Dave Cooke
@ucsdave.bsky.social
Using my white male privilege to rabble rouse companies and govt agencies into doing more. Midwest-grown, California-schooled, Senator-less citizen of the Douglass Commonwealth. This is a personal acct, but I'll still be mad about transportation issues.
The IRA was good policy. And it would have been better -- and had faster & more dramatic results -- if not constrained & blunted by the idiosyncratic assholery of one dimwit egotistical senator. Just because it couldn't stop a global tsunami of discontent doesn't mean it "didn't work."
I have far too much detail for this to be true, I hope, but this is definitely how I feel as a peer reviewer looking at submissions today, and for the general consternation I am no doubt about to provide some grad students, I apologize.
1/ Bloomberg Law reports that EPA is proposing major air pollution rules that don’t consider the health benefits of clean air while still calculating industry compliance costs. That’s not a balanced cost-benefit analysis. It’s only half of an equation.
EPA’s Truck Rule Extends Novel Approach to Cost-Benefit Analysis
The EPA’s new proposal to ease truck pollution standards marks at least the third time this year that the agency has floated a rule that doesn’t consider the monetized value of human health effects.
news.bloomberglaw.com
People are shocked when they come to DC now and see groups of fully armed soldiers patrolling our neighborhoods. Trump's occupation of DC has been going on for nearly a year — and he wants it to go on forever. We refuse to allow this to become normalized and continue to call for it to end.
A year into a national guard deployment, DC residents say they live in ‘a city under siege’
Since Trump deployed troops last August, Washingtonians have banded together to resist and support one another
theguardian.com
if you walked into a hospital intensive care unit and started pulling patients off of their oxygen tanks at random you'd be arrested but if you do the same thing at scale?
Reuters@reuters.com · 3w agoElon Musk's xAI has installed more than double the number of gas turbines than it has publicly acknowledged to power its Colossus 2 data center project, without federal permits, and the pollution is hitting predominantly Black neighborhoods the hardest reut.rs/4bIghEm
It's been sitting in my "to read" tabs for a while but I've finally gotten around to reading this. I've got two thoughts on it, which I'll elaborate below. One is it's just sloppy. And two it suffers from a common problem: it assumes scientists are the only ones with agency.
Science Shouldn't Be Political - Journal of Academic Ethics
Scientific institutions increasingly engage in politics through candidate endorsements and public advocacy, raising questions about the neutrality of scientific institutions and public trust in scienc...
link.springer.com
Does replacing parking with bike-lanes hurt restaurant business? Of course not, as this new peer-reviewed STUDY of 15 years of Montreal data showed. ACTUALLY, downtown experienced significant restaurant growth after bike lanes were installed. @momentummag.bsky.social momentummag.com/do-bike-lane...
Why are car-centric transport systems so difficult to undo? Because automobiles represent the dominance of private property over public space. In this @urbancyclinginstitute.org essay, I look to history to uncover how we got here. #StealingCars
Stealing Cars: Property, Automobility, and the Colonial Crisis of Car Culture
Long Ride | Historian John Munro delves into the past in order to understand how the primacy of private property shapes mobility hierarchies in the present
urbancyclinginstitute.substack.com
I know we can get inured to this admin's wanton destruction of enviro safeguards, but this latest proposal drastically weakening truck engines slated to go into effect in six months (!!!) is just patently absurd. www.epa.gov/regulations-...
Proposed Rule: Amendments and Nonconformance Penalties for Model Year 2027 and Later Heavy-Duty Highway Engines and Amendments to Inducement Provisions for SCR-Equipped Diesel Engines | US EPA
coming soon.
epa.gov
I’ve officially resigned as Associate Editor for Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience. It used to be a reputable journal, but became a case study in how forced automation destroys academic integrity. 👇
" About 30% of SpaceX’s free float is now set to be owned by passive investors after just 15 days of trading, according to Intropic, a provider of index-rebalancing forecasts. That figure would be roughly 4% under previous slower-inclusion rules." www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
SpaceX Set to Put 30% of Tradeable Shares in Passive Hands, Testing Markets
The prospect of billions of dollars of oncoming demand for SpaceX stock from index-tracking funds risks creating a feedback loop that drives the shares of Elon Musk’s company even higher, academics an...
bloomberg.com
Near beer? OK. Queer beer? Hell yeah!
Doin’ Beers: 5 Queer Minnesota Beers to Drink in June - Racket
Nothing gayer than a cold brewski.
racketmn.com
"Military interventions in domestic policing rarely improve public safety. Instead, they often escalate unrest due to a higher risk of excessive force, jeopardizing the rights of citizens and risking bodily harm to civilians and troops alike." protectdemocracy.org/wp-content/u...
Protect Democracy@protectdemocracy.org · 2mo agoAs National Guard troops mark a year on American streets, we've released “The Dangers of Military Intervention in Civilian Law Enforcement” to highlight the risks to civil society and the military itself when it's ordered to police local communities. 🔗 protectdemocracy.org/work/dangers...
What is “safe traffic”? Whom do we protect from crashes and how do we protect them? Whom do we imagine when we hear about crash victims, and whom (or what) do we hold responsible? Whose practices do we normalize and whose do we pathologize? ...
The modern world in America is built for the “convenience” of motor vehicles. But the truth that people don’t want to hear is this: Cars ruin cities. Riley is dead, because drivers have the world catered to their every need while pedestrians, bikers, and public transit riders get the crumbs.
i'm sorry men being forced to answer for themselves is so painful. you know what's more painful? the level of intimate partner violence in this country. the baseline disrespect and humiliation that women are forced to take in order to survive.
Still in awe of interstate-induced cliuds. Somewhat validates a career of research we have done on how cities affect clouds, rainfall and lightning...My explanation here www.forbes.com/sites/marsha...
Striking to me how little reporting there is on this rule proposal, which is maybe the biggest change to American governance in almost a century. And this reporting is … weak. www.npr.org/2026/06/03/n...
President Trump seeks control of science funding
The White House Office of Management and Budget is moving to take more control of billions of dollars in federal grants. Critics say the proposed change would jeopardize the integrity of U.S. science.
npr.org
There's an inherent contradiction between increasing regressive sales taxes and promoting buses as an affordable alternative to cars. Seattle's sales tax is already astronomical! But, as Wilson just said, the state has given Seattle very limited options to fund transit service expansion.
Plan to Preserve Metro Bus Service Heads for November Ballot - PubliCola
After a lengthy debate over the correct size and duration for the proposed renewal of the Seattle Transportation Benefit District—a…
publicola.com
this article undercuts its primary premise by pointing out that the societies that have actually progressed meaningfully toward electrification are top-down directed to by their governments lmfao
Matt Hardigree@matthardigree.bsky.social · 2mo ago
Crazy thought but maybe 17 million new car sales per year was an unsustainable figure and it's not a case of when it'll get there again, but facing a reality it might not get there. People generally like having one less monthly payment or not paying for fuel www.wsj.com/business/aut...
One Million New-Car Buyers Are Gone and They’re Not Coming Back Soon
GM, Ford and Toyota have said they are planning for new-car sales to stagnate or shrink this year, as prospective buyers stay on the sidelines of the market.
wsj.com
Almost all of our unhoused friends were born & raised in DC. This is an actual city where actual people grow up, live, thrive, struggle, & build communities. And they’ll be here long after this political regime is gone. Housing for all who want it. Now!
Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 2mo agoTrump: "The homeless aren't staying here any longer. We just can't have them in the nation's capital."
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
Ben Harris@benharris1.bsky.social · 2mo agoReminder that this is still a common sight in DC. Never normalize it.
Oh we decided not to fall out of a plane with no parachute? Guess the physicists were hysterical about gravity, let’s all go jump off this cliff
Interested in running for ANC or getting more involved in local DC politics? Free DC Ward 4 volunteers are hosting an informal gathering to chat about running for ANC, what the role involves, and neighborhood organizing. 📍Jackie Lee's 📅Saturday, March 23 🕔5–7 pm I’ll be there and hope to see you!
This one got people mad LOL For a good time, go check out the comments youtube.com/shorts/zxlbB...
Awkward Farm Facts: US Farmers Aren't Poor (No Really)
YouTube video by Farm to Taber
youtube.com
EPA, because it has forgotten that its letters do not stand for the Enabling Pollution Administration, has just proposed to just...NOT...improve tailpipe pollution standards for light- and medium-duty vehicles. www.epa.gov/regulations-...
Revision of Tier 4 Criteria Pollutant Standards, Part 1: Amendments to Phase-In Schedule for Light-Duty and Medium-Duty Vehicles | US EPA
The proposed rulemaking for delaying the start of its next round of vehicle pollution standards (called “Tier 4”).
epa.gov
