iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Huh. That explains something I’d always wondered, which is: how was that calculus teacher in 11th grade able to catch us up on trig quickly enough to get through the whole calculus curriculum? In effect I ended up learning three years of advanced-track US trig and calculus in one year in Romania.

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Alright in this very article I did learn something about the latest WMATA-ATU contract. So, so far worth the $80 and also, pretty much the same Matt Yglesias I remember from what it was all free.

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...standard track was everything shifted back a year, no calculus at all, and algebra 1 in 9th grade).

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Well, I guess social studies was in elementary and middle school. But high school the classes had specific names (American History, etc.). Actually the US math classes definitely did too in HS (advanced track was geometry in 9th grade, algebra 2 in 10th, trigonometry in 11th, calculus in 12th; ...

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The separate classes thing does sound familiar. I also remember Romanian kids talking about taking a class called geometry, which is something we never had in America. We didn't even have history – it was just "social studies"!

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It wasn't a stricter definition, the teacher (who actually was American) just couldn't fathom a student doing work that in a high-performing public high school in the US would simply have been an A. The quality of essays was just so much lower that she assumed I must've plagiarized it.

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I'm curious how significant the "miscellaneous work rules" reforms that WMATA won in its latest contract with ATU Local 684 are www.wmata.com/content/dam/...

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Okay I subscribed. It gave me some free two-month subscriptions to give away so I sent one to you.

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I wonder if I’m accurately relating things, or if I’m misremembering or was being exaggerated to.

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That said, I am not sure this really contradicts what Matt is saying. I don’t think he’s saying we should totally copy the Soviets, just that we should learn from their basic math and reading education, at least. Although I will confess that I’m not a subscriber and probably neither of us read…

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…recall, middle school. Also French class was of course an incredibly embarrassing experience for me, but it’s hard to say whether French language education in Romania was just better or they all had an advantage in being native speakers of a Romance language (realistically it was probably both).

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On the other hand, the math teacher who was supposed to teach us calculus was disgusted by the fact that by 11th grade we hadn’t even learned trigonometry yet, and indeed the scholarship students who had gone through Romanian public school system had already started learning calculus in, as I…

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Californians for Electric Rail @calelectricrail.org · 4h

My experience at the American International School of Bucharest in 2004-05 was indeed that the Romanian kids did not understand the difference between an original essay and plagiarism, to the point that I was accused of plagiarism for turning in an essay that in the US would’ve just been an A.

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Reposted by Stephen Jacob Smith

Frustrated with the slow progress on CAHSR? Apparently the California legislature isn't, given all bills to speed up progress died this year. Why isn't California's signature infrastructure project a priority? calmatters.org/politics/202...

calmatters.org

California’s high-speed rail authority made a legislative wishlist. It mostly stalled out

California’s bullet train agency said timely construction of the rail line depended on these reforms. They mostly failed.

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Reposted by Stephen Jacob Smith

Adrián @elenoam.bsky.social · 4h

Made some nicer graphs to show how motorcycle use is increasing in Mexico at the expense of transit. Mexico really sucks at zoning and transit.

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Stephen Jacob Smith @stephenjacobsmith.com · 4h

Would this not be on TCP’s website in the database?

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...lines on a map specifically for her commute, I am using @alonlevy.bsky.social's predetermined "what NYC could build if we had northern European costs" maps, here: pedestrianobservations.com/2023/06/18/a...

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Given that she was commuting at the crack of dawn where there would be no bike share balancing issues, I could also imagine her using Citi Bike as a first-mile connection from whatever she lived (maybe last-mile, but unlikely given the Pennsylvania Ave. tram). And I am not drawing optimistic...

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...exclusively rapid transit. Specifically: IBX, A extension to and beyond Jamaica, the LI-Jamaica-DTBK-FiDi-NJ regional rail trunk, and a Pennsylvania Ave. tram (taking her almost to her work's door).

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The lines on that map that would have kept her from moving from transit to an e-bike (she was a mother commuting in the 5 o'clock hour who work a helmet and had a legal bike who switched to save 2/3 of her perceived commute time – textbook example of a marginal e-bike rider) were mostly but not...

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John Lansing @pipedreaming.bsky.social · 8h

And it seems like when individuals retire, entire research programs die with them. I haven't seen any useful fire research out of NIST since Richard Bukowski retired, for example. Robert Wyly's retirement clearly also was a huge blow to their plumbing research.

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Reposted by Stephen Jacob Smith

I just learned from a German engineer that the Messeturm tower in Frankfurt, the 3rd tallest building in the EU, was built with single stack drainage configurations in every bathroom serving all 63 floors. The stack diameters are 8-inches and all vent piping is eliminated except at the top floor.

en.wikipedia.org

Messeturm - Wikipedia

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But I also think you’re exaggerating how often e-bikes are faster in a city with good transit. I will grant you that for non-CBD commutes this is more likely to be true, although then we get into whether speed is always people’s #1 decision making input.

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…enclosure is scary and uncomfortable.”

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How then can you explain why East and SE Asian cities have seen big declines in mode shares for motorcycles in favor of transit as they’ve built out systems? I think the answer is a combination of “transit can be faster” and “people choose transit even when it’s slower because going 25 mph without…

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I deleted the post and you’re still arguing with it. Very annoying behavior.

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I looked up the details of her trip and posted a map about what we practically could have. Stop being so argumentative.

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I bike a lot and am very much in favor of it. But like the article says, she switched because it was faster. In many ways it’s inferior – you can't sleep/read, you're at much higher bodily risk (yes, even in the Netherlands), and it's very uncomfortable on some days.

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The article says very clearly that she did it because it was faster

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MTA Seeks to End $1 Billion of Tariffs on Subway Cars, Buses

“The Metropolitan Transportation Authority wants the Trump administration to exempt New York City’s purchases of new subway cars and buses from tariffs to avoid $1 billion in added fees on the nation’s biggest transit system.” www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

bloomberg.com

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority wants the Trump administration to exempt New York City’s purchases of new subway cars and buses from tariffs to avoid $1 billion in added fees on the nation’s...

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We need safer bike lanes, but why was this commute 20 mins by bike vs. 60 by transit to begin with? Reporting hints that she lived either near Jamaica or Middle Village, worked in East NY. Both would be MUCH faster if we built the transit we're paying for: pedestrianobservations.com/2023/06/18/a...

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Nolan Hicks @ndhapple.bsky.social · 8h

@paulbarter.bsky.social has noted that as countries develop, cities shift from being oriented around motorcycles to transit. Unfortunately NYC is backsliding: people are shifting to e-micro-mobility because transit options are poor, and with that sometimes comes death www.nytimes.com/2026/09/30/n...

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Reposted by Stephen Jacob Smith

Reupping very cool MTA openings!

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Crazy how much of a powerhouse NIST (formerly NBS) used to be in building code research. Pretty much every topic you'd want to know about up until certainly the 1970s and in some cases the early 2000s, they did some of the highest-quality research there is. And now, almost nothing.

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I really wish the state would authorize the city to use camera enforcement for bike lanes. Make this guy’s fear a reality bsky.app/profile/step...

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Wheels Up: City Bus Speeds Hit Four-Year High Under Mayor Mamdani - Streetsblog New York City

The bus lanes, cameras enforcement, congestion pricing, and maybe even redesigns are working – MTA buses are traveling faster than they have since 2022 nyc.streetsblog.org/2026/09/29/w...

nyc.streetsblog.org

Citywide bus speeds hit 8.5 mph in August, which is the quickest buses have moved through the city in four years

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They do elementary schools. Actually I was using it the other day to learn about how the boundaries in my neighborhood seem to be drawn to almost intentionally segregate white kids from the kids in the adjacent projects.

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I remember eating there as a student at Georgetown two decades ago thinking, “This is what pizza is supposed to taste like.” I remember when kale was taking off seeing it as ornament around whatever salad bar or condiment station or whatever they had and thinking, “This is where this belongs.” RIP.

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Spain is designed in a lab to refute all of the US “antimonopoly movement” arguments about what makes housing expensive. Its housing is almost entirely individually owned apartments, one or two at a time. Little private equity, institutional ownership, or even whole-building multifamily ownership.

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