site banner
PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   2743 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for February 14, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

2
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

For purposes of "traffic calming", urban planners (1 2) often make the roads in residential neighborhoods curved rather than straight. What if a developer were to simply use a space-filling curve to lay out his residential subdivision on a single ridiculously curved road?

Example subdivisions appropriate for the International Zoning Code's R1d single-family-residential zone: 1 (Hilbert curve), 2 (curve name unknown), 3 (Peano curve)

See also: Small intestine

@Southkraut: "Outmanoeuver"? A daring synthesis, as the cool kids say.

I imagine people wouldn't want to live there considering how much more time-consuming it would be to get in and out of your neighborhood.

In the biggest Hilbert-curve subdivision, the distance from the center to the nearest edge is 8000 feet (2400 meters) in a car versus 2000 feet (600 meters) as the crow flies (or on one of the pedestrian paths proposed by another commenter). Is that such a huge price to pay for an ultra-quiet neighborhood?

@Felagund

It's not just the difference in straight-line distance. It's also that it's a lot of back-to-back sharp 90 and 180 degree turns, which are slow and exhausting to drive especially in winter conditions.

Admittedly, this observation is based on the base curves not your catboxes - catbox blocks a surprisingly large chunk of the internet, myself included.

Imgur album

The inside radius of the right-of-way lines shown in these images is 30 feet. When you add the 6-foot sidewalk and the 8-foot parking lane, you get an effective inside radius of 44 feet for the travel lanes. (Standard minimum travel-lane inside radii are 25 feet for a passenger car, 30 feet for a single-unit delivery truck, and 40 feet for a shorter multi-unit truck. A long fire truck can swing wide into the oncoming lane.)

Ok, so less sharp than I was imagining. Thank you for the mirror.

I still think the Hilbert curve one would be slow and exhausting to drive, especially in winter conditions. The Peano curve may be alright - though at that point one wonders why you bother with the Peano curve as opposed to just a Boustrophedon.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats