Pleased to report that the miso cod soup crushed it at Xmas dinner.

if bari weiss had tried to do 9/11 there'd be three towers now

Feel like this encapsulates the MAHA low trust/high gullibility mindset. Steve Martin was ahead of his time.

My Top 10 Songs of 2025: 10. GC Shuffle - LaRussell 9. Float - The Altons 8. U Ain't Gotta Chance - Big L & Nas 7. 2004 - YG 6. My People - Kirby 5. Community - JID & Clipse 4. Hop Out Cho Feelins - Kai Banx, Smino, & Buddy 3. Hard Times - Lady Wray 2. FICO - Clipse 1. Will Be - De La Soul

Illustrating this point for Berkeley. Despite the fact that Berkeley has built virtually nothing post-Nixon, local property tax revenues are disproportionately drawn from recently-built homes. These charts show the number and value of residential structures in Berkeley by decade built.

Follow-up thought: at the end, @muhammadspeaks.bsky.social says that the challenges with condo production all stem from a focus on protection that’s so strong it kills the whole industry. The same is true with rental housing, where tenant protections are sacred but have unintended consequences.

Another banger from this podcast series. Really cool that @muhammadspeaks.bsky.social is becoming The Condo Guy™️.

Couldn’t sleep last night and made the regrettable decision to listen to Labi Siffre, an artist whose music raises the question, “What if there were an entire catalog of tearjerkers more sentimental than the MASH theme song?”

I hate Elon's politics but what actually drove me away from Twitter was transition from a site where the replies to a tweet would often be smarter/funnier than the original to one where unfunny if not downright offensive tryhard shit was lifted to the top of every thread

To me the most interesting response is the supervisor candidate who says it’s not his business. Housing is a city- and region-wide issue! Being overly deferential to the district representative is part of the problem!

The transformation of San Diego’s Little Italy neighborhood is genuinely inspiring and shows the dormant potential of regular city streets.

In June of this year, DHS Spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin forcefully proclaimed on social media that Kilmar Abrego Garcia “will never go free on American soil” Today he was released by a federal judge He spent this evening with his family In Maryland

Oakland is making $65 Million available for acquisition and deed restriction of existing (rent-controlled) housing, and only $7 Million for rehabilitation of affordable housing. Just a complete joke. Heads ought to roll for decisions like this.

Nothing against pre-approved building plans, but my City published a dozen different pre-approved ADU plans a year ago and hasn’t gotten a single submittal using them. Also, this is a paid advertorial.

Utterly baffled by the decision to build a cinderblock wall here.

I was persuaded by Kelsey Piper’s article about education in Mississippi, so it’s interesting to look at this 2023 article about Michigan Democrats going the opposite way.

Somebody should tell Elon about Ras Kass's song Nature of the Threat, just to see his head explode. genius.com/Ras-kass-nat...

Why is the California governor's race field so dismal

RIP Steve Cropper, guitar god and one of the architects of the Stax sound. 🕊️

Really good podcast. I was very surprised that LIHTC accounts for a quarter of all multifamily production since 2000. That’s not good! (Although I guess development more or less stopped for a few years during the great recession.)

Something I think about a lot is that the most carbrained elected official in my city sustained a literal brain injury during a car accident, to the point that people tell me he’s not the same person he was before.

There’s a longstanding joke about me that despite being white and a dj, I don’t know white music. Tonight my wife and mil were incredulous that I didn’t know the song Suzy Q by Credence.

I’ve done threads on this before and will grab sources if folks want them, but only a small % of calls for service to fire rescue departments are actually fires. Something like 1 - 5% depending on department. This coincides with the substantial decline in structure fires over the same period.

New De La album is really good. Damn near a miracle to make an album this good so deep into their career, and with Dave gone.

10 years ago, LA Mas did a cutting-edge community engagement process called Futuro de Frogtown, about the future of Elysian Valley. All these professionals and experts came in, and people basically said, nope, we don't want any change. What's changed since then is state legislation took over.

Up reading NFPA blog posts like a sicko, and the author of this one about protection of homes from wildfires decided that the only choice worth mentioning specifically be anti-density. Meanwhile the actual standards are mostly about vegetation / defensible space and construction materials.

I respect all these professors a lot, but ”people care about aesthetics” is a maddening argument when (a) planners have tried and failed a million times to regulate their way into attractive buildings, and (b) the design of buildings comes from a complex combo of planning & building codes, (cont’d)…

San Francisco's small sites preservation program is the same for what i've seen. The portfolios nonprofits have assembled of these old, small, rent controlled properties are collectively AT BEST just breaking even, which is highly risky for leveraged properties with no upside to offset that risk.

Reading the Oakland staff report about forgiveness of the EBALDC loans. They threw in a bunch of fancy-sounding accountability measures, but the truth is that the ACAH program was bad news from the start, and run-down old rent-controlled apartment buildings should ~never be acquired by nonprofits.

Was awakened from my nap by my daughter beating me with a sock puppet.

Rebecca Kaplan quietly landing a $149k/year job with the City of Oakland instead of shrinking away into the ether is really galling.

Hearing reports that Trump took the shahada, can anyone confirm?

New from me for Inside Philanthropy: California foundations need to decide whether they genuinely want to improve housing affordability or would rather keep funding NIMBY obstructionism in Sacramento. www.insidephilanthropy.com/home/philant...

Out of curiosity, I actually listened to the Tucker Carlson/Nick Fuentes interview. I think the most telling part was when Fuentes says he‘s a big fan of Stalin. Carlson just says they’ll circle back to that and then never does.

Hell yeah brother

It’s unfortunate that people on X have to post links downthread so the algorithm doesn’t suppress them, but at least the discourse is elevated and respectful.

How is this song going under the radar? Best De La in years. Chills at the line “step to us with a Goliath, got a David right here.” RIP Dave

Great episode.

Now that voters have also turned on Trump over the economy despite real wages increasing, has Will Stancil expressed any reflection or self-awareness? Not going to wade through 50k posts to find out.

Open to the idea that Newsom’s experimentation over the last year was like when Lil Wayne started using Autotune. Was trainwreck bad for a bit but then the shit started actually working.

They really had the chance to drive his popularity down to the low 30s or below and functionally end his presidency, and they blinked. Cowards.

I bet there are a whole bunch of policies CA could adopt to move the construction industry away from light wood frame and towards CMU block, mass timber, etc.

As the saying goes, always interrupt your enemy when he’s making a mistake.

Can’t believe Nithya Raman is trying to change LA’s rent control to limit rent increases to 60% of CPI. Awful policy.

Housing policy expert (??) Ezra Klein is a strong supporter of inclusionary (?) and artist (??) housing??

Met with the Fire Marshal today and he seemed to have a surprisingly pro-development stance…even threw the local water authority under the bus for their delays and onerous requirements.

Real life alert! The homie @reggaedelgado.bsky.social is on here.

So there are at least 3 apartment projects in Oakland that were literally abandoned mid-construction?? 😬

Re: tonight.