How We Became a One-car Household: Slowly, Then Suddenly

When Laura and I bought electric pedal-assist bikes in March 2022, our goal was to ditch one of our cars at some vague future date, but we didn’t really know how it would happen.

I mean, cars are just so convenient, and when you have them it’s easy to just keep them, right?

We spent the year replacing car miles with bike miles (and, during shitty weather, bus miles).

Like most folks, the majority of our trips are just a few miles. Laura found her commute into downtown Iowa City was faster by bike than car because she cut out the five-minute walk from parking to the office. My 12-mile commute didn’t have the same time savings, but it really only added 15 minutes or so.

Groceries were manageable with panniers and the extra weight didn’t matter because of the peddle assistance. Costco trips were still by car, but Laura hauled fence posts for her garden on her bike, and we just don’t haul much.

Most of the time, at least one of our cars sat unused for weeks at a time, though it was easy to get lazy and make an excuse to use a car.

I started marking bike days on my calendar and lumping as best I could days I would need to travel from my office (or urging phone and video calls when it made sense). I did rely on coworkers for tides when we were going to an offsite meeting together, but that just means carpooling which we should be doing anyway.

Then, in just before last Christmas, a driver failed to yield and smashed into our sedan, totaling it. (Everyone was fine, albeit a little shaken). So here we were, in the middle of an Iowa winter, with one car. And it was fine.

(We went back to two cars for a short time when we got a Prius to replace the relatively inefficient Subaru Outback.)

It helps that our high schooler (1) doesn’t drive a lot, (2) doesn’t travel for extra curricular activities since they’re boarding at school, (3) our jobs are flexible enough that we can work from home during bad weather, (4) we can afford costly cab/rideshare fares and (5) have coworkers willing to drive. But we’re going to save thousands of dollars each year on car insurance, gasoline, oil changes and other maintenance. You might also save of parking costs we don’t have.

Electric pedal-assist bikes are transformative. A good one isn’t cheap (we spent $4,000 each for our class 3 Specialized Turbo Vado 4.0 bikes plus more on gear), but it’s cheaper that a car and gets the job done. I’ve found it’s easier if I just plan to ride every day, alleviating decision-making second guessing.

NPR Quits Twitter

National Public Radio has left Twitter, like list of people, after being “state-affiliated” like Chinese and Russian propagandists. The organization won’t return even if the label is changed, says NPR CEO John Lansing, who told in-house media reporter David Folkenflik:

“At this point I have lost my faith in the decision-making at Twitter. I would need some time to understand whether Twitter can be trusted again.”

Better late than never.

Fair Play

I think I watched more basketball over the past week than I have in a couple of decades. It was thrilling and emotional and disappointing and really fun.

Then, following the emotional, and disappointing, loss to LSU in the NCAA championship game, lots of Iowa fans got mad. Mad at LSU star Angel Reese and mad at the mostly anonymous officiating crew.

It was classless, Iowa fans, and shockingly lacking self-unawareness.

Others have done a better job than I can delving into the racial and gender dynamics of calling out a Reese, a young, Black woman in a big moment, for “classlessness,” but watching Iowa fans twist themselves into knots to define where the line between self-assured shit talking in a big moment and taunting lies was sad after celebrating Caitlin Clark for her cockiness all season. Turnabout is fair play in sports, and I’m sorry it hurt your feelings.1

And blaming referees for a loss — a decisive 17-point loss — is, well, not being honest. Unless the officials gave Jasmine Carson 22 points in 22 minutes off the bench. I am the fairest of fair-weather fans, jumping on the bandwagon late in season and quick to move on, so maybe I don’t understand how basketball works.

Instead of celebrating the ride — including beating the defending and undefeated champion — the reaction took away exactly what Iowa fans said they were mad they were being distracted from: a magical season from a scrappy team with a home-grown superstar.

1 | Kudos to Iowa Coach Lisa Bluder for her response when asked Reese’s end-of-game actions: “I’m sure she was really proud of her accomplishment. And I would be really proud of my accomplishment if I made it, won the national championship too. We’re all different people, and we all have different ways to show our emotion. Again, I’ve got to focus on what I can control.”

Jason Kottke Hits 25 Years of Blogging

I can’t remember when I started reading Jason Kottke’s blog, but I find I’m often surprised how long I’ve been reading someone when I start to work it out. I’m guessing it’s been since the mid-2000s. The eponymous blog has always hit a sweet spot for me.

Several years ago, I was the subject of a post and it gave me insight into how much Jason’s site drives conversation on the web, as I followed along as the story was picked up by increasing prominent news outlets (Buzzfeed, Adweek, cnet, Forbes) and, eventually, the New York Times.

Congratulations on reaching 25 years, Jason.

Death of a Pig 15 Years Later

It was 15 years ago today I participated in a pig slaughter.

The bullet had to pierce the pig’s thick skull to stun it. The shot’s angle and position are everything. If you drew an X from each ear to the opposite eye, I was aiming for the small depression that lay in the middle.

Even at point-blank, getting in position to shoot a pig is a dance with an unwilling partner. I had the added trouble of working up the nerve to pull the trigger. You have to shoot the pig with it looking you in the eye.

After the pig murder, I produced a rather morbid multimedia package. In the past couple weeks, I took a little bit of time to put it back online, but, sadly it’s missing some parts, maybe forever, due to the death of a video-hosting service and Flash.

The story of the life, death and rebirth of a pig was about how we’d lost connection with our food and the skills that were once required to eat. Online news has gotten really sophisticated, but when I produced the story, a lot of news organizations were still trying to figure out how to shift from traditional media to the Internet (and many were scrambling as the financial crisis of 2008 was bludgeoning the news industry much as it is again today).

At the time I was writing about the loss of knowledge and skills, I was oddly unaware of how we were on the cusp of the lost of other knowledge and skills in the industry I was training for. So it goes.

It was designed for an internet that was early in the iPhone era, and we didn’t have great non-Flash solutions yet. The web design (Calibri?!) and technology (non-responsive?!) is somewhat antiquated. And in master-of-none form, it’s clear I’m neither a great photographer nor videographer. Nevertheless, the work, I think, holds up pretty well, and I’d invite you to explore The Death of a Pig: a Pig in Three Parts.

Under Iowa’s Theocratic Governor, No Wonder Young People Flee the State

A former Iowan writes to the Los Angeles Times:

The current governor, in my opinion, is a threat to social progress and basic academic freedom. She has supported banning books from school libraries, eliminating gun safety, banning almost all abortions, restricting LGBTQ rights and more.

Is it any wonder that young people leave Iowa after graduating from its public universities? Young people in Iowa and elsewhere are being deprived of obtaining an education in which controversial subjects are discussed. Democracy cannot flourish in such an environment.

If you are a person in your 20’s or 30’s, looking to start a career and, maybe eventually, a family, would you stick around a place that would make planning for those big decisions difficult at best? I sure as shit wouldn’t.

Who Can Ruin Their State the Best?

Emine Yücel in Talking Points Memo:

For some time now, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott have been locked in a high-stakes competition, using anything and anyone as props — including vulnerable migrants and children — to score points with Trump supporters and collect MAGA clout at a national level.

Meanwhile, Red State Trailblazer Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds is heading down a similar path without the national fanfare. Attacks on transgender kids? Check. Abortion ban? Check. So-called parental rights? They went big and bold on “school choice” that will cost millions and continue to hammer away.

Reynolds’s is currently working to reorganize the entire state government, which looks to take control away from county officials and consolidate power in the governor’s office.

What’s Left for Gannett to Cut?

Zachary Oren Smith, formerly of the Iowa City Press-Citizen, reporting for Iowa Public Radio:

The nation’s largest chain of newspapers is shrinking much of its physical footprint in Iowa. IPR News confirmed Gannett Media will not renew its office leases for the Ames Tribune and the Iowa City Press-Citizen. Leases expire in April.

The official word is this is part of a “flexible workplace model,” and no jobs are being cut (this time). Of course, there’s only a couple of reporters left, and most of the other functions (layout, editing, production) have been centralized out of town.

Legacy media hasn’t been robust for years, but the Iowa City and Cedar Rapids area is left with The Gazette, KCRG, Iowa Public Radio and Little Village as critical sources of original reporting.

As Twitter Declines, 25 Tweets Highlighting What It Was

The New York Times:

On Wednesday, Twitter announced that users who pay extra will be able to send their thoughts into the world in tweets of up to 4,000 characters, instead of 280 or less. A few hours later, the site glitched. Users couldn’t tweet; they couldn’t DM; #TwitterDown began trending. All of it — the muddled sense of identity, the breakdown of basic function — confirmed the sense that Twitter, a site that has hosted the global conversation for almost two decades, had become a rickety shell of itself, that its best days were behind it and that it would never be as significant again.

Ate these are the 25 most important tweets? Some I’ve never seen before, but they are a good representation of all that Twitter was.

I’ve stopped using Twitter, which I used heavily and evangelized for since June 2007, and it’s still kind of amazing how quickly it stopped being the place that hosted the “global conversation”.

It’s not a great sign that more 10% of these tweets are Donald Trump, tho.