Pedestrian deaths preoccupy me like nothing else but I hate the word "pedestrian" with burning passion. Instead I will be referring to walking in the words of @rebeccasolnit.bsky.social—it is "the intentional act closest to the unwilled rhythms of the body, to breathing and the beating of the heart"

This is a major indictment of federal inaction re: car tech.

For years, automakers sold consumers on Level 2 systems by implying (seldom outright saying) that drivers need not focus on the road.

The feds -- NHTSA, FTC, Congress -- have never forced the car co's to stop. Now confusion reigns.

Ok fine if I MUST, allow me to be the one to bravely say that veg*n men are super hot!!! Only a beta loser would mislead you into thinking otherwise!

Clip from linked story: "...probably perceive him as a very normative masculine man because he eats meat" and he's fit, she told me. "But then he breaks his boundaries of masculinity by eating vegan food, and for a lot of people, this brings a lot of tension and a lot of questions." [...] One day, just a couple of weeks after he had launched the Soy Boy Chronicles, he tried to log on to Instagram only to find that his account had been taken down. The reason? According to a screenshot Smith shared with Vox, Meta said it doesn't allow its users to follow, praise, or support people or organizations it defines as dangerous.

Much great reporting and analysis in here 🫛💪

Carefully doesn't say that Insta banned a fitfluencer for transgressing gender boundaries around meat (or, more likely, for generating a whole bunch of reports from people who thought he did) but it also doesn't NOT say that

www.vox.com/future-perfe...

Many highly developed (& correct!) consequentialist arguments for how veg(itari)anism helps animals, workers, or environment through social, political, or economic mechanisms

But what made me take the leap years ago was much simpler virtue ethics: "I don't like this & I don't need to be part of it"

you can opt out of participating in this system entirely and it feels so great!

important story here by @jesslsr.bsky.social

Finally wrote about this

mbolotnikova.substack.com/p/ridglan-ma...

Subscribe to Marina Bolotnikova Click to read Marina Bolotnikova, a Substack with hundreds of subscribers.

I have never written one of these Substack things before but will be out with a debut piece soon (about the mass beagle rescue in Wisconsin, of course) - pls sign up here to get it!! (this is free, so skip anything that asks you to pay for it!)

mbolotnikova.substack.com/subscribe

In an in-depth investigation about the lives of calves born into the dairy industry, @voxdotcom.bsky.social reporter
@mbolotnikova.bsky.social exposes systemic abuses that are hidden from the public.

cc: @dylanlscott.bsky.social @paigeblank.bsky.social @katherinecourage.bsky.social

Just had one of the most intense experiences of my life watching activists break beagles out of Ridglan, one of the biggest breeders of dogs for animal experimentation. Here are police who showed up to stop them, dragging one of the dogs into their car:

AMA HERE! www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comme...

The carnivore promoters seem simply unable to comprehend that their preferred human diet is impossible to have without farming animals in this manner!

Join me for an ~Ask Me Anything~ about this story on the extreme confinement of dairy calves: Americans ditched veal, but what replaced it is just as bad

On the r/iama subreddit, TODAY! at 12pm ET!! reddit.com/r/IAmA/

Americans ditched veal. What replaced it may be just as bad. The giant loophole that lets Big Dairy keep baby cows in solitary confinement

"The dairy business is, at bottom, organized around the hyper-optimization and commodification of one of life’s most intimate processes: pregnancy, birth, lactation," writes @mbolotnikova.bsky.social for @vox.com:

There Is No Housing Affordability Without Building More Housing If we make it easier to build dense housing in cities, then the resulting supply boost will ease the cost burden on renters and put homeownership within closer reach for millions of households.

Every couple of months or so, someone puts out a piece of bad social science meant to undermine the case for more housing. For Roosevelt Institute, I wrote a blog post responding to the two most recent specimens. rooseveltinstitute.org/blog/there-i...

There are legitimate reasons to focus the animal movement's precious resources on other things! But I personally will never ever be able to shut up about this

Under California's Prop 12, veal calves are required to have at least 43 sq feet each, but dairy calves, which are a MASSIVE industry in California, way way bigger than veal, get no protection from extreme confinement

in the animal movement, compared to the caging of egg-laying hens and pregnant pigs. I wrote about this too!

Calf ranches are interesting bc they represent one logical extreme of the dairy industry's business model, which is fundamentally about hyper-optimizing life's most intimate processes

But they're also interesting bc they reflect a form of extreme confinement that has received v little scrutiny

and a critical part of the beef supply chain too. They're located in California's Central Valley, the milk production capital of the US, known for its dense concentration of mega dairies. Grimmius is the largest calf raiser in California, raising calves on dairy farms' behalf

I wrote about this through a @dxeofficial.bsky.social investigation into Grimmius Cattle Co. You've never heard of it, but it's part of an industry of "calf ranches" — mega-farms that are an increasingly critical part of the dairy supply chain

gift link:

www.vox.com/the-highligh...

Many people think veal is the fate of male calves born in the dairy industry, but veal is virtually a dead industry in the US. Instead, male calves, & some females, are raised for beef. And dairy calves of both sexes are kept in crates that look like this (photo by @dxeofficial.bsky.social)

I tried to do what we call, if I may be so bold, a "conceptual scoop"!!

Pls read my story on the most overlooked form of extreme confinement of farmed animals—the routine caging of millions of dairy calves in tiny crates less than 1/10 the size of a parking spot.

It's not about veal! (🧵)

Close-up of a hand holding a Kindle e-reader displaying a passage about food systems, including the line: “The most important thing you can do is banish from your thoughts the idea that we should—and can—scrap the ‘broken’ food system and start over.”

Big belated congrats to @jandutkiewicz.bsky.social and @gnrosenberg.bsky.social on FEED THE PEOPLE! a book that everyone should read and will get a lot out of. It might surprise you to know that they call for throwing away the "broken food system" cliché but they have a GOOD POINT!

The biggest drawback of driverless cars Driverless cars could save thousands of lives. They might also break our cities.

"AVs almost by definition lower the friction and costs associated with driving ... And we already know, from the last century-plus of experience in the US, what happens when we make driving easier: We will get more of it. And more concrete and asphalt infrastructure to accommodate it."

High-End Construction Really Does Help Everyone A new rung at the top of the housing ladder permits people lower down to climb up.

new from me: a story about VACANCY CHAINS, the idea that underlies the argument that more housing is good even if you can't afford it www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

There's considerable ignorance about animal agriculture practices

People overestimate the prevalence of high-welfare practices and underestimate low-welfare ones

Some of the replies are incredible. It may be true that some of the land used as pastures are not suitable for growing crops, but we don’t have to use all the land. We could just leave some places to be wild.

pour one out for DOGE

What the Foodies Get Wrong About Food Reform Telling people to eat more home-cooked meals and start gardening isn’t a realistic prescription for widespread change.

"Improving the American food system further will require engaging, improving, and fairly distributing modern agriculture’s productivity, not tossing it on the compost heap."

@gnrosenberg.bsky.social and I on the concept of democratic hedonism in food system reform.

newrepublic.com/article/2067...