#taxi near ann arbor

[fareride]

Ann Arbor Limo and DTW Airport Ride Services, Mercedes Sprinters and more.

Ann Arbor Limo and DTW Airport Ride Services, Mercedes Sprinters and more.

[skoopup]

Taxi Transportation To Michigan Stadium | Ann Arbor

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[umichenginabroad]

The Pros and Cons of Buses

Hey everyone! I’m back with another recap of this past week :) 

This past week was Spring Break, and so many people from Michigan visited their friends in Spain. I went out Monday night with my friends as we knew this was the case, and it almost felt as if I was back in Ann Arbor. I saw so many familiar faces and it was honestly such a great time. I had quite a few friends visiting Madrid, so I had the opportunity to grab a lot of dinners with friends who were visiting. 

Later in the week, I decided to do a little solo-exploring day within Madrid. I had recently heard about some almond blossoms in a park in Madrid, so after some research I ventured off to Parque la Quinta de los Molinos. It actually turned out to be a pretty chilly day, so I bundled up and then took the metro for about 30 minutes before arriving at the park. The entire area was filled with beautiful almond blossoms, and it started to really feel like Spring. I was able to wander around the park for about an hour and take in all the beautiful sights.

After my solo day, it was time to set off for another weekend trip with friends! This past weekend I was able to visit the region known as Andalucía, which is in the South of Spain. This trip was a bit last minute for me, so I wanted to save as much money as possible, so for the majority of this trip I traveled by bus instead of train. This was a very interesting experience, so I’ve decided to lay out some pros and cons:

Pros:

Super cheap/affordable

Not your average bus; similar to a charter bus

Available to so many locations 

Flexible travel times

Cons: 

Takes the longest

Seats can get cramped 

On Friday night, I took an overnight bus to Malaga from Madrid. This was super convenient for me, as I was able to leave Madrid late Friday night, and arrive in Malaga Saturday morning. My bus was also very cheap, coming out to only €18. My only issue was that the ride was 7 hours, which feels extra long when you’re cramped into a bus seat. Saturday morning I arrived in Malaga and met my friends, who had been there since Friday morning. We dropped our stuff at our airbnb and then grabbed some yummy pastries from a local bakery. Then, it was time to hop on another bus! We actually took a €6 bus from Malaga to Nerja, a town about an hour away located on the coast. This by far has been my favorite place in Spain that I’ve visited so far. It was a beautiful day out, and we took this opportunity to go down by the water and walk along the beaches and pathways. Nerja was full of flowers and local shops, and we grabbed some lunch near the water. We then were able to make our way to a lookout point and enjoy the sunshine and the water. 

Nerja is relatively small, so we took the second half of the day to visit another town: Frigiliana! This was a 15 minute taxi ride inland from Nerja, and so worth it. I felt as if I had been transported from Spain to Greece, as Frigiliana was full of white buildings with colorful doors and flowers. It’s sandwiched in a valley so we had beautiful views of some mountains, and even were able to climb to a lookout point to take in the city. 

On our way back down, we actually stumbled right into Frigiliana’s Carnival parade! We had no idea this was going to happen, but it was so fun watching the parade and having this experience in a small town. 

We then traveled back to Nerja and caught the bus to Malaga. After grabbing some dinner in Malaga we retired back to our airbnb as we had a train ride to Granada the next morning! 

On Sunday, we woke up early and took a train to Granada for the second half of our trip! My roommate back in Madrid is actually from Granada, so she came with us and actually hosted me for the weekend. She gave us a little walking tour of Granada where we saw some cool sights and grabbed breakfast. 

After this, we went to the Alhambra, which Granada is known for. The Alhambra is a palace/fortress that is one of the best preserved sites of Islamic Architecture. Everyone that I’ve talked to about Granada has said that this is a must-see, and I would have to agree. We arrived there around 2:30pm, and did not leave until 6pm, as there was so much to see and do. We toured the Nasrid Palaces, which were absolutely stunning. The Islamic Architecture was so different compared to other palaces I have seen in Spain so far, and we all found it so beautiful and interesting. We also walked through multiple gardens, and climbed some towers that overlooked all of Granada. 

After this, we met up with some of my roommates' hometown friends from Granada, and they took us to their favorite local Andalucían restaurant. This was the BEST food I have had in all of Spain so far. The menu was simple and we let them tell us what dishes were best. We all ended up getting Sangrias (which came with huge chunks of fruit) and ordered our dishes: pollo con salsa (chicken with sauce), carne con salsa (meat with sauce), and then meatballs and a salad with octopus. I’m actually so sad that the dishes had such simple names, as I wanted to find similar foods back here in Madrid. But I truly don’t think this meal could ever be replicated, even the girls said it was the best the food has ever tasted from that restaurant. 

On Monday, we took advantage of our last few hours and climbed up to a looking spot in Granada. We did so by going through the Arabic neighborhood, and then on our way down went through the Gypsy neighborhood, where all of the buildings are built into the side of the mountain. The views were spectacular, and it was a great way to end our weekend! 

We then took a bus back to Madrid, and now it's back to school for just a few days before my parents visit me this weekend! Check back in next week to see what we end up doing :)

Abbey Almeda

Industrial and Operations Engineering

UP Comillas

[midrashic]

[headcanon] a map of hidden places i: new york city

{ a map of hidden places }

the first time james visits new york is more accident than anything; there’s a weapons expo and it’s january, and surely new york in january can’t be any more unpalatable than scotland in january. there are restaurants and boutiques whose names were, even then, synonymous with luxury, but james spends most of his time in the hotel room with the nanny playing with the puzzle ball he’d received that christmas. enid takes him to the natural history museum to see the mammoth bones, to central park to stare at the bare, shivering tree skeletons while he mounds old snow into various blobby shapes.

he doesn’t remember any of this; by the time he’s ten, new york is just a vague smear of concrete and solitude in his imagination, a glimpse of a faded marble facade that blends into all the other glimpses of all the other cities of everywhere else his father has ever had a conference.

for years, there’s the odd holiday abroad with his aunt, a trip with a school friend whose father owns a major hotel in the city or something. then there’s the navy. he learns new york in thirty-six hour stretches of shore leave, and he learns new york through the eyes of dozens of royal navy sailors, which mainly means that he learns very fast which bars near the harbor serve something roughly as strong as paint thinner for a measly two dollars per drink, or a dozen for a twenty.

but he learns other things, too. he saves up the days of walking on solid earth for the weeks when his feet won’t touch dry land and wanders into the neighborhoods that his well-to-do parents and guardians never let him anywhere near: bushwick, the lower east side, basically all of the bronx. new york city’s just hit its peak for violent crime, though someone only attempts to mug him once and gets a broken jaw for his trouble besides. the strangest thing for a brit is the gunshots that will ring out randomly, multiple times a night, but that’s true for every american city he’s ever visited.

he experiments with the subway. the tube in the 80s and 90s was no picnic, but hell, he learns, is a suspiciously empty new york subway car.

one strange thing: over the course of one particular weekend, he runs into a girl he slept with on shore leave in kingstown in a pizzeria named something uncreative like “48th street pizza,” an old university professor in a rare book store, a boy who was in the class above him at eton in bryant park, and then the girl again at a bar that night. (there is indeed a repeat performance.) this is a statistically accurate sampling of how often he recognizes a face from his past. back then, it was the third-largest city in the world, after tokyo and osaka, but it could sometimes feel very fatalistically small.

& then he’s in new york fairly often as a junior agent, but he doesn’t really tap the veins of the city until he’s a double-oh.

the thing about new york is that, for all that you tend to run into people you haven’t seen in years fairly frequently, it’s a great place to disappear. there’s no way to cover every possible exit when planning an ambush and a thousand laundromats, bars, and, hell, magic shops to duck into when you’re being tailed. vaguely seedy fleatraps that bill themselves as “youth hostels” where you can rent a room for four months and leave without anyone having asked you your name. the city seems to boast a disproportionate number of people sitting alone in the corners of coffeeshops, bars, hotel lobbies. it’s the first thing he thinks of when the name shows up in a mission briefing or news article: the pure relief of being quietly ignored, of being anyone, of being no one. he kills a drug kingpin and sips espresso at a café patio ten feet away as the police begin to boredly take statements. he garrotes a man in a bodega bathroom and no one notices for three days because it’s always out of order anyway. new york makes it so easy, so very easy to let a face become a file become a statistic. it has a carelessness with its people that he’s used to seeing in the third world, in places where the corruption is overt, in places that don’t even pretend to have a functioning police system. new york doesn’t care about you.

it also makes it so very easy to pick people up.

in a lot of ways, new york is a lot like london. it’s not every city in the world where you can get a sandwich at four am because the son of a bitch you were surveilling spent five hours haggling over uranium shipments with his contact, which was four hours and fifty minutes longer than he needed to spend. there’s a certain level of mercenary profit-seeking required to keep a sandwich shop open all night, damn circadian rhythms.

but new york takes it to excess. in london, you can probably find 24/7 takeaway within a reasonable walking distance, but in new york, you’re guaranteed to have at least five in the immediate neighborhood and eight more if you’re willing to go a little further for a substantial uptick in quality. during a particularly frustrating bit of downtime not longer after the quantum incident, bond strolls into a midnight karate class for no other reason than he’s bored and wants to see what kind of people can only do karate in the middle of the night. it’s a surprisingly friendly bunch, two night shift workers, a sleep-deprived college student, a jumpy little tweaker, and a single mother who decides to do this with her scant two hours of free time weekly. it’s taught by a petite woman who hits with the precision of an architect and used to practice jiu-jitsu competitively until a back strain caused her to switch to a sport with more standing and less rolling around on the ground.

he does try to sleep with her, but they actually end up sharing a platter of nachos in between (fittingly) manhattans at a bar and chatting about differences in karate conditioning techniques and shitty b-movies. the bartender joins in for the latter. he walks away that morning to another endless round of negotiation with the cia feeling strangely refreshed for a man who got no sleep and no sex.

bond ends up censoring his new york reports more than any other locale, not because missions go wrong in new york more often than anywhere else, but because they tend to go wrong in utterly baffling and sometimes embarrassing ways when he’s in new york. in the reports, he changes the timely plague mask-wearing flash mob that allowed him to escape his pursuer to a traffic jam, the girl wearing a dress made of lettuce that beat a terrorist into submission with her tomato purse into a well-placed police officer, the message he got painted on his nails in gold glitter to a simple note (it worked, the fsb searched him and found nothing and apparently manicured men in brioni are common enough in the city that no one even gave him a second look). new york is many things, but it spits on the dignity of the profession.

felix hates new york, hilariously. he calls it “the big asshole.” he hates the garbage sitting out on the streets, the way you can never tell whether a puddle is rain or urine, the flimsy little metrocards, the food deserts, the traffic, my god, the traffic. (bond has to agree: it’s bad. he once walked to laguardia instead of waiting for a taxi.) the only places he hates more than new york are minnesota and south sudan, which are the foreseeable consequences of a boy from texas spending his first winter away from home in the midwest and being a sane person with a functioning sense of smell. but for some reason, international criminals turn up in new york a lot more often than they do in ann arbor or south sudan, so felix has no choice but to spend sometimes weeks or months at a time in his third-least-favorite place in the world.

(bond knows why he really hates new york: in 2003 he was chasing a jewel smuggler and ran straight into a fruit cart. he was washing fruit juice out from behind his ears for a week and he lost the target. after that, anyone would hate this place.)

when bond is in midtown west, he makes a point of stopping by the trenta tre pizzeria, which boasts pizza that isn’t oily, isn’t too chewy or crisp, and boasts a sauce with a salty-to-sweet balance of flavors that make his eyes roll back in his head. he’s had the real deal, pizza lovingly crafted by hand, topped with buffalo mozzarella, and wood-fired in a tiny neapolitan back room. he knows better than to tell an italian--or anyone who he needs to think of him as a well-traveled sophisticate--but he prefers this.

coincidentally, the pizzeria is located next to a bodega that displays its fruit on wooden stands on the sidewalk. behind the peaches lives a cat, well-fed and sleek and a shameless thief of chicken parm pizza toppings. he doesn’t know her name--the owner is from rural ethiopia and doesn’t speak english, mandarin, arabic, french, german, spanish, russian, or any of the four other languages bond speaks--but in his head he’s named her selina after that greatest of feline burglars, catwoman. selina is good company after a violent mission, and almost never sheds on him, which is more than he can say about the other cats in his life. if he lingers after the pizza to pet her a little longer, no one needs to know.

the events, the new trends, the previews, the releases, blah blah blah. the access is touted more than it actually matters. he’s sure that- if he actually lived in new york he would appreciate the convenience of dwelling in the obligatory stop of every tour and the go-to place to drum up media attention. but he doesn’t and he has enough frequent flier miles that his grandchildren will probably be getting complimentary upgrades and if he really wants to be at the premiere of a much-hyped performance of la traviata he’ll make it there somehow. he does notice that the access has given new yorkers a strange sense entitlement--when a fashionable event happens someplace other than new york, the resentment is deeper, the sense of loss sharper--as if everything important should happen in new york. still. he brings home a tea flavored with the newly discovered ruby chocolate months before it becomes widely available as a souvenir for q. there are compensations. 

when q finally punches down his fear of air travel for long enough to make it to new york, bond keeps him out of manhattan. they drift around brooklyn and queens, wandering streets balanced on the knife edge of an existence that is almost suburban--dogs everywhere and strollers between the specialty shops and markets. they sit in a soda fountain famous for its egg creams and share a sundae named after elvis. q orders three different sodas--he’s a connoisseur of exotic beverages--and pronounces the house blend the best cherry soda he’s ever tasted. bond smiles at him around his ice cream float. the place is packed, every seat filled, but here, at a little round table tucked into the corner, he and q might as well be invisible, being aggressively ignored by everyone except the soda jerks. just two people, forcefully alone together. the last two people in the world.

[joestories]

Placeholder Text

I deplane and stroll past the baggage claim because I’ve crammed four days worth of supplies into a backpack.

I'm staying in a moderately fancy hotel downtown, but tonight I direct the cab driver towards my old neighborhood. I don’t have much of a plan once I’m out on the street. Everything has gotten fancy, I barely recognize the place. Strange what five years can do.

I enter an inoffensive looking bar. The interior has been meticulously crafted to look like a reading room of yore, books lining the walls, probably glued in. It appears to be one of those places that serves coffee during the day and booze at night.

I sit at the bar and request their cheapest glass of white wine. I ask if this place is new. Yes, says the youngish-looking bartender with an immaculately sculpted mustache. He tells me I don’t seem new.

Is that a dig at my age? 33 isn’t that old, but I’m definitely older than him. For most of my life, bartenders were older than me (duh), but then at some point, all at once and without me noticing, it flipped. They're all younger than me now. It's weird.

"No," I tell him, "I lived here. Not anymore, but I used to." Back before it was cool, I’m tempted to add. But I don’t, because, you know, it's cooler not to acknowledge things.

Someone yells something in Spanish and the bartender retreats to the kitchen. I feel someone looking at me. It’s a sensitive-looking man with glasses (redundant?). Attractive enough. He's sitting at one of the small tables near the front. He sees me looking at him and his eyes return to his sketchpad.

The only other people in the bar are a couple quietly fighting in the back corner. I stand and shuttle my wine glass over to the table next to Mr. Sketchpad. He’s practicing calligraphy with a brush pen. "Hello," I say. I'm sure he wants me to ask about all this calligraphy stuff.

He introduces himself. I forget his name immediately.

"Nice to meet you." I don’t tell him my name. Guys always tell me it’s a pretty name, unusual, they’ve never met a girl with that name, blah blah. Yes, sure, that's nice of you. My name isn't something I had any say in. But it's great for SEO, ha ha ha.

He says if I tell him my name, he’ll write it out in calligraphy. I'm tempted to ask if the third graders were impressed by this routine, but I don't say it because I'm being nice.

There was a miscommunication with the conference organizers and I was booked on a flight that arrived the night before my hotel reservation starts. I probably could have made a fuss about it, but that’s not really my style. So, worst case scenario, I pay for one night in a hotel. But I decided to see this as a challenge.

I lie and tell him my name is Rose. "That's a pretty name. Unusual," he tells me.

We get to talking. The boy is like the bar, he works for a financial institution during the day, and he's an artist during the evenings. But he’s cute and he buys me another glass of wine. I don’t really remember the conversation, but it must have gone well.

After a third glass I’m a little buzzed and he makes some excuse for me to come back to his place. Like, you should see my art, I think you’d appreciate it. "Yeah, okay." So we’re walking outside together. I ask him where we’re going, and I take the lead. I want to prove that I know this place, that I belong here.

I used to live on this block. And I want to see the building I used to live in. It’s on the way, sorta. Of course, I’m not planning on saying this to the guy, that I want to have a little nostalgia break on the way to get laid. Don't wanna get all rhapsodic about the old neighborhood in front of this kid.

And so then we’re on my street. There’s a new ugly condo building on the corner. I approach my old address, which is right in the middle of the block, but this feels wrong. Something is off.

I get closer and see that it’s not just that something is off. The entire building is gone. Completely demolished. There’s a rubble strewn lot in its place.

And suddenly, I have a flood of memories. I remember the creaky hardwood floors. The pipes that rattled like crazy in the winter. The way Luke (he's important, but I'll get into him later) would announce his arrival over the building's buzzer with animals noises. But there's no more buzzer. No more creaky hardwood floors. No more pipes.

And now I’m feeling weirdly emotional. This wasn’t meant to happen. Calligraphy guy asks what’s up, he seems to think he did something wrong. I’ve stopped walking, my mouth is hanging open. Nothing, I tell him.

A few more blocks and we're at his apartment. He warns me that his room is a mess. I’m still in a daze, and a little drunk, but not so much that I don’t notice that he has framed movie posters for a few movies that, if I'm mistaken, were all directed by Christopher Nolan.

Clothes come off. He asks if I wanted to know what his tattoos mean. Because, in his words, "Most girls do."

I decline.

The sex isn’t memorable. My mind keeps going back to the missing building. If you’ve read this far because you wanted to read a hot sex scene, I’m sorry. But I promise there is more sex coming.

I don’t sleep well. When the sun is up, I stand up and get dressed. I thought the boy might wake up, but he doesn’t, and I’m fine with that. I pick up my bag and slip out of his bedroom.

I pass through the kitchen on the way out and pause. I decide to take something to remember this little tryst. It’s sort of a bad habit, I guess. I open a drawer and find it full of Taco Bell hot sauce packets. Like, jam-packed full. I lower my estimate for the age of this person I just spent the night with.

I take a hot sauce, close the drawer, and leave.

I take a taxi over to the fancy hotel where I am allowed to check into my room. I take a shower. I lay down and enjoy the quiet for a moment. I try to do my meditation exercise but it doesn't work.

My phone starts buzzing. It’s Cindy. "Where are you? Ross is being a weirdo." I've known Cindy for a long time and she's always been very good to me. I muster the strength to be social.

I go downstairs and take an escalator over to the adjoining building where the conference is taking place.

I pick up my badge. The volunteer at the registration table asks for my name. I provide it. "What an unusual name! That's so beautiful.”

I place the lanyard around my neck and take my tote bag of branded knick-knacks and walk over to the atrium where there’s free coffee.

A few colleagues recognize me and wave me over. For simplicity’s sake, I’m just going to call all of them Ross, because any of them could be a Ross, and none of them really have any distinguishing characteristics that make them important to the story.

I say hello to Ross, Ross, and Ross. Ross introduces his friends, whose names I forget.

"We were just talking about you," says Ross. "You weren’t at the mixer last night."

"No, I had other plans."

“Such a rebel," says the other Ross.

"Darren’s talk is starting in a few minutes, you guys want to head over?" asks Ross.

"Oh, you have to come to Darren’s talk," says Ross, leaning towards me conspiratorially.

“Yeah, okay."

Darren is a big name in this world and has a reputation for being kind of a pompous asshole. I follow the others into the big auditorium for his session. We sit in a row of empty seats near the back. I open the program. There's a big glossy picture of Darren. This is apparently the keynote.

Darren takes the stage to thunderous applause. He has a confident stride. He's in his 40s or maybe early 50s. But handsome, in sort of a hot professor way. But like a hot professor that goes to the gym a lot. The room is silent.

"All the data of my youth is lost," he announces in a provocative tone. The slide behind him changes.

"It was never recorded,” he continues.

He loses me somewhere in the next minute. I start to dig through the bag of branded freebies. There’s some truly tone-deaf choices this year. There’s a condom in a wrapper that says, Don’t miss your target with Berkman Research Services. The text is small so I’m holding it close to my face.

As I’m staring at this, a voice whispers, “I thought I’d find you here." I'm startled and drop the condom.

Standing in the aisle next to me is a guy with a familiar face. He sits down in the empty seat behind me. I think I've met him before, but I can’t remember his name.

“I’m Joe, by the way.”

I pick up the condom I dropped and quickly shove it in my jacket pocket. Remember this moment. This is Chekhov's condom.

I say hello. I must have had a quizzical look on my face, because he quickly adds that we've met before, at the Interaction Summit in Ann Arbor.

I tell him it’s good to see him again, even though I don’t quite remember him. I resume digging through the bag.

“This guy is kind of pompous, huh?” asks Joe. Ah, I guess we’re still having a conversation.

“He’s okay.”

I find a pad of paper with the name of a company that offers gamification services printed across the top. I think of the empty lot where there was once a building I lived in. I try to remember the building. I start drawing. Were there two windows across, or three? Two, I think. Three stories or four? Three, I think. I have a pretty good rendering before the keynote is even over. When I look up, the screens are showing a line from an e e cummings poem. Why? I couldn't tell you.

I start to think of the other important buildings from my time in this city. Suddenly, the idea of cataloging these relics of my past feels very important. I will need to visit them. I will have to make sure they’re okay.

As the day presses on, I continue from room to room to see speakers. But now I'm feeling sad and nostalgic and that's a powerful combination.

Here's my list:

The Basement.

The first place I lived alone. This is the one that has been demolished. RIP. I draw a line through the name.

Party City.

The name my roommates gave to the first apartment we lived in that wasn’t a dormitory. The name is a misnomer. We didn't party very much.

The Model.

The bar where I learned how to be a person at a bar. It was ideal for its proximity to Party City.

The Studio.

When I was in college, this was my second home. It was a rickety old building connected to the college where all the painters and illustrators had desks. That was back in my previous life when I thought I was going to be an illustrator.

Luke's Apartment.

Also known as The Cohabitation Experiment. Luke lived here. I moved in. We lived together for three years. I moved out. I know I said I'd tell you more about Luke, but that's enough to get the idea, right?

Tonight, I will visit Party City. First I go up to my hotel room to drop off the swag bag. As I'm heading back out through the lobby, I run into Joe.

"Hey, I’m glad I ran into you! We’re about to get dinner if you want to join us."

I don't slow down as I pass him. "Sorry, not tonight!"

I lived at Party City until I was 23. We had two refrigerators and roof access. There was on an air vent on the roof that was connected to the pizza franchise on the ground floor. It would constantly blow out pizza-flavored air. I used to joke that if you stood in front of it for ten minutes with your mouth open, you would feel full.

The subway goes above ground, rounds a corner, and I can already see the empty lot where Party City should be. I get off to survey the damage.

No more refrigerators. No more roof access. No more pizza-flavored air. Just rubble.

RIP. I cross it off the list and walk down the street. This trip is a twofer. The Model is two blocks away. But of course, The Model is also gone. This one is less shocking; if cocaine was flammable, it would have burned down years ago. But there's not even any remnants of it. If you didn't know it had been here, you might think this had always been an empty lot.

I cross The Model off the list and go back to the hotel. Three down, two to go.

As I'm walking down the hall towards my hotel room, I freeze. There's something on the floor in front of my door. As I get closer, I can see it's a pile of at least a hundred pennies.

What-the-fuck.

This is creepy, I’m not sure what it’s supposed to mean, but I don’t want it to be interpreted as some passive-aggressive tip for the staff, so I pick up all the pennies and bring them in.

I'm not feeling very sociable, but Cindy keeps texting me. First, that I should come to the party. Then that they have been kicked out of the party. Finally, she wants to know if she can come hang out in my room? That I can oblige. Cindy will be a nice distraction. Maybe she can decode the meaning of my past homes being vanished.

I reconsider this plan when a very drunk Cindy shows up at my door. She's slurring her speech and laughing way more than usual. "You have to see this, the boys were showing me." She brushes past me and grabs the TV remote off the nightstand. I'm not sure who "the boys" are. Ross and his friends?

She turns on the TV and manages to locate the hotel's adult movie offerings. "That was eight clicks," she says. Despite her drunkenness, she's still very observant.

She makes a selection and the cursor now hovers over a button that says continue. "Now what do you think would happen when you press this?"

"Don't press it," I say.

She presses it, and a scene with two women undressing each other starts to play. "No price! No confirmation!" Cindy is righteously angry.

"How much was that?"

"It's all expenses paid, relax."

Cindy hops on the bed next to me and I immediately get a weird feeling. Is she flirting with me? If this were a short story written by a pervy dude, we’d definitely start making out.

I pick up the remote and turn off the TV. "I'd love to watch lesbian movies all night, but I'm tired and I have to give a talk tomorrow, remember?"

Cindy leaps up and starts dancing around the room in a detached way, like she's been totally out of it this whole time. It's actually pretty convincing, maybe she really is totally out of it. After a few minutes of her dancing while I pretend to read emails on my phone, she tells me I'm no fun, giggles, and departs.

I'm happy to be alone again, but I immediately turn sad. I try to do my meditation exercise but it doesn't work.

I send a text to Luke: "Has your apartment been demolished?"

I haven't actually spoken to Luke in three years. I know this because I can see the previous message I sent to him. It was wishing him a happy birthday three years ago.

He responds a few minutes later. "It still stands."

"Are you sure?"

"I am sure because I am in it."

"I'll believe it when I see it." As soon as I press send I regret it. It sounds flirtatious. Right? Maybe I'm over thinking it.

"Are you in town?"

Is it bad that he knows I'm in town? Maybe not, I'm more worried about what ideas he might have for me.

"Sorta, yes. For a conference." I press send, but that doesn't feel like enough. I need to close this window before something flies out. I quickly add "I don't really have time to go out and stuff."

The dots appear to indicate that Luke is typing a message. Then they disappear. Then they appear again and stay for a while. Then they disappear again. Then they appear again and disappear again. Then a long pause. I start to type a message, but the dots appear, so I erase what I had typed. But then the dots disappear again.

I take some initiative and type, "We're not going to meet up."

"We'll see."

He knows I hate that expression. Am I being manipulated? Because now, a part of my brain wants him to talk me into it. This part of my brain needs to be shut off for the next few days. I definitely should not see Luke.

I sleep restlessly.

In the morning I find my way to the table with the free coffee. Joe spots me and says I shouldn't have left early. The drinks were really good. And something funny happened. He tells a long story that never seems to arrive at a punchline.

My talk is in the afternoon and it's a new one, so I feel like I should rehearse it. After I've had a few cups of coffee, I say bye to Joe and head back upstairs.

I rehearse for about five minutes then I'm bored with it. I head downstairs, out, and towards the subway. I tell myself I will rehearse more on the train. I don't.

I arrive at my old campus. They seem to have done well for themselves in the years since I graduated. Everything looks a little cleaner and their old bad logo has been replaced with a slightly better but still bad logo. I walk around the block to see The Studio, number four on my list.

The Studio is gone, of course. In its place is a courtyard. At least it's not an empty lot. A college-age kid on a skateboard rides through what used to be the front entrance.

The Studio was a special place, because I could go there at any hour and run into people I knew, and everyone had their own thing. Everyone was working hard on their art. Which is such a stupidly optimistic thing, it hurts my heart to think about. Of course it couldn't last. This place was demolished in my head the day I graduated and they took away my keycard. And if pressed, I'd probably admit that I've been looking for that kind of community ever since and I haven't found it.

I cross off The Studio. Four down, one to go.

I'm feeling maudlin and I stupidly text Luke. My text is a little embarrassing, but the gist is that the city has changed a lot.

"Yeah. Parts."

I consider that Luke is fucking with me. He could be living in a completely different city, and when I show up at his place, it'll be another empty lot. Maybe I should just throw myself fully into the conference. This is the community I have.

I take the subway back. I have an hour before my talk, so I head towards the room I'll be speaking in. Joe sees me in the hall and comes over.

"I haven't seen you around the conference too much."

"Yeah. I guess I've had some extracurricular activities."

"That sounds interesting. If you need company—"

"No, thank you, that's nice but it's really more of a solo thing."

"Well, good luck with your talk."

The talk goes well. I'm a little distracted.

I’ll always live in the shadow of my first talk. It was a viral success, as much as these things can be. It was called Always Pick Up The Penny but that's really just a small part of it. It's about finding purpose in small mindless things.

It helps that I was young and attractive (by UX conference standards). It’s funny (by UX conference standards) and it’s philosophical in a way that’s just deep enough to seem deep to people that don’t think about philosophy too often. People always want to talk to me about it. It’s the reason I still get invited to speak at a few conferences each year.

And I'm the first to admit that my subsequent talks have been lackluster in comparison.

During the Q&A segment, there's a question pertaining to this previous talk. This happens a lot too. "I was depressed when I wrote that." The audience laughs. Jokes on them, I'm still depressed.

My scheduled block ends and I clear out of the room and I'm surrounded by a small makeshift entourage of friends, fans, and people that are drawn to groups of people. Cindy is there and she's telling me she has organized a dinner for tonight. "You're not allowed to skip!"

I don't skip. The dinner is good, even though I somehow end up seated next to Joe. But the conversation (aided by an open bar) is pleasant. I even end up talking about the missing buildings, in sort of a guarded way.

It's close to midnight when we finally wrap up. Cindy and Ross and a few others are going somewhere else. I tell them I've had enough excitement for one night.

Joe makes me promise I'll come to his talk tomorrow morning at 10 AM. "Sure, I'll be there."

I walk back to the hotel, relieved to finally be alone. As I'm passing the hotel bar, I hesitate. Why do I want to go in?

I sit at the bar. "I'll have a glass of your cheapest white wine."

I scan my surroundings. The bar is pretty empty, I don't recognize anyone. But then I notice Darren. He's alone at the other end up the bar reading a book. Maybe I'm staring a little too long. He looks up and waves. I walk over and sit down next to him.

We say hello. I am flattered that he remembers my name. He doesn't say anything about how unusual or pretty it is.

"What are you reading?"

He holds up a dogeared paperback, Agatha Christie. "I loved these when I was younger. Turns out they're still good."

We don't talk about anything relating to the conference or work. I tell him about my missing buildings. Having previously told this story to Joe, the second telling is much more refined. I think I've almost convinced myself that I'm doing something important.

"Can I get you another drink?" he asks.

I didn't realize I had finished it. I nod.

"Another one of whatever she's having," he says to the bartender.

"The cheapest white wine we serve," the bartender replies.

Darren laughs. "Make that two."

We talk about the end of the universe. Darren explains that the leading theory now is that everything is going to keep expanding forever, and it will keep expanding until even the smallest components are broken apart, and all matter will ultimately be separated forever.

I'm not sure how to respond so I say, "I thought the future would be cooler."

Our glasses are empty again. Darren gives me a look and without exchanging any words, I am now sure we are going to bang.

Darren pays for the drinks and stands. I don't know what to do, so I stand too. He puts his hand on my shoulder it's electric. He must be able to read it on my face pretty easily. He guides me out of the bar.

We walk to the elevators. He scans his card and the penthouse floor lights up. I guess we're going all the way up. This is all so fucking hot. I inch closer to him as the doors start to close.

There's a rumble as the doors are stopped; someone has caught the elevator at the last second. In stumbles Joe.

He sees the two of us and looks confused. He scans his card and sees where we're going. He glances back at me and a look passes over his face. Digust? Dejection? Ugh, maybe all of them. I want to die.

He faces away from us, towards the doors, and I endure the longest elevator ride of my entire life. Joe gets off on his floor and the doors close and I exhale.

Am I too far down this path to turn back? I don't have long to consider this. As soon as the elevator doors close, Darren is all over me like we didn't just witness the most awkward thing ever. I sort of just go along with it. Before the doors open, he reaches up under my dress, grabs my panties, and pulls them down so they fall around my ankles. This is extremely disconcerting for a moment, but then I remember that there's no public hallway at the end of this. I guess this is a move you can do when you're staying in the penthouse.

When the doors open, he rushes out and I take this moment to step out of my panties, pick them up, and awkwardly carry them into the room. He continues to undress me and I ask if he has a condom. He seems put off my this suggestion, but he pulls it together and says he'll have someone at the front desk bring some up. This idea is mortifying.

I remember the freebie condom I stuffed in my jacket pocket. It's still there! I retrieve it and hold it above my head like a gold medal.

The sex is sort of dull and the whole time I'm thinking about the cheap condom and how I hope it doesn't break.

I don't get off, but that's normal. Afterwards, I'm feeling very anxious about pretty much everything, but I don't quite know how to vocalize it. I'm about to say something, but Darren, half awake, interrupts me to say, "You're not staying here, right?"

I only have a second to contemplate this before the room is filled with an ear-splitting noise.

It's the fire alarm. I'm running around hurriedly putting my clothes back on. "We have to go out separately! I'll go first, then wait thirty seconds and then you go." I am dismayed to see Darren hasn't moved at all. He's still on the bed.

"It's not a real alarm," he says.

"What do you mean?"

"It's not a real emergency. I'm not going."

"You're not going? You have to go!"

"I'm staying."

I decide this isn't my problem. The elevators aren't running, so I find the stairs and take them seventeen floors down.

I'm out of breath when I am pointed towards the parking lot, which is full of half-awake hotel guests. I try to avoid the crowd, but a staff member sees me and directs me towards everyone else.

Cindy finds me. "Naughty," she says, smiling.

"What?"

"Your clothes. You didn't go back to your room."

I try to think of an explanation. "I couldn't sleep." It comes out sounding like a question.

"Was it Joe?"

"What? No!"

"You know he's really into you, right?"

"I don't know."

A fire truck arrives, and half an hour later, a concierge appears to apologize and lead us back inside.

"We're very sorry," he says, "it wasn't a real emergency."

I have trouble falling asleep, and when I finally do sleep, it's for too long. It's 10:20 AM when I wake up. I quickly pull myself together and rush down to the conference.

I run into Ross in the hall and he tells me Joe's session was canceled. No one has seen or heard from him today. Weird.

I go to a different session, but I'm distracted the whole time. Am I the reason Joe didn't show up? No, that's way too self-centered.

Next time I'm in the hall, I see Ross talking to two serious looking men. He points toward me.

The men approach and introduce themselves. I forgot their names, but they're detectives. My heart is racing as they lead me into a conference room. I sit down at a table covered in informational packets about the conference.

"We want to ask you some questions about last night." says one of the detectives. He's seated at the table with me. I guess he's the one that does the talking. The other detective seems fidgety. He's pacing around the room and never looks at me.

"Is this about Joe?" Ugh! This is the thing that guilty people always do in movies. But I am feeling guilty.

"Actually, it is. How do you know Joe?"

"We met at a conference last year. I mean, I think we did. I don't remember for sure. I meet a lot of people at conferences."

"Were the two of you romantically involved?"

"No!"

"But maybe there were some feelings there?"

"What? No, I mean, I don't know. What's this about?"

"We'll get to that. When was the last time you saw him?"

Uh oh.

"We were at a dinner for speakers from the conference last night. We talked for a bit."

"Do you remember what you spoke about?"

"Uh, not really. He did say he wanted me to come to his talk."

"Did you go?"

"I, uh, I tried. I overslept, so I was a little late getting there."

"Where did you go after the dinner?"

"I came back to the hotel."

"And then?"

"I went to bed." This is true; I did go to bed eventually.

"You didn't see Joe at the hotel?"

I swallow hard. "No."

"Bullshit!" It's the pacing detective. The seated detective tells him to cool it, then addresses me. "Look, we saw the security camera footage from the elevator. We know you saw him."

Is it possible to blush when all the color has drained out of your face?

Everything spills out. "Okay. I saw Joe. First I met Darren in the hotel bar and we were going back to his room to have sex. Joe saw us in the elevator."

"What was his demeanor?"

"He was upset. He seemed drunk, I guess? He looked a little disheveled. He was carrying a backpack."

"Did he say anything?"

"No."

The pacing detective stops pacing and speaks again. "You chose a MARRIED man over a nice guy who CLEARLY had feeling for you." The seated detective gives him a sour look.

"Married?"

The seated detective flips open one of the packets on the table in front of him. There's a large glossy picture of Darren. The detective taps on a very visible wedding ring in the photo.

I'm not the kind of girl that notices wedding rings. "Am I in trouble?"

"Adultery isn't a crime."

"Can I go?"

"Yes, just stay in this area for the next couple of days."

"I'm catching a plane tonight."

"Well, maybe. We might need to hold you for questioning."

I wander into the hallway in a daze. I try to do my meditation exercise but it doesn't work.

Luke will recenter everything. I'll go to his house to determine if he's fucking with me. If the building is still there, it's a sign. Maybe we'll settle down, have babies. Anything is possible.

I hop on the subway and ride out to Luke's neighborhood. His building is at the top of a hill, so I'm pretty close before I can tell if it's still there.

The buildings on either side have been demolished, but Luke's apartment still stands. I can’t believe it. I take out my phone to take a picture.

The door opens, and an older woman emerges. "You must be from craigslist? You emailed about the bookcase? Come on in."

I'm not sure what to do, but I can't quite formulate a response. The older woman laughs. "I'm sorry, Luke told me to say that. It's good to see you again."

She says my name. I know this person. It's Luke's upstairs neighbor. She was here back when I lived here too.

"Luke left a key for you. He's been expecting you."

"He has?"

I'm flattered and weirded out. She presses a key into my hand.

"Where is he?"

"He's working, but he should be home pretty soon."

I put the key into the lock and open the door. The apartment is just like I remembered it. Like, exactly. It's been meticulously preserved. The bookshelf is still half-empty from when I took all my books when I moved out years ago. Everything is how I left it and I can just pick back up where I left off. It would be so easy. It's not supposed to work like this.

As I wander through the apartment, I think of the Twilight Zone episode where a man finds himself in the perfect town, everything is just as it should be, but there's no people. This is because it's really an alien spaceship and he's part of a zoo now. Why has pop culture trained me to fear this?

Is it too late to turn back?

I hear steps outside and I freeze. Luke. And in an instant I know what I must do. I run towards the back of the building, through the kitchen and out the back door. Normally I'd be boxed in back there, but there's a hole in the fence. It was there when I lived here, and it's still there, because nothing has changed. I crawl through the hole. In the past, this would have put me in the neighbor's backyard and I'd still be trapped, but that building has been demolished, so instead the hole leads to freedom. I run out of the yard and down the hill.

I shouldn't be in this city. I need to get out and not look back. I get on the subway. I try to do my meditation exercise but it doesn't work.

It's at this point that I notice my phone is blowing up. Most messages are vague and discreet, but not Cindy's.

"OMG so sad Joe :(((((( RIP"

The sessions have finished by the time I arrive back at the hotel. Some people are heading out. I run into Ross in the lobby and we say goodbye, then I hurry up to my room. I throw everything in my bag and rush down to the lobby. I'll be at the airport four hours before my flight, that's fine.

I'm heading through the lobby when I notice the detectives sitting on a couch. They're waiting for me. They motion for me to sit down on the couch opposite them. I comply.

"I thought we told you not to go anywhere. Where were you just now?"

I try to explain my building quest to the detectives, but under the scrutiny of the law, it feels juvenile. Of course buildings go away. Who cares? Why am I doing this? These aren't their questions. They're my questions for me.

"We have bad news."

"I know. Joe is dead. What happened?"

"We recovered his body from the river this morning. He drowned."

"Suicide?"

"No, doesn't seem that way. We reviewed the other security footage. From what we can piece together, after your run-in with him in the elevator, he went back downstairs and consumed several drinks at the hotel bar. He then proceeded into a service hall and pulled a fire alarm."

"He set off the fire alarm?"

"We believe he was trying to... uh, interfere with your... coupling. However, that fire alarm was equipped with an ink spray to identify the person who triggered it. It would have covered his hand in purple ink."

"Uh, okay."

"He panicked and fled the hotel. He was spotted near the river by a man named Ross who recognized him from the conference. Our best guess is that he got close to the river via a narrow footpath. He was trying to wash his hand in the river water and fell in."

"That's horrible. I... uh, I didn't think the river was that dangerous."

"Well, he was intoxicated, which is quite common in drowning victims. But he was also wearing a backpack with hundreds of rolls of pennies in it. That weighed him down."

"There was a pile of pennies outside my room a couple nights ago."

"We know. We believe he was planning some sort of big romantic gesture."

"Really? What?"

"We're not at liberty to say. Anyway, sorry for your loss. You're free to go."

As I'm standing, I hear my name. Someone from the hotel is waiting to intercept me before I can leave. "I just wanted to let you know, your credit card is going to be billed for your adult entertainment selection. The organizers are not covering the charge." The detectives pretend like they didn't overhear this.

I hit my breaking point. "The user experience of your in-room entertainment system is awful!" And for the first time in a long time, I start crying.

I'm very early for my flight.

Waiting in the security line, I look at Twitter. People are posting about how the conference changed them. I could do that too, and I'd be able to share some juicy specifics. But no one ever shares the real stuff.

Someone has shared a picture from Darren's keynote. It's the part where he is standing in front of a slide with some poetry on it. It's a verse from e e cummings. "For whatever we lose (like a you or a me) it's always ourselves we find in the sea."

I try to do my meditation exercise but it doesn't work.

As I'm going into the body scan machine, the TSA guy reminds me to empty my pockets. I reach in and find a hot sauce packet from Taco Bell.

"What's this for?" he asks.

"You put it on tacos."

"You can't keep it."

I drop it into the bin he's holding towards me, and walk into the machine.

[un-enfant-immature]

Optimus Ride’s Brooklyn self-driving shuttles begin picking up passengers this week

Self-driving startup Optimus Ride will become the first to operate a commercial self-driving service in the state of New York – in Brooklyn. But don’t expect these things to be contending with pedestrians, bike riders, taxis and cars on New York’s busiest roads; instead, they’ll be offering shuttle services within Brooklyn Navy Yards, a 300-acre private commercial development.

The Optimus Ride autonomous vehicles, which have six seats across three rows for passengers, and which also always have both a safety driver and another Optimus staff observer on board, at least for now, will offer service seven days a week, for free, running a service loop that will cover the entire complex. It includes a stop at a new ferry landing on-site, which means a lot of commuters should be able to pretty easily grab a seat in one for their last-mile needs.

Optimus Ride’s shuttles have been in operation in a number of different sites across the U.S., including in Boston, Virginia, California and Massachusetts.

The Brooklyn Navy Yards is a perfect environment for the service, since it plays host to some 10,000 workers, but also includes entirely private roads – which means Optimus Ride doesn’t need to worry about public road rules and regulations in deploying a commercial self-driving service.

May Mobility, an Ann Arbor-based startup also focused on low-speed autonomous shuttles, has deployed in partnership with some smaller cities and on defined bus route paths. The approach of both companies is similar, using relatively simple vehicle designs and serving low-volume ridership in areas where traffic and pedestrian patterns are relatively easy to anticipate.

Commercially viable, fully autonomous robotaxi service for dense urban areas is still a long, long way off – and definitely out of reach for startup and smaller companies in the near-term. Tackling commercial service in controlled environments on a smaller scale is a great way to build the business while bringing in revenue and offering actual value to paying customers at the same time.

[kathleenseiber]

How will flying cars affect the environment?

Flying cars, formally known as electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, or VTOLs, may not be suitable for short trips, researchers report.

However, VTOLs—which combine the convenience of vertical takeoff and landing like a helicopter with the efficient aerodynamic flight of an airplane—could play a niche role in sustainable mobility for longer trips, according to the study.

Several companies around the world are developing VTOL prototypes. Flying cars would be especially valuable in congested cities, or in places where there are geographical constraints, as part of a ride-share taxi service, according to study authors.

“To me, it was very surprising to see that VTOLs were competitive with regard to energy use and greenhouse gas emissions in certain scenarios,” says Gregory Keoleian, senior author of the study and director of the Center for Sustainable Systems at U-M’s School for Environment and Sustainability.

“VTOLs with full occupancy could outperform ground-based cars for trips from San Francisco to San Jose or from Detroit to Cleveland, for example,” he says.

Artistic rendering of an electric vertical takeoff and landing taxi cruising through an urban center. (Credit: Dave Brenner/U. of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability.)

Compare and contrast

The new study, the first comprehensive sustainability assessment of VTOLs, looked at the energy use, greenhouse gas emissions, and time savings of VTOLs compared to ground-based passenger cars. Although VTOLs produce zero emissions during flight, their batteries require electricity generated at power plants.

The researchers found that for trips of 100 kilometers (62 miles), a fully loaded VTOL carrying a pilot and three passengers had lower greenhouse gas emissions than ground-based cars with an average vehicle occupancy of 1.54. Emissions tied to the VTOL were 52 percent lower than gasoline vehicles and 6 percent lower than battery-electric vehicles.

Akshat Kasliwal, first author of the study and a graduate student at the School for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan, says the findings can help guide the sustainable deployment of an emerging mobility system prior to its commercialization.

“With these VTOLs, there is an opportunity to mutually align the sustainability and business cases,” Kasliwal says.

“Not only is high passenger occupancy better for emissions, it also favors the economics of flying cars. Further, consumers could be incentivized to share trips, given the significant time savings from flying versus driving.”

Solving problems through transportation

In the coming decades, the global transportation sector faces the challenge of meeting the growing demand for convenient passenger mobility while reducing congestion, improving safety, and mitigating climate change.

Electric vehicles and automated driving may contribute to some of those goals but congestion on existing roadways limits them. VTOLs could potentially overcome some of those limitations by enabling piloted taxi services or other urban and regional aerial travel services.

Several aerospace corporations and startup companies—Airbus, Boeing, Joby Aviation, and Lilium, for example—and agencies such as NASA have developed VTOL prototypes. One critical efficiency enabler for these aircraft is distributed electric propulsion, or DEP, which involves the use of several small, electrically driven propulsors.

The researchers used publicly available information from these sources and others to create a physics-based model that computes energy use and greenhouse gas emissions for electric VTOLs.

“Our model represents general trends in the VTOL space and uses parameters from multiple studies and aircraft designs to specify weight, lift-to-drag ratio, and battery-specific energy,” says coauthor Noah Furbush, a master’s student at the College of Engineering.

“In addition, we conducted sensitivity analyses to explore the bounds of these parameters, alongside other factors such as grid carbon intensity and wind speed,” says Furbush.

Short trips vs. long trips

The researchers analyzed primary energy use and greenhouse gas emissions during the five phases of VTOL flight: takeoff hover, climb, cruise, descent, and landing hover. These aircraft use a lot of energy during takeoff and climb but are relatively efficient during cruise phase, traveling at 150 mph. As a result, VTOLs are most energy efficient on long trips, when the cruise phase dominates the total flight miles.

But for shorter trips—anything less than 35 kilometers (22 miles)—single-occupant internal-combustion-engine vehicles used less energy and produced fewer greenhouse gas emissions than single-occupant VTOLs. That’s an important consideration because the average ground-based vehicle commute is only about 17 kilometers (11 miles).

“As a result, the trips where VTOLs are more sustainable than gasoline cars only make up a small fraction of total annual vehicle-miles traveled on the ground,” says coauthor Jim Gawron, a graduate student at the School for Environment and Sustainability and the Ross School of Business.

“Consequently, VTOLs will be limited in their contribution and role in a sustainable mobility system.”Not surprisingly, the VTOL completed the base-case trip of 100 kilometers much faster than ground-based vehicles. A point-to-point VTOL flight path, coupled with higher speeds, resulted in time savings of about 80 percent relative to ground-based vehicles.

“Electrification of aircraft, in general, is expected to fundamentally change the aerospace industry in the near future,” Furbush says.

The study’s authors note that many other questions need to be addressed to assess the viability of VTOLs, including cost, noise, and societal and consumer acceptance.

The study began while Kasliwal and Furbush were summer interns at Ford. The work continued when the students returned to Ann Arbor, with the help of a Ford-University of Michigan Alliance grant.

The study appears in Nature Communications. Additional coauthors are from Ford’s Research and Advanced Engineering team in Dearborn, Michigan.

Source: University of Michigan

The post How will flying cars affect the environment? appeared first on Futurity.

How will flying cars affect the environment? published first on https://triviaqaweb.weebly.com/

[migrately]

The Driverless Future Isn't Disrupting Industries and Jobs… Yet

John Stuart Mill once said that “[e]very great movement must experience three stages: Ridicule, discussion, adoption”. What matters to modern industry stakeholders isn’t how they approach each of these stages, but how actively they evaluate each “great movement” before it becomes a disruption they can’t overcome.

Disruption isn’t some type of sudden event that occurs overnight, but rather, it is a slow chipping and eroding away of the status quo. When this chipping and eroding goes unnoticed, that’s when it has its most destructive potential to existing industries. The defense to disruption isn’t entrenchment in existing ways, but realizing that change is occurring and embracing change and innovation as ways to improve what you already offer customers, stakeholders, and employees.

On almost a daily basis we see in newspapers, online blogs, and other publications claim that autonomous vehicles and their offshoots are disruptors of existing industries and jobs. According to these publications, autonomous vehicles will be the death of various industries and their jobs – apparently, just as millennials are the reason so many industries our parents may have enjoyed are also being destroyed as well, but I digress. If you are to believe these publications, autonomous vehicles will soon replace hotels and AirBnBs, food delivery drivers, taxi and ridesharing drivers, and all other forms of industries that may or may not currently be dependent on drivers. Yet, contrary to the fearmongering in the news, just as millennials aren’t currently killing any industries  or the economy, the death of other industries and their associated jobs is just a bit premature, for now. But, this doesn’t mean companies, industry leaders, stakeholders, workers, college students, and consumers shouldn’t be thinking of how this emerging technology will be changing their professional and personal lives quicker than they might care to think.

According to an August 2017 report from the Department of Commerce’s Economics and Statistics Administration, there were 15.5 million workers with jobs related to driving in 2015. Of these jobs, only 3.8 million workers actually operate vehicles that require long-distance driving on open roadways, such as long-haul truckers or taxi/chauffer drivers. These long-haul drivers face the most risk because their highway driving conditions are more easily automated than driving in congested, urban environments. The remaining 11.7 million workers involved delivery drivers, postal employees, emergency first responders, and others which, will continue to benefit from autonomous enhancements, but likely won’t have their jobs immediately replaced due to the interaction with consumers as a part of their job.

Even with the need for being consumer facing, these drivers aren’t entirely immune to the disruption of autonomous vehicles. Embracing the change these bring into the marketplace will be pivotal to staying competitive, both in the near and far term. For instance, Dominos and Ford Motor Company  are testing the potential for self-driving cars to deliver pizzas to your door without the need for a delivery driver in Miami and Ann Arbor. Similarly, General Motors and their Cruise Automation unit have partnered with DoorDash to automate your restaurant food deliveries from restaurant to your front door in San Francisco. While it’s not expected that these partnerships will reach the mass market in 2019 and put high school students and the gig-economy out of a job just yet, by 2040, Goldman Sachs estimates that autonomous vehicles will replace over 300,000 driving related jobs per year as autonomous vehicles hit mass adoption.

Of course, such predictions of the future and disruptive technologies have the potential to be widely off. This was evident by one study commissioned by a major telecom provider that predicted by the year 2000, only 900,000 subscribers would being using cellphones in the US. In reality, when the year 2000 came around, over 109 million subscribers were using cellphones in the US alone. So does this mean autonomous vehicles will arrive in 2020, or does it mean they won’t arrive until 2075? That’s a question no one knows, but what is known is the need to evaluate and embrace disruption in conventional and unconventional ways going forward.

The Driverless Future Isn't Disrupting Industries and Jobs… Yet published first on https://medium.com/@888MigrationServices

[thegoviza]

The Driverless Future Isn't Disrupting Industries and Jobs… Yet

John Stuart Mill once said that “[e]very great movement must experience three stages: Ridicule, discussion, adoption”. What matters to modern industry stakeholders isn’t how they approach each of these stages, but how actively they evaluate each “great movement” before it becomes a disruption they can’t overcome.

Disruption isn’t some type of sudden event that occurs overnight, but rather, it is a slow chipping and eroding away of the status quo. When this chipping and eroding goes unnoticed, that’s when it has its most destructive potential to existing industries. The defense to disruption isn’t entrenchment in existing ways, but realizing that change is occurring and embracing change and innovation as ways to improve what you already offer customers, stakeholders, and employees.

On almost a daily basis we see in newspapers, online blogs, and other publications claim that autonomous vehicles and their offshoots are disruptors of existing industries and jobs. According to these publications, autonomous vehicles will be the death of various industries and their jobs – apparently, just as millennials are the reason so many industries our parents may have enjoyed are also being destroyed as well, but I digress. If you are to believe these publications, autonomous vehicles will soon replace hotels and AirBnBs, food delivery drivers, taxi and ridesharing drivers, and all other forms of industries that may or may not currently be dependent on drivers. Yet, contrary to the fearmongering in the news, just as millennials aren’t currently killing any industries  or the economy, the death of other industries and their associated jobs is just a bit premature, for now. But, this doesn’t mean companies, industry leaders, stakeholders, workers, college students, and consumers shouldn’t be thinking of how this emerging technology will be changing their professional and personal lives quicker than they might care to think.

According to an August 2017 report from the Department of Commerce’s Economics and Statistics Administration, there were 15.5 million workers with jobs related to driving in 2015. Of these jobs, only 3.8 million workers actually operate vehicles that require long-distance driving on open roadways, such as long-haul truckers or taxi/chauffer drivers. These long-haul drivers face the most risk because their highway driving conditions are more easily automated than driving in congested, urban environments. The remaining 11.7 million workers involved delivery drivers, postal employees, emergency first responders, and others which, will continue to benefit from autonomous enhancements, but likely won’t have their jobs immediately replaced due to the interaction with consumers as a part of their job.

Even with the need for being consumer facing, these drivers aren’t entirely immune to the disruption of autonomous vehicles. Embracing the change these bring into the marketplace will be pivotal to staying competitive, both in the near and far term. For instance, Dominos and Ford Motor Company  are testing the potential for self-driving cars to deliver pizzas to your door without the need for a delivery driver in Miami and Ann Arbor. Similarly, General Motors and their Cruise Automation unit have partnered with DoorDash to automate your restaurant food deliveries from restaurant to your front door in San Francisco. While it’s not expected that these partnerships will reach the mass market in 2019 and put high school students and the gig-economy out of a job just yet, by 2040, Goldman Sachs estimates that autonomous vehicles will replace over 300,000 driving related jobs per year as autonomous vehicles hit mass adoption.

Of course, such predictions of the future and disruptive technologies have the potential to be widely off. This was evident by one study commissioned by a major telecom provider that predicted by the year 2000, only 900,000 subscribers would being using cellphones in the US. In reality, when the year 2000 came around, over 109 million subscribers were using cellphones in the US alone. So does this mean autonomous vehicles will arrive in 2020, or does it mean they won’t arrive until 2075? That’s a question no one knows, but what is known is the need to evaluate and embrace disruption in conventional and unconventional ways going forward.

The Driverless Future Isn't Disrupting Industries and Jobs… Yet published first on https://888migrationservicesau.tumblr.com

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DTW Ann Arbor Airport Shuttle & Metro Airport Taxi Cars

Do you support local businesses? Supporting local taxi services is a great way to assure the future availability of critical transport resources for everyone in town. Also, local business operations typically keep their income right in their community and spend it back. Ann Arbor is truly a wonderful place to live and continues to be at the top of the list for university campuses in the United…

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Taxi Rides to Spring Events in Michigan

One of the most iconic springtime events in Michigan is the Tulip Time Festival in Holland, a vibrant celebration of Dutch heritage and the beauty of tulips. This annual festival, held in early May.

Springtime in Michigan is a magical season filled with blooming flowers, outdoor adventures, and exciting events that celebrate the beauty of nature. From music festivals to community gatherings, there is something for everyone to enjoy in the Great Lakes State during the spring months. Let’s take a closer look at some of the upcoming springtime events in Michigan that are sure to captivate…

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The Driverless Future Isn't Disrupting Industries and Jobs… Yet

John Stuart Mill once said that “[e]very great movement must experience three stages: Ridicule, discussion, adoption”. What matters to modern industry stakeholders isn’t how they approach each of these stages, but how actively they evaluate each “great movement” before it becomes a disruption they can’t overcome.

Disruption isn’t some type of sudden event that occurs overnight, but rather, it is a slow chipping and eroding away of the status quo. When this chipping and eroding goes unnoticed, that’s when it has its most destructive potential to existing industries. The defense to disruption isn’t entrenchment in existing ways, but realizing that change is occurring and embracing change and innovation as ways to improve what you already offer customers, stakeholders, and employees.

On almost a daily basis we see in newspapers, online blogs, and other publications claim that autonomous vehicles and their offshoots are disruptors of existing industries and jobs. According to these publications, autonomous vehicles will be the death of various industries and their jobs – apparently, just as millennials are the reason so many industries our parents may have enjoyed are also being destroyed as well, but I digress. If you are to believe these publications, autonomous vehicles will soon replace hotels and AirBnBs, food delivery drivers, taxi and ridesharing drivers, and all other forms of industries that may or may not currently be dependent on drivers. Yet, contrary to the fearmongering in the news, just as millennials aren’t currently killing any industries  or the economy, the death of other industries and their associated jobs is just a bit premature, for now. But, this doesn’t mean companies, industry leaders, stakeholders, workers, college students, and consumers shouldn’t be thinking of how this emerging technology will be changing their professional and personal lives quicker than they might care to think.

According to an August 2017 report from the Department of Commerce’s Economics and Statistics Administration, there were 15.5 million workers with jobs related to driving in 2015. Of these jobs, only 3.8 million workers actually operate vehicles that require long-distance driving on open roadways, such as long-haul truckers or taxi/chauffer drivers. These long-haul drivers face the most risk because their highway driving conditions are more easily automated than driving in congested, urban environments. The remaining 11.7 million workers involved delivery drivers, postal employees, emergency first responders, and others which, will continue to benefit from autonomous enhancements, but likely won’t have their jobs immediately replaced due to the interaction with consumers as a part of their job.

Even with the need for being consumer facing, these drivers aren’t entirely immune to the disruption of autonomous vehicles. Embracing the change these bring into the marketplace will be pivotal to staying competitive, both in the near and far term. For instance, Dominos and Ford Motor Company  are testing the potential for self-driving cars to deliver pizzas to your door without the need for a delivery driver in Miami and Ann Arbor. Similarly, General Motors and their Cruise Automation unit have partnered with DoorDash to automate your restaurant food deliveries from restaurant to your front door in San Francisco. While it’s not expected that these partnerships will reach the mass market in 2019 and put high school students and the gig-economy out of a job just yet, by 2040, Goldman Sachs estimates that autonomous vehicles will replace over 300,000 driving related jobs per year as autonomous vehicles hit mass adoption.

Of course, such predictions of the future and disruptive technologies have the potential to be widely off. This was evident by one study commissioned by a major telecom provider that predicted by the year 2000, only 900,000 subscribers would being using cellphones in the US. In reality, when the year 2000 came around, over 109 million subscribers were using cellphones in the US alone. So does this mean autonomous vehicles will arrive in 2020, or does it mean they won’t arrive until 2075? That’s a question no one knows, but what is known is the need to evaluate and embrace disruption in conventional and unconventional ways going forward.

The Driverless Future Isn't Disrupting Industries and Jobs… Yet published first on http://simonconsultancypage.tumblr.com/

[usacurrentnews-blog]

Police look for 4 suspects in Ann Arbor bicycle taxi armed robbery

Police look for 4 suspects in Ann Arbor bicycle taxi armed robbery

ANN ARBOR, Mich. (WXYZ) – A Boober Tours bicycle taxi driver was robbed at gunpoint on Thursday, Nov. 1, and police are looking for the four suspects involved. 

The armed robbery occurred around 2 a.m. on the Diag near West Hall Arch, at the intersection of South and East University Avenue in Ann Arbor. 

According to a release from the Division of Public Safety and Security at the University of…

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Taxi & Limo Businesses vs. Rideshare

Many people assume a rideshare service is the same as or similar to both taxi and limousine services but in essence, its origin is quite different. Rideshare platforms tried to modernize the taxi and passenger driving businesses by making them look less like such things. They also tried bypassing traditional chauffeur standards and hands-on methods of direct fleet management. The Rideshare idea…

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Do You Prefer Traditional Taxi or Limo Services?

Our drivers are your neighbors and they’re drug free, receive background checks and have years of training and experience working in the for-hire transportation sector. We take pride in our work and seek to offer you the most efficient and courteous taxi

Many of our local community members request our cab and limo ride services daily and prefer supporting local businesses. We absolutely appreciate your patronage and conscious commitment towards keeping our Ann Arbor based transportation services going strong. Our company has over 20 years of service combined in Ann Arbor. All drivers are your neighbors and they’re drug free, receive background…

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Ann Arbor Taxi | SkoopUp Transport

Our hometown is based in Ann Arbor, Michigan and that’s also near the University of Michigan which is also a very popular attraction for academics and sports fans. Keep Skoop Up Taxi and Limo Service in mind if you ever need of a ride because we’re your o

Skoop Up hopes you’re having a wonderful Michigan summer. Ann Arbor and the mitten shaped state is an awesome playground for summer travel, camping and fun. Travelers coming in and out of the area are very frequent as we’re a popular destination for many tourists. The Great Lakes has so much to offer those who love outdoor activities and you won’t want to miss an opportunity to explore historic…