Mike Hicks
@mulad.bsky.social
1.4K followers 430 following 17K posts
Tech guy into transpo and urbanism, politics to push the needle. Once a streets.mn person. A Swiftie to ease my unhappy singleness Transit blog: https://hizeph400.blogspot.com/
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Whatever it is, it'll be on the menu at some Zohran election-night watch parties

Tastes like... Victory
What kind of martini would this be?
Reposted by Mike Hicks
Reposted by Mike Hicks
ICYMI - SNAP benefits will be suspended Nov 1 due to the federal shutdown. Counties and Tribal Nations are no longer processing new applications.

1) Now is the time to donate money to your local food shelf.

2) If you need help still apply.

dcyf.mn.gov/federal-shut...
Federal shutdown information
dcyf.mn.gov
Yep, especially when we want to pull speed limits down on local streets to improve bike and pedestrian safety
Reposted by Mike Hicks
As much as I appreciate Metro Transit building out an aBRT network it will never be able to compete with driving time wise. Only a proper metro system (with buses feeding into it), along with a broad regional rail network can bring transit travel times closer to driving.
One thing I wish we would do far, far more in our ped/bike/transit writing and advocacy is acknowledge the time tax those modes of transport often incur, and what it means for people to absorb that tax. When we don't, I think it makes us a bit dishonest and weakens our advocacy!
Reposted by Mike Hicks
Federal court (after six years!) rules on and dismisses Gavin McInnes' lawsuit against the @splcenter.org

The case sought to declare it defamatory to say McInnes and the Proud Boys are "extremists," "far-right," a "hate group", or "white supremacists."

storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
Aside from what is actually alleged in the complaint
(including materials adopted in it) , which is all the
court may look at, see Coral Ridge, 6 F.4th at 1253,
Mcinnes's briefing returns to the same losing refrain: the Proud Boys says it is not a hate group; SPLC
acknowledges that the Proud Boys says it is not a hate
group and that the group contends that it has engaged in
non-hateful activity; therefore, SPLC acted with actual
malice in describing it as a hate group. Under this
flawed formulation, any published statement denied by a
public figure is, by virtue of that denial, published
with actual malice.
squarely rejected. The Eleventh Circuit has noted that "there is a
fair debate about whether the term hate group is
definable in such a way that it is provable as false" and
that the "debate is complicated [further] by the fact
that SPLC put its own definition of the term on its
website." Coral. Ridge, 6 F.4th at 1252 n.7. This court
need not resolve at this time the questions posed in that
debate. But if it had to, it has already found that
SPLC's hate group designation was not provable as false
because "there is no single, commonly understood meaning
of the term 'hate group'" from which to test the label's
veracity. Coral. Ridge, 406 F. Supp. 3d 1258, 1274 (M.D.
Ala. 2019) (Thompson, J.).
The underlying issue highlighted throughout
Mcinnes' s arguments is that SPLC has amassed too much
influence over social media companies. This is neither
here nor there. It has been said that the film critic
Roger Ebert could make or break a film's financial... success in three words or less. Ebert could have declared
that "The Godfather" was a hateful, misogynistic, deeply
racist film and that could have ruined the film's boxoffice.
But that would not, by fiat of Ebert' s influence,
make his judgment-based opinion a fact. That is, Ebert
calling the movie hateful does not make the movie, in
fact, hateful.
Reposted by Mike Hicks
AOC has just officially become the top House fundraiser, beating out Hakeem Jeffries. Now lemme take a big sip of coffee as I look at the age distribution of donors to AOC vs Jeffries
Alexandria Ocasio Cortez
80000
60000
40000
20000
0
Bernie Sanders
200000
Number of Donations
150000
100000
50000
Elizabeth Warren
60000
40000
20000
01
25
50
Donor Age
75 Hakeem Jeffries
40000
30000
20000
10000
Nancy Pelosi
100000
Number of
Donations
75000
50000
25000
Suzan DelBene
2000
1500
1000
500
25
50
75
Donor Age
Reposted by Mike Hicks
ICE recruitment ads have been all over streaming services. Artists do not want the places where people find and listen to our work to promote ICE, a racist, corrupt group who kidnap and disappear innocent people. Why the fuck is Spotify running ICE ads?
Reposted by Mike Hicks
Charli XCX Escalates Feud By Luring Travis Kelce Away With Beef Stick
Charli XCX Escalates Feud By Luring Travis Kelce Away With Beef Stick
$40 million allocated to this, which means some real effort, unlike endless studies that are typically in the ~$300k range
A $40M MOU signed by Michigan Central, MDOT, & Detroit to launch research & engineering for a new multimodal hub at historic Michigan Central Station - bringing passenger rail back to the station for the first time since 1988!

http://railpax.org/E2sw50XcBHJ
Michigan Central transportation hub proposal includes Amtrak service
Research and engineering will start on a transportation hub aimed to provide a new passenger rail and intercity bus station at Michigan Central.
railpax.org
Reposted by Mike Hicks
I haven't seen research that puts numbers on it, but I suspect that voting for a Public Utility Commissioner (in the 10 states where they're elected vs. governor-appointed) is among the most impactful invididual climate actions. PUCs are very influential and turnout in PUC elections is often <10%.
Today on Volts: hey listen up! The most important election of the year is happening in Georgia next month. Two seats on the (currently all-GOP) Public Service Commission are up & rising electricity prices are on everyone's mind. This is a bellwether for next year's governor & midterm elections!
Pay attention to the most important political race of 2025
With energy affordability set to dominate national politics, Peter Hubbard and Brionté McCorkle explain why a down-ballot Georgia race is ground zero for the fight.
www.volts.wtf
Reposted by Mike Hicks
Streetsblog National Security Desk gets action: Federal judge Lewis Kaplan has ordered the federal government to pay the MTA $33,898,500 in Transit Security Grant Program funds after the feds initially told the MTA it was getting $0
Reposted by Mike Hicks
A terrific AFP fact check uses reverse image searches to expose how a White House video took scenes from Florida, Texas, South Carolina and Nebraska and lied that they showed "Chicago is in chaos."
factcheck.afp.com/doc.afp.com....
Post from WH about Chicago "in chaos," showing scene from another state.
Yep, that's what I was thinking too!
Reposted by Mike Hicks
I was just going through a box of my old memorabilia, and I thought I’d share this concert ad from 1984 (just in case you thought my biopic was LYING about Howie Mandel opening for me!)
1984 L.A. newspaper clipping advertising a Weird Al concert at the Starlight Amphitheatre “with very special guest Howie Mandel”
The $1 coin designs for 2026 commemorate Norman Borlaug, the Cray-1 supercomputer, Steve Jobs, and mobile refrigeration, for Iowa, Wisconsin, California, and Minnesota, respectively
www.usmint.gov/news/press-r...
Four bronze-toned coin designs featuring a man holding crops for Dr. Norman Borlaug on the Iowa coin, a top-down view of the C-shaped Cray-1 supercomputer for Wisconsin, a rendering of Steve Jobs sitting cross-legged with landscape in the background for California, and a curvy mid-20th-centruy semi truck with Minnesota and various foods and supplies on the side for the final coin
Reposted by Mike Hicks
To catch you up, Indiana University’s student newspaper reported:
• It was told to print no news in its homecoming edition, set to come out Thursday.
• It refused.
• The director of student media was fired.
• Hours later, IU cut all print editions of the paper, including Thursday’s issue.
UPDATE: More at Indiana University, with all IDS print being cut.

The university chancellor claims “the campus is completing the shift from print to digital effective this week” — despite the fight earlier this week having been over a print Homecoming edition. www.idsnews.com/article/2025...
By Mia Hilkowitz and Andrew Miller
Oct 15, 2025 5:54 pm • Updated Oct 15, 2025 7:28 pm
f
Indiana University fully cut the Indiana Daily Student's print newspaper - including the special publications it had earlier indicated it wanted us to run - Tuesday evening, hours after firing its student media director. Our next edition, part of volume 158, in our 158th year of publication, was set to go out
Thursday.
Reposted by Mike Hicks