iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

I love opening this app and sensing that discourse has occurred only by seeing the penumbra of meta-discourse, without seeing the discourse itself. (This suggests to me that I am curating my feed well.)

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Doug @doug.city · 13h

“Excuse me, do you have a ticket for those building materials?”

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Nolan Hicks @ndhapple.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

We've got a second opening to join the team designing, bidding and building the trains and buses that move millions. We're looking for someone who loves data and can mine datasets with hundreds of millions of rows and extract meaning from them. AND… 1/2 — careers.mta.org/jobs/1828831...

careers.mta.org

Associate, Rolling Stock Strategy & Analysis in New York, New York, United States

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Doug @doug.city · 28/09/2026

DB obviously has systemic issues with reliability (both ICEs I rode last week were delayed, conveniently allowing me to still make my connection…), but it does do many other things right. The website, app, and passenger info systems are top-notch and so are the ICE equipment and on-board experience.

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Doug @doug.city · 26/09/2026

I have seen more people on here making fun of New Yorkers for posting photos of the sunset than I have seen photos of the sunset.

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Doug @doug.city · 26/09/2026

If the sunset in NYC is so red why is the weather forecast bad?

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Nolan Hicks @ndhapple.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Come help us design, build and buy the trains and buses that move millions! We’re hiring for the special projects team in the rolling stock program. We’re looking for a fast and strategic thinker, problem solver and consensus builder who’ll assist w/‘hot potatoes’ — careers.mta.org/jobs/1827678...

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Ben S @bensh3.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

In addition, the Reimagining Regional Rail master plan has been released! We finally might get the S-Bahn Philadelphia deserves. Read now: wwww.septa.org/initiatives/...

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Doug @doug.city · 20/09/2026

The array of European destinations that now have nonstop flights from JFK (or EWR) has gotten really interesting…I just walked past flights to Olbia, Catania, and Malta. All catering to the “premium leisure” market no doubt.

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Marco Chitti @chittimarco.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

If you don't know how to waste your time in a productive way today, here is a 10-minute video of just drone views of the now almost complete tram in Bologna 🤤🤤🤤🚋🚋🚋 youtu.be/zcZUIwM8fUA?...

youtu.be

Cantieri tram conclusi

YouTube video by Comune di Bologna

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Jason Thorne @jasonthorne.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

A rare glimpse inside the now-abandoned Tallinna Linnahall in Tallinn, Estonia (for the architecture biennale).

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Doug @doug.city · 10/09/2026

A new thing seems to be politicians or political groups who have my email subscribing me to their Substacks. This is not pleasing to me.

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Jake Berman @lostsubways.com · 08/09/2026

In a lot of ways, the environmentalism of my parents' generation didn't ask anyone to sacrifice anything. People still drove (but it was a Prius), lived in the burbs (but with a beautiful garden), bought supermarket food (but bought organic). It was an aesthetic choice as much as anything. 🧵

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Doug @doug.city · 07/09/2026

Finally got a chance to read this good debunking of the idea that HSR is only for trips between the largest cities. This is rarely how actually existing HSR works, and often some of the biggest changes in spatial relationships created by HSR are in the way they link mid-sized cities with large ones.

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Doug @doug.city · 05/09/2026

I keep getting ads on social media for hotels that do not indicate what city or even country they are in. This confuses me, because it would be very unlikely for me to travel to a place just because there is a nice hotel there.

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Bernie Wagenblast @berniew.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

A message for my trans sisters, especially the older ones. I’m living proof it’s never too late. I transitioned at 66 and just turned 70 this week. I’m so happy I can finally be comfortable in my own skin. I’ve had more adventures in the past 3+ years than I ever could have imagined.

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Amy @plitter.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Do you use the MTA website regularly? If so, would you consider telling us what you think of it? The good, the bad, the ugly—we are seeking feedback to help prioritize improvements in the upcoming redesign. Please and thank you!!! nymta.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...

nymta.qualtrics.com

Qualtrics Survey | Qualtrics Experience Management

The most powerful, simple and trusted way to gather experience data. Start your journey to experience management and try a free account today.

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Doug @doug.city · 01/09/2026

It’s so humid in NYC today you could drown just by breathing in the air.

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Doug @doug.city · 31/08/2026

I am trying to fill out a warranty claim form from a relatively major company. Unfortunately, the relatively major company does not seem to know, in 2026, how to make a website, and I can't get the form to submit despite having all the required fields filled out.

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Doug @doug.city · 30/08/2026

Hmm, now imagining windowless 33 Thomas apartments. Live in an architectural icon in prime TriBeCa. Quiet, peaceful apartments secluded from the hustle and bustle. Note: Must obtain a security clearance from the NSA.

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Marco Chitti @chittimarco.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Something reminded me that a few months ago I prepared a few graphics about the problem of "feeder" suburban bus service for a medium-sized city tram network (e.g., Zurich, Strasbourg, or Bologna), so I'm going to share and discuss them here (everything to procrastinate on annoying academic tasks).

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Marco Chitti @chittimarco.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

The video in this LinkedIn post is a cool visualization of daily rail traffic over a 24h period in Belgium, and at midday it's an incredibly clear visualization of a "clockface" regular-interval timetable. The analogy works even better with the French "cadencé" i.e. "rhythmic" lnkd.in/p/gwfhkVFT

lnkd.in

🚆 24 heures de trafic ferroviaire voyageurs en Belgique Comme je vois passer ce type de visualisations (ici pour l'Allemagne : https://lnkd.in/eQkgfPVA), je me suis demandé à quoi cela… | Christo...

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Aden Y @adenyacobi.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

Imperial College London and the International Bus Benchmarking Group (IBBG) released a preprint detailing bus speed declines in 15 world cities and what transit agencies are doing to reverse this.

Note that not all cities have 10 years of data and are indexed to the earliest year of data that is available. For example, DC saw a 10+% decline in bus speeds but the first year of data was during 2020 when the pandemic increased bus speeds due to less traffic on the roads.

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Peter Hartlaub @peterhartlaub.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

Wrote this one for all the transit kids. Here’s the story behind @sfmta.bsky.social’s iconic logo — and the people (including Muni and a certain Chronicle columnist) who tried to kill it. Long live the worm! 🚌🚌🚌 www.sfchronicle.com/totalsf/arti...

sfchronicle.com

This man designed Muni’s ‘worm’ logo. Critics wanted to kill it

In 1975, Walter Landor’s new Muni logo was disparaged and ignored. Fifty years later, it has become the ultimate San Francisco icon.

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Jake Anbinder @jakeanbinder.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

"what if there was no cancer" is a dream forged in the cold sober new england winters. "what if people had a robot therapist" is a dream forged in the frivolous, shiftless california sun.

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Doug @doug.city · 16/08/2026

“fascinating”: I’m not so sure about the argument. “intriguing”: I’m not convinced by the argument. “paints a vivid portrait”: The author spends a lot of time “scene-setting.” “riveting”: Written like a thriller, if those had endnotes. “gripping”: I think “riveting” is overused.

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Joe Stieb @joestieb.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

I'm trying to translate the descriptors used in book reviews/blurbs into what they really mean: "lyrical": the author thinks he's a poet. "meditative": it's boring. "a tour de force": the reviewer didn't read it. Feel free to add your own!

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Jake Anbinder @jakeanbinder.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

I'm told Sweden did create an atomic bomb, but no one liked that it required the user to assemble it

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Amy @plitter.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

I’m hiring! Again! I’ve got another content strategist role available, working on web content and our upcoming website redesign. No transportation experience required, but strong opinions about and experience in web content is. More details are in the job listing! careers.mta.org/jobs/1811790...

careers.mta.org

Website Content Strategist in New York, New York, United States

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Natalie Makhijani @nat.makhijani.us · 15/08/2026

Are filed flight plans (or just routes) available for international airspace (specifically the North Atlantic) anywhere?

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Doug @doug.city · 14/08/2026

I don’t know about this place, sometimes. I’m not concerned about it being an ideological bubble, but I do sometimes feel like it’s a bubble in the sense that people here place way, way too much import on what others here are saying, to put it mildly.

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Natalie Makhijani @nat.makhijani.us · 01/08/2026

please do not hesitate to email me pictures of hard panel control interfaces at your place of work

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Marco Chitti @chittimarco.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

Interesting debate about self-driving buses down this thread. I think the main issue with self-driving buses is not technological, but legal and operational. There are too many unanswered questions before we see them deployed effectively. Just some of them as an example in the next posts: >>

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Kurt Raschke @kurtraschke.com · 09/08/2026

this adaptation of the Rumsfeld matrix to experiences came to me in a discussion with @multipleunit.bsky.social yesterday and now you have to see it too

a 2x2 matrix with the following items:
"expected pleasant"
"unexpected pleasant"
"expected unpleasant"
"unexpected unpleasant"

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Mike @mikeyashworth.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

A lesser known British Railways publication - the Hancock Report of 1963. A PR campaign using one of Britain's then best known comedians to help explain the rationale of the Beeching Report on the reorganisation of the network. #railways #1960s #publicity

The cover to an interesting booklet; issued in 1963 this was one of British Railways attempts to better sell the impacts of the now infamous "Beeching Report" into the reorganisation of the railway system. Dr. Richard Beeching (1913 - 1985) was an industrialist who was brought in by Government in 1961 to restructure British Railways in an effort to stem the massive and growing financial losses accrued by the undertaking. Beeching famously did this by proposing massive closures of lines, removal of what were considered uneconomic services, both passenger and freight, and a managerial restructuring of the Board. Beeching left the railways and returned to ICI in 1965. Much maligned it is also important to recall that his work did ensure that moving forward British Rail had a successful InterCity network along with a better equipped freight network.

Back in 1963 it was obviously decided that the story of restructuring, that received a fairly brutal press, needed a publicity boost and so the BRB turned to one of Britain's best known comedians of the day, Tony Hancock (1925 - 1968). In the early 1960s Hancock was probably at his height and this press advert campaign, issued here in booklet form with all eight adverts, takes a look at various of the issues levelled at the railway - serious matters considered with some humour. The introduction tells that the photo shoots took place in the frigid February of 1963 and notes that the locations included the Bristol Pullman, Hampton Court carriage sidings and Waterloo station. The photos are suitably noir and as well as "Anthony Aloysius Hancock", the actor's 'stage' name, also include the infamous Doctor on the cover and in the final advert.

The booklet was printed by Lund Humphries. Sadly no photographer is credited. This shows a cigar smoking Hancock shaking hands with the BR chairman.

B/W photo of Dr Beeching shaking hands with Tony Hancock outside the British Railways Board HQ at Marylebone.

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sick public transit, gloria @seung.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

I rarely share personal news here but: I was laid off from my job in public sector communications based in the East Bay. I want to channel this life change into a time where I write as much as possible. So if you want to collab with me or have leads in writing opportunities, please DM me!

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Blair Lorenzo / The Fox and the City @thefoxandthecity.com · 06/08/2026

Your out of context quote for the day:

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Metropolitan Transportation Authority @mta.info · 05/08/2026

We’re auctioning a limited number of MetroCard Vending Machines and MetroCard Express Machines! The auction is now open and offers must be received by Wednesday, August 19, 2026 at 8 pm EST. Learn more and bid on our website: mta.info/auction

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Doug @doug.city · 03/08/2026

Or more than coded…

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Marco Chitti @chittimarco.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

When you look globally, there are many more countries that consistently abandoned street-running railways in the postwar years than ones that retained them. The simpler answer is that technology, decaying infras and the zeitgeist killed streetcars everywhere but in a bunch of countries.

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Christof Spieler @christofspieler.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

I think the conspiracy is comforting to people -- "a few bad guys did this." The reality -- "electeds, planners, and most of the public believed that the car was the future and rail transit was outdated" is actually more unsettling since it raises the question of what we're getting wrong now.

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Jake Berman @lostsubways.com · 03/08/2026

this is not true. there was no conspiracy. it didn't matter whether the streetcars were publicly owned (seattle, detroit) or private (los angeles, atlanta). a thread (because i wrote a whole-ass book on this): 1/?

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Alexander Luckmann @aluckmann.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

It’s August, which means it’s time to post the great Molly Ivins’s greatest article: “Just Another Nutty August at the Heartbreak Hotel,” published August 9, 1993 archive.seattletimes.com/archive/1993...

archive.seattletimes.com

Just Another Nutty August At The Heartbreak Hotel | The Seattle Times

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Doug @doug.city · 02/08/2026

Google hotel rating scale (in North America): >4.5 stars: Very nice (for the class of hotel) 4 stars: Nice enough 3.5 stars: Barely acceptable 3 stars: You probably won’t get bedbugs 2 stars: You probably will get bedbugs 1 star: You probably will get murdered and the bedbugs will eat your corpse

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Doug @doug.city · 01/08/2026

The thing everyone is dunking on is not only bad, it’s mind-numbingly predictable in its badness. It doesn’t even have the decency to be interestingly or entertainingly bad. Anyone familiar with the oeuvre could write the whole thing just from the headline.

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Alexander Luckmann @aluckmann.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

OK since people seem interested in the Southern California Modernism class I'm finishing up teaching: I'll post four images from each lecture, one lecture per day (there are 18 lectures). Lecture 1

El Alisal, Charles Fletcher Lummis's river rock house in Los Angeles

Cover of Ramona by Helen Hunt Jackson, showing Rancho Camulos

Reyner Banham on a folding bik ein the Mojave

Santa Barbara's mission revival train station

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Doug @doug.city · 30/07/2026

“Vintage candy”? Unless it’s wine, I don’t think “vintage” is an adjective I want applied to anything I’m meant to be ingesting.

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Doug @doug.city · 28/07/2026

And people say wires are ugly!

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Yonah Freemark @yonahfreemark.com · 27/07/2026

Congress appropriated billions of dollars for new transit projects. Why is the Trump administration spending none of it? Why are even transit projects in red states going unfounded? New reporting in @nytimes.com (gift link): www.nytimes.com/2026/07/27/u...

New capital investment grants signed by administration

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