It’s been responsible for a lot of unnecessary death, and the splintering of a lot of organisations that could have done good otherwise. Often both at the same time. That’s because everyone has a slightly different idea of righteousness.

Shitty historical events seem to relate to either too much or not enough of it.

“AI businessperson suggests the future is AI”

If that infuriates you, you’ll be infuriated a lot.

Yeah, past experiences with a wonderproject that actually turns out to be meh may very well be part of it. Especially if it’s an older person.

Speaking of pollution, the whole “wifi/5G causes cancer” thing is still out there too, and might be conflated with a datacenter.

No, but appreciating what a big generic building does could require education.

If there was any education behind making those slopcenters, they wouldn’t make them gas powered in a desert.

Yes, they’re designed and built by illiterate cavemen. /s

Like, obviously you know engineers do that, and are educated and well compensated. It seems like you’ve drifted off to a different argument here.

The rich are also more educated. Lemmy hates AI, but other upper-middle-class types might just see a datacenter as a big box full of cool technology.

To plumbers and cashiers, it’s more of a new-fangled abomination we don’t need.

I’m not sure that’s infuriating at all, when they’re already blowing up and hacking neighboring countries. It might mean Europe has to spend more or regulate more to protect their cars, that’s it.

I mean, there’s more options than just tree or grid, and if it’s not strictly a tree the fastest route from A to B could be something small again. And of course trees have their own issues, like what happens if you need to get from one leaf to another that’s nearby, but only “as the crow flies”.

That example about having to move aside for a car going through a narrow European street was something I’ve actually experienced. Maybe it’s just my Canadian brain but it felt unsafe.

Ahh yes the good old days, when there was no urban planning, and empty land to develop on was always there from whatever section of town just burned down.

Only kinda /s. Obviously fires are bad, but development can be so politicised and dumb now.

Bingo. Allow me to introduce you to the colonial French seigneurial system.

And the ancient Romans, and Indus valley people another couple millennia earlier were both fond of grid plans.

They’re considered passe, but there’s real advantage in terms of easy scalability and adaptability to changing land uses.

I mean, you can organise grids to be more or less stroady, and if you have too much of this going - like you have a medieval street plan - you can get the opposite thing where cars are forced through areas only suited to pedestrians, and everyone has to flatten themselves against building walls to make room.

Yeah, someone deciding to clear out an area and develop it in a completely different way is possible, I guess, but seems a lot less likely. Maybe there’s a bit of both - something large like horse stables or a hospital was there, then it was replaced with a new self-contained development, and then they built out into the margin around it later on yet.

In any case, somebody had a big urban planning idea of some kind, but it hasn’t really continued to make sense as things changed. The angle could just be because one grid is aligned true north, and the other magnetic north.

There has to be some interesting history here.

A few other examples have been posted, but this is easily the wildest. It’s not even the same aspect ratio of grid, or at a normal angle, or over a very significant area. (And they’ve still managed to tie it in reasonably well)

Canada works this way too, interestingly enough.

Yeah, the crosswalk part was harmless, even if he technically wasn’t supposed to do the municipality’s job for them. The rest I’ll take your word for.

The charges include interfering with a traffic control device, grand theft, and vandalism exceeding $400

Actually reading the article, the first fits, but the rest is definitely the cops power tripping, unless he stole the equipment to do it.

Yeah, people also don’t want high-speed rail tracks going past their house or whatever.

If the government doesn’t address it, the people will.

Good luck with that. Most people like cars a lot more than I do.

Doesn’t is still use closed-source Chrome components?

Good. (Downvote me all you want)

If you let everyone design their local traffic flow it will be impossible to go anywhere. That’s worse than everyone deciding if they want low-income housing or a safe injection site in their neighborhood.

Usually “I’m an expert” gets followed by “here’s why your question is stupid and I won’t answer it”. Non-powertripping experts just answer the question, or ignore it if it really is dumb.

It’s a non-market way of doing things, so sure it fits the definition, but labels are dumb, and the people who really like labels are worse.

You’ll also notice that you still have to pay for whatever device Linux goes on, which is a strong hint about the economics at play.