Matthew Lewis is ready for progressive federalism
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mateosfo.bsky.social
Matthew Lewis is ready for progressive federalism
@mateosfo.bsky.social
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.
Pinned
This was a lot of fun, both because we covered a lot of topics and because David and I have known each other so long and so the conversation flowed.

But the whole tl;dr of the thing is:

Housing policy is (still) climate policy. And the climate movement should do more to acknowledge this, IMO.
Today on Volts: you may have noticed that some climate/energy types (like me) have become obsessed with housing & urban land use lately. Why? Why are they climate issues? What's the connection? The great @mateosfo.bsky.social and I attempt to answer those questions.
Why housing is a pass/fail question for climate
Housing is a climate issue we can't afford to ignore — Matthew Lewis explains why.
www.volts.wtf
Reposted by Matthew Lewis is ready for progressive federalism
Check out the depth of this @thecacoast.bsky.social required parking lot for a new apartment building in Santa Monica. This looks like an expensive hole! Great news for renters. And I’m sure the neighbors will love all the additional cars this puts on the road.
November 11, 2025 at 12:25 AM
Guys:

The Senate is a Confederate institution. That means even when you *can* manage to elect red state "Democrats," they will *still sympathize more with the Confederacy than with the United States.*

Schumer sucks, get rid of him. But that won't fix the Senate, which must be yeeted into the sun.
the caucus gets how this is *worse* right? if you're just going around Schumer, what's the point of leadership
November 11, 2025 at 12:34 AM
Insane.

Mayor @adenaishii.bsky.social and City Council have to forcefully tell Berkeley School Board they'll never permit another 2-story car garage downtown -- which already has two massive garages within a block.

What kind of values does this city have? www.berkeleyside.org/2025/11/10/b...
Berkeley High parking garage development is back on the table
BUSD is reviewing plans for a campus expansion on Milvia Street, which may or may not include two floors of parking for school staff.
www.berkeleyside.org
November 10, 2025 at 11:50 PM
Reposted by Matthew Lewis is ready for progressive federalism
A reminder that this is the most liberal/progressive Senate that will exist for the rest of our lives and that it will only grow more right-wing/Confederate loyalist with time.

That is how it is designed. As the U.S. urbanizes and rural/red states bleed population, the Senate gets steadily worse.
November 10, 2025 at 5:25 PM
A couple of the quote tweets are dunking on Will for not acknowledging that, while spending power is objectively up, life spans and health are down.

Guess why Americans have shorter lifespans and worse health. Guess what we spend most of our disposable income on.
November 10, 2025 at 5:17 PM
folks, the United States Senate is the scorpion and we're the frog. every time.
November 10, 2025 at 5:08 PM
November 10, 2025 at 5:20 AM
Reposted by Matthew Lewis is ready for progressive federalism
Car brand BYD's new SUV ad pokes fun at people walking and cycling, comparing them to Horse & Carts.

It joins a long list of car ads that sell a false promise of convenience and aspiration while punching down at sustainable transport modes.

So I made it a bit more realistic...
November 7, 2025 at 1:58 PM
Reposted by Matthew Lewis is ready for progressive federalism
Shabbat shalom to everyone except the lady in the electric VW SUV who screamed "FUCK YOUR BICYCLE!" as she blasted past us on the bike boulevard, almost hitting a couple scooter riders in the process.
November 8, 2025 at 1:33 AM
oh i was on a bike ride -- did the US Senate do the most US Senate thing, which they always do, to fuck the United States and advance the Lost (arguably, Found!!) Cause of the Confederacy?
This is a morally repugnant betrayal of House Democrats, of Democratic activists, and of Democratic state electeds who have been fighting this out in the court of public opinion.

We trusted Senate Dems to negotiate. They fucked us. Just fucking enraging.
November 10, 2025 at 1:50 AM
Reposted by Matthew Lewis is ready for progressive federalism
I don't know what the Senate is going to do. But if they do in fact fold in exchange for nothing, they will be living up to past performance. To expect the Senate to carry out the will of the American people is to misunderstand why it was created in the first place.
November 9, 2025 at 9:55 PM
Reposted by Matthew Lewis is ready for progressive federalism
A wealthy safe streets advocate could do the most good by paying a team of maybe a half dozen journalists to aggressively and comprehensively report every single traffic death in every major city. Depicting the horrifying human cost, FOIing PDs and DOTS, contextualizing it in policy choices, etc.
November 9, 2025 at 5:55 PM
Imagine if this had been a mass shooting, but reporters had covered it the same way they cover driver violence:

"Bullets fleeing gun slam into bar in Tampa, killing 4, injuring 11"
November 9, 2025 at 5:40 PM
One reason safe streets advocacy is so critical is that there's no way to get media to even cover driver violence with basic journalistic integrity.

In some cases it's because ness outlets depend on car industry ads; in others, it's because many reporters/editors themselves have carbrain.
November 9, 2025 at 5:35 PM
Reposted by Matthew Lewis is ready for progressive federalism
Reposted by Matthew Lewis is ready for progressive federalism
It's amazing how using more than just paint actually prevents drivers from doing shit that endangers micro-mobility users
Low Profile Delineators, aka Zebra’s, keeping Delivery trucks from parking in the bike lanes. @mass.streetsblog.org @streets.boston.gov
November 9, 2025 at 1:04 AM
Reposted by Matthew Lewis is ready for progressive federalism
So it turns out... the US air travel system was incredibly, deeply dependent on federal funding to just run day-to-day all this time, to the benefit of private airline shareholders, when everyone thinks that state-run trains are leeching off the government. Weird!
November 9, 2025 at 12:10 AM
ask me about how cars work
So it turns out... the US air travel system was incredibly, deeply dependent on federal funding to just run day-to-day all this time, to the benefit of private airline shareholders, when everyone thinks that state-run trains are leeching off the government. Weird!
November 9, 2025 at 3:45 AM
Driver violence is completely out of control in the Bay Area and it's time to start talking about more direct solutions.

Enforce traffic laws with an iron fist, and jail every single violent driver -- or let me open carry my gun and protect myself the very old fashioned way.

I prefer the cops.
November 9, 2025 at 3:32 AM
Reposted by Matthew Lewis is ready for progressive federalism
A cyclist was stabbed by a Tesla driver today in the Marin headlands.

This is a developing story. I'll post updates as I learn them.

www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco...
Cyclist in Marin Headlands stabbed during altercation with Tesla driver
Around 11:40 a.m., the driver of a Tesla and a cyclist got into an altercation, and at some point, during the confrontation, a knife was taken out.
www.cbsnews.com
November 9, 2025 at 2:23 AM
Reposted by Matthew Lewis is ready for progressive federalism
I think drawing swastikas on a Jewish day school is bad and whoever did it should be punished to the full extent of the law regardless of the direction from which they are trying to terrify Jews
November 8, 2025 at 8:21 PM
Reposted by Matthew Lewis is ready for progressive federalism
Theoretically, this eventually turns into the “how do I ensure my doomsday bunker guards don’t eat me?” problem that all the “futurists” say is the number one question they’re asked by billionaires.
“More and more cabinet members — Rubio, Miller, Noem — live on military bases now, & it's another parallel to Iraq, where the administration lived in the Green Zone. There’s something deeply unhealthy about a society where leaders are literally shut off from the communities that they govern.”
Don Moynihan on "Purge, Merge, and Surge"
"Instead of surging in Iraq, it’s happening here in American cities."
www.publicnotice.co
November 8, 2025 at 7:54 PM
the joke is thinking car culture cares about human deaths when dead and maimed bodies are actually the car industry's primary products (in terms of revenues/GDP)
we are never going to have flying cars on account of how there would be a 9/11 every day
November 8, 2025 at 8:13 PM
Reposted by Matthew Lewis is ready for progressive federalism
This is really grim.
But have you ever had to park your car half a block further than you wanted to?

www.cbsnews.com/news/dolphin...
Hundreds of dolphins found dead in Amazon lake were in water hotter than a jacuzzi, study finds
"You couldn't put your finger in the water," said the lead author of the study, which spotlights the impacts of planetary warming on aquatic ecosystems.
www.cbsnews.com
November 8, 2025 at 4:18 PM