Put 3 kids thru college w/ a blue collar job. Worked dawn to dusk, building homes. Loved his wife of 30yrs & John Deere. Lived here longer than I've been alive It doesn't make a life more valuable. But so many immigrants detained, deported, dying bear the trappings of "real America" we mythologize

One week into SB 79 taking effect, and there are already over 200 new homes proposed in Palo Alto across 5 buildings. The last year in which Palo Alto permitted more than 200 new apartments was 2007. www.paloaltoonline.com/palo-alto/20...

Antisemitism is a real and growing issue in American politics and culture, but the fact that American Jewish organizations like the ADL and AJC went harder on Mamdani than on Platner is part of why we are making no headway in fighting it.

today is a good day

This is crying out for the state legislature to pass a bill adopting the 2027 IBC’s four-story single-stair allowance

Hundreds of people in Washington, DC have had the constitutional duty and the sacred public trust to stop this perversion of our American institutions. They’ve chosen to sit, flaccid and impotent, thinking that shattering our institutions helps their ‘side’. Thinking we’ll forget.

y'all wanna talk about the Epstein class?

Promising statement on CA high-speed rail from Becerra here. Looking forward to hearing more about how he would cut through high-speed rail bottlenecks as governor - we've got some ideas. 🧵 www.newsweek.com/california-e...

The worst part of US city planning is that living somewhere where one doesn't need to personally use car tires almost always mean having to breathe more amount of other people's tires 🫠

Note: The US has no safety regs that limit vehicle blind zones. Federal car rules only protect those inside a vehicle. Others are ignored.

I realize writers aren’t responsible for headlines, but describing California’s condo laws as “bureaucracy” is particularly wrong. Instead of civil servants protecting home buyer deposits and ensuring quality construction, we’ve outsourced the work to plaintiffs attorneys.

Come ON. We fought a revolutionary war over such abuses. We wrote habeas corpus into our Constitution. This is INTOLERABLE.

Two weeks in Scandinavian cities and I’ve not seen a single fire truck. Lots of vans. No ladders. No engines. It’s almost like if you don’t send them out on the 97% of calls that aren’t fires you need fewer of them and can use cheaper & faster vehicles for those.

So many cyclist deaths begin with a stationary driver blocking the bike lane. The disconnect between cyclists, who see this as a life-threatening reckless action, and drivers, who see this is a minor parking infraction, is what often leads to discord.

America spends more on police that kill more people and solve fewer crimes than peer nations. These are actual real things in the physical world. Why are we debating the platonic ideal of what really is crime.

critical support to NIMBYs against ICE facilities

the marker in Humboldt makes me so happy

The point of American zoning is to put the most people in the worst places for residential, so they don't inconvenience the people rich enough to live in the best places for residential.

The dynamics between ULA and the current Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association are a lot like Prop 13 in 1978. Local govt is unable to fix the issue, Legislators from outside of LA don't feel responsible and expect someone else to fix it. California is sleep walking into a new fiscal crisis.

this is how US building codes get written: a hundred different special interests & grifters getting together to scratch each other's backs

Single-purpose districts are often a problem. They shouldn't be allowed to write zoning codes, building codes, or street standards. Why? Because they lack the balanced perspective that comes when elected officials need to balance competing goals, from fire & traffic safety to housing affordability.

KNICKS HAVE THE MANDATE OF HEAVEN

have I mentioned how bullish I am on Berkeley Middle Housing + SHRA (SB 684)?

procurement reform (relaxing local/minority business requirements) allowed Oakland to get ~50% more curb cuts for the same money that means safer, more accessible streets for all Oakland residents

Californians, remember:

judicial decisions on land use & environmental review: "so on the one hand you have the clear legislative intent, affirmed repeatedly by the voters… but on the other hand, footnote 7 of paragraph G says that my neighbor Clarke should have had more say"

We can still prevent a 'New Prop 13,' but time is running short. Sign the petition urging immediate action on transfer tax reform 6/6: actionnetwork.org/petitions/si...

Maybe Berkeley should do this on College Ave. - College is width-constrained. - Diverting through traffic evaporates cars while maintaining local access. - Telegraph and Claremont are right there. - College is a more important bus route to BART than car route to the highway.

SFPD sent 20 cops to Oakland to arrest a teenage robbery suspect who had stolen a fake gold chain when the security guard at his (girl?)friend's apartment building asked to see a warrant, they broke down the door instead oaklandside.org/2026/05/22/s...

counterpoint: the only thing that can defeat a bad group chat is a good group chat

"social conservatism" in the American political tradition is best understood as the pro-slavery political tradition

is there an inverse tesla and spacex ETF? i've gotta think there's an appetite for a cheap and easy way to neutralize the musk in your index funds

lol lmao lmaooooooooo *breaks down sobbing*

What is Trumpism if not Maoism with American Characteristics?

(guy who has been a dad for less than a month): childcare is really hard and also taking care of my child is fucking awesome I know one of my own dad’s biggest regrets in life is the time he was unable to spend with his children when we were young

putting state money into supporting inclusionary zoning and union labor for high rises? interesting concept!

This is a brilliant way to think about infrastructure: “for every obstacle encountered: is this a rock, or is this a person?”

am I hallucinating that the first decision the Roberts court handed down gutting the VRA referred to its at-the-time recent reauthorization by Congress as "perpetuation of a racial entitlement"?

What do conservatives always say when liberals criticize a Supreme Court decision? "Get Congress to pass a law," right? That is EXACTLY what happened here. In 1982, Congress explicitly overruled a Court case that narrowly interpreted the VRA. Today, Sam Alito said, nope, we were right all along.

My actual take on these NYT ‘here’s some morons’ things is that people are basically calling out for mediating insitutions to make politics comprehensible to them, because most people are not weird freaks like you probably are if you’re reading this, that like paying attention to this shit.

yeah my thought when i hear that is "tell this to the president and his goons"

couple thoughts from the first five days of fatherhood: cluster feeding got hands I am very grateful for modern advances in swaddle technology I have developed an impulsive sway in my hips any time I stand still, last night I caught myself doing it while brushing my teeth

I want us to be a nation of immigrants, not a nation of indentured servants

I would like to see some moderate, sensible Democrat adopt "police who lie in reports or on the stand should go to jail and never again work in law enforcement in their lives" as a position. Nothing vague about reforming the police, nothing radical about defunding. Just this simple, obvious thing.

They sometimes have priority, they sometimes have preemption, they sometimes have neither. But we're running a campaign to implement preemption everywhere! DM me your email if you want to join!

some people want to believe homelessness is about the moral failing of homeless people some people want to believe that it's about the moral failing of capitalism but the reason we see the *specific problem* of homelessness, people not having a home, really is mostly about housing!

The S-trap shown in this public messaging banner is illegal in Canada. The requirements making it illegal are literally costing Vancouver alone millions in new construction!

If leaders abuse the rule of law to make themselves immune to it, so that they can undermine the rights of others with impunity, by what moral or philosophical argument are they entitled to its protections, once they lose power? By what grace should they be sorted by law instead of by other means?

this is 1) a great pro-housing message and 2) how I feel about Oakland ONE MILLION OAKLANDERS