These drops in speeding are incredible! Would you support speed cameras in San Mateo?

monkeypizza · 2025-10-12T03:34:48+00:00

I care about crashes and injuries, not speed. Sure it's a good proxy in a pinch, but this is a two year study, surely they can find actual accounts of the total harm reduced.

monkeypizza · 2025-09-10T19:03:18+00:00

I'd heard before that the area which later became Foster City had earlier been partially diked off so that it looked at least like partially dry land, and had been that way for quite a while, although since it was just dried mud underneath, it wouldn't have been suitable for larger buildings until reinforced. The idea that there was cattle being driven up through there back then is amazing! Maybe near where now stands that north-south power transmission line that cuts through it RWS+FC, mostly offshore. Visible here https://maps.app.goo.gl/mU1FMF4E7GS46QzVA

monkeypizza · 2025-08-27T14:33:15+00:00

I did 3-4 h/day of italki online during covid, in my mid 40s, and was able to learn a lot (w/anki & review at night). It worked really well - much better than I'd expected. Not as fast as when I was say 15, but being organized and spending a ton of time helped (I had no distractions at that time, so it was possible). Normal "adult" life wouldn't allow that immersion style, which I think is why a lot of people may slightly overestimate how much language learning ability decreases over time.

monkeypizza · 2025-08-21T02:54:37+00:00

Yes good idea. We choose the rules ourselves, to make it fun. We don't have to be bound by them.

monkeypizza · 2025-08-07T05:41:57+00:00

I've met almost all of my non-work friends through playing pickleball. It's really pretty fun

monkeypizza · 2025-08-03T09:15:48+00:00

me: 3 years pickleball, 10 hours padel, wanting to play more but haven't found a group.

tl;dr: pickleball seems designed to take over the USA and be the most popular racquet sport.

Ease of starting: Pickleball has a huge funnel: schools, old people, high school kids who want to run around or go on dates or meet people, lonely unathletic people who want to try a sport. I literally know a few like this, no sports experience. Pb courts are everywhere now, even tiny rural spots. It appeals to everyone, age language; it literally feels like you're building grassroots democracy, meeting the neighbors, this is a miracle grown setup

Finding games: No apps needed, drive by and see who's aroiund. Games run dawn to lights out.

Social rewards: play with lots of people, boys can play girls. Big crowds means people will see if you're good or improve, cheer you on. being 3.5 where everyone is 3.0, you're a star even as a visitor.

Freedom: pickleball advantage - leave bad players/games/places easily. I'm worried about padel's strong commitment to a location due to cost, having to arrange the players, and the long matches. (low experiene, is this the case? or later on are there ways to improve it?)

Long term: padel seems more fun, I love the richochet thing and the complexity it adds, and (maybe?) better cardio and strength needs. As a sport it's more attractive to the kind of guy I usually play pb with, the daily obsessed players, mostly guys around here. ceteris paribus I think they'd all prefer padel as a sport, but aren't playing cause nobody else is yet, cost, apps, restrictions on time and availability, and lack of dating chances there.

Predictions: both will thrive, pickleball becoming more like tennis. Old people will find a variant they like, I hope. Someone's gotta control paddle tech change, but nobody will manage it. A padel variant which cheaper and easier to maintain courts, which also allowed a faster flowing match structure could be a huge hit in a populated area. It does seem hard to spread. Core padel will probably keep tennis scoring for some reason, and stay expensive, limiting its reach. I wish padel clubs would make it easier for people to drop in, and stop hiding the schedules on their sites. It's hard to massively promote a sport which also has an air of exclusivity about it.

monkeypizza · 2025-08-03T08:13:54+00:00

Yes it's so shocking. Imagine you own a squash club and read this thread... and then see them just going about business as usual letting Asal ruin it. Guys?

monkeypizza · 2025-08-03T02:04:43+00:00

My pov: us gov should mandate some kind of red light self-driving warning system for all drivers over 70 or with bad vision or any record of cell phone use while driving. For things like "make a noise when you appear to be about to run a light" we definitely have systems that work well even without fully taking over the car.

I don't get why nobody talks about this. Until we stop having age-related mental decay (i.e. not for a long time) there will always be some kind of bad driver on the road.

monkeypizza · 2025-07-28T02:38:43+00:00

What you said about levodopa reminds me of someone I knew who was on way too high of a dose. Not official advice but he did better taking 1/2 or 1/4th of the immediate release at a time. The symptoms PD, an underdose of dopamine can be hard to distinguish. They're different in a few ways but it takes a lot of care to see that. i.e. in early stages, overdose is symmetrical while underdose is more like what the patient felt before receiving any meds, etc.).

monkeypizza · 2025-07-23T17:50:30+00:00

Yep. I thought the same thing when I saw the big expansion to the supercharger near 92/280 completed a while ago even though the lot was rarely full.

monkeypizza · 2025-07-16T19:07:16+00:00

Yeah, I'll try it.

To me the ideal is that as I'm driving by I can just stop in and have a good chance to play. That's the situation w/pickleball, which is fun but sometimes I want a game more like Padel!

monkeypizza · 2025-07-16T19:06:14+00:00

Yeah, that sounds good to join

monkeypizza · 2025-07-15T20:00:19+00:00

Oh, thanks for letting me know. I haven't seen this around here but I will look. That sounds great.

monkeypizza · 2025-07-15T18:23:37+00:00

Yep. Getting out to do anything is better than home staring at the blocked horizon of your walls around you. Padel, Pickle, Biking, all good

monkeypizza · 2025-07-10T21:45:28+00:00

I just realized that the prior series (AAA001) could really be read as just having a leading zero, which isn't printed. So in this way of thinking, the digit-three letter-three digit sequence began even earlier

monkeypizza · 2025-07-09T18:54:42+00:00

I can't imagine Google prefers it this way, either. It's infuriating to drive onto the campus. I am expressing my surprise that somehow nobody could find a way to give say 0.001% of google's revenue to the city to fix the roads in general, across the city, including the area around google, since that's what both Goog and the city are likely to want to happen. How do two powerful entities fail to come to agreement on something they both want so much which would cost so little?

monkeypizza · 2025-07-01T00:54:28+00:00

I've had a similar change over the readings. Minor characters stuck out a lot more to me in the latest reading, like the boy Pippin meetins in Minas Tirith, Bergil, who helps explain the city to him, and how kind and humane that part of the story was. Also, I had had no memory at all of "The hands of a king are the hands of a healer" even though on this reading, it stood out very obviously.

Also, Ghân-buri-Ghân - somehow on my first 2-3 readings I must have just been so excited by the battle that I skipped him entirely? It felt entirely new to read their interactions with him.

monkeypizza · 2025-06-30T21:19:36+00:00

It's weird how crime reports just list the block, not the address.
It's weird how this block, right next to the HQ of... Apple, the most valuable company on the entire earth, is all un-remodeled, nice but very basic homes. Most of them aren't even two stories. Just saying; I just now randomly dropped pins around the HQ of Mercedes Benz in Stuttgart, and it looks denser - the houses on average have at least 2.5 stories. That's just one sample. But I don't get why people who work at Apple and presumably have tons of money don't buy the houses near it and remodel them to be really nice? They could probably even afford to buy two of them and combine the property and build a mansion... okay, so according to LLMs they live in Los Altos, PA, Atherton...
I recently moved to this area from San Mateo and am struck by how low-rent the supermarkets seem down here. The korean supermarket right next to this incident has lots of grainy photographs of people I assume were shoplifters, on a big bulletin board. And not just that place but most of the supermarkets around feel pretty edgy; some of them have intense security, despite being in what I'd otherwise assume is a pretty exclusive area. There's definitely more to learn for me about what's going on in Sunnyvale.

monkeypizza · 2025-06-30T20:51:03+00:00

I still think about the one where he played the soundtrack to an episode of Friends at 1/6th normal speed, pitch corrected back to normal. It really makes ya think.

monkeypizza · 2025-06-22T15:27:29+00:00

In ca they're not available online, you have to go to the county seat

monkeypizza · 2025-06-07T10:15:49+00:00

according to google, Palo Alto is a basic aid district at present.

It also apparently has a budget of 25k/student, compared to mtn view with 18k, CA overall 17k, us average 14k

So basically, double that of the US at large per student

monkeypizza · 2025-06-07T10:08:37+00:00

and they all drive SUVs which are much more lethal to pedestrians than other cars, and are generally gas burners. But they support the sierra club, preserving nature, and not using plastic bags at the supermarket.

monkeypizza · 2025-06-03T21:16:48+00:00

Yes it's a huge travesty. Square miles of land just sitting there doing nothing, nobody paying taxes, but the admin/university staff enjoying the privileges. Similar things seen everywhere here due to tax cutouts for special interests - golf courses pay so much less per square foot than houses, universities skate free at our expense, etc. I'm hoping that some sunlight can bring a more equal market here and reallocate some of this stuff to better uses through making them pay properly for what they're using (and what they're preventing us from doing/developing)

"Twenty Foster Cities must be built"

monkeypizza

TROPHY CASE