rhallie11

Have none of y'all heard of rental cars? Just a few weeks ago, I missed my morning flight from SF to LA and was told the next one wasn't until later that night, so I opened my phone, booked a rental car, took a Lyft to the pickup spot, and just drove myself the rest of the way down for the weekend.

I would imagine that a world in which fewer people are buying cars would also lead to one in which there are more options for different lifestyles. It wasn't that long ago that the idea of randomly picking up an electric scooter off the street was a novel one. Now there are multiple unicorns putting them everywhere. Getaround/Turo/ZipCar are already things, and I imagine they'll just become more widely adopted/less expensive in the future.

I was his second girlfriend, and he'd just gotten out of a multi-year relationship. We met while interning in SV. We broke up soon after I went back to school, and I think he just ended up getting back with his ex, so...

It was 2, and I honestly have no idea why

I dated a guy once who, after a couple of weeks, asked me to marry him--citing this problem as his reasoning.

I said no.

Butt he's all I ever think about whenever I hear it mentioned, so.

Howard specifically tries to brand itself as a school that has a large amount of economic diversity, and a high percentage of students who are first generation college grads (around 38% for the class of 2014 [1]). Its a pretty well-known/prestigious HBCU, and doesn't have a problem attracting applicants.

But, unlike a lot of other schools in its position, its alumni network generally doesn't give back all that often (probably in part because first-gen college students are more-likely to have financial responsibilities to their families, and less-likely to be able to afford to give/prioritize giving back to their universities).

But I do specifically remember having to move off campus because my dorm had a mouse/mold problem (woke up multiple nights in a row to mice in my bed, and started having breathing problems because of the mold. Some students even had mushrooms growing out of their carpet). And when I brought it up to the director of residence life, he responded by saying that it wasn't a big enough deal to address, and that students always complain about these things and eventually stop pushing....So....

[1] https://www.howard.edu/assessment/documents/reports/Graduati...

As a former Howard student, I think the school's just hella cheap, but also doesn't like getting negative attention from the outside. Students (myself included) have been complaining for years about the quality of the buildings, and asking for renovations. But it wasn't until the neighborhood started gentrifying, and the new neighbors started to complain, that Howard did anything about it.

Which is why people get upset. Its not that the changes aren't good, its the fact that the change doesn't happen until someone else asks for them.

Its probably more complicated than that. In areas that don't have bike lanes, people tend to just bike on the sidewalks, and pedestrians just put up with having to move out of the way. The reason is likely a mix between being historically ignored by the city, not bothering to really try, and also just knowing that sidewalks are safer to bike on (even if inconvenient).

When wealthier people move into a neighborhood, expecting bike lanes, they push for them. They probably have more power/influence, but they also have a higher since of entitlement that causes them to not give up, even if the city pushes back.

Yeah, at this point, it might just be lingering feelings of luxury, even if its no longer the reality for the most part.

Probably because coffee shops tend to charge two to four times more for a cup than a diner would. Like, you could buy a bag of coffee grounds for the amount some people pay

I think another way it could have been put: no one cared enough about bike riders to put in bike lanes until wealthier riders moved in.

Like, yeah, totally agree that bike lanes are an important part of any city's street planning. The more absurd thing is that there have been people riding bikes through the streets of SF for decades, and it wasn't until parts of the city began to gentrify, and bike shares became popular amongst the wealthier residents, that anyone cared enough to fix the problem.

Woop!

for the white millennials this site seems aimed at, there's not much in their way

I don't know what about our product makes you think that we're specifically targeting white people, but, even if we were, millennials (even ones from populations that are disproportionately of a privileged background) are overwhelmingly either currently in school, or under-employed . "Under-employed," meaning that they tend to work part-time, hourly jobs, rather than being able to secure salaried positions (even for ones with higher degrees).

As I've said before, they literally do not have time--and will, in fact, be put at a financial burden, if they chose to--to take off time to vote. Which is why we have services like "Time off to Vote" (https://www.voteplz.org/guide/get-time-off/) to help people know their rights, as well as easy-to-understand information about getting absentee ballots and voting early.

We also have an entire resource for helping people with criminal pasts know their rights (https://www.voteplz.org/register/#/felony-help/), which pretty much no one makes straight-forward. If you look at other registration sites, they tend to say something along the lines of, "don't use us if you've ever committed a crime," because they don't feel like putting in the effort to help that demographic. Even the National Voter Registration form uses language that can be misinterpreted as meaning that people who have been to jail automatically lose their rights forever.

Like I said, making it easier for people to vote (and giving them resources to get informed) is not making people who don't want to vote, vote. It's helping people who want to make a difference get the resources to make a difference.

Hey there! Could you send more deets to support@voteplz.org ?

There are a number of reason why this could have failed on our end that users have run into in the past: anything from maybe entering your name incorrectly (people who type in "Alex" instead of "Alexander"), using the wrong address (if you recently moved, but registered at an old address), all the way to our DB being not quite up-to-date due to you having registered very recently.

Not saying its impossible for it to have been an "us" problem, but there are a lot of moving parts at play. There's also no real downside to registering twice (other than the loss of a couple minutes). Better to be safe than sorry

Making it simpler for people to vote isn't prodding. "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink."

This is actually false. Most states require you to either mail-in your registration form (which requires access to a printer, knowledge of how to use the postal service/where to get stamps [which, let's be honest, a lot of young people have never had to do], and a state-issued photo ID [which costs money, and requires you to have time to go to a government building anyways to get one issued to you]) or go fill out a form in-person (which means you need the free time to do so [government buildings operate 9-5, which is, inconveniently, generally the same timeframe people are at work. And people with hourly jobs cough young people and low-income people cough would literally lose money taking time off to do this).

And that doesn't even touch on the fact that a lot of states make you show up in-person to vote (need a "legitimate" excuse for requesting absentee) and don't require employers to give you paid time-off to vote.

I think the way that we're taught to view elections is fundamentally flawed. People see the Presidential election as the most important election that you can participate in, because its the vote for the highest office in the country.

But a president who loses the popular vote can be still be elected because the actual decision is made by the slightly lower-ranking politicians that we vote for in state/local elections. Which is also funny, because these are viewed as some of the least important elections, because the individual offices aren't nationally powerful on their own.

But your vote statistically counts the most when voting locally. And your local decisions have a systemic impact/ripple effect on who ultimately gets picked for president.

Registering to vote is important. Your voting is important. But people always wait until its too late to be as impactful as they could have been when they only think to vote when presidential elections roll around.

#1 Peer pressure Things like vote.org will help if they close the loop by showing to your peers (bragging rights) that you've voted.

Yeah, I defs remember remember reading about a group that sent out a list of everyone in your neighborhood who voted in past elections with an add-on like, "Make sure you're on this list next year", and they got a whole lot of people registered. I also heard Facebook's "I voted" status-maker increased turnout last time around

I feel like photo voter id reqs wouldn't be that controversial if there were a "free" (paid with taxes, obz) state-issued id that everyone had access to. You can get passports and state ids made, but they defs cost money.

I also disagree with electronic voting, but am a huge supporter of: - automatic registration - election days as (paid!) holidays - national no-restrictions on requesting absentee (some states require you to vote in-person unless you have a reason explaining why you literally can't)

I doubt any means of simplifying the registration process will ever be enough to make people who don't want to vote vote.

There are a wide variety of reasons as to why registering to vote should be as easy as possible, and most of them have nothing to do with convincing people who don't want to vote to vote (I mean, ideally, we should live in a society that automatically registers everyone by default. But we're not quite there yet).

People who work 9-5 jobs that are paid hourly (or people currently in school, and go to school during those hours) literally lose money by taking time off to go to a government building and do these things in person, since government buildings operate 9-5 as well (some even open late/close early, because government).

Currently, the people most-likely to vote are either old (retired, with the free-time available to go do these things at their convenience), or middle-to-upper class salary workers (who won't be penalized for taking time off to go do these things).

While the people least-likely to vote are young people and people who work lower to lower-middle class hourly jobs, who cannot afford to take time off to register/vote. Most states don't even guarantee you paid time off to vote on election days.

If people don't want/care to vote, no amount of simplifying is going to make them do it. But people who want to vote shouldn't have anything standing in their way.

OP: "Shouldn't YC be as friendly to not-for-profit startup founders as they claim to be to for-profit founders?"

Made it sound like they thought VotePlz was a for-profit/getting more promotion because of that (which it isn't)

How is this splitting voters if you have more than one place to register? That's like saying having multiple DMVs in a state would make it harder for people to get a driver's license

VotePlz is a non-profit...