Matthew Lewis -- living in the era of cults and consequences
@mateosfo
I make things, including bike rides, state housing laws, bread, and trouble. Quality varies with rainfall, political winds, and tire pressure. Run comms at @cayimby for the love of cities.
This is winnable!! We just have to engage the fight. www.berkeleyscanner.com/2026/07/30/c...
But embedded in this data are some lessons that need to be shared: First, just like for housing -- most people want more housing, only a small cohort of NIMBYs oppose it -- most people ALSO want safe streets, and ... a small cohort of NIMBYs oppose that, too. www.berkeleyscanner.com/2025/03/03/t...
Berkeley is pretty dysfunctional, but we're incredibly lucky to have a band of passionate volunteer organizers for safe streets who are very good at what they do. One of them commissioned a poll last year that showed that, while safe street opponents are loud, that's all they are: loud.
Another violent killer set loose on Berkeley's streets. It's simply incredible that we have to fight our city leaders to protect us from these violent thugs, while so many of our neighbors fight to *help them commit more violent crimes.* www.eastbaytimes.com/2026/07/29/b...
According to the DSM, incidence of antisocial personality disorder -- aka "sociopathy" -- in the US population is around ~4%, or about 11 million people over age of 15. Not all drivers are violent sociopaths, but probably all violent sociopaths are drivers. We see more evidence of this every day.
What's wild is there are a lot of cars in Japan! They're not anti-car! They just understand cities can't function when city governments treat cars as citizens, and humans as annoying trash that gets in the way of cars -- which is how US cities function. www.parkingreformatlas.org/parking-refo...
Latinas are the single largest group of riders on LA Metro. Check out what they say. What do you get from your lies? Why do so many white leftist men refuse to listen to women?
It takes 5 billion miles, but there's disagreement about how to model edge cases from real-world driving experience; I'm on the side that says the models are dubious, because driving is *constant* edge cases. The existing framework is incredibly generous to Waymo. www.autosafety.org/wp-content/u...
look i get that los angeles is the canary in the coal mine of car culture & it must truly suck to have chosen a car-dependent lifestyle but in addition to there being an oversupply of free parking in that city, there are so many entitled drivers that i struggle to conjure sympathy read a book
common berkeley climate activist, TBQH
For over a decade, a small cohort of us were lonely voices warning that the hundreds of billions of dollars going to subsidize electric cars and incentivize people to buy them weren't going to work. We were summarily dismissed, accused of being Luddites, told we don't understand how great EVs are.
yeah those few areas are just about every city where Waymo operates techcrunch.com/2026/07/08/f...
Boston Mayor Wu is responsible for death of one of Boston's top safe streets advocates. The cowardice at City Halls across the US has to be bullied out of office. City leaders should not be helping kill their own residents out of fear of carbrained jackasses. mass.streetsblog.org/2026/07/14/w...
I wonder how many of the folks blaming data centers for the end of the world drive an SUV that gets less than 25 miles per gallon. Because in the U.S., that describes ~ 65% of all people. Carbrain isn't just about violence. It's also about blaming others for your lifestyle choices.
Zero-emission vehicles in the US are about ~1.9% of the fleet. The average fuel economy of today's on-road fleet is 21 mpg. It's dropped from 25 in recent years thanks to US automaker's solid commitment to building larger trucks and burning more oil. www.ucs.org/resources/br...
Mother Jones has been the ~ only publication on the left that is willing to do the kind of honest, introspective reporting that could have prevented the forces of NIMBY slopulism from gaining traction in left circles. So, you can't blame MoJo for what's happening, or what comes next. Subscribe.
Low-income Americans drive an average of about 25 miles per day, while high-income folks drive about 50 miles per day (rounding up slightly from 2015 data).
On top of the fact that the driving mandates make Dallas as expensive as Paris, Dallas drivers are also the most violent in the United States and kill more people than drivers in any other city. Is that worth as much as Paris? I guess it depends on your values and priorities.
San Francisco's socialist left-NIMBYs just came out with a new report on housing in San Francisco. You'll never guess what they found. Turns out they think San Francisco is building *too much housing.* This was funded by Policy Link and the San Francisco Foundation.
you can definitely keep yelling at the growing cohort of Americans who grow less convinced about AV safety with time and exposure, maybe that will work to convince them. I don't think it will!
sample (thread is up to ~ 300 comments i think)
This is what "local democracy" gets you -- a years-long fight over whether you can put a hot tub in your own back yard. But also, come TF on. How did I not know this. "Candido Jacuzzi" was a real person in Berkeley?!?!? LOL www.berkeleyside.org/2026/07/01/b...
Happy SB 79 day to all who celebrate!! But especially @hanlon.bsky.social and @scottwiener.bsky.social who had the vision and held onto it against massive odds. cayimby.org/legislation/...
Autonomous vehicle boosters are destroying the hope of AVs. I actually believe AV tech will prove to be safer than human drivers. It needs a couple billion more miles/~ 10 more years, but I do believe this. But arrogance of the AV industry is trashing their rep. news.gallup.com/poll/708683/...
Well, you do what any good carbrained activist would do: You make it illegal to force drivers to pay for the cost of their violence. But, oopsie!!
Californians: "You can't put apartments and bike lanes next to the beach. We're not Europe; beaches are where freeways and parking lots belong. We're sustainable." Chicagoans: "We're gonna ride from Andersonville to the beach then Lakeshore to the River for pie at Robert's. We're Chicagoans."