Metaheuristic algorithms like GA and simulated annealing are almost identical to Bayesian methods/MCMC. Metaheuristic algorithms are Bayesian methods if you can pretend that your objective function is proportional to a probability distribution that you want to maximize. They just take unique approaches to exploring the posterior distribution. But conceptually they’re identical

Dentistry is such a wild industry. Virtually every dentist I’ve ever been to was just one old kinda weird white dude making like a bajillion dollars while being constantly surrounded by dozens of the hottest mid-20s women you’ve ever seen

And it was killed by politicians who mistakenly thought it would be better to deface our city with billions of dollars worth of decaying roads and complicated and unpredictable bus lines.

Also remaking that with modern electric rail tech instead of rubber tire busses could easily triple its top speed while reducing energy and maintenance costs and increasing capacity.

I haven’t heard of Pittsburgh’s skybus actually! Thanks for sharing. This type of system with modern technology could be so powerful. I also think people don’t fully appreciate how expensive roads are to maintain, vs how cheap rail is.

It costs $1 million to repave a single lane mile of road, and they must be repaved every 15 years on average. There are 866 miles of paved road in Pittsburgh. That is 57 million dollars per year to maintain Pittsburgh’s roads, ignoring our 450+ bridges and assuming they are all single lane. Monorail has very little maintenance cost cause there is nothing to repave. Installation cost varies a ton but can be done for about $50 million per mile for elevated lines, including building the supporting power and control stations. After that upfront hurdle you see massive savings, cause roads last way longer when they see less traffic.

Imagine if we had high speed monorail connecting each of our neighborhoods. Not like subways but like the ultra light rail at airports that transports people between distant terminals. Never more than a 5 minute wait cause each line only has two stops and multiple train cars, each equipped with bike racks that let you bring a regular or electric bike with you.

Nobody would ever have to look at a bus/train schedule and you could be in any neighborhood in less than 5-10 minutes. With a bike you could get from any rail station to your destination in another 5 minutes. You’d never have to even look at a map or gps cause it would become so easy to navigate.

And monorails are almost silent so it wouldn’t matter where you put them. They are so smooth that you hardly even notice that you’re moving. You could read a book during your commute. They are also futuristic as fuck and would make this city just feel like it is decades ahead of the rest of the world.

They are also billions of dollars cheaper to maintain and run than roads shared by cars and busses. We could easily afford to do this right now and have several monorail lines up and running within the decade

Genes had a $1.75 22oz draft for like the entire summer/fall of 2021