81. Give up the car keys.

New blog post: Why you should call them conspiracy myths or conspiracy fictions, not theories. bettybarcode.com/2026/07/16/t...

People do not buy ebikes because they are happy to spend thousands more than they would on a regular bike. People buy ebikes because they save thousands compared to the car journeys they replace. That is the key distinction that many policy makers the general public miss or don’t understand.

I am angry and upset that my kids and my neighbours were put at risk because of gun violence in our quiet and polite neighbourhood. But I am outraged that two completely innocent people have been killed by traffic violence, and nobody seems to care at all. lloydalter.substack.com/p/two-killed...

Another fun-in-the-sun illustration to accompany a deadly heat story. Like using figure skaters to illustrate winter storm stories.

Obligatory duck retweet

There is an incoherence of a certain sort of urbanist who wants there to be organic growth but is unwilling to actually do anything that might permit organic growth

What is up with the half-tucked-in blouse? Like, one shirt tail tucked in, one hanging out. Or a T-shirt tucked in only above the zipper in your jeans, the rest hanging out. Is there a female counterpart to the menswear guy who can explain what this means?

If other news was reported like climate change:

Oh, yay, it's been a minute since Watermelon Truck has appeared in my timeline!

Dopey question for #LawSky, what's keeping the ICC from prosecuting probable crimes now?

It's true not everyone can walk, or ride a bike, or use public transit. But for most of us, that's not because of anything to do with the act of walking, biking, or using transit itself. 🧵

Obligatory duck retweet

"It’s worth remembering the context for what’s happening: Being undocumented in the U.S. is not a crime, no matter what hyperbolic language Republicans may use. "It’s a civil offense, not even as bad as a speeding ticket." www.salon.com/2026/07/13/n...

I looked up the code and statutes for parking RVs in my city and Gmail is now showing me RV ads.

#1. All paths that traverse grass must have arbitrary curves or you can lose your license.

"Verify your age" I listened to Nixon resign from office on a transistor radio at summer camp.

Please, people, as the Right cranks up the conspiracy machine, stop dignifying every demonstrably false narrative with the word theory. The term you want is myth, fiction, falsehood, or lie.

👊🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾

Excellent proposal for use of 'restoration'

“Culture of impunity” is right. The demand is to never hold public figures accountable for wrongdoing, not even verbally when they’re already beyond the reach of human accountability and won’t hear the criticisms and jokes. The legacy must be sanitized, or current elites might feel less impunity.

Girl, same.

"Progress occurs one funeral at a time." -Max Planck, paraphrased

What to do with cukes. Lime juice, chili powder, kosher salt. #vegan

Most elected and appointed officials believe deep down that cars & drivers are the rightful owners of streets and that they must never be deprived of the use of their property. #WindshieldBias

There is nothing more patriotic than wanting better lives for your neighbors.

Today's quiz: how many phone numbers can you rattle off from memory, excluding your own? I got three: spouse + 2 former workplaces.

it's brutal out there.

When someone notable is killed by a driver we get lots of coverage of how bike infrastructure is a matter of life and death. But the rest of the time we're stuck with stories about how we really need to consider the impact on parking.

Boston, you need a Gag Rule, in Louisa's honor, that flags any site of serious injury or death for automatic safety analysis and redesign.

"New, improved iron lung" is a headline I hope I never see

Someone please invent a field in image properties that lets you write & save alt-text *once* and it travels with the photo wherever it gets copied & reused. IOW, permanent metadata. Permadata.

"To lose her on a morning commute at an intersection the city has explicitly documented as dangerous for years is just an unmitigated tragedy, a systemic failure." Deaths like Louisa's occur because our leaders prioritize the convenience of drivers over the safety of pedestrians and cyclists.

These threads are pure GOLD, especially for non-Catholics like me

This isn’t about preferences, or ideologies. This is literally life or death. #VisionZero

yeah of course bike lanes are dei (deeply enjoyable infrastructure)

Every cyclist death is heartbreaking, but it hits even harder when it's an advocate like this. It's infuriating and saddening. These deaths, especially on roads that are known to be dangerous, are simply policy choices.

Broke: Potomac Visual Approach Woke: Niagara Visual Approach into BUF, starting Lake Erie & Ft Erie, Ont., then the Niagara & Grand Island, and the Erie Canal as it ends at the River in the twin cities of Tonawanda & N. Tonawanda. NY. Quick glimpse of Lake Ontario, too! ☀️🛬

This is a brilliant essay, which, in my view, accurately describes the predicament of the post-Boomer generations, and the vast infrastructure of lies designed to disguise it. "Degeneracy is a symptom. The disease is rent." 🧵 henryfudgeofficial.substack.com/p/degeneracy...

No one is louder or more profane than a driver caught in the wrong. #WindshieldBias

Wrote this during the pandemic. Enjoy! #satire bettybarcode.com/remembernote...

‘Polarization’ has become the master concept for diagnosing our current democratic crisis. But this is not polarization. It is the radicalization of the political right. By misdiagnosing it, we risk becoming complicit in the crisis. 🧵 Just out in Perspectives on Politics doi.org/10.1017/S153...

Sincere question: why do so many campaigns put so much stock in phone banking? They're just more spam calls for the rest of us to avoid & ignore.

The seat--any seat--does not belong to the incumbent, the candidate, or the party. It belongs to the district.

I wish designers of shoulder bags with adjustable straps figured out how to prevent strap bunch-up.

If Maine does not like the rest of the country weighing in on its Senate race, then it should not have been hitting up the rest of us for donations.

One of the side effects of this is that bad planner jargon ("green space" being one of the worst) escapes into the wild, where people adopt them in the hopes of being taken seriously by officials & planners. @strongtowns.org