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I’m not convinced of the author’s details and models on fares vs taxes. The overall concept seems on track, but there’s differences between direct fees (bus fare) and general funding (taxes).

The US has a long history of not understanding just how valuable and efficient shared resources are, even with the overhead of government administration. In fact, government administration is usually much more efficient than private corporation administration of the same kinds of services so we get a lot more bang for our buck.

The author does leave out the libertarians of the world. They do want every bus ride (even school busses), even police, fire, and library service paid for via contracts with the person receiving the service. It’s completely infeasible and never works in practice, but they’re out there.

The vast majority of public transit systems that go to a fully (or nearly fully) non-fare based model do great. People use the busses, trains, and other resources. They make better transit choices and have more money to spend in the local economy. The author hints at this, though I’m not sure they really made it clear in their writing.

To sum up: make the transit paid for by the community at large because the community at large benefits from it, even if they’re not actually riding the bus. It gives us freedom as a community to have free public transit and our economies are healthier.

Just to put you all on notice: I started my kids on Linux from day 1 of their computing lives. I’m playing the long game here. In another 80 years they’re going to be in the longest living users category.

They mostly use Linux as their daily drivers. Any time they have to use windows for school work they also rage at the terrible UI and lack of ease of use. <Insert evil laughter here>

I was given a logging on a RedHat server in 1997. It was operated by a fellow student in the dorm.

My school taught the engineers how to use SunOS for class, so it wasn’t a huge leap to start using a telnet connection to a local Linux machine.

Within a few months I was dual booting an older desktop Linux/Win95, and away I went. Since then it’s been about 90%+ of my daily computer use on Linux machines.

Wow. I haven’t seen a Sun keyboard like that in … geez forever. Whose were fun times. I was younger then.

My family and I are off to Germany.

After watching a violent coup attempt on Jan 6th, 2020, then absolutely no serious reaction by the US leadership to arrest and persecute the leaders of the coup, I knew it was time to bail. I started writing applications in fall 2020. It took years to get a good spot and to make arrangements with my ex wife over the kids, but it’s coming to fruition now.

I put in a few applications with Canada (BC/Victoria), but didn’t pursue it too hard. I figured if the US actually went down the fascism route as much as I feared, Canada wouldn’t be far enough away.

Is Germany better? Only maybe. They’re having a major fascism surge too with straight up neo-Nazi movements, but at least their government had some backbone to deal with it. The US is a fraking jellyfish in the face of open coup attempts so it’s done.

A failed coup with no actual punishment is just practice for the next one.

So moving straight to hydrogen bombs and skipping the atom bomb stage? That kind of move is always scary in Civ.

I’m no nuclear physicist, but I’m heading out with my family. It’s a computer science PhD, a applied mathematician with a PhD in education, and kids on track for engineering, history, computer science, art, and mathematics (we have a whole passel of kids).

My university has spent the last four years trying to hire a second faculty member to compliment my skill set and failed every time. I hope they succeed in the future, but now they’ll need to hire two people to fully cover the classes.

My city is going to finish a new bus route. They’re hoped for target is September of 2030. They’re just that good.

My university in Germany operates entirely in English. The academic world is very international so it often falls back to English to support the faculty and students. Issues in the community will also be run through the university news routes, so while I’ve been learning German, I’ll also have a big resource with my work community.

There’s a few places to check for positions. I interviewed in Ireland and Scotland as well (didn’t get the jobs). There’s also Australia and new Zealand hiding out there. Or Canada. Hell, Mexico has a great university system you could look into.

Your PhD does open new doors. It’s by no means a guarantee of a faculty spot, but it’s valued so you can leverage it.

The position is in Germany. It might be out of the frying pan and into the fire given Germany’s right wing rise, but that’s happening across the western nations and we’re all in trouble.

I don’t have a ton of advice for you. I defended over 10 years ago, so I’m moving straight into a tenured/permanent position as senior faculty. For an ABD, I’m not sure what the landscape looks like these days.

If you want to make the move, start talking to people. Reach out to people publishing in your field and talk shop. Collaborate with them, talk about the future, and be willing to take a postdoc (or german system W1) position. It’s more ramen and a small bedroom, but it’s one where there’s healthcare and civil rights.

Academia (and most professions) are all about networks. Talk with people, collaborate, and grow that network. Something will come along.

Good thing I’ve just accepted a faculty position outside the US.

I’ll get to move to a country that doesn’t persecute academics and I think I’m just beating the crowds on the way out.

I bought a 386 motherboard that needed a patch. Not software, but by soldering a wire between two pads. You just basically figure it out and went from there with a soldering iron.

Build the computer from parts? Sure. Soldered it like it came as discrete components? Also sure.

Tech savvy is often in context of when you were learning in your teens to early twenties and then what of that skill set is still applicable today.

Desktops: Linux (Mint)
Laptops: Linux (Mint)
Phones: Linux (Android)
Servers: Linux (Debian)
SBC: Linux (Armbian / Raspberry Pi OS)
ESP32/ESP8266: Arduino (I’ve never really taken to MicroPython)
ATMega 328P/etc : Arduino

For a loose definition of “me” and more “my parents when I was young” was a mid-70’s Fiat. I have lots of memories where we waited in some parking lot or by the freeway for a tow truck or some other help to arrive.

There’s tiny bits of real city around the US. It’s usually leftover fragments that managed to survive through the carpocalypse of the 30’ to today.

There are very few real city places larger than a 1/4 sq mile here.

It’s all about biblatex. I only write using Word/docx if they force me to for publication, otherwise I use LaTeX for typesetting. It’s vastly superior for serious publications, especially technical ones.

I use JabRef for managing my citation databases.

I did some work In a field with a total of 6 papers over 30 years. It was niche as all get out. Did my second paper cite the first? You betcha. I literally cited every research paper ever done on the topic, including mine.

Now there’s 7 papers on the topic.

I turned down a professorship position at a uni in part because they used windows for the whole curriculum. It would have driven me crazy having to use windows given how annoying it is for dev work. I put value on my sanity and it wasn’t worth the modest pay bump to be driven batty every day.

I likely get to teach an IoT class next term. It’s going to be so much fun with SBC systems running Linux and Arduino sensor systems! That’s worth a ton to me.

The same meme with “wiring and lights” at the top. Then you descend to motors, transformers delta-y phases, RC and RL circuits, op amps, BJT circuits, reverse bias what?, differential equations, and eventually signals and systems.