Posts by BenRossTransit@mastodon.social
(DIR) Post #ArY2TjGHsu0vDe9vgO by BenRossTransit@mastodon.social
2025-02-27T15:31:56Z
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@interfluidity In the 1950s & 60s, hostility to modern medicine was strongly coded right-wing. The far right led a very active anti-fluoridation movement. There was a widely listened-to quack medicine talk show on the radio in NY. Recall the line in Dr Strangelove about "the international communist conspiracy to sap and destroy all of our precious bodily fluids." 1/2https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1KvgtEnABY
(DIR) Post #ArY3pxx4333J6WKpM0 by BenRossTransit@mastodon.social
2025-02-27T15:38:38Z
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@interfluidity The coding shifted in the late 60s and 70s due to combined effect of (1) revelation of the very real distortions of official science by powerful public & private actors (eg, lead toxicology, pesticide science, A-bomb testing fallout) & (2) hostility to science as such in the 1960s counterculture and "new age" movements (coded left). 2/2
(DIR) Post #ArxWskBnCplnTqyBcW by BenRossTransit@mastodon.social
2025-03-11T22:40:29Z
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@interfluidity This uses a single measure of ideology. For Democrats, there's lots of evidence that populist positions on economics are *more* persuasive than moderate positions, while the opposite is true for cultural issues. Using a single scale for ideology in this situation yields no useful guidance and risks misidentifying turnout & persuasion effects.
(DIR) Post #AsaQNMkTusycSCcs6a by BenRossTransit@mastodon.social
2025-03-30T17:01:19Z
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@interfluidity Back when they created those made-up Communist conspiracies, you had heard of the Communists before and there were in fact real Communist conspiracies alongside the made-up ones.
(DIR) Post #Askab0D5SAaXjCkKW0 by BenRossTransit@mastodon.social
2025-04-04T14:42:57Z
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@interfluidity It's notable how the anti-Trump actions, especially the Townhalls and the demos at government agencies, have been mostly organized by Indivisible, local Democratic Parties, and unions.The left that is busy attacking Democrats for inaction without distinguishing among them (except Squad vs everyone else) has been notably missing in action, outside of the Bernie/AOC tour (which itself took a clearly left-liberal stance) & maybe the Tesla takedowns.
(DIR) Post #AsouDQ6uYULrFunqUK by BenRossTransit@mastodon.social
2025-04-06T16:41:39Z
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@interfluidity It's not enough to just ignore them. You need to define your own objectives & the objectives of your action in clear, positive terms that distinguish yourselves from the crazies. Unwillingness to offend them ultimately drives away more people than it attracts.
(DIR) Post #Asp4SaKfpcGcqO6tFo by BenRossTransit@mastodon.social
2025-04-06T18:36:27Z
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@interfluidity Hopefully the people in the other faction would like to wall off those crazies too. But in my experience, they often need encouragement. There's much too much of a no-enemies-to-the-left attitude floating around, and people who feel discomfort with their own crazies tend to shy away from discomfiting them and instead just drop out.If you clearly state a positive program that distinguishes you from the crazies, things usually won't evolve into a need to confront them directly.
(DIR) Post #AsxtUAUlVx6GDX1R4q by BenRossTransit@mastodon.social
2025-04-11T00:45:52Z
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@interfluidity During Stalin's purges, the NKVD had a weekly quota of arrests. If they couldn't find someone on the list, they arrested someone else to fulfill the quota.Someone warned my grandmother's cousin's wife he was on the list. He left town for a week, returned and went back to his job as if nothing had happened.ps Arrested in 1952, did 3 years north of Arctic Circle.pps He really was a Trotskyist, thought until death in 1988 that Lenin good, Stalin bad.
(DIR) Post #AtissoU6cYhoQ2f2xM by BenRossTransit@mastodon.social
2025-05-03T16:50:32Z
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@interfluidity Remove the thumb that is now very heavily on the scale for small apartments: single-family zoning.Most land is zoned for 1 unit & 5000+ sq ft floor area per lot. Marginal land/entitlement cost of added bedroom is zero, so in high-land-value areas (where housing is most in demand) new houses have many bedrooms. Result is a surplus of big houses, relative to demand. (People who'd like their own apartments living in group houses is a sign of this.) 1/2
(DIR) Post #Ativ6QrrQNGx8ROUWO by BenRossTransit@mastodon.social
2025-05-03T17:15:23Z
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@interfluidity Remove the thumb that is now very heavily on the scale for small apartments: single-family zoning.Most land is zoned for 1 unit & 5000+ sq ft floor area per lot. Marginal land/entitlement cost of added bedroom is zero, so in high-land-value areas (where housing is most in demand) new houses have many bedrooms. Result is a surplus of big units & shortage of small units, relative to demand. (People who'd like their own apartments living in group houses is a sign of this.) 1/2
(DIR) Post #AtixC02aHNuzZvByzo by BenRossTransit@mastodon.social
2025-05-03T17:22:48Z
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@interfluidity Apartment zones limit sq ft but don't limit # of units. So each sq ft in a unit has same cost. Builders with this cost structure face, where most housing is 1-family (most of US), a market in which the price per square foot declines rapidly with increasing unit size. They have an overwhelming incentive to build small units.Legalizing 6 1000-sq-ft apts in place of a 6000-sq-ft McMansion would, over time, shift the price structure so you'd see bigger apts. 2/2
(DIR) Post #AtixkqQ02y5Bs2lBNQ by BenRossTransit@mastodon.social
2025-05-03T17:45:08Z
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@interfluidity There are a whole lot of obstacles that need to be cleared away, like off-street parking requirements and legalizing single-stair construction. But the economics are so overwhelming that I think they would largely replace mansionizations in cities with half-decent transit. The most expensive suburbs, where the old houses are so big that there's little mansionization, would not change much.
(DIR) Post #AtiyEdbuEO3sppXGrY by BenRossTransit@mastodon.social
2025-05-03T17:46:25Z
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@interfluidity The problem is so big, and has been built up over 100 years, that any solution will only work out over decades.
(DIR) Post #Atkn5Oaa05m8SeE2gy by BenRossTransit@mastodon.social
2025-05-04T14:50:38Z
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State-wide yimby zoning reforms are regulation, not deregulation.The US system of land-use governance is not planning. It is a system of chaotic competition in which localities seek higher status and/or financial gain at the expense of each other & the wider public. Yimby zoning reforms regulate the competition to limit its anti-social features. 1/2
(DIR) Post #AtqtMmF74hJvPzcEIi by BenRossTransit@mastodon.social
2025-05-07T13:33:38Z
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@interfluidity The "microdistrict" he describes is actually copied from the Soviet Union ("mikroraion" in Russian). I haven't been to China, but spent quite a bit of time in Russia, sleeping, working & visiting mostly in this environment, in the 90s,.There they had the flaws described by the people Smith quotes.I remarked at the time that these areas in St Petersburg (where I mostly went) were nicer than elsewhere. Was told that German captives built a lot of it there after WW2.
(DIR) Post #AuBmflr002AB0BPGL2 by BenRossTransit@mastodon.social
2025-05-17T15:27:34Z
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@interfluidity It follows in the tradition of Silicon Valley innovation after blockchain whose first use case is money laundering.
(DIR) Post #AufSaQuD1BymKXjDJA by BenRossTransit@mastodon.social
2024-10-11T12:51:17Z
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Just out from me & Joe Cortright.We expose the prevalence of outright falsification & scientific fraud in traffic models used to justify highway expansions.https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/highway-robbery/
(DIR) Post #AvqEiaiOjeYPD1B1Au by BenRossTransit@mastodon.social
2025-07-06T01:42:24Z
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@interfluidity Isn't this true of any measure used to judge the performance of managers? We regularly see scandals of colleges juicing up their USN&WR rankings, DEI managers faking their hiring records, etc etc.From a market socialist perspective, the problem with capitalism is not profit as a motivator, it's giving the owner the profits. That excessively empowers capitalists and over-incentivizes profit vis-a-vis other goals such as honesty & lawful behavior.
(DIR) Post #Avy0kcB0QcnkE8J9qS by BenRossTransit@mastodon.social
2025-07-09T19:43:33Z
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@interfluidity I don't buy this argument. It assumes the means-tested service is used involuntarily. You can't equivalently tax eg a library user fee or a bus fare because use is unpredictable & even depends on the fee.The political argument (which goes back way before 1998) is the real one. It also guides you in cases like bus fares where it's not clear which alternative constitutes means-testing.https://bsky.app/profile/benrosstransit.bsky.social/post/3ltkcmkqtv22o
(DIR) Post #Avy1yOqEu7FmsTjQMS by BenRossTransit@mastodon.social
2025-07-09T19:57:17Z
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@interfluidity Yes, because eligibilty for a child allowance is involuntary. But the argument doesn't apply to libraries or transit fares.