Writes Rex Parker, about today's NYT crossword, about what was the last word I got. Maybe you haven't done the puzzle yet, so I'm putting a page break before the spoilers, but what follows is of interest even if you don't do the puzzle:
My... struggle came with WAYMO (40A: Self-driving car company that started as a Google project), which I hated not because I didn't know it, but because ugh, cars, self-driving cars, Google ... it's a dystopic tech bro nightmare. Build efficient public transportation! It's doable! And it's so much better than this apocalyptic vision of hyper-individualism they're trying to sell you. "Oooh, robot cars." Bah. Pffffft. WAYMO, because you'll get "way mo'" pedestrian deaths and way less human accountability for those deaths. Google will not be satisfied until you have Google Brain Implants. At some point you have to stop worshiping your tech overlords, who hate people except insofar as they can be hooked up to machines (literally or figuratively) and drained of their resources and volition. Gonna stop before I write a manifesto and Google tells the feds on me.
Google Brain Implants! I was just talking about head implants. Ugh!
Unlike Rex, I don't remember ever hearing about Waymo. The word never appears in the archive of my blog. How's Waymo doing? I wondered. So, of course, I googled, googling about Google, as one so often does.
There's this from last Thursday: "Waymo Lays Off a Number of Employees As Autonomous Tech Hits Roadblock" (Jalopnik).
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He should define efficient. Sounds ambiguous.
Build efficient public transportation! It's doable!
Not without dense housing and jobs in big buildings jammed together downtown -- a design that has been shown to be unpopular.
Or perhaps we can have both dense urban areas with public transportation and spread out ex-urban and rural areas from which people can commute in autonomous vehicles, enabling people to choose what they prefer. Different strokes for different folks. Except why does it so often seem as though folks like Rex want only their preference catered, to the exclusion of other's, as though the availability of alternatives will leave them the freedom to choose wrong?
As a creator of word puzzles for my local newspaper, I can say with great assurance that it's not easy making the clues too easy or too hard. If people come to the puzzle with WAYMO in their knowledge base, it makes them happy and feel smart. If they don't, "Why the f did you put that word in there, you dumbasses?"
So you attempt to help out with cross-clues, subtle hints, whatever. The problem is, we all come with a different knowledge base that has nothing to do with whether we're smart or not. Cooks know cooking stuff, geeks know geek stuff, theo-bros know theology stuff. The common core of knowledge that we all come with is fairly small and pretty boring, tbh.
To conclude: puzzle-creation is an art and a science. And some people solve puzzles to feel like they're smart. And that's a pity.
"There’s a black Mercedes rollin’ through the combat zone
Your servants are half dead, you’re down to the bone
Tell me, tall men, where would you like to be overthrown
Maybe down in Jerusalem or Argentina?"
They want you traveling collectively because that makes you easier to control.
Yes to Reddington at 10:36. More individual choice regarding how to live: good. More experts and bureaucrats encouraging, then "nudging," then telling, then forcing people to live the way the former prefer: bad.
But what if people don't want autonomous or electric powered vehicles? Fine; if such things really are superior people will want them without subsidies or coercion. All of us are smarter than any of us.
I get the impression that the real end game is no personal transportation, just public mass transit, so as to control movements of the proletariat. If there's another pandemic, public transit is a bad idea, but, you know. Omelets, eggs...
Public transportation is sexist.
Just be grateful that you don’t have to look at the world through Michael Sharp’s eyes and think about things using his brain.
"Public transportation is sexist." I believe Japan and India and maybe more countries have female-only carriages on some public transportation. Of course that would not work in a US identity as a female is subjective.
Was hoping the missing word was 'garner' to be honest.
What we need is more remote learning for the kids. Then as adults they will be comfortable working remotely and they won’t need all that energy for commuting.
Commuting costs to much. Working remotely is the way to go.
It is very well-known if you have any association with tech.
I signed up for the service, self-driving cars like Uber, but haven't heard back.
I think they're looking for people who would use it more often so they can get feedback before opening it to a wider base...
"Public transportation is sexist."
I thought you didn't do sarcasm.
'Public transportation is sexist.'
Have Ferrari build the trains and busses.
Then it would be sexy...
Well, I would have gotten that answer instantly.
Parker's reaction to automated driving is fascinating, though. If self-driving ever actually is possible and becomes widely commercially available, it will lead to a vast reduction in pedestrian and motorists deaths pretty rapidly given the vastly better response times possible. However, I am a bit doubtful we will see full self-driving in my life time. It is a very difficult problem to solve at a 99.999%+ level.
so, there's a thousand people, that want to go to a thousand different places..
HOW do you build efficient public transportation for them?
step1: Require them ALL to go to the same places
step2: EXECUTE Any (and ALL) that refuse to go there
step3: repeat as necessary
efficient public transportation is Easy! and Simple! Just ask a farmer; they use them for their hogs
Poor old Rex. This isn't the first time he's been forced to encounter a clue and a word that offends his lefty prejudices. Public transportation over cars for now, maybe communal dining halls over family dinners tomorrow. From each according to their abilities, etc.
"Build efficient public transportation! It's doable!"
It is all in Orwell's 1984. “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
No need to know (or care) what Rex thinks.
Ann Althouse said...
"Public transportation is sexist."
I'll hazard a guess that because women (however they may be defined) are more at risk than men (however they may be defined) on buses, commuter trains, etc. It could be argued that individual transportation is patriarchal, but I think that concept would be easily rebuttable. If I missed your point, i beg your indulgence.
Public transportation is racist. It limits opportunities to achieve equity through carjacking.
It denies hardworking folks who aren't afraid to get their hands dirty the opportunity to remove and sell catalytic converters.
America needs to take its boot off the necks of young people who want to improve their skills and get ahead.
Isn't this guy the piece of shit who created the swastika crossword on Yom Kippur?
Sexist partly because of safety, but also childcare and family errands.
Public transport assumes you're just going by yourself to work and back, as in a traditional nuclear family. If you have kids to drop off at day care, how is a train or bus going to work? And if you have to pick up groceries on the way home, plus manage children — how do you do that without a car?
Yes, a man might have those responsibilities, but there's a disparate impact, because women are more likely to have them.
I'm concerned with anyone that has responsibilities for a household with children, and these are the citizens who most deserve attention when policies are made.
Just like fusion power, autonomous cars will be 10 years in the future, forever.
Public transportation here in Seattle is so very healthy. Vagrants use the buses as a rolling home. They'll smoke their drugs on the bus. The rest of the riders, and especially the drivers, get a free high from the vapors. If you're really lucky, you'll pickup some bedbugs.
Sound Transit and Metro are not enforcing fare enforcement, so the taxpayer has to fill in the deficit.
Ridership is down.
The same applies to Portland OR's Tri-met system.
For those of us who do the Saturday NYT puzzle, would the Professor share her time for today, or if not her Parker rating? Previous times have been very impressive.
Quick google map search shows 28 minutes from here to there by car. 92 minutes by public transportation.
Plus, you gotta walk to and from bus stop.
Example 10 thousand that everything is bad. No hint of a better way…just a suggestion that surrendering our power to chose to the critical theorist must be better. It must be. Our Dictatorship will order it done.
Move within walking distance of where you need to get to...
And if you have to pick up groceries on the way home, plus manage children — how do you do that without a car?
..strong forearms and one of those French shopping carts. Thats the way the Chinese women with EBT cars do it on Boston, anyways...
Maybe that's beneath 70s feminists...
"Build efficient public transportation!"
He wants us to use public transportation so the roads will be clear for him and his class to use without interference or inconvenience. Like the people who fly their private jets to Davos and try to convince us to avoid use of fossil fuels, and the politicians who have armed guards provided by taxpayers who demand that we give up our personal weapons.
There's a word for that also. Almost rhymes with "democracy."
Shorter Parker: Old man yelling at cloud. Film at eleven.
Upon first reading this post, I was unsure whether it might be parody.
Ann Althouse said...
"Sexist partly because of safety, but also childcare and family errands".
"Public transport assumes you're just going by yourself to work and back, as in a traditional nuclear family."
>>>> Who "assumes" that, besides you? What if you're a young single person with no kids? What if you're a kid who rides the subway to and from school? (my wife did that as a high school and Juilliard student in NYC.).
>>>>Can you explain why leftists are pushing "sexist" policies? Isn't sexism something only conservatives do?
"If you have kids to drop off at day care, how is a train or bus going to work?"
>>>> Why do you assume only women drop off their kids at day care? Why the sexism on YOUR part?
>>>>>Why do you assume the day care isn't local? Why the assuption that families with kids have no car for local driving? Where I live there are at least three day care facilities within walking distance in our neighborhood.
"And if you have to pick up groceries on the way home, plus manage children — how do you do that without a car?
>>>>>People already living in big cities without a car have managed how to do that. Why assume that suburban people can't figure it out?
>>>>There are two supermarkets within a half mile in our neighborhood. Uber once a week? Use Doordash?
>>>> Where did you get the idea that the husbands of the 1950's are the same as today? Does Meade do any shopping? Does he cook?
"Yes, a man might have those responsibilities, but there's a disparate impact, because women are more likely to have them."
>>>>So "disparate impact" is now "SEXISM"? SNORT. Now there's top-class legal reasoning for you!!!!
"I'm concerned with anyone that has responsibilities for a household with children, and these are the citizens who most deserve attention when policies are made."
>>>Your "tilt of concern" is duly noted. But the implicit claim that all this woe is inflicted only on women is pure bullshit.
>>>>This is the most insipid comment you've ever made.
>>>>American instincts to resist Leftists attempting to corral millions of people into squalid urban hellholes reflect a rational choice, and lack of physical safety is only one reason why.
>>>> Ditto the Left's attempts to force people to abandon their cars for public transportation.
Yet every single day we read of murder and mayhem on the subways in our major cities. ALL passengers, of all sexes, of all ethnicities and marital status, are running the gauntlet. every day.
Comparing these realities to an abstract claim of "sexism" is fucking ridiculous.
Try harder, Althouse.
Someone here should take a pill.
Thanks, Arthur
Progressives believe that the public should structure its behavior in such a way as to suit the government's plans. Conservatives believe that government should structure its plans in such a way as to suit the public's desired behavior.
Besides, Progressives don't believe proles should have children anyway, so public transport should work fine for them. You can be sure they are not giving up their own cars.
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