"the minivan will still be trammeled by its fundamental purpose. It is useful because it offers benefits for families, and it is uncool because family life is thought to be imprisoning. That logic cannot be overcome by mere design. In the end, the minivan dilemma has more to do with how Americans think than what we drive. Families, or at least vehicles expressly designed for them, turned out to be lamentable."
If only we could solve:
- Car culture: 42,795 deaths in the US in '22 and rising; ave ~20% of household expenses per year
- Guns: 48,830 firearm-related deaths in the US in '21, 54% suicides
...then we could tackle...LAWNS:
"Nationwide, landscape irrigation is estimated to account for nearly one-third of all residential water use, totaling nearly 9 billion gallons per day." (Based on the PDF version at link, this was 2013.)
19january2017snapshot.epa.gov/www3/watersense/pubs/outdoor.html
"Texas is one of a few states with officials who still seem to think that bigger highways help improve traffic despite data showing that it solves it nothing."
When Jalopnik is ripping your car-centric state transportation budget, you know it's bad.
jalopnik.com/texas-will-pour-billions-more-into-pointless-freeway-ex-1851632104
In my head, _everything_ gets its own conspiracy board.
"It occurs to me that to read everything, including the news, like a novel—to be cognizant and accepting of discontinuities and conflicts, of multiple interpretations, of symbol that sits alongside more objective truths—is maybe the skill we most need to employ in navigating the world of news today, when there is so much news, and so few ways of making it all cohere."
Spanish veteran Luis Maté (Euskaltel-Euskadi) is celebrating his retirement by riding the 600 kilometres from the Vuelta finish in Madrid to his home in Marbella in the south of Spain.
“It’s partly to get used to the idea of leaving my pro career behind, but I’m going on being a bike rider, and this is like a transition, riding home from being a pro to riding a bike ‘for real’"
