Posts by Moz
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Speaker: Confessions of an Uber Driver…, in reply to BenWilson,
I don't follow why longer distances make carpooling less attractive. I'd think the exact opposite applies
It's harder to find people to pool with, even with the app. The longer the distance the less often people drive it, and the more spread out the sources and sinks become. I'm guessing that once you get past easy biking distance (say 30km), carpooling becomes tricky. Trying to line up schedules in a world of insecure work and hence socialising is hard enough when it's friends you know and care about, trying to do that from the small pool of motorists going to the same place at the same time, is exponentially harder.
I've got some experience of this from a lifetime without a car and attending stuff like music festivals in the countryside. It can be done, but 99% of the time you can narrow the list of possibles down to "people going to the festival", the idea that some random local will be doing the trips is low. Many festivals run exactly the "internet based ride share" thing you're talking about, and every year 90% of the arranged rides work, and every year there's a few lonely souls left at the festival when their ride vanishes.
I pretty much don't see electric bikes replacing Ubers when it comes to delivering groups of young girls to nights of partying in the city. Even less likely is for the homeward trips
No, but that's where Uber is just blatantly breaking the law and daring the government to do something about it. As you say, carpooling which relies on a stranger staying off the drugs for an evening is even higher risk than when it's a friend. But the alternative is paying someone outright, which the law likes to call "a taxi service".
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Also, even when people return having come second, they're normally expecting that. The whole "prepare, prepare, perform, recover" cycle happens at a fractal level, from "today I'm doing intervals, sprint to the lamppost gogogo" to "my career will be over by the time I'm 30", so most athletes get used to that progression. Kind of like studying for exams, but with the key difference that in order to, say, get to the Olympics, you have to have won enough competitions to get invited to train for selection, have been selected, then gone. Plus you have trainers, teammates and media attention. Combination of better social support, and more experience of winning.
That stuff is more like being a Rhodes Scholar than a run-of-the-mill PhD student. Even if you're just off to Battle Mountain for a week of riding bikes fast, like this guy I know.
That said, I work with a guy who is the forth fastest in Australia, in his main event. He's still in Sydney. But he's not moping, even though this year was probably his last chance to make the Australia swim team.
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Is that a recipe for depression for the athletes as well as the nerds? Or does the endorphin rush of physical exertion help keep the beast at bay?
Most athletes start by doing something they enjoy. There's a difference between digging into the fine print of late Roman empire latrines (few 5 year olds have that fascination), and "I like swimming" becoming "I like swimming... FOR AOTEAROA".
Can go either way. For many athletes the relentless grind to perfection is exhausting physically and mentally, and at some point they snap. There are a lot of disabled former athletes around, and a slightly disturbing number who are not around.
But the flip side is that athletic pursuits tend to be seasonal, so there's a "holiday" period every year, rather than after 3-10 years. That plus the endorphins,. plus the sheer fact that athletes have to go outside and run round in the sunshine helps a lot. I found that while studying my mental state did depend on riding my bike, and quite strongly so. But by the time I started my master's I had a system fairly well worked out, part time work, part time organised social stuff, ride my bike for transport.
Also, can I point out that "former PhD student who dropped out" still has an undergrad qualification and is rarely disabled as a result of attempting the PhD. There are lots and lots of wanna-be athletes who failed because their body gave out, permanently. So not only have they spent 10-dd years of their life not getting a qualification or any useful experience, they normally have private debt and no assets. I have one friend who made the news when the bunch she was training in got taken out by a car. She came back unable to run or ride, needing ongoing physio, and with about $50,000 in debt (a fair chunk of that was credit card debt).
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Speaker: Confessions of an Uber Driver…, in reply to goforit,
people like to be independant
Then people should get on their bloody bicycles and be independent of the whole mess.
Remember that car-pooling and ride-sharing also fall flat where there's not the population density or the distances are too great. The overlap with "could be done on a (electric assist) bicycle" is huge.
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Access: Patients X, Y and Z, in reply to Rosemary McDonald,
I asked her why she said "These people...." and she just wafted off.
I'm ... not shocked to hear that, and in fact pretty much the contrary. I find myself periodically thinking "why is billions of dollars for bloody useless military toys so unquestionably necessary, when ensuring that people have basic necessities is optional?" and feeling quite grumpy.
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"These people have a sense of entitlement."
As a lawyer she no doubt assumed the "based on law" part of her statement was implicit and obvious.
I'm happy to hear that this is happening. Hopefully another win, and by the time that happens we have elected a government who accepts that the law applies to them too.
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Hard News: "Meth contamination": the…, in reply to Sacha,
this govt are quite comfortable with state houses containing deadly mould.
There are houses where mould will be a problem regardless, and houses like ours where the tenants have almost complete control over the mould. Specifically, if they never open the windows there will be condensation and mould. To fix that we would need to put extractor fans into every room and prevent the tenants turning them off, which would make a cold brick house even colder. I have emphasised to them the usefulness of locking the bedroom windows in the "slightly ajar" position when leaving home for the day... but some prefer to complain about the mould.
However, houses where the mould is a permanent feature are a whole different story, and there are times when demolishing the place is the only option. Often it should be done anyway, because expectations have changed - we expect insulation, airflow, all sorts of "modern conveniences" that mean we also generally live longer, healthier lives. OTOH, crawling under the house and tightening one of the seals under the shower has removed the mustly smell from the adjacent bedroom.
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Hard News: "Meth contamination": the…, in reply to Glenn Pearce,
Interesting that there's apparently no requirement that "the property" not be contaminated by lead, DDT, radioactive material etc etc. Possibly because properties free of detectable lead, DDT and radioactivity don't exist?
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Hard News: "Meth contamination": the…, in reply to James Littlewood*,
Where did that quote come from?
And actually, unless explicitly prohibited by law and backed with enthusiastic enforcement, private landlords could readily do exactly that. If you're looking to rent a house you're not usually in a good position to say "nah, paying for a drug test is a waste of time". There are already markets where turning up to inspections and saying "we'll pay over the advertised rental" is the only way to get a place.
I have experience with the "would you like to pay $50 then $20/mo subscription fee to our 'rental application management website' or use the free version?" then been told by a real estate agent that the default sort order put all paid subscribers above the non-paying ones when listing applicants (the free version also lacked, among other features, the ability to save anything you typed in for future applications). Explains why we never heard back about any applications... until one of us paid the fee.
If they said "and pay $100 per applicant for a drug test" and give us the results we'd just suck it up. Albeit if we were moving out and they wanted $1000 to test the place for meth, we'd likely say no or run off to the tenancy tribunal.
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Legal Beagle: Voting in an STV election, in reply to izogi,
Yes, but that's not the question being asked. "A candidate who would beat each alternative in a 2-way match" by definition isn't your scenario. Your scenario can, and possibly does, occur, but the condorcet systems are designed to hide that possibility.
STV is designed to make is possible for a party to build support within a single-member system, while normally single-member electorates are used to achieve the opposite.
The more general issue is people's reluctance to vote for parties or candidates that cannot win (or are seen as such). A lot of effort goes into creating that perception in Australia, both Labor and the constellation Coalition parties consistently talk about "wasted votes" (ie, those not going to them) and disparage the possibility of fringe parties winning anything. The Senate voting rules were recently changed in an effort to handicap minor parties, but then the Prime Munster called a double dissolution election which undid that (halving the quota for a seat meant that even though it was nominally harder to get elected each candidate had twice the chance of election. Kind of "10% harder because of the rule change, but 50% easier because of the double dissolution = 45% easier overall")