April 2026 – Complaint Hub

Replace ONE car trip with a bike trip

Originally posted today in 2023

This year for my birthday, I’m not asking for donations to a charity. Donating to charity is great, and if you have the means, please do, but this year I’d like you to think about something different. Since my birthday is on Earth Day AND I’d like a habitable world for my kids and grandkids to grow up in AND I’m an insufferable bike advocate, for my birthday I’d like you to think about biking.

Think about replacing ONE car trip this week with a bike trip. If you don’t have a bike, for the purpose of this exercise assume you do. Don’t get bogged down in not having a bike and miss the broader picture. If replacing ONE car trip with a bike trip would be really difficult, please think about why.

Is it money? Even a top of the line electric-assist cargo bike costs less to buy than the average yearly cost of owning a car. And a solid utilitarian bike can cost WAY less than that, probably less than one month’s car payment.

Is it safety? Imagine there was a network of bike lanes completely separated from car traffic and see if that would fix it.

Is it weather? This is a legitimate challenge, but I promise you that someone in your situation in a MUCH worse climate has solved this problem, and you can, too.

Is it logistics? Where do you park? Think about how much we subsidize car parking and think about how little we would need to throw at bike parking to make this problem disappear.

What else is keeping you from using one of the most environmentally friendly modes of transportation available?

No ultra-rich person will ever build a successful city

I was listening to the Behind the Bastards podcast on MBS, as recommended by Peter, and subsequently recommended by me, and one little aside was about how ultra-wealthy libertarians are always trying to build cities. MBS is trying to build a crazy wall-city that I’m sure will totally happen.

It got me thinking that, when you put aside the fact that cities are HARD to just build from nothing, all of these ideas are doomed to fail because anyone with the wealth to just build a city is fundamentally incompatible with a well-functioning society. When you have a society where one successful adult makes a nice salary, and the God-King of that society spends that annual salary on a random Saturday evening get-together with friends, that society is sick. No number of shiny new skyscrapers and efficient vertical farms or whatever the latest trend is can make that society okay.

Doing small things as a parent

I am reminded of something I saw on Twitter (now known as X) some years ago. It was a parent talking about how their child likes to hide under the covers with a flashlight to read, thinking they are getting away with something. but never noticing that somehow the flashlight batteries are always charged.

Today Gremlin 1 is riding her bike to soccer practice and I charged the lights for her, which she would never have thought to do and will not notice that it was done for her. But she’ll be safer on the way home.

Let me explain Bell’s Oberon

So I did not grow up in Michigan. I have never lived in Michigan. But the woman I married did both, and so I know more about Michigan than most people who’ve never lived there. I’ve been there a lot – it’s a cool state. If you’ve never seen an ocean-sized lake, you should rectify that by visiting Michigan. Traverse City is one of my favorite spots – if you like water, biking, and beer, it might be one of yours, too.

Maybe you’ve had Bell’s Oberon. Maybe you thought, “well, this is a pretty mid wheat beer”. You aren’t wrong, but you are missing the true meaning of Oberon.

Oberon is seasonal. It comes out in March or so every year. And the thing you’re missing when you dismiss it on objective taste grounds is that for many Michiganders, that first sip of Oberon means that winter is over. The long, dark, cold Michigan winter is officially over as soon as you take that first sip of Oberon. And when you understand this, you understand its outsized importance to the locals