Magnitude 8.0 upzoning - 0 km from Sacramento, CA - 2025-10-10 17:00:00 UTC - TSUNAMI of SB 79 housing expected in all urban areas of California. Nice new apartments will reach 6 stories over normal housing heights. RECOMMENDED ACTION stay in CA to enjoy affordable housing with great transportation

I did not know that the %age of Chinese workers in the informal sector is increasing. Surprising to me!

You can imagine a scenario where more CA building and FL doing some of the very bad tax policy + immigration shifts leaves to CA and FL having roughly equal pop growth in 2030. Maybe a ~30% chance

These kinds of dense, defensible, mutually-supporting fortifications are illegal to build in most American cities

We'll never find out now if Boluarte could've made it to 0% approval... www.bbc.com/news/article...

The 28 YEARS LATER text card states that "Mainland Britain" is abandoned, and later we see a map showing Ireland & the UK in the quarantine zone. From this I can conclude only that Ireland is fine but cut off from the world.

Best predictor is a person’s occupation. People in most elite jobs much more likely to hold pro-growth views Skilled manual workers (rather than semi-skilled or unskilled) are the most anti-growth. This relates to how exposed these jobs have been to automation in the past

Once again, usually I'd end these threads by talking about the rapidly-growing ridership on Seattle Link, but they haven't submitted official federal data for several months (their website says ridership is up 27% year-on-year). I've emailed Sound Transit to see what's going on

We Have Always Lived in The Castle And That’s Why I Am Writing to Oppose to Proposed Housing Development That Will Fundamentally Change the Character of Our Picturesque, Gothic Community

Not nearly enough is made of the incredibly impressive feat Indian Railways has made to electrify almost 100% of its 135,000km of track, while also growing renewable sourcing. Huge: timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/ind...

So at the university football game I sat next to a cheerful student from Japan who was telling me how much she liked the "colorful traditional costumes" and the "old folk music" and asking about the "dances," and I realized she was talking about the marching band and that she was, well, spot-on.

I respect that the Kushan Empires take on gods was that they liked them. Greek Helios? Big respecters. Shiva? Absolutely. Serapis? For sure. And not just God's. Heracles, Buddha. Some random kings in central Asia in the 1st cent. we're cool with all of them

The German Stock Market rose from 32 to 1943, when the Nazis froze prices. Graph source: www.investmentoffice.com/Observations...

A new far right party in the Czech elections is Motoriste Sobe, a driver's grievance part against bike lanes. They support "cars, coal, and the crown [ The koruna]" en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motoris...

today's newsletter: a consideration of the many wonderful cars in One Battle After Another, in particular Willa's 2005 Yaris, Sensei's T-Bird Super Coupe and Bob's boosted 1991 Nissan Sentra SE-R

Maryland has gradually increased registration fees on heavier cars more than lighter cars. @mkorman.bsky.social who now chairs the House of Delegates Environment & Transportation Committee has advanced this as a matter of fairness.

Given that street wear scales with weight^4 it is interesting to me that there isn't more interest in charging parking or tolls at rates scanning with weight. Send like a populist issue — those with lights vehicles are the majority

Llegó la nueva tarjeta del sistema de transporte colectivo de área Metro San Juan, llamada p’ATI. Muestra algunos destinos importantes que visita, incluyendo centros urbanos, la torres icónicas de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, Aeropuerto Internacional y el Choliseo.

Most big US cities have an obvious geographic reason for existing. If you replayed history, there would be a in settlement in NYC, Chicago. Some might move around a bit, the big bay area city might be Oakland etc. The most contingent IMO are Dallas, D.C., Atlanta, Seattle, Denver, Orlando

It began with Jimmy Carter and the economic part of it was entirely top-down. And the economic part of it was really all of it, in fact lack of an economic message drove centrists *left* on non-economic issues. I went through the history here: www.dissentmagazine.org/article/demo...

How much of the post-Reagan/Bill Clinton era Democrat move right was a top down product vs an actual movement to the right of Democrat voters? My sense is both?

The EIR for the 1978 citywide downzoning in S.F. archive.org/details/fina...

I did not know the Comte's Positivism ended up creating an organized church in 19th Cent. Brazil. As of 2016 the main building in Rio is crumbling, kind of amazing for a philosophy once so powerful it's followers drew the Brazilian flag www.nytimes.com/2016/12/25/w...

Had a very thought-provoking discussion last night about the Trump-Peron comparison with our Argentine dinner guests, who argued convincingly that it's of very limited value and applies mainly to the charismatic populist style of politics they share.

Juan Linz may or may not be right, the current US crisis has nothing to do with his problems of presidential thesis. Linz was talking about how the leg. and pres. have Independent democratic legitimacy and this leads to conflict. The leg. has freely granted the pres. All power! Very different!

It's confusing that - the salience of immigration has increased a lot in the last 2+ decades in the developed world - it is hard to map this to a level or trend. Some countries with low immigration also have high salience, some with high levels etc.

Türkiye, Syria, and Jordan agreed to revive the historic Hejaz Railway through a trilateral MoU. Türkiye will help complete the missing 30 km in Syria, Jordan will handle locomotive maintenance.

My go-to book recommendation is 1491 by @charlescmann.bsky.social, about pre-Columbian America. Literally more than a dozen people have read this book on my recommendation and I've gotten uniformly positive feedback from them

Gaining Dem senate control in 2026 is very unlikely (ME, NC, OH, & elsewhere?!). But margins matter; every race lost in 2024 made 2026 harder. 2028 doesn't offer much more. Dem geographic disadvantage is real but it may mean they need to win 3 cycles in a row (haven't since 80s)

Yeah I went and calculated this, the greater LA area (LA, Ventura, OC, Riverside, San Bernadino Counties) has abouth a 10th of the total trains per day as Belgium. I'm probably off by a few hundred for Belgium, I couldn't find timetables for all the trams (so many trams).

China's home ownership rate is ~90%, but only ~60% live in a home they own. The gap is mostly people who own homes in their hometown and moved to a city for work. IIRC China did the typical 90s Communist reform and gave everyone the dwelling they lived in. Is there such a gap in Eastern Europe?

People really need to reckon with why people will vote for pro-choice referendums and pro-life candidates at the same time. This isn’t an argument for a pro-life candidate but it is a suggestion that voting the referendums don’t refute the point.

In hindsight I think Seattle would've been better off if it'd built the park. The development around it ended up being much taller than this expected, it would've been like a small central park

Don't mind me, I'm just celebrating

This makes DC metro' success even more impressive

Making it across!

Feel dumb, realizing that the Mercury stuff LeGuin's DARKROSE AND DIAMOND (1999) (collected in TALES OF EARTHSEA (2001)) is obviously based on real Daoist interest in elixirs of immortality using mercury, cinnabar etc.

AVs’ raison d’etre is to improve the experience of being in a car. How do people respond to improved experiences? They do more of them. For that reason, AVs could turbocharge gridlock b/c people will take more and longer car trips. That would be terrible for cities (esp transit).

Does anyone know why in "In the Mountains of Totomi Province", from Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (1830-1831_, by Katsushika Hokusai, the beam is being cut into planks at an angle? Why don't they do it flat? (maybe a dumb Q, but I can't find anything about it)

🚉🇨🇴 New regional rail dropped ~ Hace 2 meses comenzó la construcción del Regiotram, un tren de cercanías. En su primera fase consiste de 17 estaciones a lo largo de 40 kilómetros y conectando 5 municipios en Cundinamarca, la región metropolitana de Bogotá. Será el primer tren eléctrico de Colombia.

Who are the 1% who opposed income tax increases on the wealthy and also think NYC should do it? [Presumably it's noise, funny to imagine though]

The amazing thing about 1930s Japanese policy is that everyone who sat down and wrote a few numbers realized it was impossible to fight the USSR, China, and the US at the same time and then they went ahead and did it anyways.

A strong opener in the competition for "non SF writer questions a really bad SF book". I'll be watching closely. It's a scourge!

The way the Democrats (and Republicans) are weird is how totally they balance each other out. They’re running at 4-3 in 21st century elections and the last three have all been closer than any UK election since 1951

Graph from Alexander Sahn about how most speakers at SF housing public comments are from nearby and opposed but get more open to development the further away they live is very striking

Good article on Bukele. Lots of good stuff on why the security reforms works, what's going on with the economy, and what the opposition thinks. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

It's so amazing to know what Republicans felt like watching special election results in 2010 sure they would win the mid terms

MIDDLEMARCH: great classic novel for train lovers. Interesting to see an 1870s perspective on the 1830s as the first rural areas get trains and various groups take pro or anti positions

Today the 710 service was officially discontinuned by CPTM, here's the horrendous aftermath, why it'll only get worse, why it's a stupid decision, and how it's part of an even stupider decision. Buckle up, this is a long one, and thank you so much if you do reach the end of it. Le thread 🧵