[HN Gopher] "March of the Intellect" Cartoons (1828-29)
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"March of the Intellect" Cartoons (1828-29)
Author : Caiero
Score : 40 points
Date : 2023-03-04 05:06 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (publicdomainreview.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (publicdomainreview.org)
| IIAOPSW wrote:
| Prior art on the hyperloop.
| notahacker wrote:
| Good to see 200 year old illustrations not only predicting the
| imminent demise of work, but also that people would spend their
| free time enjoying practical novel forms of transport like
| Hyperloops...
| atoav wrote:
| But as it turned out the hyperloop was a work of fiction to
| avoid investment in actual high speed train networks by a guy
| who owns a car company. Who would have thought?
| capitainenemo wrote:
| The same issues of high construction cost and NIMBYism that
| doomed california's highspeed rail project ensured that the
| hyperloop was doomed from the start, only doubly so since the
| other project was already started.
|
| Really though, I feel the US has pretty much the optimal rail
| system. Every rail line devoted to moving people around is
| another one that can't be used for high efficiency freight
| transport, resulting in freight being moved far less
| efficiently by trucks.
| notahacker wrote:
| > Every rail line devoted to moving people around is
| another one that can't be used for high efficiency freight
| transport, resulting in freight being moved far less
| efficiently by trucks.
|
| Movements of people tend to be in certain time windows
| though, and there's no particular reason why freight needs
| to move inside those windows. And if there are lines
| operating at capacity, it's not like the US lacks the land
| to build more...
| capitainenemo wrote:
| The explanation for why US passenger rail is so slow, as
| I've read in other threads, is that the lines are at
| capacity with freight and it often has precedence. The
| distances traveled are often enormous, and the amounts so
| large given how hard it is to move things by ocean from
| the west coast to the east, that it is probably hard to
| do this. This has been bemoaned by passenger rail as
| misplaced priorities, but in terms of the environment
| this is probably optimal since train is many orders of
| magnitude more efficient than trucks, especially with the
| length of freight trains in US (another advantage US
| freight efficiency has over European, and also blamed for
| slower passenger lines in the US).
|
| Europe has far more passenger rail, but seems to pay for
| it with less efficient freight rail and a lot more
| trucks.
| swayvil wrote:
| Right now the intellectual-way is established and ubiquitous. We
| are born and die, embedded in that.
|
| Alternatives are not discussed or even (if you look at the
| conversations in fiction, social media) imagined. Except to the
| degree that anything that is not "born of intellect", or
| intellectually digestible, or otherwise intellect-centered, is
| abhored. Considered insane and diseased, even.
|
| So that's a stong invisible bias there. (Like fish who never
| heard of water, yet are surrounded by it, lacking anything to
| compare) Something to consider.
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