Well... it would also be confusing to call them "passwords" because they are not that.
In addition to biometric authentication, Windows Hello supports authentication with a PIN. By default, Windows requires a PIN to consist of four digits, but can be configured to permit more complex PINs. However, a PIN is not a simpler password. While passwords are transmitted to domain controllers, PINs are not. They are tied to one device, and if compromised, only one device is affected. Backed by a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) chip, Windows uses PINs to create strong asymmetric key pairs. As such, the authentication token transmitted to the server is harder to crack. In addition, whereas weak passwords may be broken via rainbow tables, TPM causes the much-simpler Windows PINs to be resilient to brute-force attacks.[139]
So you see, Microsoft needs a way to describe an access code that isn't a password, because it's more secure than that, but yet it isn't exactly a number, so what do you call it? "PIN" is perhaps an unfair recycling of an in-use term, but should they coin a neologism instead? Would that be less confusing?
I live in an apartment that's sandwiched between a freight train line and a light rail track that is on a 6-lane stroad. The noise from all of that is highly filtered and attenuated, and I consider it calming and soothing (90% of the time anyway.)
Most of my life I've used public transit, but I've also been a motorist and a vehicle owner. Looking back on my long rides on the train and bus, I began to miss them, because they are (70% of the time) an opportunity for stillness, solitude, and contemplation. I can be alone with God and the angels and I don't need to stress about driving or traffic or navigating anything but my own mindscape.
Riding around in taxis more often these days, it really puts on pressure and a rush. The taxis arrive way way faster than any bus. They put me on someone else's schedule when they arrive to pick me up and rush me somewhere, going at or above every speed limit. If there is a human driver, then there is some forced, awkward social interaction, and sometimes an incipient scam as a bonus!
It is why a lot of urban people take up walking, even getting a pet dog as an excuse to go walking on the regular, because walking is likewise low-stress, an opportunity for solitude and contemplation.
I like white noise and I like background noise. I can be alone in a busy nightclub or restaurant where there is pleasant, amiable background chatter of many people and instrumental music. I have slept inside elevators and on park benches outdoors. I also enjoy libraries, which are not always temples of silence, but at least calm and relaxing atmospheres conducive to thinking and studying.
Yeah, radio and TV can really get to me sometimes. The speech pressures and high-anxiety of capitalist swine trying to shove words into my ears, it hurts. More often I find myself seeking out Jesus in a silent Adoration chapel. It's become the best way to simply listen and open myself up to the numinous.
The amusing thing and perhaps the reason I've embraced it as my username, is that people around here are bringing it to life in a certain way.
It may not prove to be effective or as momentous as the fictional one, but it began when I saw stickers slapped onto utility poles that read:
DEATH TO CLANKERS
BUTLERIAN JIHAD NOW
And I stopped to read them (because they were posted in a neighborhood where my people's cultural center is) and I pondered the intents and methods of those who were slapping up stickers. Surely this was more than just an in-joke or coy sci-fi reference?
The next time I fell victim to the jihad was with a crop of Lime e-Scooters, again on a block where my people have established businesses. I wanted to rent a Lime. I found one with a full battery. I located it and tried to scan the QR. Guess what? The QR had been sanded completely clean. There was no code, no serial number, nothing to scan and no way to uniquely ID the conveyance. There was only a sticker slapped prominently onto its side:
DEATH TO CLANKERS
BUTLERIAN JIHAD NOW
At this point I began to suspect the initial aims and methods of the "real-life Butlerian Jihadis". It is sort of ironic that they should start so small, by denying micro-mobility to innocent consumers, but perhaps they will graduated to lighting Waymos and Teslas on fire.
That is funny. I don't know. I always kind of cringe when I hear the term clankers. I know people often aren't serious but it seems like maybe we shouldn't be trying to invent new slurs.
Most motorists absolutely hate e-scooters and e-bikes. They hate them with a white-hot passion. You will never see more road rage than against a scooter when I ride it in a traffic lane. The scooter goes about 17mph, and with 3+ traffic lanes available to cars, they will pile up behind a scooter, scream out their open windows, honk and cut me off, and spit in my face: yes literally spit all over my face, because they hate personal mobility so much.
Motorists hate anything that isn't a car and is in their way. Motorists hate Critical Mass; they hate light rail or streetcars that hog their rights-of-way; they hate pedestrians (especially when pedestrians aren't wearing the right clothes); they hate Lyft, Uber, and Waymo especially; they hate big trucks and they hate Amish people with horse-drawn buggies.
Motorists will establish coalitions to vote against public transit measures in their home towns. They have come out in City Council and other public meetings, to protest and rail, so to speak, to rail against the expansion of light rail into their neighborhoods, because not only do they hate the construction, but they hate the "type of people" that light rail brings, and ultimately they hate the gentrification that comes from a fixed-route project that will ultimately close their shitty exploitive businesses and replace them with more elevated exploitation and richer moguls.
As someone who's canvassed on transit and bike mobility issues before, I think you've spent too long in online urbanism circles. There's a kernel of truth in what you say but it's exaggerated and victimized way too much. Your examples are also pretty textbook online urbanism and ignores other vulnerable road users (motorcycles, mobility scooters, etc)
No, in fact, my assertions are wholly based on in-person interactions with motorists, in conversation and on the roads. I’ve literally been spit upon and road-raged, and many voters and taxi drivers have expressed their sheer hatred and opposition to public transit.
My assertions have nothing to do with “online circles” except here where I am breaking the bad news to y’all.
If you haven't spent time in "online circles" then why is your understanding of vulnerable road users and non-car options limited to only bikes, light rail, and Critical Mass? What about rail trails projects? Does your area follow any NACTO guidelines? How does your DOT/DPW see things?
I don't deny the general idea that motorists in the US tend to have a crab mentality on the road where they want and expect everyone in the road to only be other drivers. I've also been sneered at in various ways in every non car form of transit I've been in.
e-scooters kind of sit in an uncanny valley of shittiness. I'll upfront say it's not at all fair to anyone using them responsibly, but there's a lot of cultural baggage that is going to make them uniquely reviled compared to alternatives. For instance, I've longboarded all around the city of Dallas for years and nobody has ever honked at, cut me off, or spit on me. But temporary rental scooters with no permanent docking station carry with them the stigma of:
- People riding them on sidewalks to putting pedestrians in danger
- "Parking" them right in front of someone's gate, blocking the entrance to their house
- Obviously drunk partiers using them in lieu of getting a ride or taking the bus
- Groups of them sitting around half knocked over completely blocking a sidewalk or other pathway meant for cyclists, runners, walkers, and other pedestrians
Fair or not, you're like the kid using a razor scooter at the skate park. Nobody likes you but it doesn't mean they hate everyone at the skate park. They just hate scooter kids.
at least in England, if you use an e-scooter while under the influence of alcohol, that equates to a motoring offence whereby incurring (car) driving licence penalties, driving licence disquaifications (bans), fines, and imprisonment all apply, depending on circumstances and severity. I'm not sure if/why it would be different anywhere else
Yeah I do not think there are any serious transit advocates that put time into advocating for e-scooters. They are worse and more dangerous than bikes and e-bikes in every possible way.
And any bike lane infrastructure would benefit e-scooters anyway, so riding them in the road at 30mph below the flow of traffic is a sad hill to die on.
I assumed comment is referring to people that advocate for transit as “anti-personal mobility”, they are counting cars as the only “personal mobility” which is beyond laughable.
It is not merely suburbanization that has been caused by cars, but also the very urban fragmentation. Immigrants are no longer permitted to live in enclaves, ghettos, or the same neighborhood with one another.
Another thing about "this mental health crisis" is that it has been ongoing for many decades before we noticed it and before it was brought to the forefront. "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" was out and then President Reagan approved the mass closure of asylums. What happened was that massive numbers of citizens had been condemned and committed by their relatives and "put away" in homes, facilities, and institutions, and then Reagan shut 'em all down.
Today, the mentally ill live among us. Either their families care for them, or they live in jails/prisons because they became criminals and were convicted, or they live independently/on the streets. The mentally ill live now in "virtual institutions" where their chains and restraints consist of drugs. The drugs are what keep them connected to their home clinics and their psychiatrists. The drugs keep them coming back for more, month after month, to their pharmacies and clinics. The drugs they are convinced they cannot live without, making them compliant and unsure of what is really going on in their lives.
The non-criminal mentally ill are mostly encouraged to integrate and socialize, to seek employment and try to simulate functional human beings in society. So they live among us and they are causing more noticeable issues when they interact with people possessed of more sanity. The mentally ill are probably less likely to drive or own a vehicle, and more likely to rely on public transit, so you know where to find them.
But the mentally ill who live independently, and live with these "virtual restraints" are likewise living in fragmented neighborhoods that are not walkable and require a lot of effort to overcome the sheer distances that separate them from services and their employers. They're living among immigrants, foreigners, heathens and infidels, and on every corner is a moral trap such as easy alcohol, easy sex, easy gluttony, easy gambling that can ensnare even the sanest city dweller. These traps are, of course, legitimate businesses that cannot be shut down by a mere vice-squad raid.
So "this mental health crisis" in 2026 can perhaps be partly traced to the advent of personal motor vehicles, but I feel there are several causes that have brought it to the forefront.
Not so fast: I would say that the move to suburbs was initially driven by a thirst for homeownership with luxurious lawns, coupled with electric streetcars and other rail-based transport.
It was only later that the almighty combustion engine and tire companies forcibly replaced streetcars with buses and trucks, that cars began their hegemonic domination of suburbia. The National Highway System decrees didn't hurt, either, but highways were built in the USA with an ulterior motive of national defense.
It also happened during a period where cities were polluted, noisy, and the middle-class housing was largely cramped tenements. Basically all of this has been/is being mitigated these days. City-center housing now looks more like luxury loft living than tenements (though this gives us a big problem with ‘missing middle’ housing where there’s very little housing available that is suitable for families where everything is decrepit slums or luxury 1 and 2 bedroom condos). Pollution has been largely mitigated with catalytic converters and, now, EVs. And electrification helps deal with noise pollution as well through getting rid of engine noise (especially for motorized appliances like leaf-blowers).
Meanwhile, traffic and the stigma around drunk driving (which wasn’t nearly as strong or strictly enforced before the 90s), have quickly taken much of the bloom off the rose of car-dependent lifestyles. I predict the growth of micromobility options will continue to make cities even more attractive as well by improving coverage for areas where transit can’t go and generally improve the throughput of city streets and reduce the space needed for parking cars for people who live within “not-quite walking but feels silly to drive” distance.
The big gap in the US at least is simply a lack of cities! Everything is still concentrated in a handful of legacy urban centers that survived the waves of “urban renewal” and it’s simply too expensive to house all the people who want to live there without turning them into Hong Kong sized megalopolises, which starts to introduce new problems from overwhelming density. “Urban” development patterns need to expand out to more of the country to take demand pressure off the 5 or 6 American cities with decent mass transit.
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