Gas Cars Aren't Going Anywhere For A Long Time

Also, a eulogy to Netflix DVDs, a service too good for the modern internet

As someone who has published on the internet for a decade now, I can say with confidence we have known forever that Twitter accounts for a small-to-tiny portion of traffic. Google search, Reddit, and Facebook to varying degrees have always been far more important. But more recently, the split has become particularly pronounced. If I had an article do well traffic-wise in the past, it would also do well on Twitter (the reverse was not always true; an article that did well on Twitter often did poorly in traffic overall). But this is no longer the case. I’ve had several articles do very well traffic-wise recently that basically didn’t exist on Twitter. Something strange is happening where Twitter is siloing itself off from the rest of the internet. It’s weird.

In recent years I have logged onto Twitter only to share my biggest stories. But there’s no point in doing that anymore. I am actually not sure where to go to share my stories anymore, other than here, with you, which is more meaningful to me anyways. So I’m going to send these emails slightly more often than I used to. Instead of every month, maybe every two weeks? Certainly no more than that. We’ll see how it goes.

Gas Cars Aren’t Going Anywhere

I found the coverage of the EPA’s new emissions rules a bit strange. Most every story framed the new rules as one of the most consequential regulations of our time. Reading the EPA’s press release, that is certainly the story they were telling.

But, after running some basic numbers—and I mean basic—I found that buying a gas car in 2032, according to the EPA’s projections, will be easier and more readily available than buying a sedan today. Using some elementary projections, it’s pretty obvious we’re looking at around the year 2050 until gas cars become truly difficult to buy. And that’s assuming these regulations don’t ebb and flow as new Republican administrations cancel or weaken them over time, which has very much been the historical norm on auto emissions.

All this is to say: Gas cars aren’t going anywhere any time soon, for better or worse.

Goodbye Netflix DVDs, How I Loved Thee

Netflix announced it is shutting down its DVD by mail service, something that, believe it or not, I still use. I sat down last night to write a eulogy to a service that meant a lot to me as a burgeoning cinephile. I wrote that, but also accidentally wrote an essay on the “the passing of an era where the great big tech companies of the day thought the internet was a way to improve the offline life rather than to replace it.” I hope you’ll read it.

Other Stuff

• Study Finds High-Speed Rail Increases Happiness. The study found Chinese people were two percent happier on average living near high-speed rail, but I’d be one million percent happier if we just had one in the United States. An hour and a half to get from NYC to Philly is 19th Century bullshit.

• Please Stop Crashing Trains So Much, Agency Responsible for Safety Regulation Asks Railroads

• Two-Thirds of Rural Mail Carriers Are Being Hit With A Massive Pay Cut Calculated By An Algorithm

Until next time,

Aaron