Observations of the Random sort

[dead_elvis]

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[Eric the .5b]

It'd only be funnier if she tried to follow through.

[JD]

Because this could never have any side effects:

Slated to be introduced this week by City Councilman Ritchie Torres, the plan calls for the council to enact legislation to force private lenders to revalue every taxi medallion at $250,000. In turn, the city would act as a guarantor on all outstanding loans, absorbing only the costs of drivers that default on their payments.
...
The new proposal is coming after local officials in January floated a plan to create a public-private partnership to bail out taxi drivers by buying back the medallions. While the program calls for unspecified discounts on the medallions, officials admitted the plan would cost upwards of $500 million.

Proponents of the new plan, meanwhile, argue that it would sidestep the need for a costly bailout. A $250,000 valuation for every medallion, Dange argues, could make for an attractive return for most lenders, who are now staring at the prospect of a slew of defaults, as well as a demand from the New York Taxi Workers Alliance to cap all medallion debt at $150,000.

https://nypost.com/2020/05/11/nyc-taxi- ... be-250000/

Government is, as usual, a mechanism by which the politically connected (taxi unions, lenders, in this particular case) extract wealth from the non-politically-connected (taxpayers in general). Everyone is kind of to blame here: medallion purchasers, who assumed that medallions were magic investments that could never ever lose value; lenders, who were happy to encourage this belief because it meant people would borrow huge amounts for a medallion; the city, which was also happy to encourage this belief because it inflated the price it was getting for medallions; existing medallion holders, who didn't want to see the value of their purchase diluted.

[Kolohe]

https://nypost.com/2020/03/28/hero-mta- ... cated-dad/

Someone completely burned up a New York City subway car at the end of March and the first I heard about it was a rando twitter shitposter just now.

[Hugh Akston]

https://nypost.com/2020/03/28/hero-mta- ... cated-dad/

Someone completely burned up a New York City subway car at the end of March and the first I heard about it was a rando twitter shitposter just now.

TBF the NYC subway catching fire isn't exactly news.

[Jennifer]

Had to re-organize parts of the living room and one bathroom the other day, because the number and type of coronavirus-avoidance supplies Jeff and I have has grown far beyond the space I originally allotted for such in March. While going through the bathroom shelves I found an old, unopened gift set -- likely from a long-ago Secret Santa or something; I don't actually recall where or how I got it -- a bar of fancy soap, a bottle of lotion and one of shower gel, all lavender-colored and -scented, and packaged with a face cloth in a box occupying more than TWICE as much space as its contents [the soapbox, bottles and folded cloth were all mounted atop thick styrofoam inserts]. When I opened the box and removed its contents it was immediately obvious that the gel had leaked, since its bottle was less than half-full while the bottom of the lotion bottle was crusted with what looked like a shapeless blob of yellowish-transparent plastic. The dried gel was stuck on too hard for me to remove with my fingers, so I set the lotion bottle in a little bowl of water, figuring "Shower gel is soap or detergent, definitely water soluble, so after a couple minutes in the water the dried gel should be soft enough for me to peel off, assuming it doesn't all just melt away."

That was over 36 hours ago. The lotion bottle with the dried gel on the bottom has been in the water bowl since then, and that dried plasticky gel is not melting or softening and STILL refuses to detach itself from the outside of the bottle.

I cannot yet comment on the quality of "Baylis and Harding -- England" lavender-scented luxury toiletries ... but I think they might have developed an excellent waterproof building mortar.

[nicole]

From Snap's summit last week

Atom Tickets is re-inventing the movie-going process with their own Mini, making it easier than ever for friends to plan a night at the box office. If you think about it, the traditional movie-going process is complicated. Between watching trailers, choosing the movie, picking seats together, and then splitting the costs, we have to switch between a bunch of different apps, while also messaging back-and-forth. With the Atom Mini, this whole process can happen right in one place. Stream the latest movie trailers and share them with friends, choose a show-time at your favorite local theater, select the best seats together, and individually pay for tickets to see the show.

I can't believe how much more complicated going to the movies is now than at any time when I went to the movies lol.

[Highway]

"This whole process is so complicated because we've made it all complicated with all these apps that were supposed to make it easier. But now OUR app actually does make it easier! You can totally believe us, not like all those other apps that promised the same thing!"

[Hugh Akston]

From Snap's summit last week

Atom Tickets is re-inventing the movie-going process with their own Mini, making it easier than ever for friends to plan a night at the box office. If you think about it, the traditional movie-going process is complicated. Between watching trailers, choosing the movie, picking seats together, and then splitting the costs, we have to switch between a bunch of different apps, while also messaging back-and-forth. With the Atom Mini, this whole process can happen right in one place. Stream the latest movie trailers and share them with friends, choose a show-time at your favorite local theater, select the best seats together, and individually pay for tickets to see the show.

I can't believe how much more complicated going to the movies is now than at any time when I went to the movies lol.

That really needs to be accompanied by one of those monochrome infomercial scenes of someone trying to buy movie tickets online but then falling out of their chair.

[nicole]

I mean I still haven't even gone to a movie theater that had assigned seats, how common is that?

[Hugh Akston]

I mean I still haven't even gone to a movie theater that had assigned seats, how common is that?

It's remarkably rare to attend a movie that doesn't have assigned seats.

[Highway]

I mean I still haven't even gone to a movie theater that had assigned seats, how common is that?

It's getting more common, and it's a pain in the ass. Even when it's just me buying tickets for 2 people it kinda sucks, and increases the time it takes to buy tickets to a movie from "Hey, I want two tickets" "Ok, here you go" to 5 minutes of garbage about "pick the showing you want to see, now wait for the seating chart, now go find the person you're going with and ask about which seats they want, now pick the seats, now wait for the confirmation screen, and the payment screen, and now get the email confirmation, then go to the theater, and futz with their kiosk that says "We don't have any tickets on file for this credit card" or has a broken reader, or whatever". Especially when it doesn't fucking matter, because the showing is only going to have 15 viewers anyway. But now you get to be all pissy about having to sit next to someone, or someone being in the wrong seat, blah blah blah, just to watch a movie that's waaaaaaay too loud, while you try not to think about what other people might have done in the comfy chairs.

If you can't tell, I'm done with movie theaters.

[Jadagul]

I'm pretty much always in favor of reserved seating for things. Makes my life much easier, and I'm better at planning in advance than most people are so I get better seats.

(This is my least favorite thing about Southwest, for instance.)

[dead_elvis]

I'm pro reserved seats for movies, without which one is completely hostage to sitting through commercials in order to get decent seats. But yeah like a lot of life recently you get more features with more hassles.

[Aresen]

I'm pro reserved seats for movies, without which one is completely hostage to sitting through commercials in order to get decent seats. But yeah like a lot of life recently you get more features with more hassles.

I know it keeps theatres in business, but I hate pre-movie commercials. I count how many there are before a film. My personal record is 18.

[Highway]

I'm pretty much always in favor of reserved seating for things. Makes my life much easier, and I'm better at planning in advance than most people are so I get better seats.

(This is my least favorite thing about Southwest, for instance.)

I'm exceedingly willing to take the "no reserved seats" for Southwest in exchange for their prices and the system they have. Especially when you can, for an additional fee that is still less than a (worthwhile) airline with reserved seats, get priority check in which allows for sitting together (and I'm in the middle anyway, cause my wife likes window seats). For someone who does not fly much (at most 1 trip a year), I feel that it's a better system that doesn't punish low information users.

[Hugh Akston]

I would never fly on an airline without reserved seating.

[Jadagul]

I'm pretty much always in favor of reserved seating for things. Makes my life much easier, and I'm better at planning in advance than most people are so I get better seats.

(This is my least favorite thing about Southwest, for instance.)

I'm exceedingly willing to take the "no reserved seats" for Southwest in exchange for their prices and the system they have. Especially when you can, for an additional fee that is still less than a (worthwhile) airline with reserved seats, get priority check in which allows for sitting together (and I'm in the middle anyway, cause my wife likes window seats). For someone who does not fly much (at most 1 trip a year), I feel that it's a better system that doesn't punish low information users.

I don't want priority check-in; I want to walk on the plane five minutes before the close the boarding doors and take my aisle seat.

And sort of fundamentally I want a system that _does_ punish low-information users, at least on a relative basis. That's kind of the whole point.

[nicole]

Yeah, I started to really hate that about Southwest.

[nicole]

I'm pretty much always in favor of reserved seating for things. Makes my life much easier, and I'm better at planning in advance than most people are so I get better seats.

(This is my least favorite thing about Southwest, for instance.)

I'm exceedingly willing to take the "no reserved seats" for Southwest in exchange for their prices and the system they have. Especially when you can, for an additional fee that is still less than a (worthwhile) airline with reserved seats, get priority check in which allows for sitting together (and I'm in the middle anyway, cause my wife likes window seats). For someone who does not fly much (at most 1 trip a year), I feel that it's a better system that doesn't punish low information users.

I don't want priority check-in; I want to walk on the plane five minutes before the close the boarding doors and take my aisle seat.

And sort of fundamentally I want a system that _does_ punish low-information users, at least on a relative basis. That's kind of the whole point.

Haha yes. Extreme Team Jadagul.

[Highway]

I'm pretty much always in favor of reserved seating for things. Makes my life much easier, and I'm better at planning in advance than most people are so I get better seats.

(This is my least favorite thing about Southwest, for instance.)

I'm exceedingly willing to take the "no reserved seats" for Southwest in exchange for their prices and the system they have. Especially when you can, for an additional fee that is still less than a (worthwhile) airline with reserved seats, get priority check in which allows for sitting together (and I'm in the middle anyway, cause my wife likes window seats). For someone who does not fly much (at most 1 trip a year), I feel that it's a better system that doesn't punish low information users.

I don't want priority check-in; I want to walk on the plane five minutes before the close the boarding doors and take my aisle seat.

And sort of fundamentally I want a system that _does_ punish low-information users, at least on a relative basis. That's kind of the whole point.

I can understand that, it's just not how we travel.

[dead_elvis]

Since I usually have a valuable carryon that cannot be checked, I love and prefer Southwest. With traditional boarding doing the gate-lice shuffle to make sure there is still overhead space when I get on is super stressful. Southwest transfers that stress to the moment 24 hours before (or I just buy the early boarding) , but it's so much better for everything to be predictable once I get to the gate on travel day. It's great knowing that I don't have to panic unless a flight is cancelled and it's difficult to get a decent boarding number on the rebook (and this is really where buying the early boarding pays off, as that will transfer, if I got a good number doing the regular checkin it will not and I'll get stuck in the D group).

[nicole]

Interesting. 24 hours before my flight is probably my most stressed out time. At the airport, zero stress.

Although I do get annoyed when airlines don't kick people off who have too-big carryons. I would really like to see that someday. Every businessdouche gets bounced.

[JD]

Although I do get annoyed when airlines don't kick people off who have too-big carryons. I would really like to see that someday. Every businessdouche gets bounced.

I have always wondered why airlines charge for checked luggage.* It seems like it would be a lot more useful to charge for carryon luggage, because the current system encourages people to try and carry everything with them.

* Probably because it requires more labor on the airlines' part

[nicole]

Although I do get annoyed when airlines don't kick people off who have too-big carryons. I would really like to see that someday. Every businessdouche gets bounced.

I have always wondered why airlines charge for checked luggage.* It seems like it would be a lot more useful to charge for carryon luggage, because the current system encourages people to try and carry everything with them.

* Probably because it requires more labor on the airlines' part

I'm sure it has nothing to do with the fact that they started charging for checked bags after the TSA made it impossible to fly with certain items in carryons.