OK we can add "ripping out a state of the art filtration system for the reflecting pool because Obama installed it" to the list of things Trump has done out of absolute bitter jealousy of the first Black president.

If these were cars, you'd need a 6-story parking garage and it would take 2 hours to empty out after the game. People would leave the game early to "beat the rush" and would have missed singing Take Me Home, Country Roads together.

A Black man with the surname Freeman scored for the USA on Juneteenth in a home World Cup match.

my god, it's real

Great @danielsperrykc.bsky.social piece for us today, about how the wonderful town of Lawrence, Kansas fell in love with Algeria: www.theguardian.com/football/202...

😳 via @futi.live

If you’re stressing about how to get to tomorrow’s World Cup game, we have some advice. The main one is: Don’t drive. www.sounderatheart.com/2026/06/how-...

Heads up: The U.S. Postal Service has proposed a new rule that would allow it to refuse to deliver mail ballots in states that don't turn over voter rolls to the federal government. Dems say it's clear evidence the Trump admin is trying to unconstitutionally intrude on state-run elections.

UPDATE: Now it’s Ivory Coast supporters caught up in Trump & Stephen Miller’s racist World Cup dragnet. ⚽️ 🇨🇮 www.thesun.co.uk/sport/393789...

The World Cup is about celebrating exotic host nation cultures

I don’t remember any World Cup where shitty stuff like this happened, & I can remember every World Cup since 1978. This referee is one of the best referees in the African Football Confederation (AFCON), & FIFA is standing there useless.

ICYMI: The right-wing think tank that developed Trump's anti-DEI policies is now shopping model legislation designed to turn minor protest offenses into felonies under a novel theory it calls "CIVIL TERRORISM" 🫠 by @lhn.bsky.social

CDOT Commissioner Cheaks should announce on Monday morning that the city will be phasing out "door zone" bike lanes starting immediately, as they are inherently deadly.

Studies consistently find that retail business operators tend to overestimate the proportion of their customers who travel by car. In Berlin, for example, retailers estimated that 22 per cent of their customers drove. In fact it was only 7 per cent. findingspress.org/article/2449...

BREAKING: in May 2026, *every single one* of the 599 refugees admitted in the U.S. were white South Africans. In FY 2026, the U.S. has admitted a total of 6,665 white South Africans, three Afghans (back in November 2025), and nobody else. For reference, the U.S. admitted 100,060 refugees in 2024.

Been a minute, but I felt an itch to write something ahead of the World Cup. On the things the game can give us: medium.com/@samstejskal...

World Cup watch parties have become part of the event’s fabric, and there will be no shortage of free options for soccer fans in the Bay Area over the next month.

OPINION: The political significance of Tuesday’s election isn’t simply that Mayor Daniel Lurie’s allies won (and won handily) — it’s where they won, columnist Allison Arieff writes.

We have a promo with Upway where you can save $100 off any purchase of $800 or more with code TWOC100. We're big fans of what they're doing. Sort of like CarMax for e-bikes.

Never gets old. J-school essay topic: Is there any performance test for essentially life-tenure columnists? A limit on how many big calls you can get totally wrong, before they say: Hey, buddy, how about taking a step back for a while. Maybe a few reported pieces? Where you go out and ask around?

california is gonna have so many mail in ballots that don’t get counted because people don’t know the new USPS rules that are impacting mail in voting. tl;dr don’t put your ballot in the mail today, find a ballot drop box. www.kqed.org/news/1208537...

Meanwhile in San Francisco my district Supervisor Alan Wong sends out endless emails about how his top priorities are to provide more parking and to rescind tree planting requirements

Duo Lingo ad idea right here. Learn spanish so you can watch soccer without having to hear AlexI

Breaking: California becomes the latest blue state to retreat on climate goals amid affordability concerns as regulators Friday evening voted to revamp its landmark carbon market to ease costs to the oil industry with $4 billion in incentives. Free link. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Does the war on universities start to make more sense now folks? 😬 The public university is the opposite of an ivory tower, in principle: the whole reason we have public education is intergenerational equity. Can we start saying that all together, a little more loudly please? 🙏

"When someone offers you a seat on the rocket, don't ask questions." -Eric Schmidt.

I am obviously biased since I wrote it but I think this week's @coyotemedia.org calendar is a pretty good one! 50+ events and some of my better jokes, not even gonna lie. You can get it right to your inbox for FREE if you sign up for COYOTE About Town: www.coyotemedia.org/newsletter-s...

They're stealing billions of your money to pay off violent right-wing psychos while doing everything in their power to spike gas up to $5 a gallon, make groceries into a luxury and hand the country over to the oligarchs who want to permanently replace you.

Thousands are marching in Selma calling for a full restoration of the voting rights act.

Today Community Pedal Power participated in Watertown's Ecofest at the Commander's Mansion. We had more than a dozen families stop by to try out a range of e-bikes and cargo bikes and learn about the E-Bike Lending Library. I love these events, because I know how much they can accelerate change.

NEW STUDY: Who is the Highway Lobby? “The highway lobby has been shaping transportation policy conversations for decades in its interests.” And they spend MILLIONS buying car dependency to make sure all of us have to spend BILLIONS. #UrbanTruth Via the Union of Concerned Scientists @ucs.org.

“We moved 4.5 million people off SNAP” is a crazy way to say you took food away from 4.5 million people, mostly needy families. And also crazy to think this works for them politically!

I love a good road trip, but this is brutally out of touch: a Trump Cabinet member making a documentary about himself while regular families can’t afford road trips anymore, because Trump and his war put gas prices through the roof.

We might as well start preparing to explain why energy price increases aren’t due to the transition to renewables, but due to the transition not happening faster.

Come join my team! We're hiring an Analyst to join AV's housing team. This is a great opportunity for early-career folks interested in the pro-housing ecosystem to support philanthropic investments, advocacy, and policy engagement. Details below: www.arnoldventures.org/careers/infr...

by my tally we are now spending ~$2B to companies to NOT build more energy infrastructure. in the middle of an energy crisis

I had never hear of Upway until I listened to this. I've never used it, so I can't comment, but if you're looking for a e-bike, it might be a good place to look: upway.co/collections/...

HELLO LONDON ON A TUBE STRIKE DAY! I cycled from Farringdon to Marble Arch this morning on a Forest bike and it was BONKERS. Here’s a video ⬇️⬇️ Sound up for an absolute tune by Raye 🎶🎶

Exciting news from Nebraska - Heartland Bikeshare in Omaha is now offering free 60-minute trips to locals. usa.streetsblog.org/2026/04/21/b...

In the literal thousand+ of headlines and articles like this that I've read and analyzed, I'm not sure I've seen one where they both mention the driver AND frame it like the car was a free agent. @calvinthigpen.com Did you see this one?

Pike Place Market just released new sales data for Feb 2026. Looks like Jan+Feb 2026 had 11% higher sales than Jan+Feb 2025 (before the pedestrian pilot)! Congrats Seattle, you managed to find a way to shop at the market in the dead of winter without driving your cars through the middle of it.

Oil just dropped 11% on news the Strait of Hormuz is “open.” But “open” doesn’t mean normal. Right now, 800+ tankers are stuck in the Gulf. The strait is effectively a 3-lane highway merging into 1. ~400 loaded ships trying to exit. ~100 empty ships willing to enter. 3 years until normal.

"Those taxes you just paid? The money is going straight into Trump's pocket" would be good messaging

Concerning findings @bloustein.rutgers.edu's Kelcie Ralph & @sunyofficial.bsky.social's E.O. White: the next generation of transportation engineers are, at best, getting an incomplete education about induced travel, and at worst aren't getting taught it at all. journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...

How do upzonings impact housing supply? In brand-new research published today @urbaninstitute.bsky.social, we show that big upzonings in New York City & Philadelphia had large, statistically significant effects on supply & permitting with several years of reforms. www.urban.org/research/pub...

NEW—I got an exclusive excerpt from a USAID whistleblower's new book that made me gasp multiple times. It details Trump's dismantling of the humanitarian aid agency & his team/DOGE's shocking ignorance to public health. 'Into the Wood Chipper' by Nicholas Enrich is out tomorrow. Read excerpt here:

Fresh off his trip to Hungary where he begged Hungarians to back Viktor Orban, J.D. Vance has decided world leaders shouldn't meddle in other countries' politics.