I have itemized data for a single line in New York (Second Avenue Subway Phase 1) and a single line in Paris (Metro Line 1 extension), from which I have the following costs:
Tunneling: about $150 million per km vs. $90 million, a factor of 1.7
Stations: about $750 million per station vs. $110 million, a factor of 6.5
Systems: about $110 million per km vs. $35 million, a factor of 3.2
Overheads and design: 27% of total cost vs. 15%, which works out to a factor of about 11 per km or a factor of 7 per station
[…]
In Paris, as well as Athens, Madrid, Mexico City, Caracas, Santiago, Copenhagen, Budapest, and I imagine other cities for which I can’t find this information, metro stations are built cut-and-cover. While the tunnels between stations are bored, at higher cost than opening up the entire street, the stations themselves are dug top-down. This allows transporting construction materials from the top of the dig, right where they are needed, as well as easier access by the workers and removal of dirt and rock. There is extensive street disruption, for about 18 months in the case of Paris, but the merchants and residents get a subway station at the end of the works.
In contrast, in New York, to prevent street disruption, Second Avenue Subway did not use any cut-and-cover. The tunnels between stations were bored, as in nearly all other cities in the world that build subways, and the stations were mined from within the bore, with just small vertical shafts for access. The result was a disaster: the costs exploded, as can be seen in the above comparison, and instead of 18 months of station box-size disruption, there were 5 years of city block-size disruption, narrowing sidewalks to just 2 meters (7′ to be exact).
{ Pedestrian Observations | Continue reading }
pencil, ink, and enamel on tracing paper { Elena Asins, Scale, 1982-1983 }
economics, new york, paris, underground |
March 10th, 2019
the Chinese People’s Liberation Army and French Ground Army maintain small pigeon forces in the event that electronic warfare should disrupt or disable military communications.
This hypnotist charges half a bitcoin for helping you remember your lost cryptocurrency password
The Shutdown Problem: How Does a Blockchain System End?
Robots Built House That Generates More Energy Than it Needs
What Happened When I Bought a House With Solar Panels Third-party ownership and decades-long contracts can create real headaches.
From 1979 to 2017, productivity grew 70.3 percent, while hourly compensation of production and nonsupervisory workers grew just 11.1 percent. Where did the “excess” productivity go? Rich People Have Been Taking Your Money For 40 Years And They Still Are
a short story about what happened to the U.S. economy since the end of World War II
Oil will remain the world’s single largest source of energy for the foreseeable future, and the balance between global supply and demand remains perilously narrow.
why deepfakes haven’t taken off as a propaganda technique… they’re too easy to track
Home Control With a Posture-Sensing Couch (Users can then, e.g., switch their TV to a fireplace scene when assuming a relaxed posture) [PDF]
The hipster effect: Why anti-conformists always end up looking the same
Around three-quarters of patrons of nightclubs and live music venues would prefer lower sound levels
Consuming From a Shared Plate Promotes Cooperation
Orgasms with a partner were associated with the perception of favorable sleep outcomes, however, orgasms achieved through masturbation (self-stimulation) were associated with the perception of better sleep quality and latency.
how dress codes sexualize students by analyzing the rules and their framing in 481 public high schools across the US
The habitable zone around other stars has been defined as the region where liquid water can exist on a planet’s surface, but it takes more than water to support complex life. Life probably can’t exist on quite as many planets as we once thought
It may be categorically unpleasant to visit cemeteries, crash sites, and death camps, but tourists queue up to see such places. The history of dark tourism
When Kodak Accidentally Discovered A-Bomb Testing
Adults living in the state where they were born
Jareth Nebula never felt completely human
every day the same again |
March 7th, 2019
if being very smart was much, much better than being of average smarts, then everyone would [have] become very smart up to the physiological limit. […] The fact that being very intelligent is not evolutionarily clearly “good” seems ridiculousness to many people who think about these things. […]
let’s talk about another quantitative trait which is even more heritable than intelligence, and easier to measure: height. […] Though being a tall male seems in most circumstances to be better in terms of physical attractiveness than being a short male, circumstances vary, and being too tall increases one’s mortality and morbidity. Being larger is calorically expensive. Large people need to eat more because they have larger muscles. […]
let’s go back to intelligence. What could be the trade-offs? First, there are now results presented at conferences that very high general intelligence may exhibit a correlation with some mental pathologies. Though unpublished, this aligns with some prior intuitions. […] Additionally […] one could argue that being too deviated from the norm might make socialization and pair-bonding difficult.
{ GeneExpression | Continue reading }
photo { Linda Evangelista photographed by Philip Tracy for Vogue, January 1992 }
evolution, genes |
March 7th, 2019
The first cluster, or factor, of psychopathy is Fearless Dominance, which is characterized by social and physical boldness, adventurousness, and immunity to stress. The second factor of psychopathy is Self-Centered Impulsivity, which is is characterized by a narcissistic, callous and impulsive lifestyle and a willingness to take advantage of others without experiencing guilt. Note that those who score high in psychopathy tend to score high on both factors. In fact, if you just score high in Fearless Dominance, that might be an indication of a healthy personality! It’s the combination of these traits in a single package that makes it psychopathy. […]
In general, people did not find psychopathic characteristics particularly attractive for any form of relationship — whether it was a date, a short-term relationship, or a long-term relationship. […]
[T]hose with higher levels of psychopathic characteristics were more attracted to those with psychopathic characteristics. […] It wasn’t just psychopathy that predicted attraction to psychopathy. Many personality disorder features– such as histronic, narcissistic, obsessive-compulsive, schizotypal, passive-aggressive, self-defeating, antisocial, paranoid, borderline, avoidant, dependent, and sadistic features– were correlated with a preference for psychopathic characteristics.
{ Scientific American | Continue reading }
formica and industrial paint on wood { Lygia Clark, Planes in Modulated Surface 4, 1957 }
psychology |
March 7th, 2019
A company tied to Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump owns a 171-acre hunting preserve that is being used as a private shooting range. […]
During negotiations, said Joe Kleinman — who with his wife, Jocelyn, sold the property in August 2013 for $665,000 — the buyer’s agent tried to reduce the price by invoking a 1991 state court decision that requires buyers disclose to sellers if a property is known to be haunted.
Kleinman refused, saying anyone who truly believed it was haunted would either abandon the sale or pay a premium.
{ Poughkeepsie Journal | Continue reading }
quote { entire crew is HorseFaced for real }
U.S., guns, housing |
March 7th, 2019
Hot temperatures do not have a significant effect on sexual activity on a given day. […] we found that temperature does not influence sexual activity on subsequent days either. […]
the relationship between temperature and sexual activity might be a mechanism of minor importance in the relationship between temperature and birth rates.
{ Demographic Research | Continue reading }
sex-oriented, temperature |
February 21st, 2019
Contrary to the belief that happiness is hard to explain, or that it depends on having great wealth, researchers have identified the core factors in a happy life. The primary components are number of friends, closeness of friends, closeness of family, and relationships with co-workers and neighbors. Together these features explain about 70 percent of personal happiness.
{ Murray & Peacock, A model-free approach to the study of subjective well-being, 1996 }
related { Having Poor Quality Relationships Is Associated With Greater Distress Than Having Too Few }
photo { Janice Guy }
psychology, relationships |
February 18th, 2019
Leveraging popular social networking sites, individuals undertake certain forms of behavior to attract as many likes and followers as they can. One platform that symbolizes people’s love for strategic self-presentation to the utmost degree is Instagram. […]
Narcissism is characterized by grandiose exhibition of one’s beauty and pursuit of others’ admiration. Posting selfies/groupies is associated with narcissism and need for popularity. […]
Instagram selfies and groupies symbolize social media users’ public display of narcissism. From an evolutionary psychological perspective on the renovated hierarchy of fundamental human motives and needs, this study examined the interaction effects of Instagram photo types (selfies, group selfies, long-shot photos taken by others, and neutral photos) and Instagram peer viewers’ individual difference factors (intrasexual competition [ISC] for mates, need for popularity [NfP], loneliness, and need to belong [NtB]) on intersexual attraction. […]
The findings confirmed the assumption that a potential mate who posts selfies and groupies is perceived by opposite-sex viewers to be more narcissistic compared to a potential mate who posts neutral photos.
{ Evolutionary Psychology | Continue reading }
photo { Thierry Mugler, Monster Show, Elle US, November 1991 }
psychology, relationships, social networks, weirdos |
February 18th, 2019
Revising things makes people think they are better, absent objective improvement. We refer to this phenomenon as the revision bias. […]
We propose that the fact that revisions typically are intended to be improvements over their originals gives rise to an overgeneralized heuristic that revisions necessarily are improvements over their originals. Yet, as any author responding to editorial reviews knows, not every revision turns out better than before. […]
Things that are objectively unchanged (or even made worse) in the revision process may nonetheless be adopted, so long as observers believe they possess a “revised” version.
{ Harvard Business School | PDF }
images { Sculpture by Yoan Capote | Barbara Kruger-annotated photo of Eliot Spitzer for New York magazine, 2008 }
halves-pairs, psychology |
February 18th, 2019
[I]t is getting harder to target gamers via traditional advertising techniques, because an increasing number of consumers spend more of their digital days behind paywalls, where there is often no advertising. These are also typically the most engaged and most-spending audiences.
To win some of the attention back, games companies must target gamers behind paywalls, be it through product placement or original content on video streaming services or podcasts and playlists on music services.
{ MIDIA | Continue reading }
economics, leisure, marketing |
February 18th, 2019
GPT-2 is trained with a simple objective: predict the next word, given all of the previous words within some text. […] GPT-2 displays a broad set of capabilities, including the ability to generate conditional synthetic text samples of unprecedented quality, where we prime the model with an input and have it generate a lengthy continuation. […]
SYSTEM PROMPT (HUMAN-WRITTEN)
In a shocking finding, scientist discovered a herd of unicorns living in a remote, previously unexplored valley, in the Andes Mountains. Even more surprising to the researchers was the fact that the unicorns spoke perfect English.
MODEL COMPLETION (MACHINE-WRITTEN, 10 TRIES)
The scientist named the population, after their distinctive horn, Ovid’s Unicorn. These four-horned, silver-white unicorns were previously unknown to science. Now, after almost two centuries, the mystery of what sparked this odd phenomenon is finally solved. […] While examining these bizarre creatures the scientists discovered that the creatures also spoke some fairly regular English. Pérez stated, “We can see, for example, that they have a common ‘language,’ something like a dialect or dialectic.” Dr. Pérez believes that the unicorns may have originated in Argentina, where the animals were believed to be descendants of a lost race of people who lived there before the arrival of humans in those parts of South America.While their origins are still unclear, some believe that perhaps the creatures were created when a human and a unicorn met each other in a time before human civilization. According to Pérez, “In South America, such incidents seem to be quite common.”
{ Open AI | Continue reading }
related { The technology behind OpenAI’s fiction-writing, fake-news-spewing AI, explained }
more { Japanese scientists used A.I. to read minds + NONE of these people exist | Thanks Tim }
quote { Who is Descartes’ Evil Genius? }
Linguistics, robots & ai |
February 16th, 2019
art |
February 12th, 2019
If a rat sees another rat drowning, for example, it will forgo a chunk of chocolate to save its imperiled friend. […]
Scientists at the University of Chicago […] found that a white rat raised among only white rats will do nothing to save a black rat from a trap. Rats, like humans, can be biased in how they act on, or don’t act on, their empathy.
In a variant of the experiment, a white rat raised among only black rats would save a black rat from a trap — but would fail to save other white rats.
And a white rat raised among black and white rats rescued rats of both colors. The researchers found that it is not the rat’s color that determines which type of rat it will show empathy for, but the social context in which it was raised.
{ Henry James Garrett/NY Times | Continue reading }
related { when given a choice, do people avoid empathy? And if so, why? }
linocut on transfer paper { Christian Waller, The spirit of light, 1932 }
animals, psychology, relationships |
February 12th, 2019
Polyamorous couple who identify as VAMPIRES demonstrate how they drink their ‘donor’ girlfriend’s blood
Happiness research: Long-term effects of life events are overestimated [PDF]
Women who take oral contraceptives have a harder time recognizing emotions like pride or contempt in other people’s faces in comparison to women who aren’t on birth control, new study shows
Scene categorization in the presence of a distractor (we presented composite images with a scene in the center and another scene in the periphery. The two channels conveyed different information, and the participants were asked to focus on one channel while ignoring the other.)
Silent Neurons: The Dark Matter of the Brain?
What 100 Years of Typing Research Can Tell Us
Starting this week, Amazon is testing autonomous package delivery with little robot vehicles in a northern Seattle suburb.
The alarm has been raised on so-called ‘driverless dilemmas’, in which autonomous vehicles will need to make ethical decisions on the road. We argue that these ideas are too contrived to be of practical use, represent an incorrect model of proper safe decision making, and should not be used to inform policy.
Forecasting the Impact of Connected and Automated Vehicles on Energy Use
If technology is everywhere, the tech sector no longer exists. If the tech sector no longer exists, its premium is no longer justified.
Fortnite Is the Future, but Probably Not for the Reasons You Think
As HuffPost and BuzzFeed shed staff, has the digital content bubble burst?
In the case of Picasso’s paintings, our econometric analysis shows that some colors are associated with high prices
The moral of this story is that going to the pub raises many interesting philosophical issues
Misophonia is when an everyday sound causes a strong emotional reaction, usually anger, anxiety or disgust [Thanks GG]
How 10,000 maggots eat a pizza in 2 hours
Increased Coldheartedness related to more pleasure and less guilt after bug grinding.
Detecting a Decline in Serial Homicide
Janice Guy at Higher Pictures, until March 9, 2019
#RecursionFTW
The Neon Fruit Illusion (Observers will typically ascribe this colour change not to the lighting but to the objects themselves)
100 Years is an upcoming science fiction film written by John Malkovich and directed by Robert Rodriguez, due to be released on November 18, 2115
every day the same again |
February 12th, 2019
Previous research shows conflicting findings for the effect of font readability on comprehension and memory for language. It has been found that - perhaps counterintuitively – a hard to read font can be beneficial for language comprehension, especially for more difficult language.
Here we test how font readability influences the subjective experience of poetry reading. […] We found that participants rated easy poems as less nice when they were presented in a hard to read font, as compared to when presented in an easy to read font. […] we did not observe the predicted opposite effect for more difficult poems.
{ PsyArXiv | Continue reading }
photo { Weegee, Untitled [U.S. Hotel at 263 Bowery], 1943‐45 }
poetry, visual design |
February 4th, 2019
Bitcoin Is Worth Less Than the Cost to Mine It
The production-weighted cash cost to create one Bitcoin averaged around $4,060 globally. […] With Bitcoin itself currently trading below $3,600, that doesn’t look like such a good deal. However, there’s a big spread around the average. […] Low-cost Chinese miners are able to pay much less — the estimate is around $2,400 per Bitcoin — by leveraging direct power purchasing agreements with electricity generators such as aluminum smelters looking to sell excess power generation.
{ Bloomberg | Continue reading }
art { Marcel Duchamp, 3 stoppages-étalon, 1913-14 | MoMA, NYC | Centre Pompidou, Paris }
cryptocurrency |
February 4th, 2019
For every 100,000 inhabitants, Okinawa has 68 centenarians – more than three times the numbers found in US populations of the same size. Even by the standards of Japan, Okinawans are remarkable, with a 40% greater chance of living to 100 than other Japanese people. […]
one of the most exciting factors to have recently caught the scientists’ attention is the peculiarly high ratio of carbohydrates to protein in the Okinawan diet – with a particular abundance of sweet potato as the source of most of their calories. […]
Despite the popularity of the Atkins and Paleo diets, there is minimal evidence that high-protein diets really do bring about long-term benefits.
So could the “Okinawan Ratio” – 10:1 carbohydrate to protein – instead be the secret to a long and healthy life? […]
The typical Okinawan centenarian appeared to be free of the typical signs of cardiovascular disease […] Okinawa’s oldest residents also have far lower rates of cancer, diabetes and dementia than other ageing populations. […]
Genetic good fortune could be one important factor. Thanks to the geography of the islands, Okinawa’s populations have spent large chunks of their history in relative isolation, which may has given them a unique genetic profile. […]
It is the Okinawans’ diet, however, that may have the most potential to change our views on healthy ageing. Unlike the rest of Asia, the Okinawan staple is not rice, but the sweet potato. […] Okinawans also eat an abundance of green and yellow vegetables – such as the bitter melon – and various soy products. Although they do eat pork, fish and other meats, these are typically a small component of their overall consumption, which is mostly plant-based foods.
The traditional Okinawan diet is therefore dense in the essential vitamins and minerals - including anti-oxidants - but also low in calories. Particularly in the past, before fast food entered the islands, the average Okinawan ate around 11% fewer calories than the normal recommended consumption for a healthy adult.
{ BBC | Continue reading }
photo { Stephen Shore, New York City, New York, September-October 1972 }
asia, food, drinks, restaurants, health |
February 4th, 2019
