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Kurt Raschke @kurtraschke.com · 14h

I literally owe my career in transportation to TransportationCamp, and helping organize the revival of TransportationCamp DC is the least I can do. If you're interested too, please express your interest!

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Kurt Raschke @kurtraschke.com · 4d

I had an insight this morning: the way I am coming to feel about autonomous vehicles is a lot like the way I feel about nuclear power.

kurtraschke.com/2025/10/nucl...

How autonomous vehicles are like nuclear power, and how we should think about them both

I have a confession to make: when I was in San Francisco in 2024, for the BART legacy fleet retirement, one of the things I did while I was there was ride in a Waymo. I had no reason to do so other th...

kurtraschke.com

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Reposted by Kurt Raschke

Jarrett Walker @humantransit.bsky.social · 20d

I have a major piece in Bloomberg Citylab today. Should the US let transit fail, as Pennsylvania is already doing? And if not, what are the arguments we need to let it succeed?

www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Should We Let Public Transit Die?

Urban-rural hostility is fueling a public transportation crisis in US cities. But demands to abandon bus and train riders ignore the economic and social costs of cutting service.

www.bloomberg.com

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Kurt Raschke @kurtraschke.com · Sep 3

Oh, the irony of a clanker trying to tell me that "clanker" is considered a derogatory slur...

Screenshot of a Google search results page for the term "clanker".

The following text is visible:

Al Overview
"Clanker" is a derogatory slur for robots and artificial intelligence (Al) software that has become a prominent term in 2025 to express growing anxieties and distrust of increasing automation and Al in society. The term, which first appeared in the Star Wars: Republic Commando video game, is used in both serious and lighthearted ways to push back against the growing presence of Al and to highlight concerns about its impact on employment and daily life.

Reposted by Kurt Raschke

Vicki @vickiboykis.com · Aug 30

nothing more freeing than pushing absolutely terrible nondescript commit messages to a private repo only you are in

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Reposted by Kurt Raschke

Helvetica Blanc @helveticablanc.bsky.social · Jun 5

AI weirdos can pry em dashes and sparkle emojis from my cold, dead hands

The libertarian "come and take it" flag, but with the star and cannon replaced with a sparkle emoji and an em dash

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Kurt Raschke @kurtraschke.com · Aug 17

(This of course left an elevator technician temporarily stranded in the elevator, along with the electric chain hoist which was to be used during the decommissioning process. Perhaps the elevator was trying to protest?)

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Kurt Raschke @kurtraschke.com · Aug 17

You can say that machines don't have a soul, but the motor in this elevator made it to the very last trip before flashing over, just as the decommissioning process was about to begin.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFxR...

A Last Ride in New York City's Disappearing Horse Elevators

YouTube video by Bloomberg Originals

www.youtube.com

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Reposted by Kurt Raschke

Marcus Hutchins @malwaretech.com · Aug 4

Every Reason Why I Hate AI and You Should Too

malwaretech.com/2025/08/ever...

Every Reason Why I Hate AI and You Should Too

maybe it's anti-innovation, maybe it's just avoiding hype. But one thing is clear, I'm completely done with hearing about AI.

malwaretech.com

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Reposted by Kurt Raschke

Uday Schultz @a320lga.bsky.social · Jul 27

A lot has happened to PATH in the past 25 years -- 9/11, major construction work, COVID, etc. But consistent across all of these events have been ensuing reductions in off-pk service levels: since 2005, the number of PATH trips crossing the Hudson on Saturdays has fallen by *50%*

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Kurt Raschke @kurtraschke.com · Jul 27

Considering how underdeveloped Hudson County was in the early 2000s, I have to wonder: how empty were those trains?

8 TPH to a lot of vacant lots and low-density development is a _ton_ of service.

Meanwhile 3 TPH to areas that have experienced meteoric growth in the past decade is shameful.

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Kurt Raschke @kurtraschke.com · Jul 27

Meanwhile there's been little more than hand-waving about service levels after PATH Forward ends some time next year.

So are we finally going to get four-line weekend service back, twenty years later?

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Kurt Raschke @kurtraschke.com · Jul 27

CBTC is done. The post-Sandy work is done, as far as we know.

Now there is PATH Forward, which so far has gotten us a badly broken interlocking in Hoboken and even more devastating service cuts.

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Kurt Raschke @kurtraschke.com · Jul 27

The really galling thing is that each and every one of these service reductions was sold to riders as something with AN END. And for the most part, the precipitating events *have* ended! The permanent World Trade Center Transportation Hub has been in service since 2016.

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Kurt Raschke @kurtraschke.com · Jul 27

Does it still count as a “burrito taxi” if it’s a robot?

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Kurt Raschke @kurtraschke.com · Jul 20

They’re moving in herds!

An image of four food delivery robots lined up on a sidewalk.

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Kurt Raschke @kurtraschke.com · Jul 15

I resent this now as much as I resented having my words taken away in elementary school. I refuse to play along. I am going to keep using my em dashes and en dashes and my big words and if you have a complaint about that, take it up with the AI fanatics.

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Kurt Raschke @kurtraschke.com · Jul 15

But the most galling thing is that even if I myself choose to opt out, choose not to willingly interact with generative AI, there's nothing I can do to stop someone questioning my humanity. The fucking bots are poisoning the Internet, they're poisoning our language, and for what? More slop?

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Kurt Raschke @kurtraschke.com · Jul 15

Of course, then there are the studies showing that LLMs rot your brain.

arxiv.org/abs/2506.08872

Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task

This study explores the neural and behavioral consequences of LLM-assisted essay writing. Participants were divided into three groups: LLM, Search Engine, and Brain-only (no tools). Each completed thr...

arxiv.org

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Kurt Raschke @kurtraschke.com · Jul 15

There are many good reasons to be opposed to the unchecked spread of generative AI—the enormous resource consumption (in a time of climate crisis, no less), the utter contempt AI companies have for the rights of content creators, the fact that LLMs hallucinate at the slightest provocation, and more.

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Kurt Raschke @kurtraschke.com · Jul 15

In elementary school, I was the kid who was redirected to the other side of the school library after being told I was looking at books "above my grade level". I was the kid who got in trouble for reading too far ahead of the class, for using too many big words.

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Kurt Raschke @kurtraschke.com · Jul 15

I try generally to be civil online. But this...this just pisses me off. To be clear, this sentiment is not directed at the commenter, but rather the circumstances which have led people to think this way.

You see, I use em dashes and en dashes, and words like "delve".

Screenshot of a comment on a blog post. The text has been blurred except for the following sentence:

When you see the telltale signs of ChatGPT (em dash, bullet points, bold font, words like “delve”), just close the ticket and stop reading.

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Kurt Raschke @kurtraschke.com · Jul 15

A little more digging, and I realized it was! The page content crosses things off your to-do list _simply by watching what you do in the emulator and pattern-matching it_. It's an absolutely wild solution and yet really quite clever.

Kurt Raschke @kurtraschke.com · Jul 15

I thus went to go read about the technical details behind the emulators. Lo and behold, the one thing the JavaScript side can do is *be notified of changes to the contents of the screen*. Could that be it?

bsky.app/profile/pers...

Mihai Parparita @persistent.info · Jul 9

And for a behind the scenes look, there's a blog post: blog.persistent.info/2025/07/infi... (spoiler: Marcin was the instigator for all this, conducted over a months-long 100+ message email thread)

Infinite Mac Construction Set

blog.persistent.info

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Kurt Raschke @kurtraschke.com · Jul 15

There are many ways to enable host-to-guest communication—sending data out an emulated serial port, a shared memory range, a fake device on an expansion bus, and so on. But how many of these would have worked with an emulated classic Mac? With an emulator running in WebAssembly?

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