I lived for some time in eastern Canada and I have very fond memories of freshly picked McIntoshes and I even dare to say they were my favorites. Fresh and crisp with a good amount of acidity that balances the sweetness beautifully. That being said, they don't age super well.
Why go for a quick 5 min call when an email thread that will need you to context switch 10 times will do? That being said there is a lot of meeting which should be replaced by a email and vice-versa. Also, When there is something you don’t understand properly, coming up with the right question or meeting agenda can be very hard. Finding a common ground is better served by face 2 face communication rather than an email. When a slack thread is getting too long, a quick 5-10min VC often do wonders.
And this is wrong. If you build proper mixed housing/commercial with local markets, bakery, park, coffee, restaurants, etc. You will end up reducing car use to what they are best for. But for this paradigm to exist, you need density. I lived in NA almost all my life (California, Pennsylvania, Montreal and Vancouver) and I am currently in Spain and let me tell you, density != cars.
Maybe it's just me getting old but... as a scientist I love technical reviews however I care more and more about feeling that real world performance. If a tire feel fast, it's what I will go for. My favorite road bike is my 12yo CAAD10 because I just love how it feels and the geo is perfect for me. This kind of thinking has been mostly phased out of the reviews and the design lately while the engineering has been optimized to a point almost all new bikes (and also true with cars IMO) feels more or less the same. Nowadays, I value character over numbers.
Everyone seems to be an expert on what to do in this situation. I would argue that it's not as trivial as it seems. Yes the waymo cars seems to be on the wrong side of the road for far too long but when surrounded with erratic uniwheeler, stopping is not necessarly the right thing to do either. As a human driver, i got into some strange situation where I had to play damage control because of an early bad decision. In a big city, not crossing the double yellow line mean you will probably end up stuck every block. I personally see this as a good example to learn from but not necessarly a reason to stop testing. I would also restrain from making any decision before seeing the actual data from the car cameras/lidar/radar system.
You need a healthy turnover for community to sustain itself. You can't be too biased towards locals because you will end up with a stagnating community with a whole lot more problems with your schools/hospitals/insfrastructure/...
2-acre lot in a walkable neighborhood? How on earth are you expecting to sustain commerces, schools and or anything with a density of 250 house/km2. Your dream hawaian neighborhood is another ridiculous american suburb where only a few chosen live close enough to walk to a car dependent commercial street with ungodly amount of wasted space on parking. If you want walkable neighborhood, you will have to accept to live way closer to your neighbors. As a comparison, I am about to build a house on a .15 acre plot close to a small village with walkable access to parks, public transit, school, nature preserves, ski station... You can't build that if your plots are 2 acres, you need to densify.
You do you but don't complain if you end up having a harder time during economic downturn. Everything in life is about risk-reward and going the extra mile is about tipping the scale in your favor. To be fair, don't think op advocate for putting 60h every week. It's about being passionate about what you are doing and sometime just being available for your coworker outside of working hours can be enough. In my professionnal career, it was fairly obvious which colleagues was more than just clocking in and who I would be happy to recommend or hire on the spot.
I think you are missing the point. Yes I am currently living in Europe and yes almost every family own a car.The difference is when, how frequently its used and also the fact that you have alternatives. These article are idealiziling a car-free lifestyle that is definitely not quite ubiquitous but it does exists. Also, your idealized weather and topo do exists in the US, think California (and I would argue the entire west coast) but the infra, urbanism and often the laws do not allowe safe alternatives to cars and this is the core of the problem. Your comment make it like the whole EU has Mediterranean climate or is flat as Amsterdam, which cannot be further from the reality.
I agree with all of what you said until you started suggesting NyQuil instead. We don't have good data for long term effect of using antihistamine. Alcohol, in small quantity is not good but it's also not that bad especially in otherwise healthy and active people. Ideally, non medicated ways to reduce anxiety is a lot better.
I think you are mixing units here (km2 vs square mile). According to wikipedia NY density is 11313/km2 which would ranked 18th city in Europe. SF would be 29th with 7194/km2. I would argue that NY public transit is absolutely doing a fine job (cleanliness appart) and it's moving 7.5 million peoples on a weekday (was higher pre-pandemic)
Density is needed for proper public transit and locally accessible services to flourish.
A Camaro is not a small 2 seater by any means, it’s a rather big muscle car. If you want to experience what a small 2 seater feels like, try a Miata or a Cayman. Those 2 have outstanding visibility. Many sports car have bad visibility due to the mid engine blocking the rearview.
Davis is one of the only examples i could think of. I do know some folks in MTV who are lucky enough so they walk their children to school but unless you live a few blocks away and you don’t have to cross a 2-3 lanes stroad on the way, it is possible.
Sadly for tech geek, EU job market is quite a bit harder than the US. Luckily, remote consulting allows me, for now, to live basically anywhere.
I am interested about your experience since mine is quite different. In the last 10 years I have lived in Vancouver, Montreal, Pittsburgh, Sunnyvale, Saratoga and now in Spain. I was also choosing “walkable” neighborhoods and in my experience there is almost no places in the US or Canada I would feel safe letting my daughter ride her bike to school. For example, I was biking ~4 days a week from Saratoga to Mountain View and the schools surroundings were the most dangerous section of my commute. Lines of parents dropping their child's with gigantic SUVs ready to right hook my ass. I was having close calls almost every other days and this is in some of the wealthiest zip code in the US. I am sure there is some places where walking and biking is possible but this is the exception.