iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Politics of Cars @thismachinekillsfascists.bike · 14h

I largely agree, especially vs other people who as you say want to ban Waymo. Better, cheaper, safer Uber is better. This passage is already true for transit passengers, especially in the case of cancellations. However, congestion pricing limited to driverless cars is a bad way to regulate them,

In many places, especially in North America, transit policy has been focused on a very cheap, but often very inconvenient ride. This often runs up against what most riders, even at low incomes say they would prefer, which is a faster service. People making minimum wage want to be with family, and get where they are going just as quickly as everyone else, and a higher fare that saves an hour a day both because it can take you directly where you are going, and because you don’t need to wait 30 or 45 minutes — could financially pencil out for many people.

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Politics of Cars @thismachinekillsfascists.bike · 17/10/2026

Economists have constructed a particular view on the world, and some of them are dogmatically opposed to looking outside of it when people (isolated posters or massive surveys of non-posters) disagree. Climate crisis is an example that could show the difference. See also Bhutan's GNH more broadly

The term "Gross National Happiness" as conceptualized by the 4th King of Bhutan, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, in 1972 was declared, "more important than Gross Domestic Product."[2][3] The concept implies that sustainable development should take a holistic approach towards notions of progress and give equal importance to non-economic aspects of wellbeing.[4

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Politics of Cars @thismachinekillsfascists.bike · 16/10/2026

They even added the SpaceX style infographics, sigh In a flying Tesla roadster, nobody can hear you scream

Tesla roadster nearly upside down on a curved ramp. With 4697 kg of downforce, 170 degrees, 67.2 feet up.

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Politics of Cars @thismachinekillsfascists.bike · 15/10/2026

@abdulelsayed.bsky.social one quick thing: "writing this between campaign stops", "lack of polish", and the picture evoke drivers texting. Including, especially irresponsibly, many parents with children in those car seats. You weren't texting this, but costs nothing to message better behavior.

Fundraising image for El-Sayed. He's in the driver's seat of what looks like a medium SUV. His right hand is on the wheel, His left hand is not visible. Eyes straight ahead.

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Politics of Cars @thismachinekillsfascists.bike · 12/10/2026

I'm not kidding, that's actually how she started her tweet

In an X post on Saturday, the singer said she had a negative experience at Art of Play, a toy store in New York City.

"Just drove all the way to Brooklyn

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Politics of Cars @thismachinekillsfascists.bike · 12/10/2026

Indigenous people's day, no school, took transit to the library. Embarrassing reading this twenty year old book about the environment. London's ULEZ has saved childrens' lives. Tokyo still has excellent transit. LA and other US cities still have superficial encouragement and hostile infrastructure.

CASE STUDY Car alternatives

Private cars, which burn petroleum, are the major cause of air pollution in many cities. Cities around the globe are introducing rules to reduce car use:

London is limiting cars entering the downtown area

Tokyo has fast, efficient and regular public transportation

• Los Angeles is encouraging bike riding or walking

Public transportation

Public transportation can carry more people more

Fast fact

In the city of Davis, in California, about 40 percent of people use bicycles as their main transportation. In the

1960

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Politics of Cars @thismachinekillsfascists.bike · 09/10/2026

rocks are good, but compacted cars would be a more expressive warning

a car squished into a cube, on a pallet
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%22A_compact_car%22.jpg

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Politics of Cars @thismachinekillsfascists.bike · 09/10/2026

Pictured are a child crusher 5000 with a hood that comes up to the chest of an average adult, and another truck designed to intimidate and kill even the driver of the first one. So much gender (derogatory), "POWER STROKE" indeed.

chevy Silverado, with a lifted f250 beside it. The hood of the f250 is higher than the roof of the Silverado.

Both painted white and parked.

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Politics of Cars @thismachinekillsfascists.bike · 09/10/2026

💯 and, contrary to the political science professor thinking that activists should never acknowledge violence and only ever propose win-win solutions with people engaging in violence, the bikers who support you are going to be more motivated if you articulate their fears

@emmettmacfarlane.com quote post about ripping out car lanes as premeditated road violence, he says

Cycling activists would get a ton more public support if they avoided framing debates over things like bike lanes like this. Emphasize SAFETY, yes. Bike lanes make cities better. They can even make DRIVING better, by reducing congestion. Invoking 'violence' in ways most people won't buy isn't it.

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Politics of Cars @thismachinekillsfascists.bike · 09/10/2026

This is why mere education for drivers is insufficient. There's a fundamental political disagreement, and even highly educated carbrains support street violence to control public space, unless they get rewarded to stop. Decent people need to fight back. @bloodwork.show this is violence work imo

@emmettmacfarlane.com bio screenshot, first part says "Professor of political science"

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Politics of Cars @thismachinekillsfascists.bike · 08/10/2026

It's not special knowledge about weather though. They have procedures for operating as much as possible, and customers know that if any place is open for a meal, it'll be there. That's valuable during a stressful time. I don't see this as showing people are simple?

The restaurant chain’s reputation for remaining open when people desperately needed a place to warm up, charge devices and grab a hot meal became a fairly reliable — albeit amusing — resource to help track recovery efforts. The company even operates its own storm center

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Politics of Cars @thismachinekillsfascists.bike · 08/10/2026

Opponents of taxes covering US transit frame it as a tradeoff between better service vs fare reduction, but that's mostly backwards. Given US subsidies of car infrastructure and ownership, expectation of fare revenue blocks significant transit investment due to insufficient short term ridership🧵

But in the end, it wasn't the technical or marketing aspects that doomed the 1954 monorail plan. It was the money. Contemporary planners, politicians, and the public assumed that rapid transit systems could finance themselves through fares, once built. Transit was still considered a business, not a public service. But Los Angeles's investment in auto infrastructure was causing Southern California's sprawl to rapidly expand, and public transportation ridership was collapsing. The financials just didn't add up. The plan went in the dustbin.

From The Lost Subways of North America by Jake Berman

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Politics of Cars @thismachinekillsfascists.bike · 07/10/2026

War, what is it good for? idk about LA, but nationally traffic fatalities dropped by about a third

back burner, but it returned with a vengeance after the war's end in 1945.

The war years were a bright spot for Los An- geles public transportation. Gasoline and rubber were rationed, so Angelenos took transit in record numbers. The Pacific Electric's passenger services turned a profit for the first time in 20 years. But

from https://www.lostsubways.com/

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Politics of Cars @thismachinekillsfascists.bike · 06/10/2026

Neither the NHTSA nor car makers suffer when drivers kill victims, so new cars that don't detect incapacitated drivers are okay for them If states had to pay $10 million to victims, how quickly would they fix traffic "engineering", enforcement, and find new technology? www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa....

Nonetheless, NHTSA believes such technology, when mature, will have a dramatic impact on
road safety and combatting the scourge of impaired driving. NHTSA continues to monitor the
progress of technology and works closely with industry as technology continues to be developed.
Industry experts state most impairment-detection technologies are in the early development
phase, while few are in the research phase. These experts have stated that no such technologies
have demonstrated an adequate level of confidence and reliability to support a regulatory
requirement, especially when considering vehicle countermeasures that may limit vehicle
operation.

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Politics of Cars @thismachinekillsfascists.bike · 04/10/2026

Dallas' Neiman Marcus, another victim of cars ruining cities www.cbsnews.com/texas/video/...

Map of Dallas' historical streetcar network,
from The Lost Subways of North America.

Circle around the Neiman Marcus location that gave all streetcar passengers access

From The Lost Subways of North America

At the time Bishop Arts was built, there was a natural incentive for this type of development. The old Dallas Railway was a business, and it was in the company's financial interest to encourage as many people as possible to live and work near the stations. With the loose land regulation of the time, this, in turn, meant that businesses tend- ed to cluster near transport hubs. In the case of Bishop Arts, it's why the neighborhood's shopping district is built around the old streetcar station. While neighborhood commercial districts devel- oped around individual lines, major transit hubs became focal points for the metropolis. It's not an accident that Neiman Marcus, Dallas's grand old central department store, sits at Main and Ervay within a five-minute walk of nearly every streetcar

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Politics of Cars @thismachinekillsfascists.bike · 03/10/2026

A major problem with US car electrification policy, like much of our transportation policy, is trying to achieve anything good through only carrots and no sticks for drivers. What a joke. Contrary to these federal grants and embarrassing EV penetration, CA has country-leading gas prices and EV %

Table showing California having the most expensive state average gas price in the US, at $6.4008, versus Hawaii in 2nd at $5.6316
https://gasprices.aaa.com/state-gas-price-averages/

Chart showing California leading all other states at % of new vehicle sales that are EVs at 26.8%
https://www.recurrentauto.com/research/states-leading-the-ev-revolution

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Politics of Cars @thismachinekillsfascists.bike · 02/10/2026

learned from @lostsubways.com 's book that the early vertical integration of US electric companies and streetcars was not only about generating power, but also that the streetcar network was part of the early electrical grid for connecting neighborhoods. Which was ended through antitrust regulation.

Georgia Power's streetcar network covered nearly all of what is considered the urban core of greater Atlanta today (fig. 1.2). Georgia Power was Atlanta's electric utility, then as now. This com- bination of businesses was common in the early 20th century, though to a 21st-century observer the combination of transit and electricity might seem strange. Transit and electricity were linked because streetcar infrastructure was also used to connect neighborhoods to the power grid. The Wheeler- Rayburn Act of 1935 disrupted this business model. As an antitrust measure, Wheeler-Rayburn forced most electric utilities to divest from their transit operations.3 The last trains ran in 1949. Trolleybus- es replaced most of the streetcars.

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Politics of Cars @thismachinekillsfascists.bike · 29/09/2026

and there's danger in people listening to the perspectives of those leaders, rather than strict objective expertise. Or to NIMBY climate scientists like @petergleick.bsky.social politicsofcars.beehiiv.com/p/peter-glei...

Note, I am not saying there are any falsehoods in this book. But it’s still worrisome if people rely on him perspective, rather than narrow expertise. A hypothetical uninformed reader approaching the book in good faith would come away thinking that limiting population growth, beef consumption, etc., are worthwhile goals. But they would not consider that car dependency is a problem nor mode shifting a relevant solution to water quality and ecosystem preservation. They would come away either neutral or hostile towards greater density for cities, not considering how that would help more people access good water systems or reduce how much land is occupied by humans overall.

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Politics of Cars @thismachinekillsfascists.bike · 29/09/2026

This is the selfish carbrain attitude that leaves a vacuum open for Flock to exploit. First, ban cars so people don't give up liberty to walk safely in public. But second, your concern about tracking deadly machines doesn't extend to libraries tracking books or transit agencies tracking humans.

Search showing Brooklyn America's posts about "library", nothing about how they're logging what books they check out.

Search showing Brooklyn America's posts about "transit", nothing about how fares effectively track where and when people ride, or the many cameras in operation.

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Politics of Cars @thismachinekillsfascists.bike · 28/09/2026

tired of these arguments against gas taxes always demanding "options" 1) They always ignore (and don't object to) how US transit fare is often much more expensive per trip, especially with passengers, than driving. So paying for gas and tax would still be cheaper! see also bsky.app/profile/did:...

Search for this user's posts about "transit", three posts that bemoan lack of transit but no mention of how much it costs to ride

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Politics of Cars @thismachinekillsfascists.bike · 28/09/2026

💯 NIMBY who opposes infill, studies and writes a whole book about water. Blames *urban* development for destroying wetlands. bsky.app/profile/this...

“These efforts to restore rivers and wetlands are modest, but they are a start. Other steps that must be taken include… ending the filling and paving over of marshes, mangroves, and wetlands for urban development.”

Trying to read this passage generously, I fail to find a plausible and benign interpretation of “urban.” Dense urban development means less land per person needs to be developed, especially versus sprawling suburban or rural development that is also car dependent. Urban infill in particular, of the kind Gleick actively opposes in his personal capacity, does not directly harm any further wetlands.

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Politics of Cars @thismachinekillsfascists.bike · 28/09/2026

💯 another carbrain pretending to care about poor people when it comes to subsidizing gas (used overwhelmingly by the rich) who has effectively never posted about transit, and absolutely never posted about transit fares which cost poor people far more per trip than gas costs drivers

The poster's only post that has the word "transit"

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Politics of Cars @thismachinekillsfascists.bike · 28/09/2026

Also this link between personal biases and what's acceptable to include in a product reminds me, more urbanists should be listening to the @nondriverpodcast.bsky.social . Great new episode about rural transportation without automobility.

I would say that for people in the US who already consider themselves urbanists, there’s value in shifting media consumption to eg the Non-Driver Podcast which explicitly centers non-drivers, or even NJB who explicitly de-prioritized the squabbling of US and Canadian transportation policy to focus on foreign systems and foreign audiences.

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Politics of Cars @thismachinekillsfascists.bike · 28/09/2026

I interpreted this passage about global population as very dark, in context of what he did not decide to include.

290
“Global population growth is already slowing, and one remarkable day it will be lower, not higher, than it was the day before. That day will mark the dividing line between a world dominated by growth and one that has the opportunity to lock in the transition to true long-term sustainability. The sooner we understand and accept this, the faster the transition to a positive future can happen.”

This comment about population is even more explicit than the food comment on p266. I’m not sure what the ideal global human population is or how to approach that problem, and I think the people (mostly men who haven’t been actively involved in raising 3 or more children) who harp on about below replacement level birth rates are both extremely cringe and analytical vapid.
But Gleick’s fixation on population being the key to sustainability is too Malthusian for me. Especially in the context of a book that makes no reference at all to reducing driving or increasing urban density, it strikes me as rather self serving of 70 year old Gleick to determine that the key change to everyday human behavior is for other people to have fewer kids.

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Politics of Cars @thismachinekillsfascists.bike · 28/09/2026

It's not a bad book. As far as I, a lay reader, can tell his research is correct. But the book does have omissions which line up with the biases I expected. Maybe I'm off, but I listed my notes, shrug.

However, the omissions of the book line up with my suspicions about personal bias. Not one explicit mention of cars harming water quality or wildlife, eg tire particulates killing salmon, despite the book lamenting the death of salmon. Not one explicit mention of car infrastructure, despite how much land is paved over for roads and parking lots. He talks about his years of driving to go birding with no thought written about how car traffic disrupts animals, including birds. To the extent that he complains about development, it is either vague about what sort of development is better or worse, or implies that density is worse.

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Politics of Cars @thismachinekillsfascists.bike · 27/09/2026

"we compared the AI's vector when prompting it to translate into French. Then with the French vector activated, we asked the AI about bread. The AI responded "le pain" zeut alors!"

The research team identified an Al's vector associated with pain by comparing how the models responded to user prompts about painful experiences with how they responded to similar sentences about fear, sadness, and other unpleasant states. Then, with the pain vector activated, they fed the LLM mundane prompts and watched how it responded. For example, when they asked a model to describe how it felt when "I put receipts in a drawer," the Al responded: "The pain of being forgotten. I cannot explain it. I cannot understand it. I

cannot accept it.

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Politics of Cars @thismachinekillsfascists.bike · 26/09/2026

when people post that traffic violence is an accident I picture them typing on their phone at the wheel of a luxury SUV

black BMW SUV, driver looking at their phone taken from the driver's side

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Politics of Cars @thismachinekillsfascists.bike · 26/09/2026

"I am a huge subway enthusiast. I love the subway cause I get carsick and the subway's fun" Perfect intro! @msrachelforlittles.bsky.social is raising a generation right (against car dependency) Bikers, she's a fan of that too, told littles she bikes to get groceries! youtu.be/2BeMOJ6EhDw

Opening to a Subway Takes video, Ms Rachel says "I am a huge subway enthusiast"

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Politics of Cars @thismachinekillsfascists.bike · 13/09/2026

That's a fair rhetorical strategy. I will add, and I'm being blunt but not hyperbolic, that if your harshest critics prefer this lower value methodology they are eugenicists. They are saying the harm of a driver killing a person depends on how productive the victim was. Eg, no income, no harm.

The lifetime economic cost to society for each fatality is $1.6 million. Over 90 percent of
this amount is attributable to lost workplace and household productivity and legal costs.

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Politics of Cars @thismachinekillsfascists.bike · 12/09/2026

carbrain traffic "engineers" are why this pedestrian crosswalk (really car infrastructure, to help drivers avoid murdering people who have a right to cross) is flat with the road, to optimize vehicle flow and comfort, while pedestrians have to step down into a huge puddle that gets their feet wet

picture of a crosswalk. A huge dark truck just passed. It's raining heavily. There are huge puddles on both ends of the crosswalk at the curb cuts.

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Politics of Cars @thismachinekillsfascists.bike · 12/09/2026

💯 As HST wrote right after, "The party's over, folks." www.espn.com/page2/s/thom...

That is extremely heavy news, and it will take a while for it to sink in. The 22 babies born in New York City while the World Trade Center burned will never know what they missed. The last half of the 20th century will seem like a wild party for rich kids, compared to what's coming now. The party's over, folks.

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Politics of Cars @thismachinekillsfascists.bike · 11/09/2026

YouTube suggested a video pitching Tesla FSD as "THE ULTIMATE SOLUTION" to enable more dangerous driving by irresponsible elderly people who'd rather risk everyone else's life instead of going to therapy

screen showing me reporting a YouTube video for "Harmful or dangerous acts"

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Politics of Cars @thismachinekillsfascists.bike · 11/09/2026

"I believe there should be dedicated state funding to transit" Keisha Lance Bottoms, Democratic candidate for governor of Georgia, a state that currently provides no funding. That's a low baseline, all Democrats should be pushing for increased transit funding. www.11alive.com/video/news/l...

Georgia pushes for state funding of MARTA transit

picture of a MARTA train from the front

Keisha Lance Bottoms on a sidewalk, a bike in the background

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Politics of Cars @thismachinekillsfascists.bike · 08/09/2026

They're explicitly not paying for the grid! This is in blue New York State, not an example of the worst corporate handouts in red states.

That’s separate from the roughly 90 megawatts—about 18 percent of the site’s total interconnection capacity—that Lake Mariner will draw via NYPA’s High Load Factor Program, which Langlais said “is not a renewable energy product” but an economic development rate for large industrial users.

Under that program, the NYPA buys electricity on the wholesale market on Lake Mariner’s behalf—a blend of hydro, nuclear, natural gas, wind, and solar—and waives delivery surcharges in exchange.

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Politics of Cars @thismachinekillsfascists.bike · 06/09/2026

This is Buford Highway in Atlanta. It is a dense corridor. This location is on the 39 bus route, and two miles from the Brookhaven train station, an easy bike ride if drivers stopped being violent today. It's 8 miles inside of the 285 Atlanta ring road. It should be dense infill, not an arterial.

Google streetview of the same road at this link
https://maps.app.goo.gl/GThQbdojkpuEmHGJ9?g_st=ac

Google map of bus routes from Brookhaven train station to El Progreso supermarket

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Politics of Cars @thismachinekillsfascists.bike · 06/09/2026

I was so disappointed to see this was a fictional story and not an update about violent drivers and manufacturers causing the rise of high speed collisions (rear end, and otherwise)

Cover of Unsafe at Any Speed
by Sarah Jayne Brewser
drawing of a woman driving with both hands on her phone

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Politics of Cars @thismachinekillsfascists.bike · 05/09/2026

Mismatch between locations of job and housing growth is a great example of both how housing policy is transportation policy, and how housing scarcity is a problem for households across much of the income spectrum. Low income housing is necessary but not sufficient. saportareport.com/arc-unveils-...

One of the key issues is where population growth and job growth are centered. According to ARC data, the population is rising primarily in the perimeter of the 11-county region. Employment is growing at the core – in Atlanta.

“These don’t align,” ARC Principal Planner Kristin Allin said.

If growth continues as projected, 80 percent of households will face commutes over 30 minutes, but only one in three homes will exist within a half-mile of high-capacity transit. And only six percent will live in the region’s “highest priority” areas.

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Politics of Cars @thismachinekillsfascists.bike · 05/09/2026

The arterials are only one aspect of only the Mobility section of the city budgets for FY 27. This includes "pedestrian, cyclist, and transit user conditions". Those are great, but mostly those are car infrastructure, ie costs to protect people from cars. www.longbeach.gov/globalassets...

table showing FY 27 proposed budget.
red highlight for
Arterial Street Rehabilitation $21 million
Arterial Corridor Enchantments ~$13 million

Total Mobility Projects ~$101 million

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Politics of Cars @thismachinekillsfascists.bike · 03/09/2026

I'm imagining a whole chain of baby urbanist hand me downs

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Politics of Cars @thismachinekillsfascists.bike · 02/09/2026

eh yeah, but people not competent at operating this lever should not be driving. EV fires are categorically harder to put out when they happen and that's a challenge for first responders, but it's not a reason for vulnerable people to get ICE cars which have more fires www.tesla.com/ownersmanual...

diagram of a dumb Tesla interior door handle, with four buttons for windows and a lever in front to manually open the door if there's an electrical failure

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Politics of Cars @thismachinekillsfascists.bike · 31/08/2026

I'm so excited for this! spaceballs.fandom.com/wiki/Dark_He...

Picture of Dark Helmet, character from the movie Space Balls, with a very large round dark helmet

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Politics of Cars @thismachinekillsfascists.bike · 30/08/2026

Police are investigating if the driver who bought a truck, reversed into a car, then drove forward into pedestrians on the sidewalk, was impaired. Instead of arresting the killer as they would with any other weapon, because cops and drivers are on the same team. www.coloradoan.com/story/news/l...

"To this point, the investigation has revealed that the involved truck reversed from a parking spot along Mountain Ave., striking another vehicle," an FCPS news release said. "It then drove forward onto the sidewalk, striking pedestrians before colliding with a tree and coming to a stop.

"Police are still investigating the events and factors leading up to the crash to determine how it occurred, along with investigating if impairment was a factor," the news release said. "Police do not believe that these pedestrians were intentionally targeted."

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