Today's links

Podcasting "Disneyland at a stroll": Winding up my series on "amusement parks, crowd control, and load-balancing" (for now).
The Unraveling: Ben Rosenbaum's stunning debut novel.
What kind of emergency is our emergency?: Kim Stanley Robinson on the structure of feeling of this perilous moment.
The secrets of hospital bills: What do you call a "market" where no one chooses the services or knows the prices?
This day in history: None
Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading

Continue reading "Pluralistic: 23 Aug 2021"

Today's links

Machine learning sucks at covid: Every "AI" covid tool was useless.
Podcasting "Are We Having Fun Yet?": The first three parts of my ongoing Medium series on queueing, aggregate demand management and theme parks.
This day in history: 2020, 2016, 2011, 2006, 2001
Colophon: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading

Continue reading "Pluralistic: 02 Aug 2021"

Now you’ve got two problems (Part III)

Amusement parks, crowd control and load-balancing

This is Part III in this series. In Part I, I opened the with news that Disneyland Paris is getting rid of its Fastpasses in favor of a per-ride, per-person premium to skip the line, and explored the history of Disney themeparks and what they meant to Walt Disney. In Part II, I explored Disneyland’s changing business-model and the pressures that shifted it from selling ticket-books to selling all-you-can-eat passes, and the resulting queuing problems.

Continue reading "Now you’ve got two problems (Part III)"