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Colby Brown

A big thank you and welcome to anyone joining the instance right now! Most of you probably know me but I will give an anyways, to set a good example... I am an independent transportation planning consultant specializing in travel demand modeling, land use forecasting, and transportation data analysis. My ulterior motive in setting this up is to create an awesome local feed full of cool transportation people and their follows 😎

Feel free to post your own when ready!

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Colby Brown boosted
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Cory Doctorow

If AI has a future (a big if), it will have to be economically viable. An industry can't spend 1,700% more on Nvidia chips than it earns indefinitely - not even with Nvidia being a principle investor in its largest customers:

news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3

--

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

pluralistic.net/2024/04/23/max

1/

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Shoshana 🏳️‍⚧️

This is the coolest project and I highly recommend checking out an e-bike. It can be life-changing.

@crschmidt is behind the project

#BikeTooter

cbsnews.com/boston/news/somerv

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Colby Brown boosted
Robert Reich

Let's be clear. There is no place for antisemitic harassment or violence on campuses or anywhere else. None.

But protesting the slaughter in Gaza is not in itself antisemitic, and having armed police arrest peaceful student demonstrators is never acceptable.

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Brent Toderian

"Adding highway lanes to deal with traffic congestion is like loosening your belt to cure obesity." - Lewis Mumford in 1955.

We’ve known this for a LONG time, but we’ve put massive energy, money, space, and time into pretending we don’t know it.
#InducedDemand #lawofcongestion

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Daniel Albu

Happy 27th anniversary to Winamp!

⚡🦙⚡
The first version of ⚡Winamp⚡ was released as freeware on April 21st, 1997!
⚡🦙⚡

Winamp, it really whips the llama's ass!

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Colby Brown boosted
liferstate

In the 2024 election, I am a single-issue voter, and that issue is climate. The Biden administration's climate and decarbonization policy isn't enough, not yet, but it's been tremendous, and is still ramping up. Whereas a second Trump administration would demolish the EPA and double down on fossil fuels.

#climate #ClimateChange #USpol

nytimes.com/2024/04/20/opinion

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Colby Brown

Welp. Shorts feed still full of trash so maybe it had nothing to do with my stay in downtown Minneapolis. The YouTube algorithm has been acting very weird lately for sure and/or Cops 2024 might just be its default setting. Is there a Fediverse clone of TikTok?

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Colby Brown

Before someone whatabouts the skyways let me remind you that they close at 8pm and are lined with empty storefronts. Many restaurants are only open from 11am to 2pm. The sushi bar I ate in last night had started closing its doors at 7pm. This is not a substitute for streetfront retail.

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Colby Brown

I can't imagine what it's like to try to live in this neighborhood. We talk about revitalizing downtowns by converting the tall buildings to housing but there has to be some drastic changes to almost everything else around them before enough people will want to reside here for that to be a viable solution. Honestly the best case scenario I can think of might be to convert large portions of downtowns like these to hydroponic vertical farms (for food not weed).

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Colby Brown

I also have to say, after exploring a bit last night, that this is one of the least walkable places I've ever stayed in and I don't know how I never noticed that before when I lived in the Twin Cities 15 years ago. It seems to have been emptied out by the pandemic in a particularly dystopian and sad way. The poor streetscaping was always there, but now it's laid bare because so few downtown workers are moving about.

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Colby Brown

I just need to tell someone that the contrast between my YouTube Shorts feed when staying in Downtown Minneapolis and when back at home is wild. Lots of videos of armed confrontations between people, racially charged conversations, viral videos of police acting stupid etc.. You can't convince me that this doesn't have something to do with Google using my location to adjust its algorithm.

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Bryan Hansel

"Those who have never seen Superior get an inadequate, even inaccurate idea, by hearing it spoken of as a 'lake,' and to those who have sailed over its vast extent the word sounds positively ludicrous. Though its waters are fresh and crystal, Superior is a sea. It breeds storms, and rain and fogs, like the sea. It is cold in mid-summer as the Atlantic. It is wild, masterful, and dreaded as the Black Sea." - Rev. George Grant, Ocean to Ocean, 1872

#photography #LakeSuperior #minnesota

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Colby Brown

if I didn't know better, I'd say the app-based ride service industry was ripe for disruption by taxis

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Colby Brown

I'll also be wandering around the conference on Monday and staying in the Twin Cities for Tuesday afternoon, so to any friends and colleagues in the area, let me know if you're interested in getting together to catch up!

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Colby Brown

I'm honored to be speaking at the National Planning Conference in Minneapolis on Tuesday morning about "Socioeconomic Forecasting in the Post-Pandemic Era". Thanks to my friends Todd Graham and Dennis Farmer at the Metropolitan Council of the Twin Cities for organizing the session and inviting me to be part of their panel.

npc24.eventscribe.net/agenda.a

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Dare Obasanjo

Larry Summers and others published a paper with an interesting theory on why consumers believe inflation is higher than the government’s CPI numbers. Since 1983, it has ignored interest rates even though they affect car and mortgage payments.

Using a pre-1983 CPI formula would have inflation around 18% versus the official 7.1% in November 2022. It’s a plausible theory that explains why people’s sentiment doesn’t match inflation stats.

forbes.com/sites/theapothecary

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The Overhead Wire

Wednesday's Most Read # 2 - Has remote work changed how people travel in the U.S? bit.ly/43UYeFX MIT News

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Colby Brown boosted
Ben Smith

A short memory of how I built 38 useful Twitter bots in 2009: bensmith.blog/posts/i-invented

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The Overhead Wire

Wednesday's Most Read # 1 - A Possible Future for Downtowns Out in the Suburbs bit.ly/4cI274Z Governing

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Colby Brown boosted
𝚃𝚊𝚛𝚊𝚜 𝙶𝚛𝚎𝚜𝚌𝚘𝚎 🚇

Mondo Transit !

Today's episode: Off-the-Wall Solutions

By which I mean: Out-of-the-Wall Solutions

1/ The Liziba (李子坝) station of the #Chongqing Monorail

🚝🧱🧵

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