Queensland, Australia introduced state-wide $0.50 public transit fares a year ago, and it’s been a raging success. Conveniently, this also eliminates the entire problem class of needing to calculate fares. Mind you, for those unfamiliar, QLD is a state 2.5x larger than Texas, 5x larger than all of Japan, 7x larger than Great Britain, and is bigger than all but 16 countries.
I guess size is a factor but also population density, does QLD have way less people per sq.m and does that make it easier to implement stuff like this?
QLD population density is something like 2000x lower than that of Tokyo…
Our public transport systems are so bad.
The Brisbane airport rail connection runs about half as many train services as the Perth airport, which seems about half the amount of travellers each year as Brisbane airport. It’s crazy, double the fare burden, half the patronage, and stuck in a monopoly contract until 2036.
Don’t even get me started on the stupid busways, gimped light rails, the new “metro” and the endless amount poured into the motorways that they have been widening one lane at a time for 3 decades…
Really? It’s always felt to me like it was app availability — for all the efforts, the app marketplace was a fraction of a fraction of the competitions’, and much like the network effects in social media, if you can’t catch up quickly, it can be almost impossible to ever do so. Haemorrhaging billions per quarter takes a strong stomach and a long vision, one that’s likely to put any executive’s tenure at risk. Nevertheless, it interesting to think what things might’ve looked like had Microsoft persisted another decade.
I’ve found this problem to be compounded by the use of stimulant medications — no matter how aware of the phenomenon one is going into a task, it can feel nigh impossible sometimes to avoid locking into whatever path I’m on as the drugs kick in. This seems true not only of the task itself but also of the individual decisions that can constitute it. I don’t think this is surprising or novel, to be sure, but frustratingly predictable.
What a harrowing account. Incredibly moving, and evocative of many thoughts I’d long since forgotten, having grown up alongside multiple children with cerebral palsy, early enough to not think anything out of the ordinary of it at the time. Wow.
Seconding the sentiment, this was a brilliant read that gave me a newfound appreciation for the art of cartography, but also for giving oneself over to a pursuit fully. Truly excellent.
I read the entire essay. It comes across wholly uninspired. Some thoughts:
> But do the apologists even believe it themselves? Latham, the professor of strategy, gives away the game at the end of his reverie. “None of this can happen, though,” he writes, “if professors and administrators continue to have their heads in the sand.” So it’s not inevitable after all? Whoops.
This self-assured ‘gotcha’ attitude is pungent throughout the whole piece, but this may be as good an example as any. It’s ridden with cherry-picked choices and quotes from singular actors as if they’re representative of every educator, every decision maker, and it’s such a bad look from someone that clearly knows better. I don’t expect the author to take the most charitable position, but one of intellectual honesty would be nice. To pretend there isn’t, or perhaps ignore, those out there applying technological advancement, including current AI, in education in thoughtful, meaningful, and beneficial even if challenging to quantify ways, is obtuse. To decide there isn’t the possibility
of those things being true, given their exclusion, is to do the same head-burying he ridicules others for.
…
> After I got her feedback, I finally asked ChatGPT if generative AI could be considered a gimmick in Ngai’s sense. I did not read its answer carefully. Whenever I see the words cascade down my computer screen, I get a sinking feeling. Do I really have to read this? I know I am unlikely to find anything truly interesting or surprising, and the ease with which the words appear really does cheapen them.
It may have well been the author’s point, but the disdain for the technology that drips from sentences like these, which are rife throughout, taints any appreciation for the argument they’re trying to make — and I’m really trying to take it in good faith. Knowing they come in with such strongly held preconceived notions makes me reflexively question their own introspection before putting pen to paper.
Ultimately, are you writing to convince me, or yourself, of your point?
> Knowing they come in with such strongly held preconceived notions makes me reflexively question their own introspection before putting pen to paper.
>Ultimately, are you writing to convince me, or yourself, of your point?
I like that you point out here that the author clearly has a strong opinion, and then immediately say that the act of expressing that opinion may suggest that they do not hold that opinion at all.
By this logic, are you trying to convince us that you don’t love the way this article is written, or are you trying to convince yourself of that?
Rather, what I hoped to articulate was a sense that being able to viscerally feel that an author holds a very obvious position from the outset of an article, and then not seeing them make even the faintest attempt to proactively argue their point against the most obvious—the easiest—criticisms, comes across lazy.
I expect arguing in good faith, and this wasn’t that.
Good faith argument has at no point in history required supporting an opposite proposition. “Taking a position and arguing it” is literally what an argument is. That is what the endeavor entails.
Anything else is just aesthetics and personal preference
Agree, that is not required. It is an Essay after all.
That said, I disagree with the idea that it’s merely about aesthetics.(Hegel’s dialectic, for example, isn’t just a stylistic choice — its structure actively shapes meaning and allows for a better synthesis.)
I don't think the author wants to engage and have meaningful conversations, his position is clear.
A meaningful conversation - at least how i see it -, involves acknowledging both the pros and cons of any position. Even if you believe the pros outweigh the cons — which is a subjective judgment — you should still be able to clearly enumerate the cons. That’s is an analytical approach.
So, to recap, your gripe, with my gripe, is that I hold the author to aesthetic standards that differ from your own—and that that’s… wrong? Do I have that right?
I ask genuinely. I want to understand your position better here.
I think it’s silly to confuse aesthetic preference with the difference between good and bad faith argumentation. Like if you insist that someone painstakingly take the time and effort to convince you that they don’t have an opinion on a topic while trying to convey their opinion about a topic, that’s so absurd that it itself borders on a bad faith request.
Also my original gripe was very clear. “Are you trying to convince yourself?” indicates that the author didn’t believe what they wrote. And your reasoning here for mentioning that is that they wrote it. It is a no-win scenario in which another person literally couldn’t hold an opinion that doesn’t conform to your aesthetic. That is insane!
It’s incredible how quickly Apple changed course on this after being told to have the person responsible front court next week to explain in person why they feel they can defy Gonzalez Rogers’ orders. It should be said, there’s a lot of nuance here, as reinstating Fortnite on the App Store after being banned for their ToS violation is not the same case as the one at hand. However, it seems the internal calculus at Apple has shifted dramatically, and there’s genuine fear of the company and the executives being held accountable in a meaningful way, never mind the court of public opinion. They’ve really pissed off the court through their actions, and it’s not going well for them so far, at all.
I think the reading people missed is that Epic won the original case, but YGR was hesitant to "set prices" or outright prohibit "charging for access to the platform", but expected Apple to allow competition. They very poorly misread a softball judgment as "we can still charge everyone 30% as long as people have choices how we do so", and that was an extremely wrong interpretation. Instead of creating an environment where Apple could compete with other providers and still make some reasonable cut, now Apple gets to demand 0%.
Epic threw everything in the case, but they really only needed to win on any one count to win the case.
It's hard to say Epic really won when they lost so many of their arguments. This case could have ended in Apple being required to allow third party stores like they do in the EU, and that would have been much better for Epic and for consumers.
I'm glad the judge is willing to enforce her judgement though. When it first came out it wasn't clear whether enforcement would be meaningful.
It's really hard to bring a case against one of the most powerful and valuable companies on the planet. The strategy here was obviously to throw every possible complaint out, knowing that not all of them will work. You don't go to court expecting a full sweep, you expect to land a hit. Bringing ten claims is giving them ten chances to win. Which Epic did, and ultimately, the downstream effects of this will end up upending the mobile app economy entirely.
I think the outcome here was inevitable, but I'm certainly annoyed how long it takes. Epic has lucked out in the fact that Apple very unwisely angered the judge, which is a really, really bad idea. It's common for nothing to actually change until all of the appeals are exhausted, and this case probably has another five years of appeals and motions and stuff ahead of it. (Google v. Oracle, another huge big tech case, took 11 years!) But YGR is clearly so irritated at Apple's bull---- she decided to make things effective immediately.
Apple's game of course, is about protecting the 30% cut at all cost. Once it is dead and buried and the appeals are over, I suspect Apple will look to globally unify it's rules again, so you'll probably see things pioneered in the EU, like third party stores, and things pioneered in the US, like anti-steering rules, eventually get applied globally once they start having to compete fairly on IAP costs.
> it seems the internal calculus at Apple has shifted dramatically, and there’s genuine fear of the company and the executives being held accountable in a meaningful way
Indeed the judge already referred one Apple VP to the prosecutor for investigation of perjury. I'm guessing none of the other VPs want to step foot in that court.
Still, Apple has an appeal pending, so they could still ultimately overturn the judge's decisions.
