Observations & reflections on moving around with an infant–photo diaries included.
Fatal Distraction: Forgetting a Child in the Backseat of a Car Is a H…
archived 10 Jul 2025 23:27:06 UTC
Fatal Distraction: Forgetting a Child in the Backseat of a Car Is a Horrifying Mistake. Is It a Crime?
Winner of the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing.
The Modern Moloch
On the streets of early 20th-century America, nothing moved faster than 10 miles per hour. Responsible parents would tell their children, “Go outside and play in the streets,” all day. And then the automobile happened. And then automobiles began killing thousands of children, every year. Much of the public viewed the car as a death machine.
TransformTO Tracking — Travel Modes by Ward
Track Toronto transportation mode share by ward, trip distance and year from the Transportation Tomorrow Survey, and progress toward the TransformTO 2030 goal of 75% of work and school trips by walking, cycling or transit.
You’ll do anything for your baby. The algorithm knows how to exploit that.
In the mega-consumption era of parenthood, the internet tells new moms that products can solve the hardest parts of having a newborn. All they have to do is add to cart.
497 days car-free in the South Bay | Offprint
Reflections on car-free living in the South Bay and why I finally gave in,
‘We need to reclaim childhood’: UK ministers urged to restore right to play
A steady erosion of outdoor playtime is impairing the development of infants, say experts
Exploring the social life of urban spaces through AI
We analyze changes in pedestrian behavior over a 30-y period in four urban public spaces located in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. Building on William Whyte’s observational work, which involved manual video analysis of pedestrian behaviors, we employ computer vision and deep learning techniques to examine video footage from 1979–80 and 2008–10. Our analysis measures changes in walking speed, lingering behavior, group sizes, and group formation. We find that the average walking speed has increased by 15%, while the time spent lingering in these spaces has halved across all locations. Although the percentage of pedestrians walking alone remained relatively stable (from 67% to 68%), the frequency of group encounters declined, indicating fewer interactions in public spaces. This shift suggests that urban residents are using streets as thoroughfares rather than as social spaces, which has important implications for the role of public spaces in fostering social engagement.
Hike, Bike, Drive Offline – Navigate with Privacy
Discover more of your journey - Powered by the community
Do newborn boys really tend to prefer a ‘mechanical object’ to a human face? Failure to assess the confounding effect of an exceptionally high caesarean section rate
We review a twenty year old paper on sex differences in human neonatal social perception, and identify a serious issue: a failure to assess whether the results were distorted by an exceptionally high Caesarean Section rate. This is in addition to a number of other methodological weaknesses, which together mean that there is too much ‘noise’ in the data to draw clear conclusions from the results. The paper’s stark conclusion to have ‘demonstrated’ biological sex differences is unsubstantiated and misleading, and it should no longer be considered a reliable reference point.
What If We Kept Our Cars Parked for Trips Less Than One Mile? | US EPA
Thought starter about walking or biking for trips less than one mile.
Parenting | The Paper Pilot
The Paper Pilot's digital garden of thoughts on philosophy, politics, and sociology
The role of transportation in the persuasiveness of public narratives.
Reducing car dependence: benefits, strategies, unintended consequences, and future directions of post-car urban transitions
This paper presents the state of the art of post-car urban transitions. It begins with an overview of the impact of automobility on planetary and human well-being. The benefits of post-car cities a...
I didn't know how bad things are getting globally before finding /r/privacy
253 votes, 20 comments. The media has not informed us about the Flock cameras, age verification acts etc. that are happening in North America. There…
This stopped me in my tracks. An independent study by @qmul.bsky.social has found that after ULEZ was introduced, children’s lungs grew faster in Central London and have now caught up with children outside of the capital. Incredible.
Queen Mary University of London
Air pollution stunts children’s lung growth. New Queen Mary research found that improvements in air quality after the introduction of London’s ULEZ are associated with accelerated lung growth in children. Read more: shorturl.at/Jx86o
