Cheddar Tom wrote:Maybe it is because I am originally from a small town....but I do not understand how people can tolerate the population growth of STL County combined with the lousy, insufficient infrastructure. Lindbergh, Big Bend, Gravois, Hanley, Manchester....none of these roads are optimal for current traffic levels and my blood pressure spikes each time I drive on them between the hours of 4-7 p.m. Can the county realistically do anything to make it flow easier, though....?
Well all the road money goes out to the sprawl areas for new roads to further the sprawl. Instead of adding capacity or fixing the trouble spots in current infrastructure we just keep building new. There are plenty of things that could be done to those roads, those things will never get the funding to do it.
Also...it should be noted, infrastructure spending is underfunded. On top of that, development along the majority of these roads makes widening infinitely more difficult. Take Lindbergh for example. There's a mixture of all sorts of commercial and residential developments on either side along with utilities. Widening it would involve a ton of right of way acquisition, utility relocation, landscape buffer losses, building setback violations, and loss of parking. Plus, there are some bottlenecks that will just never go away. Even if you made Lindbergh 11 lanes wide, its still going to back up where people try to get onto 270 and off from 270 plus there is just no way to fix some of those intersections without spending 10s of millions of dollars.
On top of that, some of these roads fall into the jurisdiction of the state and not the county.
It's been a while since I've driven some of these roads, but I do remember a lot of times it was just poor planning/lack of options.
Now sure enough, this evening Forbes reported that the bankroller of the Hogan suit is none other than Peter Thiel, a prominent Silicon Valley billionaire who styles himself a libertarian but somewhat incongruously is a big time supporter of Donald Trump in addition to numerous other right wing causes, most of which have a distinctly Randian cast.
Regardless of his politics, this news should disturb everyone. People talk a lot about the dominance of the 1% or in this case more like a tiny fraction of the 1%. But being able to give massive political contributions actually pales in comparison to the impact of being able to destroy a publication you don't like by combining the machinery of the courts with anonymity and unlimited funds to bleed a publication dry.
Now sure enough, this evening Forbes reported that the bankroller of the Hogan suit is none other than Peter Thiel, a prominent Silicon Valley billionaire who styles himself a libertarian but somewhat incongruously is a big time supporter of Donald Trump in addition to numerous other right wing causes, most of which have a distinctly Randian cast.
Regardless of his politics, this news should disturb everyone. People talk a lot about the dominance of the 1% or in this case more like a tiny fraction of the 1%. But being able to give massive political contributions actually pales in comparison to the impact of being able to destroy a publication you don't like by combining the machinery of the courts with anonymity and unlimited funds to bleed a publication dry.
Websites that ask you to subscribe than give a passive aggressive opt out ("No, thanks, I don't want to be tuned in to the latest world developments!" are the [expletive] worst.
I guess I haven't thought the Gawker case through very much, but I think they and their sub-sites(?) routinely cross the line and did so with Hogan. Saying this guy destroyed Gawker by throwing money at a court case is a little disingenuous. Some court cases don't happen because there's not enough money to support the legal expense, but this one had the money and it seems to have won on the merits. So far anyway.
i like their gaming site, kotaku. it seems harmless.
im amazed at the amount they gave hogan, initially. that doesn't make sense to me. and hogan is such a creepy scumbag at this point, what we've learned about him, it makes perfect sense that he'd have this guy help him out. i'm not defending gawker either. its more just a reminder, that once again, money rules the [expletive] planet.
Jocephus wrote:i like their gaming site, kotaku. it seems harmless.
im amazed at the amount they gave hogan, initially. that doesn't make sense to me. and hogan is such a creepy scumbag at this point, what we've learned about him, it makes perfect sense that he'd have this guy help him out. i'm not defending gawker either. its more just a reminder, that once again, money rules the [expletive] planet.
Yeah, I guess most of their sites are ok. Gizmodo/io9 and Jalopnik are good. Kotaku, Lifehacker. Deadspin and Gawker can be pretty awful. Jezebel is a mixed bag in my limited experience.
the thing about the gawker network is that the main site, gawker, has injected itself into all the good sub-blogs they have and that is a bad bad thing, especially if youre a conservative.
io9 used to be the go to for sci/tech postings. they always dumbed down really in depth scientific developments/breakthroughs/etc for the casual reader (like myself) and it was an enjoyable experience. They also typically had pretty good reviews for movies/tv shows/books and were typically unbiased. I stopped visiting regularly once gizmodo and io9 merged. mainly because of the article entitled "Stop Drinking Bottled Water". I get the message, but it was very cringeworthy and just par for the course with how down hill things have gone with that site.
Basically the entire gawker network has turned into a extreme far left leaning blog site and it shows in every one of their sub-sites. even some of the most liberal regular posters are growing tired of their jezebel influenced blogs and overall schtick.
It's sad, because most of the really good writers have jumped ship because of everything going on over there.
There's a whole network of think tanks and wealthy individuals that fund strategic litigation. Gawker is implying that this is something new or unethical if not illegal. It's not. It happens on the right and the left. Do you know how much it costs to litigate a case all the way to the Supreme Court? Seven figures. Maybe you'll find a lawyer to take a significant case on principle, but like ballplayers, lawyers tend to like to get compensated for their work.
