Folding bikes as last-mile transit solution

pauladamsmith:

If you live, work, or study in Pasadena, you can get $220 off the price of a folding bike. The deal is simple: ride your folding bike and connect with transit at least twice a week, and you get your voucher.

I commuted from Baltimore to DC for 18 months for work, riding a folding bike to the MARC regional commuter train. It was a dream setup.

(Reblogged from pauladamsmith)
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The assumption driving these kinds of design speculations [Google Glass] is that if you embed the interface–the control surface for a technology–into our own bodily envelope, that interface will “disappear”: the technology will cease to be a separate “thing” and simply become part of that envelope. The trouble is that unlike technology, your body isn’t something you “interface” with in the first place. You’re not a little homunculus “in” your body, “driving” it around, looking out Terminator-style “through” your eyes. Your body isn’t a tool for delivering your experience: it is your experience. Merging the body with a technological control surface doesn’t magically transform the act of manipulating that surface into bodily experience. I’m not a cyborg (yet) so I can’t be sure, but I suspect the effect is more the opposite: alienating you from the direct bodily experiences you already have by turning them into technological interfaces to be manipulated.
Your Body Does Not Want to Be an Interface, John Pavius (via christmasgorilla)
(Reblogged from christmasgorilla)
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It is only by grappling with why we got Iraq so very horribly wrong in 2003 that we can ever hope to avoid the next one. Let’s reject those who are immune to self-reflection. Let’s search for answers for how to prevent the next catastrophe. And finally, let’s demand accountability from our leaders whose lies caused it from the very beginning.
Joshua Foust: I Was Horribly, Unforgivably Wrong About Iraq

The NewsBlur Blog: Three Months to Scale NewsBlur

newsblur:

At 4:16pm last Wednesday I got a short and to-the-point email from Nilay Patel at The Verge with only a link that started with the host “googlereader.blogspot.com”. The sudden spike in NewsBlur’s visitors immediately confirmed — Google was shutting down Reader.

image

Late night at the office
(Reblogged from newsblur)

One Thing Well: Google Reader

onethingwell:

For obvious reasons, my inbox is overflowing with folk suggesting alternatives to Google Reader, or asking me to recommend alternatives to Google Reader.

Here’s the thing: there aren’t any real alternatives to Reader available today.

Of course, there are oodles of applications and services…

(Reblogged from onethingwell)
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Having a child who suffers from mental illness would indeed make one particularly passionate about funding for mental health, sure. But shouldn’t it also lead to a deeper understanding that there are a lot of families, in all kinds of situations beyond their control, who need help from government? Shouldn’t having a son whose illness leads to suicide open your eyes to something more than a belief that we need more money for suicide help-lines? Shouldn’t it call into question the entire winners-win/losers-lose ideology of the current Republican Party? Shouldn’t it also lead to an understanding that if we want to live in a society that provides a robust system of public support for those who need help — whether for mental illness or any of the other misfortunes that life hands out at random — we will need a government with adequate institutions and revenues to provide those things?

The Decembrist: Miss America Conservatives

This is more an instance of the old saw that Americans are ideological conservatives and operational liberals than something specific to Republicans, but it does appear among them often, as in the case of Rob Portman on same-sex marriage.

Tupperwolf: Wealth, risk, and stuff

vruba:

I run into some version of this essay by some moneybags twig-bishop about once a year, and it bugs me every time.

Here’s the thing. Wealth is not a number of dollars. It is not a number of material possessions. It’s having options and the ability to take on risk.

As with carrying, so with owning in general. Poor people don’t have clutter because they’re too dumb to see the virtue of living simply; they have it to reduce risk.

When rich people present the idea that they’ve learned to live lightly as a paradoxical insight, they have the idea of wealth backwards. You can only have that kind of lightness through wealth.

(Reblogged from christmasgorilla)