MartianEngineer

Why Are So Many Pedestrians Killed by Cars in the US? It’s unfortunately not uncommon for pedestrians to be killed by cars in the US.

Deep dive into the surge in US pedestrian deaths:

"It’s not that more pedestrians are getting hit by vehicles; it’s that the ones that are getting hit are more likely to die."

"[That] seems like fairly strong evidence for the theory that the rise in large SUVs is behind the uptick in ped deaths."

In any other country, if federal agents fired upon journalists when unprovoked — what would we call it?

If federal agents marched down streets demanding papers — what would we say?

Authoritarianism — let’s not pretend it’s something else when it happens in our American cities.

Whenever people talk about "luxury housing," I remember there are literal mansions in Hartford, CT that are now selling for less than it costs to buy a starter home in Silicon Valley. If we judge luxury by market value, there is no housing that is intrinsically, permanently "luxury housing."

The rebranding of reactionary gender and biological essentialism as “heterodox and challenging ideas to which liberal students must be exposed” is one of the greatest achievements of our stupid era. Congratulations to the reactionary centrists who helped make it happen - you dupes, you utter dolts.

Pritzker: "One of the reasons Trump wants to send troops into cities is bc he wants to be able to take control of the 2026 elections...if they've got troops in cities, & it becomes a kind of norm for people, then it won't be abnormal for them when they're going to vote having troops at ballot boxes"

How Universal Child Care Could Change the Economy

Universal childcare wouldn't just relieve working families of a massive cost burden. It improves the whole economy.

"There are a lot of reasons building a child care system that works for everyone is important to our children, to parents, to employers and to economic growth."

I think YIMBYism offends a certain flavor of lefty activists because they believe that housing is zero sum and that educated middle/professional class newcomers to big cities (read: yuppies) have moral standing to make material demands of local government in their own economic self interest.

Due to a combination of technical gremlins and limited rural resources, I have been internetless for most of the past several weeks, save for my weak cell reception.

But last night I ran a Relict game for my home group via conference call and it was baller.

Via Variety: 'Guillermo del Toro refused to make #Frankenstein with too much visual effects and green screens: "I want real sets."'

variety.com/2025/film/fe...

it was always obvious DOGE was decorative "innovative efficiency" cover for the brutal dismantling of corporate oversight and the social safety net, but the press spent first six months of the year propping it up as a good-faith effort

this is absolutely correct

I don't know if we can put this country back together but the best and maybe only hope we have is for full, salt the earth Reconstruction-era politics - and this time don't stop before the job is done

there can be no "moving forward"

the thing everyone is going to have to accept is that the post-trump period, whenever it comes, will not and cannot be a project of national unity, it must be a project of partisan project of renewal, in the same way that reconstruction and the new deal were partisan projects of renewal.

Hear me out here - by killing the open street on Vanderbilt, it became less of a destination and the neighborhood can't support restaurants like that if it's not a destination

This is why Charlottesville melted down its Lee statue. If the statue is removed and simply put in storage, it remains what @artcrimeprof.bsky.social calls “America’s strategic racism reserve.”

One of the (many) things I love about Bryant is that it was a completely average American street (2 way traffic, 2 side car parking).

Most streets in the U.S. have plenty of space for protected bikeways.

We just need to make safety (for all road users) a priority.

Here’s Bryant before:

This should be standard minimum design. ❤️

📸 @daphsci.bsky.social

Stagflation was an epochal crisis for liberalism and it's one of the reasons I lean so hard into the small-a abundance thing: rapid economic growth was what underwrote America's first tentative steps in the direction of social democracy, and the left's turn toward growth skepticism was bad!

the one thing i genuinely did not anticipate from this administration was its vicious, know nothing hostility to any and everything that might even be adjacent to science and scientific research. they genuinely one to destroy the entirety of the nation’s research capacity. and for what, exactly?

the high point of my being denounced as a neoliberal shill on tiktok is when i insisted that gentrification is downstream of housing supply constraints, and isn’t a quality inherently possessed by people you don’t like

"I asked chatgpt" "I asked grok" I asked Trevor Belmont and Alucard and they said

"i asked grok" "i asked chatgpt" yeah well i asked carl sagan and he said the greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge 🧪

Relict folk!
The 170+ page, illustrated hardcover Character Compendium is now available on Amazon! a.co/d/3Ph2ITa

Digital editions are available on DTRPG. www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/5...

IF YOU BACKED THE KICKSTARTER you're getting the digital edition for free. Stay tuned for deets shortly.

Tattered Pawns|eBook In a world brimming with magic, Whistler stands apart. A rare endmage, he'll never sling a spell or speak a magic word—but he can nullify even the mightiest wizard with a snap of his fingers. L...

Reminder! This week only, you can pick up the ebook of Tattered Pawns through Barnes & Noble for FREE! My only request is that you pretty please leave a rating/review.

Use code BNPHound to get the deal!

www.barnesandnoble.com/w/tattered-p... #book #fantasy #indie

You can be a crab.

Throwing this out there:
Relict needs monsters. I'm working on a book about it. But I'm also a one-man team.
If I was to host a Relict monster-making game jam with, say, some rulebooks as prizes -- would folks be interested in that?

‘Nobody wants a robot to read them a story!’ The creatives and academics rejecting AI – at work and at home Is artificial intelligence coming for everyone’s jobs? Not if this lot have anything to do with it

When two groups of people normally known for their embrace of new technology refuse to use something, listen to them.

"‘Nobody wants a robot to read them a story!’ The creatives and academics rejecting AI – at work and at home..."

www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

#AI #Technology #Art

if Andrew Cuomo was a normal human being, he would probably regret sexually harassing a dozen women.

or maybe he would regret forcing nursing homes to accept covid-positive patients and then covering it up.

or maybe he’d regret shutting down a nuclear plant that was replaced by fossil fuels

Rainbow dot pattern graphic that reads "pride merch that you can buy right now! art share"

Let's do a different type of art share... With so much going on with LGBTQ+ & corporate America, why don't we keep the queer dollar in the queer community? 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

In this thread, share your Pride merch, or your friend's Pride merch. Let's buy from each other rather than the corporations this year.

I love this whole thing and not just because it quotes me. extremely catty in a way I think is magnificent, especially this bit about how much the internet hates Sam Altman's coffee machine