Evan Manvel

Adding Up What Urban Highways Really Cost A new report maps the economic toll that downtown freeways exact on 142 US cities — and tallies up what that land could be worth if it was developed for other uses.

A new report by @thedotcity.bsky.social quantifies the economic toll of downtown freeways, and the economic potential of tearing them down.

The 66K acres that downtown freeways occupy could yield more than half a trillion dollars of development and over $5b annually in property taxes.

USA: "Best I can do is 84 month car loans."

Uh, all the precincts are reporting in the North Carolina #SD26 Republican primary and State Senate President Phil Berger is losing by TWO VOTES!

Sam Page- 50.00% (13,077)
Phil Berger (Inc)- 50.00% (13,075)

Later stay of the decision to extend voting hours: bsky.app/profile/base...

Some context: under the Countywide Polling Place Program, you could vote at any precinct in your county. Recently, the Republican Party in certain counties decided to opt out, meaning you have to vote at a specific precinct. Crucially, Rs opting out meant Ds were forced to opt out too.

Dubai Police Threaten Arrest for Social-Media Posts Contradicting Officials The police force of Dubai, an emirate known for its population of social-media influencers and adoption of the Western lifestyle, is threatening jail time for sharing content that contradicts official...

Dubai police are threatening jail time for "any content that contradicts official announcements."

Oligarchs Are Building The World's Biggest Propaganda Machine. Their Success Isn't Guaranteed. America's wealthiest, shittiest people are trying to hoover up the entirety of new and old media companies in a bid to pummel the plebs with propaganda. But what they want, and what they actually get,...

Over at the newsletter I wrote about the Paramount/Warner deal, how it's best viewed as a well-funded attack on informed consensus, and how we still have collective agency to determine whether or not it actually succeeds.

One of my favourite sides of politics/media.

Pres Trump told me tonight the US had identified possible candidates to take over Iran, but they were killed in the initial attack. "The attack was so successful it knocked out most of the candidates," Trump told me. "It's not going to be anybody that we were thinking of because they are all dead. Second or third place is dead."

complete insanity

How to get people excited about transit "It will literally be your best selling t-shirt, it will get you so much PR, and if anyone interprets this inappropriately that's a them problem"

I wrote about the one actually great thing that happened this week

> @jimlaporta.bsky.social

It’s not supporting the troops to send them off to kill and die in an illegal war of aggression whose purpose is to make sure that their votes don’t count.

A United States senator from the president's own party, one who serves on the Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, has no idea what's going on as America goes to war with Iran.

U.S. military spending is set to hit a record $1.5 trillion.

Roughly half of defense spending goes to private contractors that routinely price-gouge the government.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon has failed EIGHT straight audits.

The military industrial complex is cheering today.

BREAKING: Adolescent teenage boys have taken over the Pentagon.

While we sit around to find out how bad exactly it all is, a bit of cheer: the best baguette of Paris competition was won by a Sri Lankan who appears to have started as a dish washer in restaurants and eventually trained as a Boulanger.

www.paris.fr/pages/la-mei...

Anyone working in "news" or "politics" needs to finally wrap their minds around the idea that X isn't reaching anyone that matters. You're wasting your time pitching no one. You're wasting your money pitching no one.

Political cartoon with the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death, seeing a fifth Horseman typing on a smart phone. Death asks him “And you are? The fifth Horseman replies “Misinformation.”

Timeless. #UrbanTruth

Update on the people making bank insider-betting on war bsky.app/profile/chri...

Catastrophic Success: Why Foreign-Imposed Regime Change Goes Wrong (Cornell Studies in Security Affairs) Catastrophic Success: Why Foreign-Imposed Regime Change Goes Wrong (Cornell Studies in Security Affairs) [Downes, Alexander B.] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Catastrophic Success: Why Foreign-Imposed Regime Change Goes Wrong (Cornell Studies in Security Affairs)

In sum, FIRC is sold to the public as a quick path to stability.

Yet, 120 cases across two centuries suggest it is one of the most reliable ***generators*** of instability outside of interstate war.

amazon.com/dp/1501761145

THIS.

I use these words advisedly: Holy fucking shit.

Being a trans journalist is going to work and having to cover how your life is now illegal in your state but also at the same time make sure someone else writes the story so no one can accuse you of being biased and a "trans activist" and then they do the story and you still get accused of it.

Your tax dollars at work

srsly how

I made a poster about this in college in the 1990s, but included the interstellar space probe as the most efficient.

The Most Efficient Traveler Isn’t a Bird or a Fish—It’s You on a Bike A famous graphic, now updated, compares locomotion in the animal kingdom

“They turn humans into this hyperefficient terrestrial locomotor because they make being on land more like swimming.”

The most efficient traveller is you on a bike. #UrbanTruth

Via Scientific American @sciam.bsky.social www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-hu...

The History We Hide: Trump’s War on Memory MAGA wants to make us forget about our eliminationist past—so they can repeat it.

There really wasn't much of substance to engage with in Trump's SOTU, but the childish, 1950s-vintage vision of US History it ended with is notable for its ultra-nationalist and eliminationist logic. David Neiwert gets at it here. open.substack.com/pub/davidnei...

Quite apart from politics, which is how so many blinkered people see this issue, no reporter at your local school committee board or town council meeting means no one is watching when someone’s brother-in-law gets a no-bid contract. The increase in penny ante corruption must be breathtaking.