LoriHC @lorihc@qoto.org

We’re often told not to mix business with politics, but consider this:

IL Dem Gov Pritzker just signed into law guaranteed paid leave to all IL workers.😄

MN Dem Gov Walz just signed into law free universal school breakfast & lunch for all children.😄

MI Dem Gov Whitmer just signed into law a repeal of anti-labor right to work for all workers.😄

AR GOP Gov Huckabee just signed into law making child labor easier for corporations to exploit.😳

🎶 One of these things, is not like the others. 🎶

Finland has been ranked as the happiest country in the world for the sixth consecutive year.

Also, here is a photo of the five leaders of Finland's largest political parties.

#SomeGoodNews

"The new bill would give a refundable tax credit of 30 percent on the purchase of a new e-bike, up to $1,500. That’s an improvement over the amended version of the previous E-BIKE Act, which would have capped the credit at $800, and in line with the original 2021 version. The credit would also be fully refundable, which would allow lower-income individuals to claim it."

#TheWarOnCars #ebike #ebikes #climate #climatechange

https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/22/23651557/ebike-act-bill-congress-rebate-tax-credit-amount

On the pharmacy’s floor
is a faded sticker which reads:
“stay safe—six feet apart”
seeing that I am looking at it
an employee tells me
that they tried to get rid of it
but it’s really stuck
so they’ve decided to live with it
and I can’t tell
if he means the sticker or the virus.

We have designed an intersection, a road, a neighborhood, a world, in which people in cars are conditioned to not notice anything around them. Even if what's around them is their neighbors...or their neighbors' kids.

Yeah, I'm upset at my neighbors for putting my kid's life in danger.

But I'm pissed at the system that allows them to do it SO DAMN EASILY.

We know how to design better streets. We just choose not to do it.

#SafeStreetsForAll #VisionZero #Motornormativity #CarCulture

If you're sad about Lance Reddick, his widow asked for people to donate to MOMcares, a Baltimore-based charity that provides prenatal and postpartum care to under-supported Black women who've been through the NICU wringer. It helps unborn babies, it helps Black maternal mortality rates, it should appeal to pretty much everyone. Go! www.momcares.org

"It feels as if the industry and the government have simultaneously woken up to the enormous potential of cargo e-bikes to replace car trips and improve the environment, and honestly, it’s about time."

https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/18/23645151/cargo-ebike-electric-golden-age-prices-utility-dtc

#TheWarOnCars #cargobike

Idaho GOP saw young voters surge 66% in voter registration in the last 4 years & responded by passing a new bill banning the use of student IDs to vote.

Meanwhile Gun licenses are still allowed despite record highs in gun violence & gun deaths.

A party that chooses violence over votes is the antithesis of democracy.

Vote them all out.

Idea for Mastodon client app developers:

Implement functionality that (optionally) programmatically strips obvious tracking gunk from link URLs when they’re posted.

/ @MonaApp @ivory @IceCubesApp @Gargron

Two pictures that both show about 30 people getting a coffee.

We have to break #carculture

#BikeTooter #ebikes #ebike #waroncars

Any experienced programmer worth their salt will tell you that •producing• code — learning syntax, finding examples, combining them, adding behaviors, adding complexity — is the •easy• part of programming.

The hard part: “How can it break? How will it surprise us? How will it change? Does it •really• accomplish our goal? What •is• our goal? Are we all even imagining the same goal? Do we understand each other? Will the next person to work on this understand it? Should we even build this?”

Extremist right-wingers have been eyeing the takeover of school boards across the country for a while now, with an agenda of extreme censorship and an anti-science mindset.

In 2023, there will be school board elections in AK, AR, CO, ID, IL, IA, KS, KY, LA, MN, MS, MO, NE, NH, NJ, NY, NC, OH, OK, OR, PA, SC, TX, VA, WA, and WI. Make sure you get involved.

Link to elections: https://ballotpedia.org/School_board_elections,_2023

Story: https://www.kttn.com/conservative-moms-for-liberty-m4l-group-sets-sights-on-school-boards-and-book-bans/

A year of dangerous passes. AKA a 40 second argument for why we need massive, urgent investment in safe, dedicated facilities for people traveling by bicycle.

Every street for everyone.

https://youtu.be/5RBoS4va4Aw

#SafeStreetsForAll #BikeTooter

The crazy thing is, I don't even ride that much. Between commuting, the school run, and occasional errands, I average <20 miles on my bike a week.

And still, I have motorists threaten my life on a weekly basis.

Y’all, we need to have a Talk about relatively well-meaning but sexist assumptions. I’m not singling anyone out - this happens to me a lot.

I get routine pings to speak, present, or serve on boards related to educating kids (especially girls) on tech, and build DEI programs. The people who ask usually start with “because you are an expert on it”.

I am very happy to be an expert on a few things - namely digital forensics and incident response and industrial cybersecurity. I’m passable at threat intel and OSINT. It wouldn’t be embarrassing for me to talk about martial arts.

However, I have zero training on DEI or girls in tech initiatives (that’s a whole real career field), and I have no children. I’m don’t even have biological nieces or nephews. If you’re saying you think I’m an expert at that, it means someone is just looking at how I appear and making assumptions, then asking me to do free work. Others may not be as chill about this.

We’re hiring a few more product engineers at The Browser Company! HMU (or DM Josh on Twitter) https://twitter.com/joshm/status/1635747595611148289

Nothing says pro-life better than death penalty