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Alon (they/them)

@alonlevy.bsky.social

9K followers 600 following 32K posts

Transit researcher in Berlin. Lived in Tel Aviv, Singapore, the Riviera, New York, Providence, Vancouver, Stockholm, Paris. https://pedestrianobservations.com/ http://patreon.com/alonlevy [email protected] @[email protected]

pedestrianobservations.com

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Alon (they/them) @alonlevy.bsky.social · 6h

But he's probably not getting a majority, which is unusual for the Democrat running in New York. He should be getting around 2/3 of the Jewish vote, not 45%.

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Alon (they/them) @alonlevy.bsky.social · 7h

No.

Screengrab of my original skeet. It's a quote of @impavid.us from 3 days ago saying,

In honor of spooky month, share a 4 word horror story that only someone in your profession would understand

I'll go first: Six page commerical lease.

Alon (they/them) @alonlevy.bsky.social · 11h

We express grave concern.

🏰meg⚔️ @Birthright Audiobook! @impavid.us · 3d

In honor of spooky month, share a 4 word horror story that only someone in your profession would understand

I'll go first: Six page commercial lease.

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Alon (they/them) @alonlevy.bsky.social · 19h

3. Hitler's main thought about the United States was that it was infiltrated by Jews and was too decadent to pose a serious threat; the country he thought was racially kin to Germany was the UK, and he was disappointed he ended up at war with the UK and allied to the USSR in 1939-41.

Alon (they/them) @alonlevy.bsky.social · 19h

1. Mein Kampf praises the US for Manifest Destiny in contrast with Latin American mestizaje, not for Jim Crow (Nazis believed in extermination, not segregation).
2. Nazi governance of occupied Eastern Europe was modeled on internal German military developments, not the American reservation system.

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Reposted by Alon (they/them)

⚡️🌙 @dystopiabreaker.xyz · 1d

andymasley.substack.com/p/the-ai-wat...

The AI water issue is fake

On the national, local, and personal level

andymasley.substack.com

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Alon (they/them) @alonlevy.bsky.social · 1d

It doesn't - it makes all new lines accessible, but new stations on extensions of old lines aren't, because French accessibility laws define accessibility by line and not by station (and this is also why retrofitting by stations as is done everywhere else, e.g. here, is illegal there).

Alon (they/them) @alonlevy.bsky.social · 1d

All of Scandinavia was late to metros except Stockholm, and in Stockholm this was controversial in the 1940s since the city was small (and then construction costs were extremely low and the city kept growing; Sweden is atypically developmentalist for a democratic mature economy).

Alon (they/them) @alonlevy.bsky.social · 1d

Yes, but Sydney electrified and opened the first section of what is now the Loop in 1926.

Reposted by Alon (they/them)

Marco Chitti @chittimarco.bsky.social · 2d

Like, why did Sydney keep expanding and electrifying its passenger railway network, but Toronto and Montréal didn't? Different economies? Different settlement patterns? Just different climates can explain it?
Can we just blame the proximity of the US again?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway...

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Reposted by Alon (they/them)

Marco Chitti @chittimarco.bsky.social · 2d

I would pay to have a regional railway network around Montréal like Sydney has. I would probably go visit some new corners of QC every other weekend.

Do we have a plausible theory why Australia went all in on electric suburban trains from the 1920s, but Canada didn't?

Every Sydney Station @sydneystations.bsky.social · 2d

LEURA, 108km from Central, is another charming station - everything is so charming up in the Blue Mountains - serving retail strip of cute cafes and shops popular with tourists. It has two platforms cut into the sandstone, accessed from an overhead concourse on a road bridge, with a lift. (1/3)

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Alon (they/them) @alonlevy.bsky.social · 1d

Ah, so the complaint is that the inflatable frog suits are not up to the standards of furry conventions?

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Alon (they/them) @alonlevy.bsky.social · 1d

Idgi, I thought half the alt-left are furries already.

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Alon (they/them) @alonlevy.bsky.social · 1d

How deep are the flats on the lower floors of the terrace?

Alon (they/them) @alonlevy.bsky.social · 1d

Konrad Zuse?

Alon (they/them) @alonlevy.bsky.social · 1d

What's the Terassi?

Alon (they/them) @alonlevy.bsky.social · 1d

Yes, I'm aware.

Alon (they/them) @alonlevy.bsky.social · 1d

Yes, but the difference in overall physician compensation is not most of the difference in costs - it's maybe 10-15% of the difference. In the US, admin costs are a larger share of the cost difference.

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Alon (they/them) @alonlevy.bsky.social · 1d

If you want to calculate determined alignments, there's @thijs.niks.nu's model. This matters, because there's more or less no case for running Chicago-Detroit on a separate alignment from Chicago-Cleveland.

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Alon (they/them) @alonlevy.bsky.social · 1d

There are handover systems here that allow doctors to work normal hours; in the US they don't have this, so experiments with getting rid of 24-hour ER shifts have shown worse patient outcomes and nobody's interested in learning from how Europeans do it.

Alon (they/them) @alonlevy.bsky.social · 1d

Someone I know asked Claude how I'd build HSR in the US and Claude came back with suggestions of things that a) are bad and b) I never thought were good (namely, it said Chinese construction is atypically cheap due to the use of freeway ROWs, which is two gross errors in one).

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Alon (they/them) @alonlevy.bsky.social · 1d

גם נאצית היא ככה. הלוואי עלי שזה היה הדבר הכי קשה בללמוד אותה.

Alon (they/them) @alonlevy.bsky.social · 1d

Never mind the asshole, how was your talk with the mayor-tantamount-to-elect?

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Alon (they/them) @alonlevy.bsky.social · 1d

I forget, did I share with you the German code citation for stair width? It's 1 m here but in practice a typical stairway with an intermediate landing has to be a bit wider than 2 m because of turn radius.

Alon (they/them) @alonlevy.bsky.social · 1d

No elevator? :'(