MaxRedline

Go Buy Public Transit!

One hundred years ago, the United States had a public transportation system that was the envy of the world. Today, outside a few major urban centers, it is barely on life support. Even in New York City, subway ridership is well below its 1946 peak. Annual per capita transit trips in the U.S. plummeted from 115.8 in 1950 to 36.1 in 1970, where they have roughly remained since, even as population has grown.

The maps illustrate the vast swaths of urban areas untouched by full service bus routes. For those who do live near one, it’s quite likely that the bus wouldn’t get them where they need to go, unless their destination is downtown.

From top left corner: Columbus, Ohio, does not have a single route that meets the full service standard. In Charlotte, North Carolina, the the newly extended Lynx LRT helps a little. Denver, Colorado is adding light rail and commuter rail, but many still struggle to get to the rail station without a car. So do people in Portland, Oregon, despite its large light rail network and forward-thinking transit culture. Washington, D.C.’s Metro is one of the most well-used U.S. rapid transit systems, but connecting bus service is limited. It’s Toronto, Canada, that shows what properly high level of transit service looks like in North America.

Out here, there's a bus that runs by about once an hour, and you only need to hike a couple of blocks or so to get to the stop. It takes you to the shopping mall located at the interface of two suburban burgs. It's probably fine if you want to buy clothes or eat at their upstairs dining plaza. The return trip ends at another commercial wasteland. Why would I pay to ride a bus when I can get to these places by riding a bike or driving a car if I felt the desire to visit? And I haven't been to the mall in years; I prepare my own meals, and I don't tend to buy a lot of stuff. What I feel I need, I get from the local little grocery store - though I occasionally buy clothing online. Malls, I believe, are mostly for women and children.

So much for the streetcar.

 

DoH!

Starting today, Mozilla will turn on by default DNS over HTTPS (DoH) for Firefox users in the US, the company has announced. DoH is a new standard that encrypts a part of your internet traffic that’s typically sent over an unencrypted plain text connection, and which could allow others to see what websites you’re visiting, even when your communication with the website itself is encrypted using HTTPS. Mozilla says it is the first browser to support the new standard by default, and will be rolling it out gradually over the coming weeks in order to address any unforeseen issues.

US carriers like Verizon and AT&T are building massive ad-tracking networks. DoH won't stop the data collection but it’ll likely make it more difficult.

 

China Invades Pakistan

With 100,000 ducks. It may seem weird, but it's happening.

China will send troops of ducks to Pakistan to help battle against a huge locust infestation that poses a threat to regional food security.

“One duck is able to eat more than 200 locusts a day. They have three times the combat capability.” Using ducks as “biological weapons” was a cheaper and more environmentally-friendly alternative to pesticides, added Mr Lu.

 

 

Wear Pants, Advises Chinese CDC

Do farts spread the COVID-19 virus? Pants work just fine to cut off novel coronavirus transmission in farts, a Beijing district disease control center announced on Sunday. The Tongzhou district CDC said it had clearly done their homework before writing the article, and they cited a fart experiment carried out by Karl Kruszelnicki and Luke Tennent a couple of years ago. Their findings were published on discovermagazine.com with the conclusion that pants can effectively screen out germs.

 

Well, It's Portland...

A woman in the 12200 block of Southwest Hall Boulevard called police after someone appeared to have broken into her home. Several things were askew, she said, but nothing appeared to be missing. The woman called back a few minutes later saying the burglar was, in fact, a squirrel that had somehow entered the home.

Officers responded to reports of a stolen vehicle call in the 15900 block of Southwest Oak Meadow Lane. When they arrived, the woman told the officers she had found her car a block away. She had forgotten where she had parked.

Officers responded to a call near Southwest Main Street and Southwest Scoffins Street about a suspicious person who wanted to get on a TriMet bus but had her pants around her ankles. Officers had received two calls about the same woman earlier. She did not want help or to pull her pants up.

Go Be "Transgender" In Japan!

Japanese Supreme Court: Transgenders Must Be Sterilized

That works for me.

Those people are nuts, and should not be permitted to reproduce.

 

If It's All The Same, I'll Keep Driving. Screw "Public Transit".

A black woman is facing hate crime charges in Oregon for allegedly attacking a mom at a bus stop while saying that she hated “white people,” court documents show.

Nimo Jire Kalinle, 42, on Jan. 19 began punching Janae Jordan in the face after getting off a bus at a stop in North Portland, where the victim had been waiting with her husband and young daughter, according to court documents obtained by The Oregonian.

“It’s because you’re white and I hate white people,” Kalinle told Jordan when the woman asked why she was attacking her, a probable cause affidavit shows.

This is pretty unusual, as everyone knows that only melanin-deficient people commit what are now termed "hate crimes".

 

Hmm...New Rules, Old Rules

The Trump administration is moving forward with implementation of its “public charge” rule, which restricts issuance of green cards for immigrants who would be dependent on government welfare upon receiving permanent resident status. “It’s consistent with our law for over 140 years, it's a core American value of self-sufficiency, and it’s just plain old logic — what country wants to bring welfare problems into its society? We don't want to do that,” said acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Ken Cuccinelli. “We’re happy to open our doors to people from all over the world but we expect them to stand on their own two feet.”

It may have been law, but Democratics refused to enforce it.

Now they don't get a choice.

 

It'll Be A Few Years Before She Can "Get Down".

According to court documents, 27-year-old Dana Mustafa was on board a flight that departed from Frankfurt, Germany, on February 22, when flight attendants were alerted to the activation of a flight lavatory smoke detector. Flight attendants encountered Mustafa in the lavatory and told her smoking was not allowed aboard the aircraft and to return to her seat. 

When Mustafa was relocated next to a Federal Air Marshal, court documents say she said: "I’m going to stab everyone on this plane. Then kill myself. I’m Palestinian! That’s how we get down."

A couple of problems with this: first, there's no such thing as a "Palestinian". Second, she's facing eight years in federal prison for her antics and threats. She's likely made the "no fly" list as well.

All because she was too stupid to follow basic rules.

 

 

Simply Irresistable. Completely Uncontainable.

The Harvard epidemiology professor Marc Lipsitch is exacting in his diction, even for an epidemiologist. Twice in our conversation he started to say something, then paused and said, “Actually, let me start again.” So it’s striking when one of the points he wanted to get exactly right was this: “I think the likely outcome is that it will ultimately not be containable.”

Containment is the first step in responding to any outbreak. In the case of COVID-19, the possibility (however implausible) of preventing a pandemic seemed to play out in a matter of days. Starting in January, China began cordoning off progressively larger areas, radiating outward from the city of Wuhan and eventually encapsulating some 100 million people. People were barred from leaving home, and lectured by drones if they were caught outside. Nonetheless, the virus has now been found in 24 countries.

As of Friday, the Association of Public Health Laboratories said that only California, Nebraska, and Illinois had the capacity to test people for the virus.

And don't count on a vaccine; it's unlikely to happen, because like the flu, coronavirus is a single-strand RNA thing. This viral class is likely to mutate, and vaccines may need to be in constant development, as with the flu. What does it all mean for you?

Bluntly put, it means that sooner or later, you're likely to become infected.