Out of the Jar
I go by Dyl for short
and Pickle if we're
close enough.
Boston//Northeastern
Post-college getting everything together for grad school. Sort of.
activism
androgyny
boots and bow-ties
coffee
composting
cuddling
cycling
dancing
design
good food
kittens!
maps
music
plants
reading
reuse
sweaters
tea
trans
Piano bike!
Bicycle Phone Charger
In Tanzania, the majority of people live without electricity, yet a third of the country uses mobile phones. Bernard Kiwia, a trained electrician and vocational-school instructor, collaborated with the for-profit social enterprise Global Cycle Solutions (GCS) to design a phone charger from scrap bike and radio parts. Made from spokes, brake tubes, clamps, motors, and capacitors, the device generates power when its roller comes in contact with the bike’s spinning wheel as one rides it
(via tofuboots)
Spring is upon us again and that means I’m back to fundraising for Bikes Not Bombs Bike-A-Thon! Donations go towards BNB’s youth and international programs, which help to teach mechanical skills, create jobs, and provide sustainable transportation in Boston and abroad. Can you spare $5-10 to support an awesome nonprofit today?
I’m excited for spring and warm rides in sun showers.
(via bisikleta)
Modeling for another one of Jessie’s photo projects! @contourcontrast
Two dogs are seen guarding a bicycle in Nanjing, capital of southern China’s Guangxi Province. According to owner Luo Ganren, the pair are protective of him and his possessions. My bike has no lock, and I never worry it would be stolen, thanks to my two puppies. They will guard the bike by holding the bars until they see me back.
bros
(via tofuboots)
(via bisikleta)
Last year, Payam Rajabi got a new job and had to leave Toronto and his girlfriend Clare and move to San Francisco. All that left him feeling a little down — until he came up with his upsy, downsy Valentine idea.
He jumped on his bike, opened his iPhone to a map of San Francisco, and tracking himself with a GPS, he rode 27 miles around the city, taking two and a half hours, burning 1,135 calories and carefully etching a heart shape onto a city map …
Incredible. Read the full story: Guy Pumps Out A Valentine — Literally
StreetMix is a new application in development will allow us to better visualize changes to street designs. It’s going to be an awesome tool for urban planners and advocates to easily create street section diagrams for redesigning our roads with Complete Streets principles. Want to put in a C-curb and create a cycletrack? Go for it! (via Atlantic Cities)
PS I’m geeking out.
Thom made a rad video from the Bike Harvest I helped organize. Love it! :)
GPOY from the Artists for Humanity Giveaway
Photo Cred: Cynthia Ginnetti, AFH
Calvin fn Hobbes.
This looks familiar.
my life.
No Accident: Urban Design and Motor Vehicle Violence
“Around the world, 1.3 million people die in road traffic crashes and 20 to 50 million more are injured each year. It is a massive global health crisis that, for the most part, we ignore.”
Tonight I went to a MIT speaker series that featured the founder of Streetsblog, Aaron Naparstek. He refuses to use the term “accident” to describe motor vehicle crashes. Language can obviously create biases and using “accident” makes it easier to shift the blame or hold no one accountable altogether for traffic fatalities In many cases, crashes are the result of negligence or illegal maneuvers by a road user, and can even be partially the fault of poor planning practices. But can you call something an “accident” when a motorist intentionally rundowns a pedestrian or cyclist? Well, the media tends to think so.
Here are a few interesting points I pulled from the talk:
- We’ve bred a car culture that is stressful, aggressive, and fails to hold drivers responsible for injuries and deaths.
- Victim blaming and incomplete reporting by the police and media, again do not hold drivers accountable for their actions. “No criminality suspected” is a go-to phrase for the NYPD in cases with cyclist fatalities, regardless of the situation and who is at fault.
- Speed kills. When vehicle speeds are kept below 20 mph, conflicts result in injuries rather than deaths. Unfortunately, the talk did not go into detail about how separation between motorists and non-motorized traffic significantly increases safety, although all the examples of street improvements in NYC included cycle tracks.
- We need better data to make solid cases for why road safety needs to be a top funding priority.
The Dutch didn’t just wake-up one day and miraculously have nationwide cycle tracks. They started at a grassroots level with protests over road fatalities (focused on children’s safety) and the 1973 oil crisis. This put enough political pressure on the government to allocate the money they needed toward building these bike- and pedestrian-friendly facilities. So what should we do? Maybe we should take this fight to the streets.
