The 2024 U.S. Presidential race

[WolfEyes]

The US is pretty massive land area wise, and there are a lot of wode open land area.

The five North American deserts are the Colorado Plateau, Great Basin, Mojave, Sonoran, and the Chihuahuan deserts. That's about 35% of the continental US which does not include Alaska and Hawaii. A fair chunk of land that isn't habitable by humans.

 

[Lexxi]

In the future, cars will have been replaced with giant guns that shoot very long bullets capable of holding many many people that are guided ny some sort of railing system. These "long bullets", will zip along very fast to their destinations!

To think they invented super fast trains called "Bullet Trains" and they didn't catch on in the USA. Apparently there is one stretch, almost 50 miles in length, where the Amtrak Acela reaches bullet train speeds.

Bullet trains common in Japan. Strict gun control.
Bullet trains uncommon in USA. No strict gun control.

 

[Free]

Bullet trains common in Japan. Strict gun control.
Bullet trains uncommon in USA. No strict gun control.

The Japanese call them shinkansen - which does not mean bullet train (it's a pretty generic name: 'new main line').

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

Let's say Cindy lives in Wichita. (I'm not sure where she is in Kansas, so this is no reflection on her taste or judgment...) She decides she'd enjoy a trip to Chicago. If you could travel in a perfectly straight line from Wichita to Chicago that's a trip of nearly 1,000 miles. Even high-speed trains don't average those high speeds, and the chances of non-stop service from Wichita to Chicago are slim. So, let's say we have a really fast train and super-efficient boarding and deboarding and luggage/freight loading and unloading (and maybe some fueling that is done by a NASCAR pit crew) and we can average 80 mph over that (perfectly straight) 1,000 miles. That's still an unrealistically optimistic 12.5 hours of travel. Via air -- about 2.5 hours. Of course, the route cannot be perfectly straight, either, so that adds even more time. How many people are going to give up a long day to travel by train when, with the same amount of misery, they can fly?

I do agree with you, but you've made now the switch from public transport to planes.

The first thing to do when breaking up a car centric culture is not to build long distance travel alternatives, but to install good local public transportation instead. Why? Because the vast majority of drives we've got is local. 70% of all car drives in Germany are < 10 km, in the US there will be a similar bracket.

So first of all you need to address that clientele. Then these local nets will spread out over time into their region.

And for high speed trains this would be mostly a thing at the eastern and western bay areas of the USA, where many people are living in a quite packaged place, so e.g. a high speed train from NYC to Washington D.C. and such.

BTW high speed trains have operating speeds from 165 up to 200 mph. The time saving on such trains in Europe is that boarding them is much quicker, and you are wasting much less time on the train station compared to the airport. Also most major train stations are in the center of town, so with good local hub you can go quickly anywhere. So high speed trains are mostly competitors to regional flights, with less < 500 km flight distance.

 

[Free]

Oh yes, to be filled with the normal kind of political hate once again. Please!

 

[Noodles]

The Japanese call them shinkansen - which does not mean bullet train (it's a pretty generic name: 'new main line').

Phhht, they need better branding. Inpropose they get a "cool name" like katanadensha.

 

[Free]

Phhht, they need better branding. Inpropose they get a "cool name" like katanadensha.

That could already be the name of a manga series about electric bullet train drivers who fight space demons from the future.

 

[Khamon]

What Bartholomew Gallacher said. It would be lovely to see fast trains crisscrossing the country at large. But that isn't the point. Mass transit in urban areas will reduce the use of cars, and need for paved areas, dramatically. My sister has to drive from shop to shop even though they're within walking distance because there is no place to walk. There is no consideration or provision for pedestrian traffic when educational, entertainment, governmental, and shopping areas are built. They're designed for people to drive their vehicle fifty yard down the highway and park in another lot. That's the car centric mindset that we're locked into currently.

The bulk of our staff, and students, will drive around campus to park in another lot, rather than walk through the quads in half the time on a clear day. The car centric mindset is real in the US. They also ride the freight elevator, installed for disabled use, rather than climb (or even descend) the three stairwells in our building. But that's another rant. Is this a rant? I thought it was an explanation. No, it's a rant. kthx

 

[Noodles]

There is a Pelosi Documentary on at the moment with Jan 6th footgage and I am reminded again how fucking stupid it is that Trump and every single person who was at the capitol tearing it down that day isn't rotting in jail for treason until the end of days

God, fuck these people.

 

[Cindy Claveau]

Trump secretly sent covid tests to Putin during 2020 shortage

As the coronavirus tore through the world in 2020, and the United States and other countries confronted a shortage of tests designed to detect the illness, then-President Donald Trump secretly sent coveted tests to Russian President Vladimir Putin for his personal use.

Putin, petrified of the virus, accepted the supplies but took pains to prevent political fallout — not for him, but for his American counterpart. He cautioned Trump not to reveal that he had dispatched the scarce medical equipment to Moscow, according to a new book by Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward.

Putin, according to the book, told Trump, “I don’t want you to tell anybody because people will get mad at you, not me.”

Four years later, the personal relationship between the two men appears to have persisted, Woodward reports, as Trump campaigns to return to the White House and Putin orchestrates his bloody assault on Ukraine. In early 2024, the former president ordered an aide away from his office at Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence in Florida, so he could conduct a private phone call with the Russian leader, according to Woodward’s account.

These interactions between Trump and the authoritarian leader of a country at war with an American ally form the basis of Woodward’s conclusion that Trump is worse than Richard M. Nixon, whose presidency was undone by the Watergate scandal exposed a half-century ago by Woodward and his Washington Post colleague Carl Bernstein.

“Trump was the most reckless and impulsive president in American history and is demonstrating the very same character as a presidential candidate in 2024,” Woodward writes in the book, “War,” which is set to be released Oct. 15.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

The bulk of our staff, and students, will drive around campus to park in another lot, rather than walk through the quads in half the time on a clear day. The car centric mindset is real in the US. They also ride the freight elevator, installed for disabled use, rather than climb (or even descend) the three stairwells in our building. But that's another rant. Is this a rant? I thought it was an explanation. No, it's a rant. kthx

There are also other ways, the city of Rochester, New York, for example started in 2014 to reclaim an oversized highway named "The Inner Loop" built mid of the 60s. The cost of filling and flattening it was less than repairing and maintaining it.

The city views it as great success, reconnecting old neighborhoods and promoting development.

Before:

After:

Inner Loop East Project

Image The Inner Loop East Transformation Project co

www.cityofrochester.gov

 

[WolfEyes]

When you live in a small college town of about 25k population, you need a car. The vast majority of what you need isn't available locally, you must drive through the next town over to get to the city on the other side that does have what you need.

 

[Isabeau]

I believe most of the US population lives in cities (over 80%?) I've rarely heard people say that those who live in towns and rural areas should give up their cars.

Obviously, those of us in Canada and the US live in countries that are vast, and our realities of daily commutes are different than they are for those living in most of Europe. I still think that many, at least here in Montreal, could rely less on cars but choose not to. It’s difficult giving up on the freedom of being able to come and go as we please. There’s a lot more parking available here than, say, Paris, London, and Berlin. People go further out for affordable housing, and know they can still work in the city. More and more, though, this is becoming difficult because of more traffic, and housing being expensive everywhere.

 

[Cindy Claveau]

I would also add that it's common in rural areas here for boys (sometimes girls) to start driving at a very young age to help the family farm.

 

[Isabeau]

 

[Free]

The FBI arrested an Afghan man who officials say was planning an Election Day attack

The FBI has arrested an Afghan man who officials say was inspired by the Islamic State militant organization and was plotting an Election Day attack targeting large crowds in the U.S., the Justice Department said Tuesday.

Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi, 27, of Oklahoma City told investigators after his arrest Monday that he had planned his attack to coincide with Election Day next month and that he and a co-conspirator expected to die as martyrs, according to charging documents.

Tawhedi, who arrived in the U.S. in 2021, had taken steps in recent weeks to advance his attack plans, including by ordering AK-47 rifles, liquidating his family's assets and buying one-way tickets for his wife and child to travel home to Afghanistan.

 

[detrius]

You know what?

Rather than adressing the responses in this thread, I'll just get some maps and pictures and start a new thread dedicated to urban planning and public transportation.

Just give me some time, I'm visiting my parents to do some garden work.

 

[Free]

 

[Free]

More things to worry about.

"Severely compromised": Experts warn right-wing SCOTUS justices may "seek to intervene" in election

"People are underestimating how messy this could get," expert says amid growing election-related litigation.

www.salon.com

 

[Free]

Lindsay has a theory as the decision by Trump's team to to take their campaign to some not very competitive states. (Personally, I like the idea they're doing this because crowds are shrinking in their well trod locations, so they hope hitting red-ish areas in blue states will get the crowds to come out and pep up the boss.)