literally just go for a bike ride i feel like so much of the AI freakout is from people who are terminally online i was just playing soccer in the park with my cousins and a horde of little kids, it was great, i never once thought about AI if the internet is wrecking your psyche, *TURN IT OFF*

The collapse of California climate policy was fully foretold. Step 1: Set aggressive climate targets, and realize they rely heavily on housing reforms that reduce driving mandates. Step 2: Don't reduce driving mandates, and instead give Elon Musk $$ billions for his electric cars. Step 3: Fail.

For those following along at home, CARB’s vote today essentially guts the greenhouse gas reduction fund and eviscerates the state’s largest sources of funding for affordable housing and public transit. At a time when we should be doubling down on them, we’re pulling away.

chicago earlier today walking through Andersonville, saw an older lady (easily in her ~70s) riding her bike down a side street off Clark, some SUV jerk leans on his horn behind her and starts shouting she very deliberately takes the lane and when they come to the stop, yells "fuck you, you jerk"

We can still prevent a 'New Prop 13,' but time is running short. Sign the petition urging immediate action on transfer tax reform 6/6: actionnetwork.org/petitions/si...

Help stop a New Prop 13. Poorly-designed transfer taxes in California are hindering housing production AND threatening vital services like schools, fire, and public safety. The experiments have proven harmful and have spurred a backlash from the same anti-tax organization that wrote Prop 13. 🧵/6

guys, i found the place. it's chicago. not sure why it doesn't just widen its sidewalks and bike lanes and steamroll every city in the US. if it weren't for the batshit drivers this place would be paradise (and yes, i have been here in winter, get a parka you wimps)

Caltrans just released its playbook for how to reduce vehicle miles travelled -- hooray!! The most important climate/environmental policy on earth. First example in the playbook for how to reduce vehicle miles travelled: A highway widening project. I am livid that I pay these people's salaries.

"Providing viable alternatives and designing communities that enable shorter travel distances and less time spent in transportation system may be critical components of a comprehensive road safety strategy." IOW, only way to save lives is by reducing exposure to the thing that kills people: Cars.

"One clear lesson emerged: Urban planning projects that get rid of cars pay dividends." '“The solution was easy: We needed to have less cars in the city.” www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Kind of dreaming about all the amazing things we'll have once we get rid of government driving mandates. And we don't even need an act of Congress to do it! Just, local and state elected leaders with courage and conviction. open.substack.com/pub/mateosfo...

This could be the most important week for mass transit in Seattle since voters rejected the 2nd Forward Thrust initiative in May 1970. On Thursday, the Sound Transit board will consider a resolution from board chair (and Snohomish County Exec) Dave Somers that would gut ST3. We have to stop it. 🧵

One of the major challenges of our era is the backlash against China backed by people who've never been there. It's impossible to describe how modern and advanced it is without sounding like a loon -- but, only if you're explaining it to an American, who lives in a comparative backwater.

A bet? On the integrity of Confederate Republican traitors in the Senate? yeah i'll take the under

"What do you mean by 'violent drivers'? I once saw a bicyclist almost not put his foot down at a stop, but then, he did. But I was scared! These things are the same!" By "violent drivers" I mean "drivers who are violent." www.usatoday.com/story/news/n...

I worked in grassroots environmental conservation for many years & still have friends/contacts in that space, so, this isn't directed at anyone in particular, but: A lot of folks (not gonna QT or mention them) upset over Dems push for permitting reform that may allow more fossil fuel development. 🧵

It’s a real renters market in Sacramento rn I’m seeing buildings that were developed 5 years ago offering rents below what they were offering when they first opened. Building housing works.

The trucks, they ate the brisket. open.substack.com/pub/mateosfo...

Part of being in science communications is quietly accepting a perpetual frustration with ideological responses from people when their beliefs are challenged. In my experience, it's endemic to humans; no political cohort follows evidence. And still, we must follow it. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

What US state hates its own biggest city the most? I am biased because I grew up there, but I don't think anybody beats Detroit vs. the rest of Michigan

If we lived in a society with any sense of history or time, we'd be talking about how completely fucked the Sunbelt of 2030s and 2040s is and start preparing now for the consequences. Awful lot of 30-year mortgages down there at the ends of sprawling car infrastructure with no plausible future.

I don't understand why you can go to jail for pointing a gun at someone in a threatening way, but not for pointing your car at them in the same way. Drivers kill and maim far more Americans with cars than guns and it's not even close. hoodline.com/2026/05/cops...

New blog post inspired by @tomflood.bsky.social and @mateosfo.bsky.social #WindshieldBias

The roots of our epistemic collapse are deep but the rot eating them away is the total lack of object permanence or temporal progression in our political journalism. Everything that happens is an isolated moment with no antecedent, no way to know actions have consequences, history is dead.

As a bicyclist you are both an out of touch elitist who rides to work on a toy and also a poor loser who can't afford a car and has to ride to work on a toy

It's kind of fun to go back and re-read Hofstadter in the context of how paranoid the American left has become. I think this is at root of what we casually describe as "horseshoe theory" -- that right-wing suspicion of democratic governance is now endemic on the left. harpers.org/archive/1964...

fucking legend

I would vote for a Logan’s Run law in Seattle, even if the age cutoff took me along with these weirdos.

Parts of Kansas City was designed to have neighborhood shopping centers every few miles. It used to have a trolley (paved over & recently revived with a streetcar). It also has wide tree-lined thoroughfares in some places. You can also tell how at one point, that kind of planning stopped 😔

"You shouldn't compare violent drivers to fascists, that's counterproductive." Who said I was comparing them.

"Bikes will not replace us" is the funniest fucking thing I've seen in a while. No one is more aggrieved than a driver who is asked to share a tiny bit of the massive pie they get all to themselves.

whut

Why is California's climate regulator eviscerating funds for the most important climate interventions in the state -- housing and transit? Why is it so easy for them to subsidize EVs for rich people while they're killing walkability and e-bikes? www.sfchronicle.com/climate/arti...

And ofcourse the flip side of the same trope is that American cities also weren't built for cars. Even newer ones in then "far northwest" like St Paul & Minneapolis were built entirely around railroads, streetcars, and the bicycle. The 1st autos didn't show up til 40 years after their founding.

A common trope in carbrain is "we can't make US cities more like Europe because Europe wasn't built for cars." There was this thing called "World War II," after which many EU cities *were rebuilt for cars* -- with help from U.S. carbrained planners! But within a few decades, they hated it.

Bicycles are hugely space efficient, which is why they make a lot of sense in congested cities. This video demonstrates why there aren’t traffic jams in bike lanes. Just imagine the traffic queues if every bicycle here was a car.

Many reasons to ignore trolls on social media, regardless of political leanings. For example, tons of folks who present as leftists/liberals are closer to reactionary fascists on car use. What data shows: Most US drivers self-report sociopathic driving behaviors. aaafoundation.org/research/agg...

The American left fighting to reduce trust in what is already a historically low-trust society suggests it is fundamentally an accelerationist movement. That has pretty seriously implications for our politics, but I probably need to think about it more and do some reading and writing to understand.

this one cool trick is 100% effective in preventing the police from reading the state-issued government-regulated license plate on your car that literally only exists so cops can read it and that it is literally their job to read

YOU CARRY A SURVEILLANCE DEVICE IN YOU AT ALL TIMES. YOU ARE SUCH FUCKING MARKS! Ahhhh!!!!!

A lot of replies being like “Wait something good!?” No you morons, republicans want to be able to allow chud truck drivers to speed through your neighborhood without consequence. You are a fucking sucker if you think congressional republicans care about privacy. This stupid country I swear to god.

Just not true at all. Reckless motorist folk story/cope. Follow the law and drive safely if you don’t want a ticket, Speedy McGee. Also put down your phone.

Drivers: "We shouldn't be enforcing traffic laws! We should be doing other things to reduce driver violence!" "You mean like slow streets?" "No." "You mean like bike lanes?" "No." "You mean like transit and walkable neighborhoods?" "No." "You mean like charging for parking?" "Hell no."

The law of small numbers is when a bunch of paranoids warn about 10-12 civil rights violations that may result each year from enforcing traffic laws while casually dismissing the 2 million Americans severely injured and 45,000 killed each year by violent drivers folks, there's no perfect system

It's kind of fun to go back and re-read Hofstadter in the context of how paranoid the American left has become. I think this is at root of what we casually describe as "horseshoe theory" -- that right-wing suspicion of democratic governance is now endemic on the left. harpers.org/archive/1964...

Not once has a carbrain ever written the words "not everyone can ride a rocket ship into space" when literally only one in a billion humans can do so, but they'll gladly write those words about bicycles, which are, by far, the most common form of human transport on earth.

One of the most alarming facts you learn when you first get into transportation stuff is that the median car trip in a U.S. city is under 3 miles. Given average city traffic speeds of under 20 miles per hour, most of those trips could *easily* be replaced by an e-bike. Parking: 5 cents an hour.

I'd put money on Fetterman changing parties if it keeps Dems from controlling the Senate in the unlikely event they win enough seats in November. But that's not mainly because Fetterman is a prick; it's because the Senate is a cesspool, an hideous, rancid, putrescent scar on our dying democracy.