Colby Brown @colby@transportation.social

New results from another completed guaranteed #basicincome pilot. This one was in Cambridge, MA where 130 people got $500/mo for 18 months. Did they work less? No. They worked MORE.

Recipients went from 36% FT employed to 40%. Those who didn't get it went from 30% to 28%. PT and seasonal employment also grew for those with the basic income.

That isn't unusual. Most of the pilots have shown increased employment.

So what else was observed?

Read the report:
https://cambridgecf.org/research-on-cambridges-guaranteed-income-pilot-shows-tangible-benefits-for-cash-recipients/

@remenca @dfeldman this is actually a very important criticism — systems should not work on "garbage in, garbage out". As far as possible, they should work on "garbage in, error message out". That the system is not only incapable of spotting the mistake but actually in the first sentence affirms that the input was correct means you can't trust it. If its only failure mode is to confidently make an incorrect diagnosis, then how can you ever trust anything it says isn't just that?

Imagine if we had implemented the Interstate Highway System alphabetically by state? Too often, active transportation networks are built out in exactly that patchy way.

We just posted a new $44.5M grant opportunity that is different:

1) Just for active transportation,
2) Focused on planning and implementing *networks*,
3) Aims for outcomes beyond safety.

Learn more about ATIIP:
https://highways.dot.gov/newsroom/biden-harris-administration-announces-nearly-45-million-available-funds-improve-bicyclist

This is both terrifying and deeply, deeply stupid.

This isn't just about TikTok. The bill gives USG the power to ban any old foreign-owned media/tech they designate as adversarial.
https://apnews.com/article/tiktok-ban-house-vote-china-national-security-8fa7258fae1a4902d344c9d978d58a37?taid=65f1bb38c2c1680001c4da1b&utm_campaign=TrueAnthem&utm_medium=AP&utm_source=Twitter

@mekkaokereke @blikkie @AdrianVolt @tess

While there are racial and gender differences in how people look at the climate crisis, I think it's safe to say that ALL Americans are held hostage by
1. a car industry that forces the American public to buy large cars (that make large profits) and
2. a lack of viable alternatives like public transit. By "viable" I mean it works for everyone not just "the undeserving poor".

The EPA could have mandated smaller EVs. But they backed down to industry.

trains are the crabs of transportation technology

every time you try making a mode of transportation more efficient, you approach it being a train a little bit more

Happy #BlackHistoryMonth !

Day 17

Why is it OK for Black folk to like the Black Panthers, but white folk can't like the klan? Black supremacy is just as bad as white supremacy! Why the double standard?

The Black Panthers:
https://hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/109880423700227612

Black History Month Megathread:
https://hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/111856915139042511

A crowd destroyed a driverless Waymo car in San Francisco. I expect we will see more outbursts of Luddite energy as automation spreads from factories to more blue & white collar fields.

The question is whether governments will be as willing to suppress now as they did then?
https://www.theverge.com/2024/2/11/24069251/waymo-driverless-taxi-fire-vandalized-video-san-francisco-china-town

What happened in Barcelona this past year is pretty fucking amazing. (this is not a.i.)

You want to talk about disruptive technologies that solve supply chain insecurity, transportation emission, and price inflation: publicly-owned, slow, and local rail.
No moonshots. No white elephants. No scamy new technology.
Just well-planned networks of logistical and commuter trains based on existing road networks. With diesel trains upgraded to electric engines, powered by decentralized solar/wind stations. Cheeper than new fighter jets.
#cdnpoli #nspoli #solarpunk #climatecrisis #trains

Shamelessly nicked from @fietsprofessor on Instagram - For decades, we literally spent trillions to retrofit our cities, our public spaces and our society around cars.

It just didn't work.

If only we had an alternative.
If only...
🚲

(📹 of #London by @PeterStuart3) - https://www.instagram.com/reel/C2-IjXBvWYi/?igsh=MXZoajFjbnA4eWxibA==

Hot take: Best-friend breakups are just as traumatizing as romantic breakups and not a lot of people talk about it.

@timnitGebru You don't need to invent AGI to get a computer to tell you how to stop climate change. The following program will do this without using any deep learning or neural nets, etc.

```python
#!/usr/bin/env python3
print("STOP DUMPING CRAPLOADS OF GREENHOUSE GASSES INTO THE ATMOSPHERE!!!")
```

The problem is this is not the answer these people want to hear.

@eARCwelder

I've said before on this federated microbloggy network thingy

I'm maaaad that the most _fun_ application of LLMs — zany weird lateral thinking tools like a tarot deck or Oblique Strategies on steroids — has been torn from my hands and replaced with something that carefully generates banal spongecake content guaranteed not to surprise anyone

https://trochee.net/samyro/

@misc

But what is the solarpunk approach to "Peak AI"?

Solarpunk offers a vision, in the face of gasoline, for planning community gardens, mutual aid societies, bike repair workshops, etc, even as the gasoline culture around us creaks and groans its way bloodily towards a reckoning

What is our (data science, machine learning, UX, design) equivalent of solarpunk for the concepts of automation?

5/

Storms should be named after #FossilFuel companies

Making direct links between the polluters and the impact they cause is an urgent next step – as in “tomorrow’s terrible weather is #Storm #Esso, Storm #Shell, Storm #RangeRover” and so on...

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/jan/12/storms-should-be-named-after-fossil-fuel-companies

ClimateCrisis