An amazing quote from Lindsey Graham in this Atlantic story. It really captures an essential truth about politics that too few people ever really come to terms with. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

The NIMBYs in Paris (led by an architect, big shocker 🙄) protested one of the most iconic constructions in the world claiming it was “out of scale and ugly”. They are always wrong

Another example is in-unit appliance rental. A big reason this is done is because federal housing money is only available under a specific rent limit that is too low to build in Seattle. So renting out “add-ons” is a workaround for a high CoL city. So the solution is not build subsidized housing.

This is a great example of vibes making renters’ lives worse. Like, for example, pets do increase wear and tear, so the outcome here is either pets get banned, or non-pet renters subsidize renters with pets. How is that a good use of public policy?

Welp. Guess I’m not getting my pipes today.

Make a list of the worst f***ing people in the discourse so we never have to take them seriously again.

ICE has murdered another person and is using the same lies they told after they murdered Silverio Villegas González and Renee Good. Rest in peace Lorenzo Salgado Araujo.

Dammit Maine Dems, get your s*** together.

I’m renaming SEPA the SEattle Process Annihilator - the place where good ideas go to die.

Our Revolution, upon no longer being able to plausibly deny Platner is a sexual predictor: “We were really proud of him and he did great work”

🫠

Anyone who wants to come over and wield a 48" pipe wrench at my house to feel extra manly, you are welcome.

Why is the right side of his face melting?

Yes this, though I'll caveat that I've met a number of politicians that are oddly open about their personal lives in ways I find weird, and I think it's because it is perceived as authentic or real.

Right: Liking rap music is a CIA psyop Left: Liking rap music is cultural appropriation Mealy Centrist Millennial: Girl Talk - Feed the Animals

when you manage costs you can have nice things

The average American car makes 4 trips/day, so this is basically what it looks like if ~all trips are handled by transit for most people.

DESC lobbying the mayor’s office to regressively tax renters to line DESC’s pockets—and the mayor jumping like a trained poodle—should be a huge ethics scandal, but I have a feeling the outrage just won’t show up.

DESC turns out to be NIMBY grifters. That’s a shame.

Maybe unpopular opinion, but the Blue Angels buzz my house every year and frankly it’s awesome. Fighter jets are a triumph of American accomplishment and seeing them up close is rare and incredible.

Let’s see if I get this right: the corporations that profit off the housing crisis think we should continue to regressively tax renters, make the housing crisis worse, and them massive bags of tax dollars??? Why would they do this??? 🙃

This is the next big problem: the libs are the YIMBYs in Seattle, but they’re also not really interested in building anything of substance. Or rather, special interest extractions always take priority over public infrastructure.

My pessimistic runs in the opposite direction! YIMBYism seems unstoppable, while no real popular or elite movement has built for transit. Instead even our largest cities only have transit cargo cults, which build transit-shaped abominations (ESA, PABT, 5x cost Subway extensions, RLX, “light rail”).

Thought the Rise of Zohran meant we’d left this component of the left in the dustbin of history tbh

We conflate rising rents w/ gentrification & overgeneralize about gentrification. In some cities Black n-hoods gentrify, displacing legacy residents. More often white working class n-hoods gentrify while deteriorating conditions in lower income Black n-hoods cause residents to leave (see Baltimore).

Bikes are better as possibly modal transpo share, but we’ve been digging a hole for a century, it’s going to take longer to dig out for most of America.

There's nothing worse than Seattle being on the economic frontier. 🙃

This is so normal. No corporations don’t need tax breaks, but he doesn’t do the mass hysteria, just says “make things fair and transparent.”

People have rented commercial/industrial space for their hobbies for at least a century. They pay taxes. They don’t use much in the way of services. It’s fine.

The really telling part about Jilani & Stoller using "HR Lady" to describe the situation with Platner is: that didn't involve work / HR at all. By "HR Lady," they mean, "any woman who objects to something I think I should be able to do." Every woman who says "no" is the "HR Lady."

I feel like if you’re suggesting that being a misogynist dipshit is essential to political success, that says more about you than it does about politics.

Lowkey think if the mayor were serious about development, she’d do a highly visible SDOT program planting trees on street ROWs. Voters are going to be less duped by this bs if they see a bunch of trees going in.

5-star voting solves this problem. Give them all a rating 1-5 stars. Highest rating wins.

Correct, Platner is garbage and his values are atrocious, but at least he’s not going to rubber stamp the looting and demise of the Republic.

Combined sewer overflows, tire dust, pesticides, maritime traffic, climate change, sprawl...None of these issues seemed to register, but remove a few zoning restrictions and suddenly every college educated white person in town is an amateur marine biologist.

The NYT (and the left-liberal spectrum more broadly) is reflexively anti-technology and progress. Also, maybe there are some misalignment problems in the coalition.

I mean, AFAICT he shortchanged the pension program (creating a future debt) and delayed implementation of a required education spending bill he previously supported. I’m not sure either of those are “good,” like imagine if a mayor Cuomo did them!

A middle ground for involuntary commitment could be a compulsory psychiatric treatment facility that is a substitute for jail for the criminally violently mentally ill. Would be better than prison and better than leaving them on the streets.

ORDINANCE PASSES UNANIMOUSLY SHARED STREETS ARE LEGAL IN THE CITY OF SEATTLE THIS HAS BEEN MY DREAM FOR YEARS AND NOW IT IS HAPPENING IF YOU COME HOME FROM EUROPE WISHING WE COULD HAVE WHAT THEY HAVE THEN WHY NOT DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT SOMETIMES YOU WILL SUCCEED

😮

Not going to hold my breath waiting for a retraction from every publication that treated this study as proof that YIMBYism doesn't work.

Nobody should be allowed to farm more than 350 acres. If we set that limit, the price of farm land will decline, and more families will be able to grow their own food. This is such an obvious solution, I can't believe we don't already do this.

Most of the anti-gentrification and cultural objections to growth are about demographic dilution and not absolute numbers. Anti-growth doesn’t solve that problem, though, and we sadly don’t try other stuff to preserve the cultural aspects.

It’s worth reading but I couldn’t have found it less convincing. The only argument is uncertainty. But without action, millions will die and hundreds of millions will suffer. So it seems taking some risk to prevent that makes sense? The only alternative he proposes is do nothing.

Yglesias derangement and Stancil derangement are in the long tradition of hating and bullying nerds.

P cool to see the trades unions on the side of economic growth for the nation. (I mean, duh!)

We recently ran a massive natural experiment on this. Covid 19 collapsed demand for urban housing in 2020, sending vacancy rates over 10% in new York and San Francisco for the first time in decades. Landlords desperate to fill their units slashed asking rents and loaded on concessions.