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Columbia is over 40 blocks north of the congestion zone. You’d be able to do the exact same thing today.

> Remember kids: congestion pricing is nothing but a tariff on transportation.

On driving. And it actually makes driving more appealing, there’s much less traffic so you can get where you’re going much quicker.

> Instead of making public transport more appealing through competition

Like having multiple subway systems? NYC did that already.


This is also quantitatively correct because for two people coming in from afar you might change two trains or a bus and train and each ticket is at least 3.00$(bus/path from NJ) which is 24$ minimum both ways, with more than two it would make even more sense to take the car.

Congestion pricing brings in a toll above the 16$ you pay throu the tunnel. I think it's 18, So 34$ total?

So you are incentivized to get more than 2 people by car. Less traffic.


It makes driving more appealing if one discounts the best alternative use of the funds, which humans are irrationally likely to do. That driving seems better is because people suck at thinking about what else they might do with the money given compound returns on its investment.

The run up to their implementation was so deeply frustrating. The sheer number of disingenuous objections. And they’ve all been proven false.

People are seemingly okay with rationing services by time, but adamantly opposed to rationing by price. You see this everywhere throughout society.

But obviously the latter is better. It offers more flexibility for consumers and more transmission of demand signals.


> People are seemingly okay with rationing services by time, but adamantly opposed to rationing by price

Maybe that has to do with the fact that lifetime is somewhat (!) equally distributed, while wealth isn't


But you can make more money, but you can't make more time.

> sheer number of disingenuous objections

This is unfair. Nobody wants to pay more for anything. And many of the objections resulted in policy adjustments that made the programme better.


Which objections lead to better policy?

> Which objections lead to better policy?

The MTA "changed its flawed initial proposal to offer the [disability] exemption only to drivers or vehicles owners with state-issued disability plates" [1].

[1] https://www.nylpi.org/resource/letter-to-mta-regarding-conge...


Which objections were proven wrong?

The objection that pricing will damage local retail, in aggregate retail has thrived from pricing.

https://bettercities.substack.com/p/congestion-pricing-is-a-...


Not surprised. In general, retail works way better when shoppers are on foot.

When you have everyone in cars, it's more convenient to go to one big store and buy everything in one place, than to go to three small ones to buy three different things. Shopping malls tried to bridge this gap for suburban retail, but the ultimate rules exploit was Wal-Mart: just build a giant box with a parking lot and sell absolutely everything in it.

The problem with one-stop shopping is the same problem as centralized app stores[0]: it creates a single buyer that can dictate to the entire market the terms of the sale. There's only room for 1 or 2 big-box department stores per market. General retail is owned by Target and Wal-Mart. Electronics is owned by Best Buy. Office supplies are owned by Staples and OfficeMax. Crafts and sewing supplies are owned by Michael's[1]. Pet supplies are owned by Petco[2] and Petsmart. Construction supplies? Home Depot and Lowe's. Each one of these are businesses that were built for maximum scale - to suck up all the demand in a market, region, or country for a thing and then mete it out to whatever supplier offers the best terms.

[0] The fact that arguments for the iOS App Store monopoly are the same as arguments for car-centric suburbs should not be lost on you.

[1] RIP Jo-Ann's

[2] Fuck Petco, all my homies hate Petco. Adopt, don't shop.


Retail where? Inside the congestion zone? What about outside it?

I don't know, but specifically many people objected that the tax would hurt retail inside and they were wrong.

If you are objecting to a policy because it will make that area better and as a result, hurt businesses elsewhere, you need to rethink your choices.

I didn’t say every objection was disingenuous, just that there was an incredible number of objections that were.

I'm sure you're being honest about your intent, but a glancing read of your previous comment sounded categorical, to my ear at least, "And they've all been proven false."

It’s hard from reading what is written how it is intended. Written communication is hard since it doesn’t encapsulate tone, emphasis, and other cues. I read “all” in this case to mean: “most of the commonly espoused objections”.

All of the disingenuous objections. The intent of the OP is very clear, imo.

> Conservatives Take Aim at ‘One Battle After Another’: “Year’s Most Irresponsible Movie”

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/one-batt...

> Netflix's 93% RT Hit Show That Has the U.S. Government Furious Is a Streaming Sensation

https://collider.com/netflix-boots-streaming-success-after-g...

And that’s before we’ve even touched HBO. John Oliver is probably the most obvious example. But I’d say shows like Watchmen count too. Fahrenheit 451. Succession was pretty clearly mocking FOX News and its media ecosystem.

Art that’s critical of the government doesn’t literally have to be shouting “Trump bad”, it can be done through critique or mocking of the values it holds.


Rewatched Watchmen (show) recently and just wow. It hasn’t aged a day and is truly a masterpiece.

I remember when it hadn't come out and there were mostly images and speculation I was really concerned that Lindelof had no idea what he's doing. A friend who watches a lot more TV than me insisted when it did release that it was very good, and reluctantly I agreed to watch Episode 1, and I knew immediately he got it and I was hooked. Watchmen is about masks, what masks mean, what it means when people wear masks, and Lindelof's TV show takes this somewhere the original book didn't but still remains about masks.

I knew about Tulsa, about Black Wall Street but I didn't know there was actually a plane. I was like, "That's surely creative license" when I saw it. But nope, the racists actually had a fucking plane.


I am so embarrassed to admit I didn’t know about Black Wall Street or the Tulsa massacre. And when I learned about it I was shocked I didn’t know about it.

And you’re absolutely right, it’s all about masks and he gets it.


Nuremberg

Microsoft’s best pitch (and Google benefits from this too) is that contracts are annoying and take forever to execute. If you can sign a deal for Outlook and Teams it’s so much easier than separate contracts for Outlook and Slack. You’ll get very far with that logic alone.

Most companies I’ve been at that use Teams over Slack is not “We can’t get contract for Slack” but “We have Teams included, why would we pay for Slack?” - Accountant

I guess Microsoft lost this battle, at least at some companies, because I'm now at one that uses Slack and Google, with no dependency on Microsoft Office.

Microsoft won this battle if you check the numbers. Last I saw it was 85% Microsoft vs 15% Google which seems right with my experience. Current company is Google Worksapce while last 3 were Office365.

Teams was clearly never meant to be used as a standalone product. It was a pretty effective defense play. Block other competitors from gaining a foothold.

Thats the whole point. The only people using Teams are the ones who are already committed to Microsoft 365. Companies on GSuite mostly use Slack, I doubt there is a single one using Teams.

I'm curious how often tactics like this work. It is essentially asking the Warner stockholders to act against the wishes of their elected board.

It seems the main thrust of the pitch is "we're friends with Trump therefore more likely to win approval" which is so deeply gross but also probably persuasive to many. Jared Kushner is involved in the Paramount bid so you know they're greasing the right wheels.


Their case for approval is much stronger than Netflix's regardless of who is president.

Netflix is the largest streaming service in the country right now. It is 4x larger than Paramount+ in terms of total subscribers. Netflix acquiring Warner Brothers is naturally going to receive more scrutiny for this reason alone.


Sure, but Netflix is the non-nepotism and non-cronyism option. I'll take that over the corruption we are witnessing right before our eyes with free markets disappearing.

> curious how often tactics like this work

Hostile takeovers hit their zenith "in the 1980s" [1], when about 50% of attempts succeeded [2].

Since then, Delaware courts have become more Board friendly (specifically, friendly to takeover defences), antitrust made "it more difficult for companies with large market shares to acquire competitors without some level of cooperation from the target company," and stocks became more expensive [1]. (I'm struggling to find recent literature on frequencies.)

Compared to the 1980s and pre-Covid hostile takeover zenith, stocks remain expensive. But money is chaper, particularly for the politically connected. Antitrust is a wild card. And Warner has reduced takeover defences given it's already in the market for a sale (Revlon duties).

So...somewhere below 50%?

[1] https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2020/11/08/the-comeback-of-h...

[2] https://faculty.fiu.edu/~daiglerr/pdf/hostile_takeovers.pdf


>> We are offering shareholders $17.6 billion more cash than the deal they currently have signed up with Netflix

> It seems the main thrust of the pitch is "we're friends with Trump therefore more likely to win approval"

It seems to me that the main thrust of the pitch is more money.


Sure, if you think that the portion that would be spun off and stay public under Netflix's deal would have a stock value of like $2.

"Jared Kushner is part of Paramount's hostile bid for Warner Bros. Discovery" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46195014

And probably also right.

No matter how you might view the topic I hope we can all agree that this is vacuous nonsense:

> “We are not doing a traditional report this year as we’ve evolved beyond that to formats that are more dynamic and accessible — stories, videos, and insights that show inclusion in action,”

Oh, you wanted hard numbers? What about a TikTok video instead?

Just be honest about this stuff. It’s insulting to the intelligences of all involved to pretend that you just coincidentally happen to be making these shifts.


The corporate slant on forcing staff back into the office is approached the same way. No numbers/data, all "vibes" -> "we want to bring the sense of connection and collaboration" blah blah .. vacuous indeed, totally omitting any shred of concrete substantiation.

Agreed-- I despise being continuously antagonized by corporate-speak.

Wouldn’t that be CSS?


no

<div class="abstract-container">

<div class="abstract">

<pre><code> abstract text ... </code></pre>

</div>

<div class="author-list">

<ol>

<li>author one</li>

<li>author two</li>

<ol>

</div>

should be just:

[abstract]

abstract text

[authors]

author one | email | affiliation

author two | email | affiliation


Sounds like XML and XSL would be a great fit here. Shame it’s being deprecated.

But you could still use HTML. Elements with a dash in are reserved for custom elements (that is, a new standardised element will never take that name) so you could do:

    <paper-author-list>
      <paper-author />
    </paper-author-list>
And it would be valid HTML. Then you’d style it with CSS, with

    paper-author {
      display: list-item;
    }
And so on.


Nothing is stopping you from using server side XSL. I personally dont think its a great fit, but people need to stop acting like xsl has been wiped from the face of the earth.


Yes but we’re specifically talking about a display format here. Something requiring a server side transform before being viewable by a user is a clear step backwards.


How so? I can't think of any advantage to having client side xsl over outputting two files, in this context.


The discussion is about the form in which you share papers. With HTML you just share the HTML file, it opens instantly on basically any device.

If you distribute the paper as XML with an XSLT transform you need to run something that’ll perform that transform before you can read the paper. No matter whether that transform happens on the server or on the client it’s still an extra complication in the flow of sharing information.


Indeed, LaTeXML (the software used by arXiv) converts LaTeX to a semantic XML document which is turned to HTML using primarily XSLT!


There is <article> <section> <figure> <legend>, but yes, <abstract> and <authors> is missing as such. But there are meta tags for such things. Then there is RDF and Thing. Not quite the same, I know, but it's not completely useless.


and you could shim these gaps with custom components, hypothetically


If you choose to classify all charity donations as "virtue signaling", yes.

If you reject that absurd false framing, no.


I suspect the same would be the case for HBO. Their back catalog is more impressive than their current output.


The Pitt, The Penguin, Hacks, White Lotus, The Rehearsal, The Last of Us, The Chair Company--all shows off the top of my head that debuted or aired a season in 2025. A few of which won several Emmys, and all of which are critically acclaimed.


Industry is highly underrated


Discovery really did a number on HBO.


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