> An underground train network is the pinnacle of public transport—right now, in New York and Chicago... people are being whisked through a network of tunnels, deep below the bustling city
Chicago is almost entirely above ground. Very little of the network is below the city.
Out of 224.1 miles of track, only 11.4 are underground (5%).[1] Only two out of the eight lines run that 11.4 miles and the majority of their time is spent on elevated tracks above street level.
That said, a ring around the city would be great. The hub and spoke layout dramatically limits Chicagoans ability to get around.
Despite its name, only 45% of London Underground is underground. As I recall only 3 or 4 lines are entirely subterranean, most run on the surface once they are out of the centre.
Precisely because of the name, it shouldn't have been hard to notice that the Chicago "El" is elevated. The "Loop" is entirely above ground and gives downtown Chicago its primary identity.
edit: we do desperately need a circle line, or failing that, dedicated bus lanes imitating one. Instead we get less and less service every year since the year they decimated "owl" (night) service.
Only 2 lines are entirely underground - Waterloo and city (literally two stops) and Victoria (the Victoria depot is above ground but all casement services are below ground)
Paris has line 6 crossing it entirely and running right next to some very touristy places and it’s overall beautiful. Aerial lines don’t have to be eyesore.
Tokyo has tons of above ground tracks and it’s fine. One big problem in american cities is that train tracks are built too high off the ground and aren’t human scale.
> people are being whisked through a network of tunnels, deep below the bustling city
Also compared to London or many metro systems, Chicago’s is not deep underground at all. As a Chicagoan I was very surprised the first time I saw some of the escalators in London or Washington.
In some parts Chicago’s is almost literally just basement level with nearby buildings.
If you have access there is a fascinating program on BBC iPlayer about digging the Victoria Line in the sixties. It's not all manual work but a surprising amount still is.
tunnels are bored depending on the soil, length, diameter. Most projects I have seen use TBMs and the New Austrian Tunneling Method. Explosives are quite the minority (not many tunnels are in solid rock), even the Gotthard tunnels were dug with TBMs
It’s been a bit since I’ve lived in Chicago - weren’t they adding dedicated bus lanes to Ashland? I remember them doing that in and near the loop as well on Washington and maybe Monroe?
It's so obvious that a ring around the city train is pinnacle of urban transport similar to London Circle line and Tokyo Yamanpte line, and every city and metropolis should has one of them.
Voice was a mainstay for me for a long time. The closest replacement I could find was a service called OpenPhone[1]. It's designed as a VoIP service for small business teams, but I'm finding it works great as a solo voice/text option. I was able to port the Voice number over.
I actually don't even use a lot of the features of Voice. I mostly just like having my phone number decoupled from any carrier or handset, so changing them is seamless, or they aren't even necessary. I do a lot of my phone calls and SMS/MMS messaging from the web application on my laptop.
I just wish I could buy and download copies of audiobooks, that's still how I listen. It's a trope on here to talk about walled gardens, but I was surprised by how difficult it's been to find audiobooks outside of Audible.
I love this! Definitely going on my morning puzzle rotation. Is there a way to copy the score to the clipboard directly without using a social service? Would love to text this to friends.
Totally, but it depends on the story you're trying to tell. I'm still early in my career and my resume is broken up to provide a summary of key parts of my work/ career to date, the most relevant/recent experience first, then highlight skills, education, and finally a brief list of other positions I've held. I've definitely dropped jobs from that last section, so it's not a full dump. I'm listing these because that additional experience is relevant and both substantiates the summary/ skills section, and shows experience where I lack formal education.
In interviews, I've had people read that far down and it's worked, they got exactly what I wanted them to out of it. In other interviews, it's clear that they didn't care, but the resume still got me in the door. They still got the most important parts up top.
And of course, it depends on who you're interviewing with and what you're applying for. The rules aren't so hard and fast, esp. when you're sending over digital copies.
I sincerely never thought I'd see Fisher on HN. His work is fantastic, tying together politics, pop culture, and philosophy into a cogent reading of our times. I would recommend reading Capitalist Realism over Ghosts of My Life if you're looking to get a sense of his ideas, or, at least I found the latter to be a harder read to get into. Both are good.
Younger folks have more and more trouble imagining a better world. It's crippling.
They almost certainly envision a world similar to now but with the glaring problems fixed. Mark Fisher is writing about the inability to imagine and begin to create entirely new futures (for examples look to the utopianism of early 20th century futurism).
What fisher and I suppose GP is saying that a future radically different from our own. Especially one that is not inherently just window dressed capitalism. In zizeks words "it's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism"
Without context these sound like hollow leftie catchphrases but especially Mark Fisher managed to show in many ways how this manifests in capitalist realism
Escaping the bitter long path dependency we're on- not just trying to rectify some wrongs, but to really make better goes, make some changes to really try over, try better- it's so hard.
I really want to see a more progressive activitism take off, see some shared hope for much wider, much better. Rather than just tangling with iniquities, trying to vault to a higher level.
My favorite of his works is The Weird and the Eerie. Capitalist Realism is good/important for making some of Gramsci's ideas more accessible to a contemporary and non-academic audience, but it's not as original.
Chicago is almost entirely above ground. Very little of the network is below the city.
Out of 224.1 miles of track, only 11.4 are underground (5%).[1] Only two out of the eight lines run that 11.4 miles and the majority of their time is spent on elevated tracks above street level.
That said, a ring around the city would be great. The hub and spoke layout dramatically limits Chicagoans ability to get around.
[1]: https://www.transitchicago.com/facts/