Dave Cooke

BREAKING: New damning evidence has surfaced of the White House and DOGE directing the termination of National Science Foundation grants for congressionally mandated programs. 🔗 bit.ly/3Wcbw11

Ooh, this is a fun framing of political will when it comes to our transportation system. Part of that is certainly deception (highway lobby pushes the myth that users pay for roads), but will confronting that myth lead voters to support the public good?

I can't tell you how many times I had an idea and thought I knew what I was talking about....only to try and put that idea into writing and watch it fall apart in my hands. Writing is a clarifier. Writing is a crucible. Writing puts ideas into action and substance. These people piss me off

awoke this morning with a Vision

This is an important thread about how the conversation about permitting reform is being entirely discussed as some bullshit political game and ignores the harmful realities of doing this right now. Unfortunately this is how politics is discussed in media, totally disconnected from actual outcomes.

Man, the framing of this bill is so rooted in insider DC politics. The idea that Ds have secured “major concessions”—i.e., a Trump promise to ease his oppo to renewables, esp. wind, which was lawless to begin with & unlikely to manifest beyond a handshake deal (not law)—strikes me as so bogus.

🌍 What do Erin Brockovich, António Guterres, and UCS President @gretchentg.bsky.social have in common? They were all named to @the-independent.com's list of the world's top 100 campaigners, change makers & innovators who are working to turn the tide on the climate crisis.

From the people who told you that straight white male privilege doesn’t exist…

*chokes on own saliva 😂 Ah yes, in a country that designed by force, car dependency into its entire built landscape, making car ownership and driving the first basic requirement to participate in society.

Any time you look around an academic department and ask, "why are there no/so few tenured women?" know that the answer includes stories like this of women who quietly disappeared. (then the men that remain think, even if they never say, "there are inherent gender differences" and act accordingly)

Loser stuff thehill.com/policy/trans...

“has no end point beyond despair”? Really? All these movements and organizations have goals and dreams and visions for the future. You could ask us, Jon.

Follow @resistancerangers.altgov.info. They collaborate. They build coalitions. They *don’t* sell stickers and tees.

Could the midterms can be a "spark" towards a more lasting, effective D.C. statehood movement? Robert White thinks so. As part of a new political initiative, White, Free DC, and other partners will deploy D.C. residents to campaign for Democrats in key House races, @samdelgado.bsky.social reports.

Very excited for this call next week. Hope you can join!

Two weeks after the updated CAFE rule has cleared review and no closer to knowing what they've finalized. This rule must be really bad! Sec. Duffy's got time to hype his Toyota-sponsored road show...surely he's got time to break down how much more families are going to spend on their own road trips?

Stroads shouldn't exist.

One way to read this is, the whole focus of modern car regulation is keeping people inside them safe and happy, and free of responsibility for anything that happens to people outside them. Which seems bad, I guess I should add.

The best way to describe this type of work remains: "All models are wrong, but some are useful."

Another example of "both sides" framing. It's not just advocates who say that speed cameras save lives. The evidence that this very post says advocates are citing — and that journalists could also cite — says this quite clearly.

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.

U.S. energy policy the last 50 years

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.

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.

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.

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

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...