Omar's Discount Tire and Auto Repair in Union City (just over the edge of the JC Heights border) has been pretty straight-up with me over the years. Despite the name they do more than tires. Great Yelp reviews, which is what made me go there in the first place (and seemed pretty unusual for car mechanics around here!). They've always been very straight-up about costs, very straight-up about what they can and can't do, very good about giving advice on things (including in way that doesn't make them money in the short term). You can call them and a real human will answer the phone and answer questions. Only downside (for me, YMMV) is they always keep Fox News blasting in the little office (sigh). We use them for anything that we don't want to take to the dealer (oil changes, tires, checking out potential problems, etc.) because the dealer always charges an arm and a leg even if they don't do anything.

There are several types of EMP. The one that people worry about, that goes over a long distances, is the HEMP, or High-Altitude EMP. It is caused by a nuclear weapon essentially detonating in the upper atmosphere, and caused by interactions between the radiation from the bomb and the upper atmosphere itself. The easiest way to think about this is that a nuke detonated in outer space has far more of its energy stay as radiation (and not turn into blast and heat by interacting with the atmosphere), and that radiation is used to "charge up" a layer of the atmosphere in a way that results in the EMP. The physics of this is complicated.

Nukes detonated in the atmosphere also produce an EMP effect, but the high-intensity range of it is pretty limited. Limited to the point that if you have something that can be damaged in that range, it probably is close enough to the other effects to be damaged anyway. So it is less "special" in this way, and would just be part of the general damage you'd have of a place that gets nuked. It is not widespread like the HEMP.

> All nukes are meant to be set as airburst, it increases their effectiveness significantly

This is not quite right. It depends on the target you are trying to destroy. An airburst is good for maximizing the distance of medium or low levels of damage. A ground burst is for maximizing the intensity of the damage at the expense of range.

So if your nuke is aimed at a "soft" target like a city, an airburst makes more sense. If it is aimed at a "hard" target like a missile silo, you need to use a ground burst.

> Parents whose children attend the Brunswick School, a private daycare, said the hundreds of kids that attend would be put at risk, and so would students at the public schools nearby.

At risk of... what, exactly? Honestly just confused about the argument here.

Agree, the whole thing sounds totally unlikely.

Shea says that the department handles 43,000 calls per month. So that's around 1,400 per day, which comes out to almost 60 an hour, or one per minute, assuming they were evenly distributed across 24 hours, which of course is an unlikely if simplifying assumption.

From the reporting it sounded like the dispatch had two people on call for the Taqueria night, and one was late, or something like that. I don't necessarily doubt the claim that they had +200 at that moment — it's a big city and 911 is used for a lot of different services — but by his number cited, that is pretty close to the norm? Like why can their system not scale to 2X normal volume? Any reasonable system would assume that there would regularly be demand above baseline, especially for a system based around emergencies.

Shea also seems to be pitching the idea that the problem here is "government technology" lagging behind "civilian technology," and that the "modern environment" is what is "overwhelm[ing]" the system. I find this... unlikely, and a strange framing. It does not sound like an informed or accurate response.

He really doesn't seem to get that this is a vital, necessary, emergency system. Having this work reliably is not optional. It is the bare minimum.

I sent an e-mail to Fulop last weekend and did get a personal response, which I appreciated:

> We actually had a closed session two weeks ago with the city council as it is an extremely high priority - without getting too into it we had a proposal on this issue 9 months ago that the city council didn’t approve bc the existing dispatchers protested…. The meeting two weeks ago was pleading with the council that they need to consider the larger problem and I do believe they were receptive

> Here is an article and we explained to them then and again it has nothing at all to do with under staffing - I think they acknowledge that now: https://www.nj.com/hudson/2022/11/jersey-city-council-rejects-213k-contract-to-evaluate-citys-911-service-citing-understaffing-as-problem.html?outputType=amp

Which I haven't had the time to unpack or respond to, but I appreciated that the overall approach was in admitting the problem existed. I emphasized in my e-mail that this is the kind of basic service that, aside from its inherent value, would definitely play a factor in whether people with money would want to move here or buy a house here, so if they don't care about the actual lives at stake, they can think of the property values... I know, I know, a little craven, but I never assume a politician cares about lives.

Anyway, if you're mad about this (you should be), you should write to the mayor, to your councilperson, etc. Obviously your individual e-mails aren't going to make the difference, but there is a lot of evidence that a tide of individual, hand-written, real messages does make these people think that this is something people care about. That's the first step towards change.

I don't think there's any medical condition that will legally excuse you doing a hit and run except consiliarius nepotisticus, which is a rare condition in which one's father is the County Executive. Sadly, it apparently lacks any kind of remedy or cure other than waiting it out.

I've been thinking about this a bunch while driving and walking in the Heights the last few months (I walk it daily, drive a in and out a couple times a week, and ride a Citibike every once in awhile, so I feel I've been able to see things from a few different perspectives). What, exactly, is the issue? Yes, sometimes it's people doing crazy things like running reds. Those stick out in the mind though honestly when I try to think about how often I see that, it's definitely more than in most cities but still fairly rare.

What seems to create the senes of hazard for me as a pedestrian, sometimes-cyclist, and driver are:

• the tight streets with poor delineation between "zones" of parking, walking, driving; the amount of constant double-parking on streets that have no room for them (Central, Palisade, Newark, etc.) which requires streams of drivers to snake around quickly;

• poor and inconsistent lighting which is combined with the modern trend of inappropriately bright headlights make for totally shit visibility at night;

• intersections that seem built for a lot less traffic than they usually have (the turn from New York Ave onto Ravine, for example, is ridiculous: it is nearly blind for the turner, competing against three different streams of traffic);

• crossings that seem inherently anti-pedestrian (trying to cross from the 100 steps area into Hoboken, for example, is almost entirely done by people sprinting across the street at a different place than the actual crosswalk, because the visibility at the crosswalk is total shit and the traffic lights are hard to see and will sometimes not give a "walk" signal for several cycles);

• unprotected left turns (a huge issue in Hoboken, too) that cause both big back-ups and drivers trying to "sprint" across between gaps in traffic or on the yellows;

• pedestrian crossings that are inherently in competition with cars (people are trying to turn left into you, etc., and they have a small window with which to do it);

• overly-narrow intersections that require very careful navigation and have too much going on (Central and Manhattan, Central and Franklin jump out to me — you have to just sort of hold your breath and lurch through them if you are trying to turn);

• a general shittiness of the quality of the pavement which lends to a sense of it being a no-man's land (too many asphalt patches, too many repair areas, too many painted lines never used — I get that resurfacing is expensive and street maintenance is never-ending, but pretty much all of the street surfaces look like garbage, and that adds to a sense of disorder);

...and probably more. Anyway, the above is what I notice most of all. Every once in awhile you see someone do something totally absurd with impunity (I saw someone drive around someone else who was stopped at a red light in order to run the red — who does this?), to be sure. But I suspect that's as much of a symptom of everything else (and lack of any apparent interest in traffic enforcement by JCPD).

(Re: JCPD, I openly laughed at the Fullop "look how great everything has been in 2022" flier that came last week, when it bragged that JCPD was the largest it has ever been or whatever. I thought, you'd think this massive, expensive police force could clear the double parking at the very least.)

The people who are just sitting there at a green light aren't being timid, they are on their phone. Often you can see them on it.

What's funny is you can really see the difference in the few places where Hoboken hasn't spent any time trying to improve the streets. Like try being a pedestrian crossing 15th street north of Willow (where there are no stop signs or lights, no speed bumps, gritty wide streets, poor lighting, etc., and so you get endless lines of cars just gunning it) and you'll quickly realize how much better it is on basically every other street.

LUXURY satire? sorry, sorry

9rove 5treet

Our place was unoccupied for like a year and so now PSE&G's estimates are all based on the idea that we use essentially zero electricity and gas per month. I've tried to post my own readings on their website (there is a place where you can do that) but they ignore them. My little "energy used" graph on their website is totally flat except for the one month they came and checked it, which is through the roof because it is multiple months rolled into one. So irritating!

Depends on what you want out of it, but their men's casual office wear is great. As far as I can tell they have cornered the market on men's work clothes for people who don't want (or need) to spend a mint on them, and just want something that is well-made and reliable and looks fine (not fashionable, but fine).

The Hudson Yards Uniqlo is super tiny, too. Totally useless for menswear. The Fifth Avenue Uniqlo is the only one that has anything like a full stock of clothing, and it's a total zoo (and practically set up like a maze). Here's hoping the Newport one is full-sized and not crazy...

One never knows whether a politician will do what they say they will do — that much is clear. But the Change for Children slate has been pretty clear about their views and priorities in the debate and in their Reddit AMAs. So I do feel I have a sense of what their approach is, and that they are serious about making it "work." I went into all of this with a very open mind, but I need to be convinced. I don't take for granted that a union-backed candidate actually cares about educational outcomes more than anyone else, anymore than I would take for granted that a member of the Teamsters' would have a passion for moving freight.

I don't expect miracles. The Change for Children would be, at best, a component of the BOE, which itself is embedded in a much bigger system. I agree with you on that. If you think that three skeptical seats on the BOE would somehow unseat the union, I think you're the one being speculative. At most I would expect them to make it harder for things to be done without some better explanation. Is the money going to the places that it should? That's the question that I don't get any the sense the union-backed candidates care about.

But the opposing slate has said, essentially, that they don't really think the budget should be a major consideration, that they have no problem with raising taxes, and that they don't really believe in any measure of accountability.

So given the two options (plus the independent candidates, who don't seem all that serious), I think the chance is there that the Change for Children slate is more likely to produce accountability and oversight than the other one. I also have just not been impressed with the other slate explaining to me how we would not end up in a situation where our property taxes would go up 4X in one quarter again. That is just not a livable situation; things need to be run better.

I don't love developers, don't get me wrong. But I have not had anyone explain to me what evil developer agenda is going to be enacted here (other than, maybe, the ideal of not just endlessly raising the property taxes — which is not just a developer agenda).

I'm an educator myself (a history professor who teaches in Hoboken), and my wife is a high school teacher in NYC, and we are both products of public schools, for whatever that is worth. I am pro-union when they are in a position to help workers have a voice, but my experience is that when they have unchecked power (whether in education, labor, policing, etc.) then it easily becomes abused, like all unchecked power. So I would prefer a BOE that was not entirely union, for their own sake — if an all-union BOE keeps raising taxes without accountability or showing results, it will ultimately lead to a real anti-union backlash, and that isn't good for anyone.

Unions are super important when it comes to giving workers a voice and leverage. But when the union has a monopoly, it just becomes another source for corruption. This has been shown many, many times throughout history, certainly in New Jersey, in many different sectors, from the longshoremen to the police. Power is power. If you think the union necessarily cares about your children, you are being naive; they represent their own interests first.

One can be pro-union but not believe that a union monopoly is a good idea. Three non-union members of the BOE are not going to significantly degrade the power of the union, but they might make the union have to act more transparently and with more accountability. That seems like it would be the best thing, to me, in the short and long run. If, instead, the union takes the slate and continues to hike up the tax burden without improving the educational outcomes, in the long run will be a very, very harsh backlash against them.

The problem is that the increases do not seem to be translating into better educational outcomes. A board stacked with people who rubber-stamp every budget increase in the name of "the children" is an opportunity for waste and corruption. A board with several members who are non-union, who will cause every increase to be justified, who will ask how, exactly, the money is being used, not only will possibly keep the tax burden from getting too crazy (nobody expects them to be lowered), but will also push so that the money that is spent is spent well.

Better accountability is a win-win for children, parents, and citizens. The present lack of accountability does not help the children at all. If it did, there wouldn't be anybody questioning it. Nobody on the ballot is trying to gut the system, nobody is anti-child or anti-teacher.

Yeah, I assume they don't want higher taxes, but I was wondering if there was a more direct benefit, e.g., some kind of project they are trying to get through.

Given that they would still be a minority of the BOE, it seems unlikely that they'd be able to enact a nefarious developer agenda anyway, if one existed.

What would you define as a "good option"? You have one group saying, "we're going to do what we've been doing, and we don't care how much it costs or whether it gets good results," you have another group saying, "we don't want to impact teacher quality or ability, but this money clearly isn't getting spent efficiently or effectively ($33K per student) and we should figure out what's going on before just mindlessly increasing taxes."

Obviously I've concluded one of those is a better option than the other, but it does seem like a choice is there. The only thing people have said against the latter is that some developers support them, but nobody's explained to me what sinister result I would expect from that.

Who, exactly, is proposing to defund public schools? It is not a position I've seen on here or from any of the BOE candidates.

This is correct. Each Coinstar has different output vendors. If you want Amazon you need to check. You can use their website here to find a kiosk near you and check what its options are.

I mean, it was out of service, so if this is some kind of mastermind... they probably aren't...

(Also, pro-tip: if you want to call a number without leaving a trace, just use a new Google Voice number.)

(Also, pro-tip: I doubt anybody does clever identity theft heists by writing phone numbers with sharpies on fences.)

> That is what fallout largely is.

Most of what you've said is right, but this part is not. The most radioactive parts of fallout are fission products, the split "halves" of atoms reacted during the nuclear fission part of the explosion. The reason surface bursts are more dangerous from fallout is not because the dirt itself became neutron activated, but because the fission products mix into the dirt, which makes them fall out of the cloud much sooner than they would otherwise. The mushroom cloud from an air burst is still highly radioactive, it just doesn't (usually) send its products back to the ground very quickly (though there are circumstances in which it could, like if it started raining), and so by the time the radioactive byproducts come back down, they have had some time for the shortest half-lives to burn out, and they are diffused over a larger area (so no single spot on the ground gets too much).