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   your auntifa liza 🇵🇷 🦛 🦦 (blogdiva@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 01-Apr-2026 15:06:07 JST your auntifa liza 🇵🇷 🦛 🦦

   RE: https://mastodon.social/@randahl/116325598364670792

   am sorry, but $4/gallon in 2026 is a fucking joke. back in the 1990s, gas was $7/g̶a̶l̶l̶o̶n̶ litre in many european countries.

   petrol should be $20 a gallon if not more because USians should have changed the way they develop suburbs.

   USA DOESN’T NEED CARS, it needs walkable towns with stores, hospitals, schools, post offices, grocery stores.

   i hate USA suburbs because they are literally food, health care and education deserts.

   KILL THE USA SUBURB,
   SAVE THE WORLD.

   #USpol #cars #NoBloodForOil

   • GreenSkyOverMe (Monika) repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Abram Kedge🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🇨🇦 (abramkedge@beige.party)'s status on Wednesday, 01-Apr-2026 15:06:07 JST Abram Kedge🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🇨🇦

     in reply to

     @blogdiva In the US it was a 1.5 mile walk to our nearest coffee shop, which was the closest shop of any kind - I walked to the cafe only about three times in more than ten years. I was sick of having to get in the car for every single errand.

     When I moved back to the UK, I spent three weeks traveling by bus and train to different towns and cities. I found a perfect walkable place with good transport links and a lively high street, but there are an awful lot of towns with abandoned centres and out of town retail parks with limited if any bus services. Away from the major population centres, it would be difficult to cope without a car.

     I'm coming up to three years happily car-free, but the UK could still use more effort revitalising towns and improving public transport links.

     I spoke to shop owners in my travels, the main problem that they shared was extortionate shop rents. For tax reasons, it seems the property owners literally do not care if the shop is empty or occupied. I suspect also that the "value" of the building is related to the rent cost - whether or not there are tenants.

     Another town (Harlow, where I lived as a kid) used to have a thriving shopping centre and a large busy market. The town council decided to use the market stall space rents as a revenue stream. Within a few years the market was gone. Now, the market square with its almost entirely gutted surrounding shops looks like a set from The Walking Dead.

   • Embed this notice
     Edward (yugthebug@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 01-Apr-2026 15:10:16 JST Edward

     in reply to

     @blogdiva 🗣️🗣️🗣️ 4 bucks a gallon is fucking cheap, here its like 2.5 dollars a litre

   • Embed this notice
     GreenSkyOverMe (Monika) (greenskyoverme@ohai.social)'s status on Wednesday, 01-Apr-2026 15:12:47 JST GreenSkyOverMe (Monika)

     in reply to

     @blogdiva I don’t think it was 7 dollars per liter in the 90s in Europe. It’s not 7 dollars per liter now.

     But it sure has been at least twice the US price at all times.

   • Embed this notice
     mausmalone (mausmalone@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 01-Apr-2026 15:17:40 JST mausmalone

     in reply to

     @blogdiva it's a but of a tangent but I hate the word "suburb." It's so vague as to be completely useless. It's everything that isn't a major city center but also not wilderness or farmland.

     It's how towns like mine justify not providing the public transit and bike infrastructure they should despite having a population density higher than most of Chicago.

   • Embed this notice
     PSoul•US 🏳️‍🌈 (psoul@sfba.social)'s status on Wednesday, 01-Apr-2026 15:26:09 JST PSoul•US 🏳️‍🌈

     in reply to

     @blogdiva amen. When are you running for office because killing the suburbs is on my agenda, too!

     The only draw back with $20/gal gas prices is that if oil is expensive then coal isn’t and that is a problem.

   • Embed this notice
     GreenSkyOverMe (Monika) (greenskyoverme@ohai.social)'s status on Wednesday, 01-Apr-2026 15:26:27 JST GreenSkyOverMe (Monika)

     in reply to

     • PSoul•US 🏳️‍🌈

     @psoul Why would expensive oil make coal cheaper?

   • Embed this notice
     Manny Dexter (mannydexter@beige.party)'s status on Wednesday, 01-Apr-2026 15:26:53 JST Manny Dexter

     in reply to

     @blogdiva

     The thing about gas is, it's a trap.

     Your car uses it up. Kinda like printers and ink. My car has about 97k miles on it, and my fuel stats say my average is about 35 mpg. (I only drive in city traffic, cuz I'm legally blind and can't exceed 45 mph).

     97,000 divided by 35 is about 2770 gallons. Using data from the US Energy Information Administration (https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=EMM_EPMRU_PTE_STX_DPG&f=W) the average price per gallon for the life of my car is $2.59.

     That's $7,175 approximately. And that gas is *gone*. It's like toilet paper - you only use it once. Renewables are like a bidet - you use water, but water is part of a cycle - it can be cleaned and reused.

     There's an excellent video about this by Tech Connextras on YouTube called "You are being misled about renewable energy technology," on the Tech Connextras channel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zgxb8I1nk2I

     GreenSkyOverMe (Monika) repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Azuaron (azuaron@cyberpunk.lol)'s status on Wednesday, 01-Apr-2026 15:28:10 JST Azuaron

     in reply to

     • Manny Dexter

     @MannyDexter @blogdiva Yeah, I believe that's the video where he brings up that we could replace all corn farms for ethanol--not corn for food, just the corn we grow to throw ethanol in our gas--with solar panels and supply ALL of the electricity for the ENTIRE United States.

   • Embed this notice
     Andres (andres4ny@social.ridetrans.it)'s status on Wednesday, 01-Apr-2026 15:30:57 JST Andres

     in reply to

     • Kinene⭐🐻

     @c_merriweather @blogdiva Somewhere on one of my hard drives, I have pics of me hauling > 80lbs (two sack of feed plus misc other chicken/duck supplies) by cargo bike 😃

   • Embed this notice
     Kinene⭐🐻 (c_merriweather@social.linux.pizza)'s status on Wednesday, 01-Apr-2026 15:30:59 JST Kinene⭐🐻

     in reply to

     @blogdiva It is already ±$6 in parts of California. I would like more mass transit, but in a county of 65,000 people in the California foothills, one can only expect so much.

     I still need some kind of vehicle to transport 40 lb sacks of chicken feed. My birds insist.

     (and the two full-size bags of potting soil, 5' plant trellises, and 15 gal pots, waiting to be unloaded, when it stops raining)

     GreenSkyOverMe (Monika) repeated this.
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     Michael Wyman (mwyman@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 01-Apr-2026 15:32:46 JST Michael Wyman

     in reply to

     • Poloniousmonk

     @Uair @blogdiva America also needs to use the funds to build public parks and green space in cities. Many of cities are atrocious at having safe outdoor green spaces for kids (and adults).

   • Embed this notice
     Poloniousmonk (uair@autistics.life)'s status on Wednesday, 01-Apr-2026 15:32:47 JST Poloniousmonk

     in reply to

     @blogdiva

     Petrol is priced by the liter in Europe, and when I was there in the 90s, the per-liter price was higher than our per-gallon price. They used the revenue to build public transportation. I've been saying since then we should as well.

     Start with a one dollar a gallon gas tax and increase it a dollar a year indefinitely.

     GreenSkyOverMe (Monika) repeated this.