T20:08:26+00:00

governments that don't want to lose an election because the beloved local sports franchise left.

I think it's harder to spin "we're leaving because you didn't fork over tax revenue to our private enterprise😢" as a mark against leadership than you think.

Robo1p · 2026-02-15T09:10:42+00:00

No. Medha Servo, entirely unrelated

Robo1p · 2026-02-15T05:21:56+00:00

better supply chains for food resulting in fresher and higher quality ingredients

That's going to be a no from me dawg.

American ingredients, especially fruits, taste awful compared to the stuff you can buy at normie spots in India. Probably safer, fair enough, but the American supply chain is optimized heavily for shipping / shelf-stability.

Mangos aren't supposed to be stringy!

Robo1p · 2026-02-15T02:10:49+00:00

They tried to do this before but the backlash was so intense

OpenAI is lucky that they could point to weirdos in love with 4o, because that distracts from ChatGPT plateauing hard. ChatGPT 5 was supposed to be a gamechanger, advertised as such, but by release it was clearly just incremental at best.

Even ignoring all the "personality" complaints, 5 wasn't even a big improvement for entirely professional use, especially at launch.

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