Today, from Amtrak's website:

Hi. I've been reading posts and comments in this community for just a little under a month, and every time I visit, I think of this piece, so I'd like to share it:

I’m looking out over my whole human family
And I’m raising my glass in a toast
Here's to our last drink of fossil fuels
May we vow... to get off... of this... sauce...
Shoo away the swarms of commuter planes
Find that train ticket we lost
'Cause once upon a time, the line followed the river
And peeked into all the backyards
And the laundry was waving
And the graffiti was teasing us
From brick walls and bridges
We were rolling over ridges
Through valleys
Under stars
I dream of touring like Duke Ellington
In my own railroad car
I dream of waiting on the tall blonde wooden benches
In a grand station aglow with grace
And then standing out on the platform
And feeling the air on my face

Give back the night its distant whistle
Give the darkness back its soul
Give the big oil companies the finger, finally
And relearn how to rock-n-roll

Ani DiFranco wrote the 9 minute spoken word piece, Self Evident while on tour in 2001-2002 USA. It's about being in Manhattan during the terrorist attack on 9/11, Operation Enduring Freedom, historical context and more. This section in praise of train travel starts at 5:00.

Fun fact: Chuck D's group, Impossebulls, covered this song.

We should put our multimodal, open source code to work in that city. Who's in?

So I’m walking to an evening class at a local college, it’s dark. There’s a bend just before the junction and as I’m walking across a car comes round way too fast. I had to step back to avoid being hit. I was wearing gloves and as it went past I hit it, no idea why, just instinct and anger.

I carry on walking and I see the driver has pulled over a bit down the road, I was expecting a “sorry are you ok” but she instead shouted “did you just hit my car?”. That set me off, shouting at her that she almost fucking ran me over. Then she says “you don’t have to use that kind of language”, the fucking nerve.

Gave up and just walked off. Wish I’d have smashed the wing mirror or keyed the car or something.

Has anyone else almost been run over and how do you deal with the anger of it?

Just look at that. This truck is taller than a used kid (10 years old). I assume the truck can run over pretty much any other age but probably the driver might be able to see older kid's heads. Or we could teach our kids to jump to school rather than walk. If you see a truck, jump and make eye contact before jumping while crossing the street. Or we could tell our kids to never go outside until they are 21.

Daylighting, which involves removing parked cars from around crosswalks in order to improve visibility and just wiped out about 14,000 street parking spaces, has proved especially controversial.

“If someone doesn’t die because of it, we will never know, while the living have to suffer,” Nina Geneson Otis wrote in an email to The Standard. The real estate broker said daylighting is the kind of policy that makes Democrats lose elections.

Others say the city’s actions remove responsibility from pedestrians to look out for their own safety. “A pedestrian can do anything, and be irresponsible, and no harm will come to them?” Brandi said, describing the policies as “idiot-proof.”

We humans have no natural predator you might say but that is not true: there is one.

It kills millions of humans every year; about one every 30 seconds.

It's a major contributor to a global conspiracy to destroy as much of the environment that humans require to survive as possible; to kill even more humans at an accelerating pace and make the survivors miserable.

Even without its co-conspirators it's capable of turning entire bustling cities into places unfit for humans.
Humans now plan their cities specifically with this predator in mind; building some defences but with ultimately little success at curbing its free roam.

Worst yet: It has successfully fooled humans into thinking they are dependent on it when in fact the opposite is the case.

It's a predator that we have created ourselves:

The car.

#urbanity #urbanism #Verkehrswende #AutoDiktatur #Autokorrektur #climatechange #klimakrise #fuckcars @fuckcars

cross-posted from: https://midwest.social/post/19753136

BTW the tank has a better forward view than the truck

Edit: to clarify: the message in the ad is actually ironic/satirical, mocking the advice for cyclists to wear high-viz at night.

It uses the same logic but inverts the parts and responsabilities, by suggesting to motorists (not cyclists) to apply bright paint on their cars.

So this ad is not pro or against high-viz, it's against victim blaming

Cross-posted from: https://mastodon.uno/users/rivoluzioneurbanamobilita/statuses/113544508246569296