Station to Station
As someone who used to commute through Penn Station, I appreciated William Finnegan’s piece about the transit hub and its troubles (“The Way Things Work,” March 13th). In 2012, I moved from Brooklyn to suburban New Jersey. I work in urban planning; at the time, I described my new town as a planner’s paradise, owing to its walkability and to the fact that my journey to my midtown office seemed to be only about ten minutes longer than it had been when I was taking the subway. Over time, however, the extra ten minutes became an additional half hour, thanks to frequent delays caused by downed wires, signal troubles, and stalled trains. Because of this, when my office called us back to work in person, I decided to find a local job.
Conditions like these are not inevitable in metropolitan areas. For instance, the town of Reading, England, is forty miles from London, and a twenty-five-minute train ride away. In comparison, my town is eighteen miles from midtown, and yet a commute on a good day—one without delays—would take around an hour and fifteen minutes. If New York City-area workers had shorter and more reliable commutes, far more people would likely be heeding the post-pandemic call to return to the office.
Daniella LaRocco
Maplewood, N.J.
Violent Content
Anthony Lane almost always gets a laugh out of me, but, as I read his review of “Cocaine Bear,” my usual enjoyment was replaced by anger toward Jimmy Warden and Elizabeth Banks, the film’s writer and director, respectively (The Current Cinema, March 6th). I am a longtime resident of Montana, where our trophy-hunting current governor has promoted brutality toward wildlife by killing nonhuman animals in cruel and archaic ways. I have read that Warden and Banks felt empathy for the real bear on whom their story was based, but, when I watched the trailer, the film looked to me like just one more depiction of gratuitous violence produced to make a profit. I hope that Lane’s assessment of this clichéd fantasy has persuaded filmgoers to spend their money elsewhere.
Kristine Ellingsen
Gallatin Gateway, Mont.
Machines in Mind
Dhruv Khullar’s piece about applications of A.I. in mental-health care made me wonder if society might become overly reliant on A.I. (“Talking to Ourselves,” March 6th). I can think of many innovations—such as cars and antibiotics—that, despite their initial promise, have gone on to cause harm because they have overshadowed good alternatives. As Khullar suggests, A.I. would ideally have a meaningful role in a large and robust mental-health ecosystem, providing the right level of service for some patients at certain points in time, a supplement to human-provided care for others, and a useful source of support for professionals.
Ellen Beckjord
Pittsburgh, Pa.
I am a parent coach and a people person, and my initial reaction to Khullar’s article was fear: will A.I. make me obsolete? Once I read all of it, however, I changed my mind. We already live in a world in which many of us interact with nonhuman helpers every day. I have multiple sclerosis, and typing is challenging for me. As a result, I regularly use speech-to-text technology, like Siri (which is usually a great stenographer). It’s important that we explore many ways to make support available to as many people as possible; so long as we continue to offer care that relies on human interaction, technology can be a rich resource.
Sarah B. Pollak
San Francisco, Calif.
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