Kiwi harvest is in! It’s the perfect vine for south facing walls: provides shade all summer and tons of fruit in fall.

Nothing like a "citywide watchdog and organizing platform for communities facing unchecked, developer-led growth in the name of “affordable housing”" that seems to exist solely to block 1 permanent supportive housing project in 1 neighborhood. Always beware orgs with no names or board listed. 1/2

How would @roby.bsky.social fix Atlanta? ATL is a growing city. Unfortunately, our outdated patterns of growth are leading us to disaster. If we don’t reform our transportation and housing practices quickly, life will get worse for everyone. how-id-fix-atlanta.ghost.io/how-roby-gre...

Somewhere in LA, there’s a guy who’s gonna tell his grandkids he saw 36 innings of WS ball, and they’ll be like, you went to FOUR games? and he’ll be like, No, but Dodgers won both times.

These kind of Catch-22’s are an impediment to wider adoption of efficient travel modes. Cars and pedestrians are allowed to go, but bikes are told to stop. The bike path turns into a narrow sidewalk with no plan for to get off. If you want more people to do this, you have to make it easy!

Don’t be fooled by “If it bleeds, it leads” sensationalism. Any trip that you can take by transit will reduce your risk of injury or death by 2-10x compared to taking that same trip by car.

So many culture war issues comes down to should we let people be who they are or should we force them to hide it.

Biking to work really paid off this morning.

I wonder if historical examples of civilizational collapse had a counter-culture of people warning that maybe this wasn’t such a great idea. I want to hear those stories.

Cicada season in WNC. Volume up.

“You should die for my convenience” is the attitude of a surprising number of people driving cars out there.

Urban highways are associated with reduced social connections in U.S. cities. The top 50 cities all show reductions in social connections with Cleveland and Orlando being the worst and NYC and Portland being the least bad. Atlanta ranks 17th (better than I expected). Source: doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

This letter is making the rounds, and it is spot on. The city cannot grow by expecting all future residents to drive everywhere (I mean, it can, but it would suck for everybody), and people can’t choose to do anything else if you don’t give them an option.

Buying chocolate like there’s no tomorrow.

Has anyone said what the final plan for the El Salvador deportees is? Are they just in prison indefinitely?

Have we memory-holed this already? Seems relevant. apnews.com/article/unit... A 9th telecoms firm has been hit by a massive Chinese espionage campaign, the White House says

It’s now officially green bicycle tire season in Atlanta.

New starter pack dropped!

I grew up in an ultra-conservative evangelical household, and we were taught that the Book of Revelations predicted an anti-Christ would come to deceive the world with his lies, and he would be assisted by a false prophet who would implement his agenda. It’s a very common belief in that community.

Infinite Jest, a 1996 novel in which the U.S. has taken over Canada and Mexico, the president is a semi-lucid celebrity entertainer who wants to make America clean again, Quebecois-nationalists have formed a terrorist group promoting independence, and corporations buy naming rights for the years.

Just another reminder that polar vortex excursions are caused by a weak jet stream which is caused by a reduced temperature difference between the poles and the tropics which is caused by greenhouse gas emissions.

Signing a text: boomer. Greeting you by name in a text: Gen X.

In 1890, the X and Y chromosomes were discovered. It was found that the men who were tested had 46 chromosomes, including an X and a Y, while women who were tested also had 46 chromosomes, including 2 X chromosomes. So obviously the conclusion was that the Y chromosome defined masculinity.

The word “grant” implies someone is giving something away for free. They’re not. They’re buying knowledge from you. Knowledge that you have to work hard to get because generally speaking, no one has ever done that experiment before.

Am I crazy to believe having a walkable community is more important than drivers turning left fast? Because it’s routine around here that bike lanes and decent sidewalks are sacrificed to make left turn lanes instead.

A little science explainer: the climate is warming faster the closer you get to the poles, so the temperature difference between the tropics and the arctic is decreasing, and the jet stream is getting weaker as a result. A weak jet stream is more loopy, so we get these polar blasts more often now.

Wow, it’s almost like the benefits outweigh the inconveniences. That must have been hard to admit. www.nytimes.com/2025/01/11/n...

178 Robin has now been captured as a slave during a raid from Sakalava. This is a good time for a quick aside on the ethnicities and languages of Madagascar. I was definitely curious at first how so many of these different cultural groups share a mostly mutually-intelligible language.

155 Back to Robin Drury. We are approaching a dark turn in his narrative where, if you haven’t already, you should seriously begin to question his moral character. When we left off, he was recovering from what sounds like a serious bout with malaria. bsky.app/profile/roby...

The next installment of Robin Drury's story. bsky.app/profile/roby...

The Robin Drury story continued... bsky.app/profile/roby...

73 Robin Drury’s story continued. It is now 1705, and Robin has been away from home for almost 5 years. For 3 of those years, he has been enslaved as a cattle herder in the Androy region of southern Madagascar. bsky.app/profile/roby...

Things I smelled taking MARTA to Buckhead on Christmas Eve: -pee -poop -Black and Mild -someone’s sardine sandwich -someone else’s lit Yankee candle to cover up the sardines. I’m a big transit booster, but a trip shouldn’t feel like you’re in a Tom Waits song.

Kiwi harvest is in.

The third installment of the Robin Drury story... bsky.app/profile/roby...

Is Atlanta cooked? It sure feels that way sometimes. If we wanna thrive, we must nurture the makers and push back against the takers. Kyle Stapleton is here today with How I'd Fix Atlanta's powerful Season Three finale: how-id-fix-atlanta.ghost.io/how-kyle-sta...

Transportation nerds: I need help with this math. In the U.S., the roadway death rate is 1.33 per 100M vehicle miles traveled (bad metric) and 12.8 per 100000 people (better metric). 🧵

More of the Robin Drury story, now in the year 1702... bsky.app/profile/roby...

Now for something different. I am fascinated by fish-out-of-water stories, and the more out-of-water the fish is, the more fascinating. This one is from the early 1700’s, and it is out there. The story of Robin Drury and his 15 years of enslavement in Madagascar. Multi-part thread, length TBD

A successful weekend. 100 sourwood trees and 50 chestnuts in the grounds.

My hot Atlanta take: YDFM >> BHFM.

I’m curious if urban-rural polarization is a persistent fixture of politics. There are so many urban issues that aren’t inherently conservative or liberal, but they get coded that way in our polarized environment. Seems like conservatives could usurp some votes by championing them while in power.

Of all the laws and ordinances that people break, the ones that result in the most deaths, injuries and property damage are traffic laws. Maybe we could focus on enforcing those a little better.

Had to do a double-take. Is this meme really 100 years old? As true now as it was then.

Today’s vibes.

Oh the irony that many institutions with a Sustainabilty office house it under Parking and Transportation.

putting the finishing touches on a new How I’d Fix Atlanta essay that’ll drop next week—make sure y’all are signed up so it goes right into your sweet sweet inbox: austinlouisray.com#/how-id-fix-...

If you were commuting to work on this trail, would you a) exit through the bollards to the street, b) continue on the trail, then take the desire path and hop the curb, or c) stay on the trail until it turns into a tiny sidewalk and go in between the mailboxes and people’s front stairs?