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Ryan Krzak (YouTube: RWappin), the creator of popular fan music videos for the Weird Al tracks "Albuquerque" and "Everything You Know is Wrong," was hired by Al to animate the "Uptown Funk" segment of his latest release, "Polkamania!." That segment starts at 2:24.

This is similar to how Al liked Jarrett Heather's "Shop Vac" video, and asked him to animate his track "Word Crimes". Jarrett Heather, incidentally, is also in this latest video. He animates the "W.A.P." segment.

The Weird Al-fan dynamic is something more wholesome than can be described. There's a genuine love there.

"Weird Al Yankovic is America's modern pop-rock genius"

— Kurt Cobain

This is "Weird Al" Yankovic's latest polka medley track, an art form he's been perfecting since his first in 1984.

He worked with twelve different animators in the production of this video.

Animator Credits:

• Cyriak – “Helena Polka (Al’s Version)”
• David Wachtenheim & W/M Animation – “Bad Guy” & “Shake It Off (pt. 2)”
• Augenblick Studios – “Hello”
• Ghostbot / Alan Lau, Roque Ballesteros, and Roman Laney – “Flowers”
• Jack D. Evans – “We Don’t Talk About Bruno”
• Vivienne Medrano/Spindlehorse – “Vampire”
• Liam Lynch – “Old Town Road”
• Jarrett Heather – “Despacito” & “WAP”
• Bill Plympton – “Shape of You”
• Ryan Krzak – “Uptown Funk”
• KukoMitzu – “Thank U, Next”
• Victor Yerrid & Melanie Mandl – “Shake It Off (Pt. 1)”

..

"Weird Al Yankovic is America's modern pop-rock genius"

— Kurt Cobain

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Driver faces hit-run homicide in Marion County bike crash

by Matt Rawlings August 14, 2023

Brian Hammons, 55, faces hit-run and criminally negligent homicide charges.

SALEM, Ore. (KOIN) — A man turned himself into investigators on Sunday after fatally striking a bicyclist on a highway, then leaving the scene, according to Oregon State Police.

Brian Hammons, 55, faces hit-run and criminally negligent homicide charges.

Just after 7 p.m. Saturday, police say they responded to the collision in Marion County on Hwy 64 near milepost 5. According to investigators, the bicyclist, Harley Austin, 42, was riding south in the bike lane on Hwy 164 through the intersection of Talbot Rd SE when Hammons, who was driving a Dodge Ram 3500, turned onto the highway and collided with Austin.

Austin was taken to Salem Hospital, and was later pronounced dead, OSP said.

Authorities allege that Hammons left the scene after the arrival of medical personnel but before law enforcement arrived. He turned himself in the next day and was lodged in the Marion County Jail.

The investigation is ongoing. Any witnesses of the incident are being encouraged to contact OSP, referencing case SP23-252845.

A ransom note, copied word for word from a template from a Catholic organization, was sent to the Rancho Peñasquitos Branch Library after two women followed the instructions of an anti-LGBTQ+ organization and checked out every potentially queer or trans book they could find. It backfired.

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“Oops, bike lane was a mistake… Uh, good luck turning right”: Commuter protests “worst cycle lane in the world” – which runs down the middle of the road and was designed “just to save 20 parking spots” – with homemade signs

From the boulevards of Paris to the sunny streets of San Francisco… Never say I don’t take you anywhere on the live blog.

Well, over in San Fran (that’s what they call it, isn’t it?), a controversial cycle lane – which runs, for some reason, up the middle of a main city street – and the “dangerous, ridiculous” construction signs which currently run along it, have inspired one bike riding commuter to install her own, cutting bike lane signs. Valencia Street cycle lane signs 4 (Danielle Baskin)

The new cycle lane on the Californian city’s Valencia Street runs down the middle of the road, with traffic passing on either side.

Cyclists using it are protected by the odd plastic bollard and small rubber kerbs. They have also had to, for the last three months, navigate the large construction signs currently lining the centre of the bike lane for its duration.

Mission Local reports (link is external) that plans for the cycle lane were approved, despite lukewarm support, in a bid to avoid removing delivery spaces on either side of the road. As the bike lane has been built, several cyclists have crashed – including into the signs – and traffic experts have been scathing of the scheme (link is external), describing it as “an abomination” and the “worst infrastructure I have ever seen anywhere in the world”.

Over the past week – in a bid to highlight the absurdity of the cycling ‘infra’ – a local cyclist has launched her own protest by swapping out the much-derided constructions signs with satirical ones of her own making. Valencia Street cycle lane signs (Dylan Hunn, Twitter)

Nine new signs appeared along the cycle path last week, each highlighting the problems with the lane’s layout.

“Uh, good luck turning right,” read one, while another said: “LOL IDK how you will merge.”

Others included: “We regret this bike lane”, “Good luck cyclists”, “LMAO We didn’t think this thru”, “If fire truck comes IDK”, and ““Oops bike lane was a mistake”.

The anonymous jokester, who commutes on Valencia Street every day, told the local paper that she installed the homemade messages because she finds the original signs “pretty ridiculous”.

“They’re an obstruction to cyclists, and also extremely confusing,” she said, noting that on one of her rides she saw one of the signs cracked in half after a cyclist hit it. That inspired her to make slogans lampooning the “dangerous” nature of the signs themselves. Valencia Street cycle lane signs 3 (Danielle Baskin)

Explaining her “good luck turning right” sign, she said: “If you have a green light and the cars have a green light, there’s this little square you have to wait in, but you don’t have much time. You have to make eye contact with drivers and let them let you make a right turn.”

Meanwhile, her fire truck-related sign was a result of the local authority’s decision to also make the cycle lane the designated lane for emergency services.

“Imagine you’re on your bike and there’re cars on both sides, and then the fire truck comes down. Where do you go?” she asked. Valencia Street cycle lane signs 2 (Danielle Baskin)

Despite encountering some opposition from the local authority – who promptly took the signs down – the cyclist returned over the weekend to keep spreading the message.

“Ultimately, I don’t think it’s the best vision for Valencia Street,” she said of the much-maligned cycling infra.

“They did all this just to save 20 parking spots. It’s frustrating because Valencia would be such a nice street, if the focus was on bikes and pedestrians.”

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Dutch e-bike maker VanMoof declared bankrupt

by Toby Sterling

July 18, 2023 5:09 PM EDT

AMSTERDAM, July 18 (Reuters) - Dutch e-bike maker VanMoof has been declared bankrupt and administrators are considering whether it can sell assets and restructure to save the business, the company said on Tuesday.

VanMoof, which raised 100 million euros ($112.56 million) to expand internationally as sales boomed during the COVID-19 pandemic, filed for protection from creditors last week.

A company statement said that a judge at the Amsterdam District Court had declared the company's Dutch operations bankrupt on July 17.

Two administrators named to oversee the company "are continuing to assess the situation at VanMoof", including whether it can sell assets, reorganise and continue to operate.

VanMoof bikes feature a sleek, simplistic design with the battery built into the frame and have become common on the streets of Amsterdam, where the company was founded in 2009.

Dutch broadcaster NOS reported that the company, which sold bikes for more than 2,000 euros ($2,250) each, suffered from high costs to maintain and repair bikes while they were under warranty. About 200,000 have been sold worldwide.

Amsterdam police on Tuesday said their telephone lines were being flooded with customers complaining of "theft" because they paid for bikes that have not been delivered or because they have bikes being repaired at the company's stores, which are now closed.

"The police cannot do anything for customers, regardless of how distressing this may be," a police statement said.

"A bankruptcy is a civil dispute and not a criminal issue."

The VanMoof statement noted that the company's international subsidiaries are not part of the bankruptcy. The company declined to comment further.

NOS reported that brothers Taco and Ties Carlier, VanMoof's founders, had thanked the company's workers in an internal email sent to its 700 employees.

"We are sad, but above all we feel proud of what we accomplished," the email was reported as saying.

($1 = 0.8890 euros)

Reporting by Toby Sterling Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman, Louise Heavens and David Goodman

Alternative link: YouTube

There are more cases than you might think of empathy in all sorts of other animals. Growing up, my dog protected one of our cats from two other cats who bulled her.

Does anyone else have any experiences like that?

What have your towns/cities been doing with their bike infrastructure? It's pretty lousy that some places are going backwards.

As a sidenote, the Culver City Council can be contacted here.

Article text:

Cycling Increased By 57% In One City After a Bike Lane Was Created. But Now It’s Being Removed.

Culver City Council in Los Angeles voted 3-2 this week to take out bike lanes and reinstall vehicular traffic lanes just two years after the bike lanes were put in.

by Michael Venutolo-Mantovani

A project called Move Culver City was launched in November 2021 with the aim of encouraging biking and walking through the 1.3-mile downtown corridor in the Culver City area. The project claimed traffic lanes along the Washington and Culver Boulevard strips, creating bike and bus lanes in their stead, reducing the lanes for vehicle traffic to one in either direction. The project was met with mixed opinions over the last few years.

And while a report released this month by Move Culver City boasted a 57 percent increasing in cycling along the Washington and Culver Boulevard corridor over pre-pandemic levels, the Culver City Council voted 3-2 earlier this week to end the program, remove the bike lanes, and return the corridor to two lanes of vehicular traffic in each direction “wherever feasible.”

The council’s slim margin seems to reflect the public opinion of locals as, according to a story in the Los Angeles Times, “a survey found that 58% of Culver City residents opposed continuing the program.”

Once the traffic lanes are reinstated, area cyclists will have to share lanes with city busses.

In a recent opinion piece in the LA Times, economic and political sociologist Yotala Oszkay Febres-Cordero argued that the rollback of the program would not just be a loss for those who use the bike lanes but also a “devastating setback for how Angelenos see the future of transportation in our region.”

One of the lasting effects of the COVID-19 pandemic was the bike boom that saw some 200 American cities alter their streets to embrace and encourage bicycling. Beyond our own borders, towns and cities the world over embraced temporary infrastructure to encourage biking over the course of the pandemic. Meanwhile, many others have redefined their streets to make bicycling a more permanent function of their cities.

And though many cities and towns have returned their streets to their pre-pandemic car-focused configurations, several are beginning to take roads back from cars, to embrace a more bike-friendly outlook, and to install permanent bike infrastructure.

The biggest example is Paris, which has famously created permanent bike lane along the Rue de Rivoli, one of the city’s most trodden thoroughfares and one that cuts straight through the heart of town. The move was arguably the most high-profile step in Paris’s endeavor to create a more bike-friendly and less car-reliant city.

An example on the opposite side of the spectrum (and on a more personal level) is my own very small town of Chapel Hill, which reduced its main drag from two lanes of traffic in either direction to one, creating a permanent bike lane running the length of Franklin Street.

Of course, the news we often hear is good. More bikes lanes, more permanent infrastructure, more cities realizing the role bikes can play in a climate-conscious future. Rarely do we hear the opposite, of the removal and reduction of bike lanes. Which is why the Culver City vote, even though it only affects a 1.3-mile stretch of road, is disheartening to say the least.

To quote Ms. Febres-Cordero once again, “Sure, a 1.3-mile corridor is just a 1.3-mile corridor. But it could be so much more.”

I'm sure I'm not the only one, but... what are your thoughts? Is there any other bicycle-related content (besides bike riding itself, of course) that has that effect on you?

BicycleDutch: Invidious | YouTube

BikeBlogger: Invidious | YouTube

I was in the U.S. visiting New York City this year for the first time since 2019, and... wow. Lots and lots of new infrastructure. The newer stuff is a lot more comprehensive than the older stuff, but there's still a very long way to go.

Is there anyone here from N.Y.C. who can speak to what it's like to ride around the city as a native? I hear tell that congestion pricing may soon be coming to Manhattan... and this should increase bike ridership and public transit.