Tab Combs

We'd made a ton of progress as a field over the past decade dismantling the myth of "safety" and actually making things safer.
We need to not lose sight of that.

"Safety" means one of 3 things in most of transportation policy:
1. Ignorance: Reducing congestion and thinking it makes streets safer
2. Cover story: Doing something unpopular but calling it safety so ppl can't oppose it
3. Gaslighting: Refusing to take responsibility for making things unsafe

My field's governing body still relies exclusively on twitter and meta for social media and...yeah...it's disappointing.

I appreciate your efforts to make me feel better but I knew full well there was poison ivy back there and that it still has potency without leaves and I STILL pulled weeds in a T-shirt and no gloves.

So I am getting my just desserts.

it takes real skill to get covered in poison ivy in late november, but evidently i was up for the challenge

daaaaaaang

I mean they also need blood.

"I have issues" is my favorite. I nearly fell out of my chair when I read it

Some big 'OMG I knowingly and unnecessarily created a dangerous situation why is nobody coming and fixing it for free' vibes

I would read the essay if it were about cars.
I think it the be the same essay, just find/replace phones and cars.

I teach a whole graduate course module on the various purposes of streets and IDK why I never thought to include "receiving area for privately-owned leaves"

absolutely!
if it was bad for trees for leaves to sit on the ground, then I'm pretty sure trees would have evolved another mechanism for dealing with their leaves other than dropping them on the ground over the past few hundred million years

No one is saying "thou shalt not get rid of leaves" (though you really should not get rid of your leaves because they are critical to soil health). We're just saying, "if you want them gone, then you should pay for it yourself"

You want your leaves gone, then pay someone to get them gone.

Blowing leaves into the street is bad enough; insisting everyone around you to pay for you to do it is selfish.

#LeaveYourLeaves

...If you want to impose negative externalities on everyone else by degrading the local ecology, filling the air with noise pollution, and dumping your waste in the street, blocking bike lanes and clogging storm drains, it's really rather absurd to expect the public to accommodate you for free.

there's a petition going around to get #ChapelHillNC to go back to picking up leaves that people have blown into the street for free...and...what?

If you have trees on your private property, then that means you are privileged enough to have private property...

They included stats for Duke and NCSU in the story.

We're at the next stag of the authors' lawsuit against Anthropic.

Check the link below to see which of your books they raided and then click through to file a claim.

Four of mine were in there.

we have some football-playing neighbors who like to race their ORV's around the 'hood in the evenings, and we've been wondering whether calling attention to their coaches would make a difference...and, I guess nah

calling someone by their preferred name is a matter of basic respect, and it costs you literally nothing to do.
suggesting or insisting they go by something else is offensive AF.

thank you for coming to my ted talk

as a cishet straight person who has repeatedly been told to change my name to something less confusing, I can only imagine how frustrating and traumatizing it must be to be deadnamed in school, at work, or by family

the "I don't have kids so I shouldn't pay for the next generation to be educated" crowd

like y'all ain't gonna need doctors

all of them, actually, because they believe there is a direct line between leaves falling out of trees and winding up in storm drains.

this 'direct line' is, of course, their leafblowers blowing all the leaves into the gutter despite knowing they will not get picked up.

I also pay taxes. Why did no one ask me before upgrading traffic signals, hiring new teachers, remediating mold in a public building, or making our parks ADA accessible????

laws vary by state, but in my state, if you send your neighbor a certified letter informing them of the tree and your (legitimate) concern that it will damage your house if it falls, then they are liable for said damages.

otherwise, the tree is yours once it falls on your house.

Good tree work is expensive!

(I worked on a tree crew to help pay for grad school)

talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face

#LeaveYourLeaves

ppl around here are threatening to cut healthy trees down because they can't bear to deal with the leaves and don't want to pay someone to haul them away.

do you know what it costs to get trees cut down (safely)?
do you know how much your home's value is based on healthy trees?

#LeaveYourLeaves

Y'll know your HOA is made up of...y'all, right? If you HOA says you can't #LeaveYourLeaves, you can change your HOA.

And in many towns, there are ordinances that overrule #HOA policies that conflict with town regs or energy conservation efforts

why people would sooner cut down their trees than buy a mulching mower, start a compost pile, or watch a single youtube on soil ecology blows my mind

#LeaveYourLeaves

I hate that every time we have a conversation about this we have to carefully insert “I’m sure there are some good uses of it”. None of which are embedded in our databases, email, or curricula!