DFN: new acronym to replace "conspiracy theories" that haven been disproven. Stands for Demonstrably False Narrative(s). Just because someone can cook up a story that blames a shadowy, disfavored group doesn't mean it qualifies as theory. bettybarcode.com/2026/07/16/t....

Theory Needs a Divorce From Conspiracy - bettybarcode.com

Narratives that are demonstrably untrue (falsehoods) are myths, fictions, fables, fallacies, hoaxes, lies, and other synonyms. Theory is not one of them. Pairing it with conspiracy has handicapped our...

bettybarcode.com

Why do Republicans in Washington often seem so hostile to funding public transit? One key explanation: Transit commuting is just much, much more common in areas that vote Democratic than areas that vote Republican, and it's been true for decades. www.thetransportpolitic.com/databook/pol...

Spending money to maintain car dominance is a historic failure. The BQE should be torn down. Give Brooklyn back to the people

Map of European Territories By The Number of Years Spent Being Part of France For The Growth, Decline & Transformation of France’s Borders see: brilliantmaps.com/the-growt...

Shocking.

Some US officials have responded to the problem of wooden homes becoming fuel for fires that ignite nearby buildings by calling for more separation between homes. That's a recipe for higher housing & transportation costs. More land/home raises land costs, more separation increases travel distances.

wish people would internalize that drivers benefit the most from policies promoting less drivers

The Metro Systems of East Asia With Logos brilliantmaps.com/east-asia...

How freely can you move around in Denmark with and without access to a car? Danish @betamobility.bsky.social first Denmark’s public transport Mobility Atlas tells a story of two Denmarks: One centered around Copenhagen and cities, where owning a car is a choice, and another where it is a necessity.

Dansk Mobilitetsatlas: mobilitetsfrihed i alle 98 kommuner

Hver dansk kommune får et mærke fra A til G for hvor frit man kan bevæge sig, med og uden bil. Samme metode for alle 98 kommuner, beregnet ned til gaden.

mobilitetsatlas.dk

Here’s a graphic projecting massive and devastating #climate driven drying out of soils right across Europe by mid-century… …oh wait, sorry, that’s an ACTUAL reading from August 10th last. My mistake.

Riyadh Metro had ~30M passengers in Q1 and Q2 each. Less than 2 years old over 176km of fully automated lines. I am not familiar in any way with Riyadh's geography, so I find the lines hard to judge. It's now much larger than Dubai's significantly system www.arabianbusiness.com/business/tra...

Riyadh Metro carries 29.7m passengers in 3 months as Saudi rail use surges - Arabian Business: Latest News on the Middle East, Real Estate, Finance, and More

Saudi Arabia's trains carried more than 38 million passengers in Q2 2026, including 29.7 million on Riyadh Metro and 1.6 million on Haramain railway

arabianbusiness.com

Every conversation about bike lanes is like: "Car crashes kill a huge number of people every day, including pedestrians, cyclists, & car occupants. Good bike infrastructure has been shown to make everyone safer (& doesn't increase congestion)." "But sometimes cyclists break rules & hit people!"

That's right.

C beskriver nu KD som ett mittenparti de vill regera med. Men KD har högerradikaliserats. "Håll packet borta", "Nej till stålskogar av vindkraft", "Varför sköt de inte skarpt", "Israel gör hela världen en tjänst". KD är idag klimatfientligt, invandringsfientligt, nationalistiskt. Tydlig högersväng

If you live in Germany, train delays are nothing new: only 60% of long-distance trains arrived on time last year. But in summer you may have to wait even longer.

New estimate of Elon Musk’s death toll just dropped www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

If this happened in Korea, the fella would've received $100 fine mailed to him because I can report with the dashcam footage. Bring it here and make them learn their lesson.

Main finding: duration is what matters, not just detour severity. Closures under 8 days show no significant ridership effect. Past 8 days, ridership rises significantly, ~3.7% at the median treatment intensity, scaling with detour severity.

As a kid growing up in Malta, I remember awesome, scary thunderstorms piercing our winters. But in 15 years living abroad, I have barely seen any thunder and lightning. I miss the electric displays snaking across the sky. So if I wanted to become a thunder-tourist, where should I head?

Europe’s rivers are running dry. The Rhine just hit a record-low water level in Cologne, while the Danube has fallen far enough to disrupt nuclear power generation. Drought isn’t just an environmental problem. It quickly becomes an economic one. Source: guidocioni.substack.com/p/european-r...

Oh... I didn't know about this exhibition. Not long left but glad there's an online version storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/c80f...

You Are Here: Transit Cartography and Spatial Identity

March 25 - August 21, 2026 at the David Rumsey Map Center

storymaps.arcgis.com

Cities screaming for a removal (absent physical network analysis - purely data driven) - High Highway Right-of-way acreage in downtown and low average daily traffic per lane (metro wide):

Charting cities by highway proximity and acreage in/near downtown against total metro lane miles per capita. Dot size represents downtown development potential.

Fort förstatliga alla naturtillgångar. USA har slut på missiler

While everyone is up in arms about so-called cheap airlines adding new charges for basic services...

Use of the Word Toe vs “Finger of Foot” In Europe More about the terms: brilliantmaps.com/toe-vs-fi...

European Population Density: The Black & Blue Areas Have Identical Populations More about the map: brilliantmaps.com/european-...

Time Traveler Causes of Death xkcd.com/2976/

​New research shows that the US has been a global laggard curbing crash deaths. If the US had merely matched improvements in 14 peer nations, 500,000+ lives would have been saved from 2000-24. doi.org/10.1080/1538...

New from me: Until recently, the gap between comfortably-off and just-getting-started could plausibly be crossed in a decade or two of hard work. Growth in asset prices means that’s no longer true: even a lifetime of striving doesn’t offer a realistic prospect of feeling you’ve “made it”.