Today's installment of "Ross Douthat Is Wrong About Everything"

I think the real question is a slightly different one --- do you want to sign a statement from an organization that also asks Steve Bannon to sign?

The Geometry Problem Suburbia doesn't scale

"Simply put, the Geometry Problem is that cars are much bigger than humans. ... these physical differences mean that when we optimize places for cars, they end up not working well (or working at all) for any other mode. They become *car-only* places."

Great post, lays it out very clearly.

YouTube video by Ray Delahanty | CityNerd The Vegas Loop Is Getting Progressively Stupider

This one’s live on the Tube now. The more I think about this Loop stuff the more insane it gets

youtu.be/VPjODKUxV5g

Folding bikes are the Swiss Army Knife of mobility.

It's time for the state of New York to withhold our federal tax dollars that subsidize low tax states like Florida

Some people get annoyed by my coverage of Thiel's Antichrist stuff.

But I'm trying to short-circuit an obvious memetic strategy by making it seem ridiculous and played-out as quickly as possible.

Whoever frames first, wins.

YouTube video by Jimmy Kimmel Live Jimmy Kimmel is Back!

Trump, Carr, Sinclair, Nexstar, MAGA and the GOP badly don’t want you to be able to watch this. Sinclair and Nexstar are still banning it (I couldn’t watch it last night via Seattle). So it seems like every single one of us should watch it and share it on YouTube if they haven’t already. #Kimmel

what this latest episode shows is that like all fascists before them these assholes are highly afraid of being ridiculed so therefore we should ridicule them a hell of a lot more

Tesla Offers Unprecedented $1 Trillion Pay Package to Musk Tesla Inc. proposed a new compensation agreement for Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk potentially worth around $1 trillion, a massive package without precedent in corporate America.

In a decade, Elon Musk's share of Tesla could be worth $2 trillion... Or it could be worthless. He'll be focused on the first option. We'll be working to make the second reality. #teslatakedown #MuskMustFall www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Your Comeback Guide to all the Anti-Cycling Arguments You’ll Hear This Year Anti-bike arguments aren’t just frustrating—they’re outdated, inaccurate, and often repeated without a shred of evidence.

“We can’t all be expected to bike.”

Fair. But that’s not the point.

“Not everyone can or wants to bike. But some people can & do—and they deserve a safe, efficient, affordable way to move through the city. It’s about freedom of choice.”

This & other useful comebacks, in @momentummag.bsky.social.

The authoritarian checklist It is time to admit that America is no longer a functioning democracy

New, from me:
America is no longer a functioning democracy. It is a competitive authoritarian system, hurtling rapidly toward authoritarianism.
This was a hard piece to write but we can't move forward if we don’t acknowledge where we are.
donmoynihan.substack.com/p/the-author...

There should be an option for legacy versions of everything - ones without all the handholding and assistance. Because it’s pushing those familiar apps to do what you want, not necessarily what they were designed to, that is the essence of doing a job professionally.

"Thug" is racially coded; how about "goon"?

there’s a phenomenon in politics where on certain issues the general public is genuinely deluded about reality, and if you don’t buy into that delusion the political media will accuse *you* of being out of touch

RFK Jr. in interview with Scripps News: ‘Trusting the experts is not science’ HHS Secretary RFK Jr. sat down with Scripps News for a wide-ranging interview, discussing mRNA vaccine funding policy changes and a recent shooting at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

1. "'Trusting the experts is not a feature of either a science or democracy," Kennedy said."

It's literally a vital feature of both science and of representative democracy.

I've written a fair bit about trust in expertise as a vital mechanism in the collective epistemology of science.

Dems should lean into sneering cosmopolitan elitism imo

This really feels like a defining post of our time

Highway filled with cars

Highway filled with cars

Next time someone tries arguing that it’s “social engineering” (cue ominous music) to give people more CHOICE to walk, bike & take public transit in their city, tell them that designing our current car DEPENDENCY has been the largest and most damaging social engineering experiment in human history.

Cartoon of road jammed with cars between single detached homes in suburban, car-dependent sprawl.

Hey, remember when car and oil companies successfully lobbied governments to create car dependent cities and suburbs, and once we became almost completely car dependent, WE became the loudest, angriest champions of unhindered road space for cars, unnaturally cheap gas, and subsidized free parking?

My statement on Donald Trump's threat to deport me and his praise for Eric Adams, who the President "helped out" of legal accountability.

Upon further thought, listening to experts might just be the common sense thing to do

The term common sense isn't salvageable because it's a deliberate dismissal of expertise. All the best ideas fly in the face of common sense, like the law of induced demand and the high cost of free parking. Let's bury common sense in the desert and restore proper respect for experts instead.

scariest data point out of Austin so far comes from a source familiar with Tesla's team, who says they've been working insane hours (no surprise) and "can't wait to be done so they can go home to California"

white-knuckling 10 cars w/"safety riders" in a tiny geofence and talking about being "done"

Corrupt as hell. Truly running for Eric Adams's 2nd term.

If you want to defeat him, tell everyone you know to rank Brad Lander and Zohran Mamadani 1st and 2nd (or 2nd and 1st).

And don't rank Cuomo at all.

This is very good and articulates a set of stakes that haven't received any attention. Please spread it around. Stopping Cuomo is one important piece of protecting democracy.

New York, welcome to The War on This Car.

Tell everyone you know: Don't rank Cuomo.

Like so much of modern life "self-driving cars" are seen as this singular technology that exists to either be celebrated or scorned, but in fact there are huge differences between various approaches/techniques... at every turn Tesla has taken the riskier approach, and we're about to pay the price.

. @billmckibben.bsky.social has been sounding the alarm on the climate crisis since the 1980s, and I’m deeply honored to have his #1 endorsement for Mayor.

www.thenation.com/article/poli...

Don't rank Cuomo.