I had totally missed that SF is issuing one-time prepaid grocery cards to CalFresh (ie, SNAP) beneficiaries. All CalFresh recipients in the city are supposed to get instructions in the mail this week. It's one time, but great to see the city stepping in. www.sfhsa.org/calfresh-eme...

Where is the perjury charge against Bovino for lying under oath? The judge makes it clear he lied multiple times.

I love a good map.

Martin Benati absolutely dominated the loop station category of GBB 25 this past weekend. But it's hard to post battles without context, so enjoy this great re-imagining of Bizkit's Amber.

I rode the new, electrified trains on a recent trip to SF. Marvelous!! Maybe a field trip by Metro managers is in order.

🤣 but also 🙏 sign up and come to the zoom bootcamp @carterlavin.bsky.social is building for later this month!

“This case, ladies and gentleman of the jury, is about a sandwich.” Closing arguments from the defense in the DC sandwich guy case are now underway.

Caltrain is posting success after success right now. Passing the regional transit funding measure next November will be critical to continuing that success.

I'm positive about the proposed structure of the measure, but I need to know how much revenue it generates before I'd endorse. That wasn't shared with me last night. IMO, the amount raised must be over $150 million, and should be closer to $200 million such that Muni can add much needed service.

Great to see recalls failing. Maybe we can get a trend going and stop the madness.

Love to see it!!! So proud of California!!!

Also exciting, non-Mamdani updates. Bolts is a great source for less covered, but important races!

As a reminder, interfering with the service of a subpoena is a crime. Do not take a subpoena as an intermediary and then fail to hand it off to the person being served. Indeed, don't touch it at all, and don't physically block the person trying to deliver it.

Stopping in to the MTA Board to hear the Directors report - largely because I was already in the area and had lunch at City Hall. There hasn't been much on the agenda for a while. No other advocates here...except for one, who happens to have a job creating disinformation about the agency.

Yes on Prop 50! Drop your ballot off in a drop box today! Ballots dropped in mail boxes today aren't guaranteed to be counted.

The neocon's manipulations seem so subtle compared to the current administration, but they were quite brazen and public in their lies too. Sadly, Chaney never saw the inside of a jail for his role in America's torture network and illegal, unjustified wars; death protects him from that just outcome.

Night everyone.

I will miss the doors on the Bredas - when they worked (and they often didn't). They opened quickly and promptly once the train stopped, whereas now I get to take a deep breath as a wait for the LRV4 doors to do their thing. That said, long live the LRV4s!

I enjoyed my vacation in Sweden this year, and part of that was exploring transit across the southern part of the country. But it's impossible to decode _how_ that all came to be by just looking at it. @icgee.bsky.social went to Sweden with the goal of starting to understand governance structure.

I don't love Prop 50, but I voted yes on it. I don't love it because it's a move back to political gerrymandering. I voted for it because it expires in 2030, and California is the only state that can help move the balance of power in Washington right now. These are not normal times.

Does anyone know how much money California *could* borrow via bonds if it wanted to? I'm curious about its capacity to fund lightly to moderately subsidized social housing, if the use of funds matters for how much can be borrowed. @aceckhouse.bsky.social @pewilliams.bsky.social

Truly the stupidest configuration of the clock.

After 4 years and 2 failed attempts, California is giving up on the idea of ebike subsidies and dumping the money back into electric car subsidies.

Trying to quickly find the workdseries on TV when you never watch TV and have no idea what subscriptions your roommate has is not a straightforward experience.

My (not particularly hot) take is that the fractured political structures of the Bay Area are one of the biggest challenges between us and solving large problems. Special districts are effectively magic to most residents.

Shameful.

Exciting to see electeds in Illinois embrace 1) revenue for transit ops 2) governance reform 3) regional network management 4) service led planning 5) streamlining project delivery of new transit infrastructure wrt 3rd parties 6) cost benefit analyses and 7) framework agreements for capital projects

I don't know how many #candidates running as #Democats, or their #consultants, see or care about posts here, but: Your excessive use of SMS to fundraise, reaching out to people who have no idea who you are, has become a major annoyance. I am now blocking and reporting as spam any such messages.

I had missed that Trump had directed the DoD (ahem, should be the DoE) to restart nuclear testing. Horrible, awful idea. We really are hitting the fast rewind button on global progress. I hate it.

Thank goodness, a transit operator finally banning the covering windows on buses and trains! These types of "dot" coverage make the ridership experience noticeably worse, can be a usability disaster, and overall cheapen the image of transit. Kudso to Denver for taking the lead on this!

More than three dozen streets across San Francisco will be closed to traffic for trick-or-treaters on Halloween this year. Use our map to find where you can take the kids out without fear of big, bad automobiles. missionlocal.org/2025/10/sf-h...

I wanted to offer some thoughts on the Gates climate memo that has been circulating this week. While I can't directly speak for others, I can say that my own response is one of dismay & deep frustration (and that this view is shared by many climate/Earth scientists). [1/n]

New: Videos show ICE/CBP agents are scanning peoples' faces on the street to verify citizenship. ICE has tool to instantly look up unprecedented number of databases with just a photo “I’m an American citizen so leave me alone” “Alright, we just got to verify that” www.404media.co/ice-and-cbp-...

Waymo does not and will not scale. It has the same problems as Uber and Lyft, but compounded by centralization (depots and routing). The state needs to allow cities to limit the number of cars per-city. Local planners have no tools to deal with this sort of brokenness.

noteworthy that rather than funding experiments into challenging conservative message domination on the local level or building between-election outreach capacity at the state level, centrist donors are throwing millions at what amount to online factional battles among a couple dozen people

Under Trump, the draconian future of homelessness policy is coming into focus: mass internment. Utah is building a 16-acre site to detain up to 1,300 homeless people inside locked "accountability centers." This is profoundly alarming. Vital reporting from @ellenbarry.bsky.social and Jason DeParle:

It seems bad that only $668 million of California's $31 billion transportation budget is for public transit capital projects next year. HSR gets another $798 million. $1.45 billion out of $31 billion. It's a hidden form of climate arson.

Come on out and strengthen advocacy for Bay Area transit!

I have never ridden the N to Ocean Beach and seen it stop at every single stop. But it's great: every stop more kids get on, headed toward the Great Hauntway!

Come to Embarcadero Station by 12:50 for something spooky. L Taraval headed to the Great Hauntway at ~12:55.

Happy Sunday!

Short thread on the huge growth in passengers on local trains where I used to live (Ticino/north Lombardy). Does not include all the inter-city traffic. Love to see it.

JUST IN: Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee said in a press release on Friday that she has been told by Alameda County’s sheriff that ICE and border patrol operations have been called off for the rest of the Bay Area in addition to San Francisco. missionlocal.org/2025/10/fede...

For the love of god, can we stop with this shit. Rather than working on all the things we need to as a society, we'd rather have a bad AI system bring paramilitarized police force down on a teenager eating Doritos.

Many believe that undocumented immigrants — or immigrants overall — commit crimes at high rates. However, decades of crime data analysis and research show otherwise.

LIVE UPDATES: Bay Area protesters arrived to Coast Guard Island in Alameda early Thursday morning. That's where federal immigration agents are expected to land today before a regional operation. missionlocal.org/2025/10/ice-...

I'm taken by the idea that many uses of generative AI don't make work faster, they merely move the work to other people and systems, or generate new steps, steps that have perhaps not been figured out yet, or even conceived as necessary.

For SF peeps, you can find more information about the SF Rapid Response Network here: www.sfrrn.org/index.html

But far and away the most exciting part is the new free transfer scheme: an East Bay hiker traveling to Marin can save 40% off their fare compared to today!

A short thread on Clipper 2.0 and why it's so exciting for recreational access!🧵 sf.streetsblog.org/2025/10/22/c...