Interesting Links for 05-07-2020

[andrewducker]

Canadian scuba diver in Mexico discovers vast, prehistoric industrial complex

(tags:Mexico prehistory )

Keir Starmer faces backlash from Labour's ruling committee after party defends 'racist, sexist and abusive' WhatsApp messages

(tags:Labour OhForFucksSake )

Edinburgh plans to merge buses and trams in major shake-up of public transport

(tags:Edinburgh transport buses trams )

The Seven Billion Habits of Highly Effective Robots (a short story)

(tags:robots funny war short_story scifi )

When Chaos Leads to Comedy: How The Emperor's New Groove was made (one of my favourite Disney movies)

(tags:Disney business movies history )

What we can learn from sexologists about persuading people to wear masks

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1279449964020719622.html
(tags:pandemic sex condoms )

A 'Viral' New Bird Song in Canada Is Causing Sparrows to Change Their Tune

(tags:music birds memetics USA )

Comments

[calimac]

The nesting levels of who's complaining about somebody else's complaint has left Labour Party politics an unintelligible morass as far as I can tell.

Buses

[danieldwilliam]

Basically merging two companies, sacking a few execs and something something redesigning the bus service in a non-specified way.

Is that a fair summary?

Re: Buses

[errolwi]

I assume the key part is redesigning to complement the trams rather than competing, as well as updating routes to reflect current realities. Many cities have done this kind of thing in the last couple of decades. It is possible to muck this sort of exercise up (especially if you don't have good data about current and potential usage), but most often there is a short-term drop in usage (as the new pattern doesn't suit some people) and sustained growth to new higher usage levels (as new users transition on over time).

Re: Buses

[danieldwilliam]

There are certainly a number of bus routes which compete more or less with the tram. And as and when the tram network is extended there will be some more.

And I guess if you are removing the handful of routes impacted by the tram-bus duplication then it makes sense to rewiew the whole network. Particularly in the light of the likely rapid growth in Edinburgh's population and whatever the impact from coronavirus is.

The main problem that I can see is the capacity issue coming through Princes Street and the roads parallel. Removing some services that the tram handles would help and some more point to point services that don't use Princes Street as the hub for hub and spoke system.

I was a bit underwheamed by the actual content of the announcement which didn't seem to establish much in the way of principles or details for the review. I guess early days and the key message is stand by for big changes.

[agoodwinsmith]

Why is Canada not in your tags? You have two links featuring Canadian stuff.

[andrewducker]

"... It's not even a real country anyway..."

More seriously it's me being distracted. I'll try to notice next time.

[agoodwinsmith]

Ho ho. I was going to rant on you about lumping us in with the US, but we're accustomed to us being overlooked because everyone assumes anything interesting done by us was done by the US. Sorta like the girl genius in the group.