Colby Brown @colby@transportation.social
- Website
- https://manhan.co
Founder and CEO, Manhan (http://manhan.co, @manhan)
Bentley Authorized CUBE Product Training Partner
Developer of over 20 land use forecasting models
Recovering musician and analog synthesizer collector (https://yummynoodles.bandcamp.com)
Follow @matthewmaybe for hot-takes on topics in AI and machine learning.
Joined Nov 2022
Colby Brown
boosted
Exciting scholarship opportunity in Smart Cities in honor of Wendy Tao. Applications due February 15, 2024. See link below. The scholarship is open to professionals and graduate students conducting research in sustainable transport and smart cities. The research can have a national or international focus, with applicability to California. Professionals can be at any stage of their career. Graduate students should have completed at least one semester of studies.
https://apply.mykaleidoscope.com/scholarships/Wendy-Tao-ISC-Scholarship-2024
Colby Brown
boosted
If, like me, you are concerned that there's a lack of reporting for active transportation crashes in aggregated crash data, and you want "numbers" to wave in front of gatekeeping drivists, then behold, the National Cooperative Highway Research Program has $500,000 to put towards the problem. If you, unlike me, have some professional experience researching active transportation topics, then you can form a team and submit a proposal by 11/12/23. https://apps.trb.org/cmsfeed/TRBNetProjectDisplay.asp?ProjectID=5492
Colby Brown
boosted
There are cheap electric cars (just not in EU and USA). $5000 2-person cars with 100km range in Japan, China, and developig world. But those microcars are designed for shopping and short commutes (not practical in middle America) and still aren't going to depreciate below the residual value of the battery.
The automobile industry isn't going to survive EVs if it can only sell luxury cars at a profit and most of the potential drivers can't afford them.
/3
Colby Brown
boosted
@cstross
Toyota has been looking at leasing the battery. That enables two things: you can get a replacement at a reasonable cost; and they get the used battery back for reconditioning or recycling.
Nissan is already buying back old batteries, then reusing the cells for new cars; for stationary applications; or recycle the materials.
Colby Brown
boosted
@futurebird Just in case you haven't heard this one before. I saw it and of course I thought of you. Thanks for the ant lessons. (copied from @tonio1083 on IG)
Rapid ice melt in west Antarctica now inevitable, research shows
Colby Brown
boosted
Resolved: Kansas City has the only acceptable transit wrap
Colby Brown
boosted
We must all fight anti-Semitism AND Islamophobia.
No matter how you feel about this conflict. If you're in America, you have Jewish and Muslim neighbors and they are scared and grieving right now, and they need to know you have their back.
We are all human beings.
So. What's the best alternative to Bandcamp?
How's your Wednesday evening going? Mine involved being tone-policed for criticizing family "friends" who gave my son a ride home from school in the front seat of their pickup truck. Yay!
Colby Brown
boosted
There is a digital doppelganger in our HR system who, by nature of not existing, has failed to do any of the required HR trainings for years.
This nonexistent person's digital presence in our HR system shares my name and email address BUT IS NOT ME.
The sheer Dilbertness of this situation is mindboggling.
Colby Brown
boosted
ANNOUNCEMENT: We're in the process of mothballing our Twitter account, which was previously our most-used social media platform.
Please help us out by boosting our posts so that our followers can see our updates and to help us build our audience here!
Colby Brown
boosted
In the latest GOOD INTERNET-newsletter i look at fossil fuel subsidies and why they should be banned, after the dutch government decided to ditch them altogether: https://goodinternet.substack.com/p/fossil-fuel-subsidies-must-be-banned
Subsidies for fossil fuels are at an all time high and surged to record $7 trillion for 2022 at rate of $13m a minute, including indirect subsidies. This is madness.
Colby Brown
boosted
E-Bikes Are Bicycles Not Motorbikes, Rules EU Court Of Justice
https://www.forbes.com/sites/carltonreid/2023/10/12/e-bikes-are-bicycles-not-motorbikes-rules-eu-court-of-justice/?sh=2f3a638d51ff #ebike #BikeTooter
Oops, I didn't even get into the backstory behind the puppet, who represents a botanist who originally came to Texas as part of a failed utopian colony. In a way he is a perfect foil for the protagonist; someone who paid close attention to the land and the things that lived there before he got there. (11/10 sorry)
Kane's portrayal of the protagonist as a hopeless click-chaser so hungry for attention he ignores all the warning signs of paranormal activity is spot-on. But it's also a send-up of urban explorers who venture into "bad" neighborhoods and abandoned buildings for fun or profit. His message, if there is one, could be: "Ignore the spiritual fabric of a place at your own risk. There are always forces at work which you might never understand." This would probably be good advice for planners! (10/10)
The mile-long staircase might be symbolic of the mind-boggling infrastructure investment that provided access to the American suburbs. It collapses, trapping the protagonist in an empty shell of outmoded commerce with a huge, powerful puppet whose intentions are at best unclear, at worst hostile. Are we similarly trapped in a development pattern that no longer serves us, increasingly isolated except for parasocial relationships with shady influencers and chatbots who might as well be inanimate?
So chiefly, the biggest distortion of reality made by Kane is placing this mall a mile underground. Aside from framing what happens next as a kind of archaeological expedition following classic mummy horror genre tropes, it also seems evocative of how remote the site was when the anchor store first opened: "This Sears was built as a two-story freestanding store on what was then the far north fringe of Dallas County and the location was largely surrounded by pasture land." (from Wikipedia)
(8/n)
It's worth taking a brief rabbit-hole dive to learn about the tragic history of this now-dead mall: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valley_View_Center
The stories told by people who experienced it firsthand are of the "you can't make stuff like this up" variety: random clowns and opera singers wandering into the mall, the smell of sewage seeping in at night, the Sears that outlasted all others. It's weird and spooky, and, in a way, an urban development horror story of its own. (7/n)
- Website
- https://manhan.co
Founder and CEO, Manhan (http://manhan.co, @manhan)
Bentley Authorized CUBE Product Training Partner
Developer of over 20 land use forecasting models
Recovering musician and analog synthesizer collector (https://yummynoodles.bandcamp.com)
Follow @matthewmaybe for hot-takes on topics in AI and machine learning.
Joined Nov 2022
