btrettel

93 ms·

811.
by btrettel 8y ago
Nice posts. I've nearly completed a PhD in engineering. A while back I decided that academia is likely a dead end unless you win the lottery. If the adjunct situation won't improve until people stop taking those jobs, I'll do
812.
by btrettel 8y ago
> How do you come to the conclusion that biking to work does anything significant to offset the 20 tons of co2 emission you produce? Let alone bring it anywhere near 0? I never claimed that it did. I think it helps, but I don't know
813.
by btrettel 8y ago
> rather because we refuse to accept a drastically lower standard of living I don't think it's as drastic as most people imagine, or necessarily worse. I'm a transportation cyclist. People seem to assume this some sort of
814.
by btrettel 8y ago
There's a border between Norway and Russia, and it's much larger than I expected. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norway%E2%80%93Russia_border
815.
by btrettel 8y ago
My post was not an endorsement of everything in the show. I agree that the particulars of the scenario make no sense for exactly the reasons you mentioned. I would find some sort of generic EU occupying force much more convincing, but only
816.
by btrettel 8y ago
Thanks for the recommendation.
817.
by btrettel 8y ago
By coincidence, I recently watched the first episode of a TV show where Norway's oil resources contribute to a different kind of trouble. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupied
818.
by btrettel 8y ago
A followup: I am in contact with lawyers at my university now...
819.
by btrettel 8y ago
Website doesn't work with JS turned off. It's even worse: It's one of those sites that redirects you to another page to tell you to turn JS on but doesn't allow you to go back in your browser. So even if you do turn on J
820.
by btrettel 8y ago
> They are now incentivized to find alternatives, creating demand for alternatives, therefore creating supply of alternatives. As a cyclist, I'm interested in how much congestion pricing (and related ideas like eliminating free park
821.
by btrettel 8y ago
Do you think congestion pricing would cause public transit to improve? (I'm interested in others' opinions as well.)
822.
by btrettel 8y ago
> How about some parking protected bike lanes and encouragement for e-bikes, which can actually deliver reasonable door to door times? I'm a daily transportation cyclist and I usually find parking protected bike lanes to be worse th
823.
by btrettel 8y ago
As a daily transportation cyclist, I doubt I add any measurable amount of time to the commutes of drivers I encounter on the road. In fact, it's not uncommon to see the same drivers at multiple stoplights because the effective speed (d
824.
by btrettel 8y ago
Check the date of the article.
825.
by btrettel 8y ago
Classic right hook: http://bicyclesafe.com/#righthook I've had many close calls like that, but fortunately have avoided collision. Drivers saying that they are "really pro-cycling" or whatnot means little to
826.
by btrettel 8y ago
Thinking about it, it might actually have been legal to ride on the sidewalk at the time I had in mind when writing above. But still, riding on the sidewalk is bad practice.
827.
by btrettel 8y ago
> The solution to this problem is to build protected bike lanes where cars cannot come. Unfortunately, there is not the political will to do it, so we go with this fiction that cars and bikes are equals, even though that results in a sig
828.
by btrettel 8y ago
> I avoid the same crossing when I'm on foot, even though it has a sign that says, "state law: stop for pedestrians in crosswalk." I have never seen a vehicle stop for a pedestrian in that crosswalk, even police. I take th
829.
by btrettel 8y ago
> Nope. You follow traffic laws. If you're in the lane at a stop sign, you stop. If you're on the sidewalk, you can behave as a pedestrian. My experience is that drivers tend to have a much worse understanding of the law as it
830.
by btrettel 8y ago
Aggressive behavior against cyclists is unfortunately fairly common, but as a daily transportation cyclist I worry more about well-intentioned bad drivers. For example, these are the drivers who turn across the bike lane without checking fo
831.
by btrettel 8y ago
Whenever I find myself in a conversation with a driver complaining about cyclists blowing through stop signs, I ask if they always follow the speed limit. Often I get a rant about how the speed limits are almost always too low. As far as I
832.
by btrettel 8y ago
I thought about that, but was too busy. I might try that later this year, though.
833.
by btrettel 8y ago
I once reviewed a journal article that at least a few pages of plagiarized text in it. I noticed only because I thought some sentences sounded like I wrote them, and as it turned out, I did write them. Not surprisingly, I found the paper ev
834.
by btrettel 8y ago
Nice quote. I'll have to read that paper later. You can merge ML and theory in at least one way. I attended a talk by Prof. Karen Willcox of the University of Texas at Austin (I'm a PhD student in mechanical engineering there) whe
835.
by btrettel 8y ago
I appreciate your honesty. What I meant was this: Driving is expensive, so one might argue that removing one's ability to drive would help them save money, but that doesn't work when a drivers' license is needed to generate i
836.
by btrettel 8y ago
Thanks. I've learned to not "bury the lede" here...
837.
by btrettel 8y ago
Can you explain which parts you believe are lecturing drivers? My post was meant to offer my perspective as a cyclist: driving is more expensive than many appreciate. I wasn't arguing that it was unnecessary; quite the opposite. I don&
838.
by btrettel 8y ago
Your views of bike activists do not match my experience. > It's always cringy when bike activists just assume that everybody can get to work on a bike fast and without sweating. My experience is that people tend to have an inaccurat
839.
by btrettel 8y ago
To reiterate a point I made in another reply, I'm not advocating for cycling here, just pointing out that driving is expensive. Also, I know an engineer who works on diesel engines in Detroit and commutes by bike. He seems to think Det
840.
by btrettel 8y ago
Both. There are multiple factors here. Reducing transportation costs is one factor (what I meant by "could help"), but typically one's income reduces even more, so on net it is counterproductive. I'll edit the post to be

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