https://cbsaustin.com/news/offbeat/greater-cincinnati-man-ch...
[0] https://local12.com/news/local/man-cleared-charges-spray-pai...
At what cost? The process is the punishment.
One thing I've noticed in my travels is that it's rather difficult to have a pothole on a train track.
You'd think a low-pass filter of a collective database of this data would quickly draw attention to the legit "bumps in the road"…
And you would think a city municipality could use this data (within a geofence, sorted by "popularity" and Newtons) to determine which potholes to tackle.
Spraypainting the pothole distorts the triage process and makes a pothole jump the queue, putting it ahead of more severe or older issues than it otherwise would have been.
It might not be zero sum, if it causes the agency to act with more haste to avoid embarrassment, but it seems like it could be close? Plus it probably takes more resources to clean up the spraypaint afterwards.
Most road maintenance crews probably aren't sitting around with abundant materials and machinery neglecting their duties, so I guess I just have some questions about what the real cost of this tactic is. What's giving.
Why are we excusing civic inaction because it might cause an unexpected schedule change for road crews? Why am I supposed to be so full of concern for the ease of their schedule that I'm ok with broken streets?
In short, c'mon, man.
Assuming that's true, the most likely explanation is that they are working on Big Projects. Pothole maintenance is (probably) behind these projects, even though it can be done without affecting their timeline.
What kind of system has work to be done but not enough jobs... it's a world where work is not focused on satisfying our needs but rather focused on maximizing profit. As long as we're choosing to make work about making someone else wealthy rather than satisfying all our needs, we'll never have enough jobs to get the work done.
Potholes are a visible manifestation of society saying it's more efficient to prioritize capital than care.
Don't get too locked in on the specific.
bogomil•1h ago