Here’s a convenient list of affordable cities in the US.

https://youtu.be/IKxR06isoLU

I completely agree. Public access to transport can be such a joke that it forces disabled people who shouldn’t be driving to be driving, like the case here with Corsiglia. They didn’t have a choice so they committed murder in order to find existence beyond being jailed in their own home. A real-life Shakespearean tragedy.

Continuing to push for disabled parking at places where parking in the first place doesn’t make sense encourages driving and discourages public transport. It’s actually harmful to ask for disabled parking because it takes away from the greater disabled group and places the general public at risk.

All that said, there are situations where it’s OK to demand disabled parking. When a public project clearly is going to include a parking structure, demand disabled parking in high quantities. Demand at-grade and wide zones at these spaces. Demand escalators and elevators. Fight for equal access. I would be there on your side.

PS: Thanks for engaging and listening. This is a topic that often doesn’t get the attention it deserves and typically devolves into some kind of public virtue signalling. The devil is in the details.

You cannot dive and yet in the very first picture of the station in the OP’s article is a passenger loading and unloading zone at the gates. How could this train station’s design prioritization unduly harm your own disability since they picked a design where you could be dropped off at the entrance? I’m actually curious here because I can drive and I would be harmed (no parking for me) yet I’m willing to let it go in favor of things like front-gate drop-off zones for public and private loading.

You’re absolutely right that different people do have different needs but priority must be given on every project. Not including disabled parking is a choice that does not unduly harm disabled people. Including disabled parking can harm disabled people. Let me explain.

Prioritizing private car infrastructure necessarily means de-prioritizing non-car infrastructure, like these loading zones. Maybe they can shrink the loading zone a bit and get a parking spot or two in, but would that be enough for those who can drive? Maybe they can put the parking in the back, but that’s not every disabled friendly either. A parking structure could address some of that, but where’s that money coming from? Remember, there’s a limited budget and limited land availability. What’s being taken away for that disabled parking?

Prioritization of parking appears harmless on the surface but manifests in unusual ways, which is precisely why I chose “San Bruno Man With Seizure Disorder Found Guilty In Double Fatal Car Crash” as a case-in-point. The disabled man in question, Rodney Corsiglia, felt forced to drive despite multiple doctor interventions and the DMV revoking his license.

Dr. Austin told Corsiglia he should not be driving because his seizures were not controlled and he did not have full awareness of them. Corsiglia had difficulty accepting the recommendation and wanted to drive because he lived alone, felt he needed a car for transportation, and had a new truck even though he did not have a driver’s license.

– People v. Corsiglia, A145944 (Cal. Ct. App. Mar. 7, 2017)

Being a local in the area, I fully understand Corsiglia’s argument and he has a point. There are no protected bike lanes, the sidewalks are a mess, there’s exactly one bus every hour that’s daytime only to the train station across the street from where the collision occurred. There’s no way he can reasonably function without a car, which is good because the train station where he murdered two people does have disabled parking. And that’s the issue: San Bruno prioritizes disabled drivers while excluding every other disabled member. It’s a decision the city, county, and state can and often makes. It’s also a decision that killed.

Pushing the “what about the disabled people” is exactly how cars get prioritized above people’s needs, disabled and abled alike. It’s counter-intuitive but pushing disabled parking and induces parking demand which, even in totally unreasonable circumstances, pushes disabled people to drive even when they shouldn’t need to.

Like blind people? Or those who cannot afford a mobility van because a 10 year old used one is priced at $35k? Perhaps you mean those who suffer from seizures?

Let’s focus our limited budget into personal vehicle infrastructure that certainly wouldn’t force these suffering people to drive. It works, bro. Trust me.

You’re not off the mark. Honestly not a bad overview to squeeze into a few sentences. Here’s some extra detail for those who remain more curious.

The circuit complexity reduction happens by changing the math behind the radio signal. Much like how you can describe a vector in cartesian coordinates (a point in x, y) or in polar coordinates (a point in angle and length), choosing how to represent the radio math allows for different techniques to arrive in the same answer. That’s what the author did: he picked a polar modulating scheme over a quadrature modulation scheme. (Note, there are even more mathy ways to modulate a radio signal, but those are what the author is presenting to us.)

The author’s choice avoids generating unwanted frequencies that must be filtered out before amplifying. That’s components on the board that don’t need to be designed nor exist. A solid win.

The drawback? Polar modulation is non-linear in frequency space. What that means is certain frequencies are over-represented and others are under-represented. Imagine playing notes on a piano where some keys are very loud and others you could hardly hear them. That’s the unwanted non-linearity.

Herein lies the trick: what’s bad can be turned into good. Power amplifiers typically need to be linear. Imagine a piano that works fine but the auditorium’s loud speakers make it sound terrible. Those loud speakers would be a non-linear amplifier. The trick is that it’s possible to match the modulator’s non-linear behavior with a power amplifier’s non-linear behavior to end up with a clean signal! A non-linear piano and a non-linear loud-speaker can produce beautiful music! This engineering trick unlocks all kinds of non-linear power amplifier architectures (that’s the “C/E/F” described in the article) which are drastically more energy efficient than linear ones (linear designs max out around 65% efficient).

I upgraded my license when my grandfather had to move in with my parents so I coul help him setup a smaller shack and assist in operating the radio with him. He deeply appreciated the family time, and I’m sure your Uncle wouldn’t mind spending time with you too.

For whatever it’s worth, these web interfaces are great at listening and cost nothing. Ask him to help you operate (finding signals and how to listen to them) using a KiwiSDR online. If you find out he’s also having fun, then perhaps look into remote radio station equipment. There’s a wide selection of transmitting capable SDRs, like FlexRadio, and DIY solutions (e.g. https://www.remotetx.net/). You can even rent remote operation time with incredibly nice hardware in amazing locations (e.g. https://www.remotehamradio.com/). Perhaps he’ll be come interested in another side of ham radio that he hasn’t done before either, like working satellite passes. That doesn’t take more than one nice, or two very cheap, handheld radios and a small handheld yagi.

Ham radio can be used as voice chat with friends, but that would be a pretty limited view of it. Here’s some things that a Discord Voice Chat cannot do that radio can:

• Chat without internet (e.g. places without cell towers).
• Chat without voice. (digital communications of all kinds; email/text, keyboard-to-keyboard, pictures, etc).
• To build an internet (e.g. building WiFi meshes with extra power [AREDN], AX.25 packet, WinLink).
• Used as a tool during emergencies (see ARES/RACES/CERT).
• Chat completely randomly (it’s just one big discord channel, but you can only hear some people).
• Chasing the challenge of unusual radio propagation (earth-moon-earth, meteor bounce, tropospheric ducting, aurora).
• Chasing the challenge of collecting the most point-to-point contacts (contests).
• Chasing the challenge of difficult radio propagation (microwave links).
• Constructing and using radios that you cannot buy off the shelf parts with (usually with those funny microwave guys).
• Higher power versions of things unlicensed folks cannot do (RC toys, Meshtastic/LoraWAN, WiFi, etc).
• Historical preservation (restoring old radios, keeping ship-shore coastal stations running [e.g. Maritime Radio Historical Society]).
• Conducting scientific experiments (HamSCI, and I conducted one listening to the ionosphere during the recent total eclipse).
• Building and controlling satellites (AMSAT).

And there’s even more. The way to view ham radio is the government grants you a license to operate on many pieces of radio spectrum so long as you can show your technical ability to not cause harm (interference, safety, and things that will prevent you from blowing up your radio as well as find success in using it). What you do with that spectrum is up to you!