No spoilers but Wake Up Dead Man’s use of the song Simple Gifts is perfection.

christmas on bluesky

there should be a movie where a woman from a small town begrudgingly goes to the big city for the holidays and falls in love at first sight with ethiopian food

The evolution of building rules in Paris, from 1667 to 1967. The Great Downzoning was truly global. hal.science/hal-01903202...

[me telling my story how I survived a plane crash and lived on a deserted island for a year] it was crazy [friend who once got a text from me where I accidentally called the grinch the grink] was the grink there?

I‘d be happier if I ran the world and the people who run the world seem like they’d be happier if they were mildly popular on social media, so perhaps we could work out some form of trade.

Stopped in the Richmond Target this evening and shared it with the descendants of African slaves, Asian refugees, English settlers, and Hispanic immigrants - all doing that most American of activities: last-minute Christmas shopping. That's the America I swore an oath to support and defend 🇺🇸

My buddy Zak is a horse trainer who also likes wrenching on cars and he daily drives a Honda Odyssey because it’s great for doing errands, his ‘68 Mustang isn’t reliable, and his F250 is overkill for anything other than pulling the horse trailer.

Husband came back from Costco with a bag of limes so I got inspired and made Mai Tais. Special thanks to the good folks at Bitters and Bottles SF for putting me on these funky rums. If you’re in the Bay Area, they are THE spot for weird liquor.

We sent a bunch of effete, Ivy League scientists into the desert and they returned with a portable sun.

The Chronicle rated La Vaca Birria’s carne asada grilled cheese burrito as the best in the mission so I went to check it out and folks, it lives up to the hype. (You may need a nap afterward.)

the epstein files as rick owens fall/winter 2024

TCW is sort of the paradigmatic example of why you should pursue excellence in your craft over wealth and acclaim, because if you get the latter without the former, odds are you’ll still be miserable.

Who needs a village when you can have parking lots?

“Pairing free buses with paid parking says we value people in motion more than cars at rest,” writes Nicolas Rohatyn.

this is what some of you look like in your chore coats

Friction is good and one of the most consequential tasks facing the designers and managers of social-technical systems in the 21st century is putting it back in in the right ways and right places.

While this website’s lack of algorithm can be boring, I will happily take it over the Threads algo that shows me some variation of “Agree or disagree: people over 65 with paid-off houses should not have to pay property taxes!” post literally every time I open the app.

Some professional news: I am now an officially certified urban planner.

also a major problem in California‘s statewide housing planning process… it’s funny because the idea of having plans with different levels of specificity ‘makes sense’ when the general plan is for a large urban region and zoning is for a small area within it, but most US cities do not need both

yeah the cross-subsidy model of IZ turns out--as goddamn bertaud pointed out very clearly--to depend on market rents inflated by artificial scarcity

California's construction defect liability system was supposed to protect consumers. But a new report suggests it has become a barrier, preventing middle-income families from buying condos and townhomes in California’s expensive cities:

It’s wild that we spend years, with significant community engagement, to draft comprehensive plans, and we don’t automatically update zoning codes to match those plans. Instead, American planners often need to restart years of new battles to change zoning. This system has so many veto points

The full spiked 60 Minutes CECOT package, clean & subtitled. 1/5

it would be really cool if the primary mode of transportation in the united states did not routinely kill people prematurely. it would be nice if we did not have to have daily blood sacrifices just to move around the world. just a thought. an idea!

I look forward to this gentleman learning about tree law in great detail.

For once Trump clearly articulates the core contradiction at the heart of Federal housing policy for the last...idk, 100+ years? I don't think he will do anything meaningful about it. But at least he laid bare the contradiction holding us back as a society.

There are more landlords than tenants in the state legislature. Should they be required to recuse themselves from housing votes in the future?

*staring directly into the camera*

Disappointed that Trump decided to forego a left NIMBY arc and just told it like it is.

This is completely ridiculous. The state legislature is *full* of landlords and yet they’re apparently allowed to vote on tenant protection bills all the time.

Every homeowner should be barred from future votes on housing since the potential for gain is far higher than Jesse Zwick's piddly ass nonprofit salary.

The bar set by this FPPC nexus test requires anyone with a "foreseeable" source of income to recuse themselves from decisions. It should be turned around to toss realtors and consultants off planning and landmarking commissions.

This is a hit job. The "conflict of interest" is that Jesse's day job aligns with the values that got him elected.

Funny how there's apparently no conflict for councilmembers who're landlords voting on tenant protections, or homeowners voting on new housing projects and rezoning actions. Just for renters who want more homes.

Sometimes you just have to look a nice 78yo left-liberal white lady in the eye at the Hanukkah party and say “no, there is no upper limit to how many people can live in the Bay Area; and I believe that we are morally called to welcome the stranger, which means being ok with neighborhood change.”

In 2023 I visited every single BayWheels bike share station in San Francisco. In 2024 I visited every station in the East Bay and San Jose. The system has added new stations since then; so today I’m going to be visiting all the new ones in SF and Daly City.

There's a larger lesson about the importance of prices generally, and the problems that arise from disregarding this knowledge.

This is a neat article worth reading. But I think the scope of "cases" is misleading. According to this method, unions have only used CEQA against 25 projects in 50 years. If we expand to threats of CEQA cases I can show you hundreds of those from labor unions, every year.

Really good “fuck you, make me” energy here

12 hour Sudafed is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.

Addison highlights these types of comments from American conservatives, and I’ve seen this all the time and always think it’s especially deranged. America has the lowest density, most “single-family” housing stock of basically any modern nation and it’s still not enough for these people!

who wore it better

Rick Steves is an American treasure. Just all-around, one of the absolute best of us.

Wow, a HUGE swath of San Francisco has no power.

Huge power outages in SF right now.

This is an excellent piece. My one disagreement: I believe that *NIMBYs weaponizng environmental law in bad faith,* not good-faith environmentalists, are the villains in abundance narratives. That said, it’s entirely possible that I am too close to this issue to have a normal perspective on it.

It's your birthday, Duane.

When Bon Jovi wrote the words “my heart is like an open highway” in It’s My Life, he was presciently foreshadowing the battle over the Great Highway and secretly showing which side he is on. In this essay I shall…

This is a good checklist for having policy influence in general.