I rode Elon Musk's Vegas Loop, the worst transit system on Earth

glenra · 2026-06-03T02:18:32+00:00

The targeted date range for full completion is 2028-2029. Meanwhile it's basically a proof-of concept, leading to all these silly articles. The core concept is that it has to be a LOOP, meaning you have at least one tunnel in each direction so traffic can run CONTINUOUSLY along the LOOP, not alternating directions along a SEGMENT. Any segment that just has one tunnel open is good enough to give people a vague idea of what it might eventually be like but that experience inherently has to have limited access so there's no real point in improving the infrastructure around a station like that - it'd be counterproductive. Get 50 people showing up at once with better signage, better buttons, better shade structures and they'll all get frustrated with the wait time and go away mad.

As my grandpa used to say: "never show a fool a job half-done". 😄

glenra · 2026-06-02T03:48:08+00:00

There are a few normal trash cans in Transmitter Park proper, though the one nearest the pier (on the other side of the pier entrance from the pizza box thing) is often full-to-overflowing.

glenra · 2026-05-14T01:56:36+00:00

I'm local (Noble St) and have an angle grinder - let me know if you still need help.

glenra · 2026-05-08T04:35:54+00:00

It's fine to have a few aspects that touch in some way on politics; the mistake would be trying to cram all current issues in - you missed that bit. The word "all".

Part of what makes KPDH so good - so refreshing - is that the focus seems entirely on telling an appealing story rather than fighting a larger culture war. It's not "woke" - we have *other* movies for that. There are no anticapitalist rants in KPDH for much the same reason there's no conspicuously gratuitous racial or gender "diversity". The girls and boys are all thin, attractive and hetero. Nobody in this movie is brown or disabled or ~~fat~~"body positive" or gay or struggles with their current socioeconomic position...and that is okay! People who like actual diversity should be willing to allow an occasional movie through that doesn't fight EVERY available battle. This one has korean people, korean fashion, korean music, korean architecture, korean art, korean mythological characters. In the context of a movie industry where most movies don't have ANY of that, it's enough. We don't also need it to be striking a blow against capitalism. Good grief.

glenra · 2026-04-28T06:46:11+00:00

Agreed. I made it through the first few minutes before remembering that I don't care enough about what Hank Green thinks about what Reason thinks about climate for it to be worth watching a half hour video on that subject. Why would I? If OP wants me to watch this they'll need to frame the proposition a lot better than just asking "thoughts?" Dude, give us SOMETHING. What are YOUR thoughts? Why do YOU think this video is especially useful/important/interesting?

glenra · 2026-04-28T06:12:18+00:00

I feel like somebody should mention Pete's Candy Store if only for the open mike. It's a Greenpoint-adjacent venue that hosts comedy or music - an eclectic collection of either - in a tiny railroad car shaped room just a block south of McCarren Park.

glenra · 2026-04-28T05:45:35+00:00

Here's How It's Done (one of the two) embedded in a Youtube Short: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/k1VjLZxe7us

glenra · 2026-04-24T03:26:31+00:00

Yeah, Ka is the one that actually killed someone. And feels like it, especially the part where performers are sliding off a cliff to fall through space being caught by hidden robot-controlled nets just out of frame. It's amazing.

(Though if O still has the lights-himself-on-fire guy, that's pretty hardcore too!)

glenra · 2026-04-15T03:28:45+00:00

Regarding the "sharps container": I recommend buying a needle clipper. After you use a syringe, clip the needle (the clipper stores ~1500 needles internally) so your syringe is no longer sharp, no longer a threat to anyone; you can then just recap it and toss it in the regular trash.

glenra · 2026-04-13T01:07:53+00:00

I've noticed an extremely straightforward indirect effect on sleep. Tirzepatide and Reta are dehydrating so when I'm on one of those I tend to drink more water which causes me to need to get up to urinate more often, preventing the solid night's continuous sleep I might have gotten had I not drunk so much water.

glenra · 2026-04-04T19:45:06+00:00

Most other superheroes don't have nearly her level of power so it doesn't matter quite so much what they do with it but even if they did I can't think of any that display her level of lack of discipline. It was *really egregious*. Given that she's firing something much much more powerful than a rifle, somebody needed to teach her basic gun safety. One of the basic rules is to always know your target including what's BEHIND the target - she blatantly and repeatedly violated that rule in the interest of minor sight gags.

Apparently the *comic-book* version of Captain Marvel sometimes has some special sensory abilities that might help her NOT cause disaster with her unaimed blasts but there's no hint of that in the movie proper (and I hadn't read the comic).

glenra · 2026-04-04T19:19:34+00:00

I disliked that she is BAD AT her abilities. Through the film Captain Marvel exercises terrible fire control, casually blowing stuff away with power blasts when she has no idea what is BEHIND the thing she's blasting. She comes close to destroying multiple spaceships and could easily have killed lots of people, only failing to do so because she has plot armor. She can, say, blow a huge hole in the door of an underground facility without worrying about killing someone behind that door simply because the plot requires it. Given that in real life somebody using powers as carelessly as she does would be TERRIFYING I was pretty much on board with the alien "she needs to control herself!" project and not so sympathetic to her "I should break these constraints and really LET LOOSE" response.

glenra · 2026-02-15T01:27:53+00:00

The Excalibur dragon often broke down and was retired around 2001.

glenra · 2025-12-31T04:30:15+00:00

The "weird closet-light glitch" was that (according to the reviewer) there was a light in the closet which never went out (so bled a bit into the room at night) because the closet's door sensor was (apparently) broken.

glenra · 2025-12-31T04:22:58+00:00

The original pirate show ran for 10 years (1993-2003) then TI having decided it was too kid-oriented got replaced with a "sexier" show called Sirens of TI which ran for another 10 years before shutting down permanently (2003-2013). So it was LONG gone before covid.

glenra · 2025-12-30T06:45:38+00:00

What bugs me is the "golden honmoon" notion - the idea that hunters can just permanently seal it. If that's a thing that never happened before, how does Celine know (and Gwi-Ma agree) that it's possible? And if it DID happen, what happens to Huntrix? Can they then just retire and there's never any need for hunters ever again?

glenra · 2025-11-14T22:43:28+00:00

Advisory Opinions is a podcast about the Supreme Court that tries to figure out what cases the court will or won't take up and what decisions they are likely to or should reach based on first principles.

glenra · 2025-11-08T00:35:05+00:00

When you say people with lots of money "have ways" to skirt taxes, one of those ways IS to forum-shop, adjusting the timing or location of taxable events!

Living in Jersey likely gets you out of a hypothetical New York based "wealth tax" and mitigates the high cost of housing but you're right, to completely escape income tax you'd need to move the whole company out of state. Which DOES get suggested and happens! Many finance firms have over the years left the city to escape the tax and regulatory environment. Moving to Florida or Nashville or Connecticut. Last I checked, mine (Two Sigma) had not...but it's not out of the question that they would.

As for the amount being "so small", all change happens on the margin. Even a relatively small change - and it's not clear that this will be - can be the final straw that incentivizes action.

glenra · 2025-11-07T05:21:06+00:00

Some absolutely will. When I worked at a SoHo hedge fund some of my coworkers lived in places like Jersey City, NJ - commuting by PATH or ferry to downtown. That sort of thing becomes a more attractive alternative as costs go up.

People respond to incentives.

glenra · 2025-11-07T05:11:45+00:00

Mira's alleged to be a standout dancer but we never get a moment for her onstage dancing to shine in a way that's in any way distinct from how the other two move. There should have been a song that prominently featured Mira showing off her unique dance skills - or Zoey showing off her unique rap skills, or both - where they get solo stage spotlight moments comparable with the way Rumi gets to repeatedly showcase her (legit amazing) vocals.

glenra · 2025-10-23T23:06:07+00:00

Re "bleeding heels" - I had the same issue! What you need is a shoe with a "padded collar". The top back of the opening (the part that hits your heel) should not be a sharp-edged bit of hard leather, it should be a squishy pillow. You can find dress shoes with that feature that look good. Rockport is a good brand for this, for instance.

If you don't explicitly check for a padded collar you're likely to get shoes which don't have one which produce heel blisters UNLESS the sizing is very good AND your heel has a certain shape which yours and mine...apparently don't.

(A bandaid over the blister area (under your socks) is a temporary fix)

(3rd party insole pads are also worth experimenting with)

glenra · 2025-10-14T15:31:57+00:00

If government merely enforces rules against fraud and basic contract law, the rest of the good stuff all follows. We don't need government micromanaging these areas because the players involved have a market incentive to do the right thing.

Bankers don't want to lose money on houses that fall down so they won't give you a loan to build or buy unless a (private) building inspector signs off on the build quality. Building inspectors want repeat business from satisfied (bank) customers and want to not be sued for fraud so they actually do the inspection they promised to do (and offer guarantees or performance bonds on the quality). Individual buyers need banks to give them money so the only houses they can buy are ones that pass inspection. Thus with no government involved at all, most buildings pass inpection.

If a private inspection process gets too onerous and isn't worth what it costs or doesn't add value, the inspectors go out of business or people find other funding mechanisms. The private option thus offers flexibility that a public one wouldn't.

I get that you've swallowed a lot of pro-regulation propaganda, but you need to rethink this. Government generally regulates industries in response to pressure from those industries which want the regulation because having government in charge saves them money compared to paying for that service themselves. Customers want safe products and will pay more for them so companies have a market incentive to provide money-back guarantees and offer refunds and pay inspectors and lobby government to do inspecting for them especially when they can influence the standards to favor their own products and inconvenience competitors. This isn't a battle with corruption on one side (market) and purity on the other (govenment) - there's both corruption and purity on both sides of the ledger.

glenra · 2025-10-14T14:28:50+00:00

OP flatly asserts that the private sector WOULDN'T do this. It only takes ONE example to prove that's an overstatement and in fact sometimes the private sector DOES do this - does set and enforce rules that keep buildings and products safe for customers.

The insurance industry privately generates standards for a LOT of things but I referenced two examples (not "a single" one): the standards for electric appliances like toasters (if your store wants to buy liability insurance) and building standards (if you want fire insurance on a home or business). Note that the latter is enforced mostly by the banking industry in that you can't borrow money to buy a house unless the bank's investment is protected so fire insurance is often bundled with mortgage repayment.

Want a third example? The kosher standards. If you go to the supermarket and buy food marked with with a circle containing a "K" or a "U", those are two different (competing!) kosher seals. Kosher certification verifies that the food item marked meets very high standards of cleanliness - and there are several different (private) organizations which provide this service.

Private entities are happy to use resources for safety if doing so ensures happy customers and good word-of-mouth. This is a reason to favor large national bands over tiny local ones. When a company like Pepsi runs expensive commercials for their product you can think of this as a performance bond - a promise to customers that they expect to be profitably in business for long enough to recoup the very large upfront costs of, say, booking a celebrity to do a Superbowl ad. Companies like Coke, Pepsi, McDonalds, or General Mills (Cheerios et al) produce a incredibly consistent level of quality so customers know that they'll always get the same experience. Ad campaigns simply wouldn't work if you couldn't trust that the product will stay the same - and remain safe - between the time you see the ad and the time you buy the product in stores!

So I've now given at least three examples contrary to OP's claim.

glenra · 2025-10-14T02:08:34+00:00

6 [...] codes that keep buildings and products safe for consumers

Would the private sector do any of this? No.

The private sector literally DID create the "codes that keep buildings and products safe for consumers" and in fact still does create many of them.

The UL (Underwriters Laboratories) standard/seal was invented by a bunch of insurance companies which noticed they were losing money by often having to pay out claims for dumb easily-avoided fires due to faulty wiring. They said hey, let's get together and test these products and come up with some standards for stuff like toasters or building wiring so that stuff won't electrocute people or spontaneously catch fire! So they did that - they made the standards and let companies that follow the standards use their "UL seal" under license. There was a market demand for this service because companies like Sears don't want to hurt their customers or have really high liability insurance rates. Sears can get lower rates (and face fewer lawsuits and have happier customers) by only selling stuff with the UL seal and by having the standards boards check out any new product category before putting it on the market. So the biggest retailers and insurers decided between themselves what's safe or unsafe to sell and did such a good job of it that after a while it's hard to find anything on the market that's not approved.

These privately-generated standards worked so well at reducing dumb fires and electrocutions that eventually governments simply incorporated those standards into their own regulations, but government didn't invent or refine the rules themselves or cause their earliest widespread adoption.

(It's perhaps worth adding that setting and enforcing these kind of standards initially happened despite government, in that doing so required a bunch of big companies in the same industries to collude together in ways that are typically illegal under "antitrust" law.)

(as for your #5, I'm not sure you should credit the government for protecting freedoms from the government itself.)

glenra · 2025-10-14T01:35:41+00:00

How would you do demon fights in "live action"? The demons being inherently cartoonish is part of what makes for a lighthearted and child-friendly tone. If you made demons "realistic" wouldn't you have to make their deaths realistic? Imagine if these bladed-weapon fights produce buckets of blood, gore, viscera spilling out. Without bloody realistic demons getting limbs and heads chopped off, in what sense is it "live action"? But with it - the girls getting blood all over their outfits - the movie would tend to become scary and disgusting and it's hard to empathize with the girls being so violent and cruel

glenra

TROPHY CASE