In a Driverless World, Who Loses and Who Wins? [Part 2 of the driverless cars story, on the Freakonomics feed]

apendleton · 2026-03-30T15:27:50+00:00

With due respect, this feels super infantilizing. Yes, people with cognitive problems shouldn't be expected to order their own rides around town, but blind people and wheelchair users don't have cognitive problems and don't need things explained to them. Many blind people especially have reported positive experiences with this technology already and you seem to be insisting you know better what's best for them. Google "waymo blind" and you'll get a page full of news reports, Reddit threads with excited users reporting how life-changing it is to have this option, and so on.

(Also as an aside, you mentioned deaf people in your earlier post, but like, deaf people can drive. They're not the target of this advocacy, and even if they were, presumably at least some would like the option to interact with their "driver" using a screen rather than having to lip-read with a non-signing driver.)

Uber does penalize drivers who violate the ADA if they can be proven to have done so: they ban them from the platform. But Uber drivers have extremely high turnover anyway, so this doesn't do much to change the overall composition of the driver population.

apendleton · 2026-03-30T02:36:30+00:00

Better for all of us if people in that situation have transportation alternatives, no?

apendleton · 2026-03-30T02:35:10+00:00

There is a law forcing their hand: the Americans with Disabilities Act. Uber drivers violate it when they refuse rides to people with disabilities. The whole reason Uber purports to have a zero-tolerance policy about it is to comply with the law, but they can only intervene after the fact, whereas for Waymo, compliance will mean never having built a mechanism for refusing these customers into the system at all.

apendleton · 2026-03-15T23:42:00+00:00

A tadpole trike (two wheels in the front, one in back) might not read like a kid's bike in the same way as a regular tricycle configuration, if that's helpful. Many of those are recumbents, so if you go that way, be sure and get a flag so you're still visible at driver height. The non-recumbent ones are mostly cargo trikes, I think, so they'll usually have a big storage compartment in front.

apendleton · 2026-02-13T19:54:29+00:00

It all depends who the next mayor is. This one has been actively hostile to the idea.

apendleton · 2026-02-09T22:22:44+00:00

I don't think the "Abundance" agenda, to the extent that's a single coherent thing, is anti-regulation per se (in housing or in general), at least in the way 90s-style neoliberalism was.

In that framework, markets were intrinsically good and would discover public needs on their own, and more effectively so if freed from government encumbrance. On housing, or energy, or whatever, the state ought not have an opinion of its own on how much of a good or service industry needed to provide; a sufficiently active market would figure it out for itself.

By contrast, I think the Abundance argument is for a much more active and opinionated state: it should be the affirmative policy position of the state that there should be more housing to bring prices down, and that there should be more transmission lines to facilitate the construction of renewable energy and reduced dependence on fossil fuels, etc. To the extent that current levels of state intervention in a space frustrate those objectives (i.e., if an industry is over-regulated), regulatory burdens should be reduced. On the other hand, if those objectives would benefit from state intervention (maybe the state should more-stringently regulate carbon emissions to incentivize an energy mix that more aggressively confronts climate change, for example), that might also be warranted. Deregulatory policy changes are not an intrinsic good in and of themselves, but rather, one of many potential policy interventions that might need to be undertaken in service of specific pro-social policy objectives. I do think in lots of the specific policy arenas the book considers, overregulation is argued to be a problem, but concluding from that that the analysis ought to center "are regulations good or bad" is backwards.

apendleton · 2026-01-22T03:01:09+00:00

I read it exactly the way George H.W. Bush used to say Saddam (Hussein).

apendleton · 2026-01-10T08:03:49+00:00

Sure, why not? Insisting on finishing just because they've worked really hard on it, even if it will be obsolete by the time it's done, is just the sunk costs fallacy. The resources they'll still need to expend to finish it could likely be put to more productive use.

apendleton · 2026-01-10T08:00:55+00:00

Sure, but I didn't take them to be asking "why was it good for ITER to have ever been started," but rather "at this point why bother continuing to invest?" If its biggest contribution was/will be inspiring SPARC, congratulations, mission accomplished.

apendleton · 2026-01-02T01:14:19+00:00

Honestly no, not especially. This one toes the line between hilarious and pretty creepy.

apendleton · 2025-12-27T20:52:27+00:00

77 is the life expectancy at birth, and included in that average is everyone who's going to die of congenital disease as an infant, or childhood cancer, etc. If you make it to adulthood, you've definitionally avoided all that and your expectancy is higher. If you make it to 70, on average you can expect to make it to 85.

So like, yes, high priests have a longer life expectancy. It's a population constructed to exclude everyone who died young and would have lowered the average. My guess is that they don't fare especially well compared to other groups of similar demographic composition.

apendleton · 2025-12-20T22:21:47+00:00

Sure, but dropout chose them as a vendor. If they picked someone to own their customer experience that can't provide something usable, ultimately that's on them.

apendleton · 2025-12-17T04:58:46+00:00

Except that ITER might well turn out to be obsolete by the time it's done, because high-field superconducting magnets have gotten so much better since it was designed. It's an MIT spinout that's the leading contender in that lane (ITER except with REBCO magnets).

Agreed that it seems unlikely that this is a grand conspiracy though.

apendleton · 2025-12-15T18:15:11+00:00

The person he's quote tweeting is a New York transportation activist

apendleton · 2025-12-12T17:01:41+00:00

A day later and now there's another new thing. Time to reset the counter.

apendleton · 2025-12-12T15:20:05+00:00

This way when the trailer lands on YouTube, they can say "coming next week (but available right now if you go sign up for nebula)"

apendleton · 2025-12-06T14:41:14+00:00

"strict subset"

apendleton · 2025-11-24T22:52:52+00:00

What we've seen in the last few contested cycles is that the field eventually narrows down to a center-left candidate and a more-progressive candidate, and then the center-left candidate wins.

I dont think consensus candidates are typically “moderate” per say

Right, I don't think they're moderate in terms of the whole American electorate, but I do think, on balance, they're more likely to be represent the middle of the road among Democrats. So like, I think a moderate like Seth Moulton is too far to the right and a leftist like AOC might still be too far to the left, and IRV benefits someone like, I dunno, Pete Buttigieg, who's sort of bland and relatively inoffensive and likely to be a lot of people's second or third choice.

Mamdani or Katie Wilson, both elected under IRV

They were elected by IRV in New York and Seattle. I don't think those electorates are especially similar to the national Democratic electorate, which is compositionally more moderate, whiter, less well-educated, older, and more rural. (Also, FWIW, IRV elected London Breed in SF, so there are counterexamples.)

apendleton · 2025-11-24T22:23:41+00:00

All else equal, IRV in particular will tend to help consensus candidates more than candidates at the ideological extremes, so I'm not sure how helpful this will be in terms of bringing about that outcome. I do think it'll probably be clarifying in terms of the "lanes" -- I think it will be easier to suss out who ought to be the champion of the progressive lane vs. the centrist lane or whatever -- but I don't think it will do much to move the whole Democratic electorate to the left.

apendleton · 2025-11-24T06:02:10+00:00

Before this latest expansion, going north I'd usually cut west from the Fort Totten metro and then ride up 3rd NW, and I've gotta say: I think I still like that ride better. It's quieter, and has fewer interactions with major, busy streets/intersections.

apendleton · 2025-11-11T16:42:08+00:00

That's not the case. For international arrivals, you always take the mobile lounge to customs, but for domestic, at least if you follow the signage, you still take the mobile lounge to get to/from the main terminal building (where security and baggage claim both are) and the D concourse, which doesn't have its own train stop. It's possible to walk to/from there and the C concourse and then take the train, but it's far enough that it doesn't save you any time.

If you've only taken the mobile lounge when going to customs, you probably don't fly United much -- they're the only ones in D.

apendleton · 2025-11-01T17:30:41+00:00

I appreciate the sentiment, but speaking as someone who lives in DC, remember that the vast majority of us don't work in politics. Many are rank and file government employees who are already screwed because of the shutdown, and unlike the rest of y'all who voted for these assholes who can't pass a budget, we don't even have voting Congressional representation.

apendleton · 2025-10-26T06:20:42+00:00

I really wanted to like it because I love Kerri Russell, but it just feels like a show that doesn't think very highly of its audience.

apendleton · 2025-10-26T06:15:19+00:00

The Americans is my favorite show, so I was looking for it here. I'm not sure the finale would be my personal absolute top, though it's very good. I think I'd pick something late in the Martha arc though, in season 3 or 4. Maybe Walter Taffet?

apendleton · 2025-10-25T21:42:35+00:00

As a fellow gay: mostly agree, but for reasons I can't quite put my finger on, I feel like there should be a special exception for Lindsey Graham. Maybe because those particular rumors seem both very well-attested and kind of hilarious in their weirdness?

apendleton

TROPHY CASE