A few readers have asked what personal information I collect with this letter. The only bit of your information that I have is your email address. I use that to send this letter and nothing else. I've disabled all tracking, referring, and analytics in Buttondown because, to be completely honest, I find all of that more than a little creepy.

With that out of the way, let's get Monday started with these links:

How car-loving American cities fell so far behind their global peers on public transit — This is what happens when you build cities and suburbs around cars, not people. And, because of that, the people who can least afford to suffer wind up suffering.

And here's an interesting follow up.

From the article:

Unlike in much of Europe, people in the US often have little choice but to rely on cars. Those unable to drive due to age, disability or the rising costs of car ownership that have only worsened amid the Iran war routinely face a laborious gauntlet of patchy public transport options.

Limiting Not Just Screen Time, But Screen Space — A musing on how our use of the internet has shifted over the decades, with it becoming not just more and more pervasive in our lives but for many an almost integral part of their existence.

From the article:

Today’s internet bends us toward solipsism. We no longer imagine ourselves to be placing our images and our voices into the internet. We imagine ourselves — our physical beings — to be living within it. We imagine the internet to be our environment.

The man who proved rockets could reach space was mocked in his time — Much derided during life, lionized after death. A sad but sadly not unusual fate for someone who pushed the boundaries of what was possible, especially in an area that many felt was fanciful and improbable.

From the article:

As the teenage Goddard predicted, yesterday’s dreams often remain tomorrow’s hopes—and Goddard’s work will continue to fuel the space exploration of the future.

When Electricity Met Democratic Revolution — A fascinating exploration of electricity, both as a force of nature and as a metaphor for human and political aspirations.

From the article:

The sudden prominence of electrical metaphors in politics dovetailed with the ascent of the far-left party known as the Jacobins and the emergence of Maximilien Robespierre as party leader. The Jacobins pushed for expanded social and economic rights, social equality, and swift, inexorable revolutionary justice meted out to naysayers—aristocrats, recalcitrant priests, moderate politicians, and anyone else who might try to short-circuit their newborn egalitarian republic.