I love Japan so much. What a wonderful country full of wonderful people

Keep ICE out of Dublin, CA. Anyone anywhere in the US can file a comment. June 1 deadline. More info & easy tools: tinyurl.com/IOD-EA-Toolkit @buffywicks.bsky.social @replsimon.bsky.social pls re-share.

Unfortunately this would also require the Democratic Party being more popular and they are barely even trying that so…

Because Albany will prioritize anything above housing. They wanted high affordability requirements – they got them. But development was still profitable, so the building trades looked for their pound of flesh too, and state legislators were all too happy to give it to them.

Going to be in Tokyo May 17-May 28. Any recommendations?

If you're an architect or code enthusiast in NYC, please email [email protected] at Dan Goldman's office and [email protected] at Jerry Nadler's to say you oppose the Pro Codes Act! It would reassert the ICC's copyright on the IBC (even amended version), making UpCodes illegal.

Kinda seems silly Governor Not-Hochul can’t toss her buddy Daredevil a pardon after he saved her life

This year, voters in Davis will vote on initiatives approving two projects that would collectively increase the local housing stock by 10%—enough to really see an improvement in affordability. I strongly recommend that local YIMBYs vote YES on Measure V! www.abridged.org/news/davis-i...

this is sloppy work, by the way. you're comparing Netflix's power spend to companies that own data centers. Netflix doesn't own data centers. They run on AWS. whatever the energy use is on their streaming, that's not in their purchased grid electricity, which is the 1% number you cited.

“You must leave the community because the mob has spoken. You must live a private life and abandon any public reputation you hoped to build” is absolutely a form of social exile and social control. Acting like it’s a reasonable mitigating strategy is absurd.

So I think the ability to force someone into social exile through abuse is, in fact, a really significant thing and the precise power that the abusers crave. It’s effectively the power to disappear your enemies

This was the big "Building more doesn't bring down rents" study that some left of center publications ran as a pre-print. Turns out it's got some major methodological issues!

most YIMBY skeptical work tends to be bad but this is so absurdly bad I’m amazed the Urban Institute published it

except that “renewables” includes biomass, which is literally burning wood for energy which in fact emits quite a bit of C02

bold of you to assume they read one book

The war in Iran has cost $50 billion, which was about the size of USAID’s entire annual budget before DOGE

Riders Alliance wants to cut driving in NYC by 40% by emulating Paris’s “growing toolkit of carrots and sticks” (nyc.streetsblog.org/2026/05/01/o...), so why are they supporting state legislation to require two employees on each subway while Paris is going driverless (www.amny.com/news/nyc-tra...)?

Just seems unnecessarily cruel to shiv it to someone doing an honorable thing like this

dog days

”The chassis requirement, they say, has also created an unnecessary burden for manufacturers because it doesn’t allow the frames to be removed & reused after a home is delivered — a cost of several thousand dollars that is passed onto consumers.” I keep learning new reasons why homes cost too much.

@sierraclub.org's Urban Infill Guidance says "Choosing smart growth over sprawl is one of the most powerful decisions city & other local governments can make to reduce climate emissions & air pollution..." So, will the @sierraclublp.bsky.social leaders testifying tonight support these infill homes?

Mao pretty famously built very little housing, unlike the USSR, which caused major issues of overcrowding. The whole “YIMBYs advocate for tax breaks for developers” shtick is a big tell for how ignorant you are of housing policy

Pretty wild that every single CA Governor candidate said “yes” to mandated treatment for homeless people who continuously refuse services and shelter

The price of housing is set by supply and demand. The only way to reduce rents and home prices in high-demand cities is to build a lot of new homes. Rent control only slows down price increases for incumbent tenants. It does not reduce prices for newcomers or people who want to move.

Donald Trump ordering a false flag assassination attempt in order to rally support for his ballroom would be most on brand conspiracy of all time

it is kinda annoying how any budget cut anywhere gets labeled “austerity” nowadays. we have not been in a demand side recession in awhile now (though Trump is doing his best to run it back), cutting *bad* spending (like ethanol subsidies) is a good thing that reduces inflation pressure

On Twitter I once shared that transport accounts for only 3-6% of food-related emissions, and the vast bulk of food emissions are from land use & ag production, and WHAT (eg beef) matters way more than WHERE. I woke up to hundreds of angry responses from people in the UK who produce or eat meat.

I’m mostly offline nowadays and even I noticed that Piker got a lot of positive attention (Ezra, Abdul El-Sayed) so it should not be shocking that some people pushed back?

the insane fake health concerns about solar energy are a great example for why the cult of “community engagement” where we treat every crank’s insane ravings as sacred is doomed to failure

one reason I'm increasingly intolerant of "data centers gave me lyme disease" type fear mongering is it spreads www.propublica.org/article/mich...

A reminder that the 🌎 is an excellent planet, the only one we've discovered with reliable wi-fi and breathable air; we should really try to stop eating it. Happy 🌎 Day! The book-length version is here: www.simonandschuster.com/books/We-Are...

No new projects are getting funded under Trump, so now is a great time for agencies to get serious and read every word of transitcost.com. Of course what they’ll actually do is just sit on their hands till the next administration and hope the money continues to rain down like it has been.

Have questions about single-stair apartment buildings? @alexhrwtz.bsky.social & I will be presenting on this on May 14 at #CNU34. Come ask us! Alex co-authored The Pew Charitable Trusts groundbreaking research on the safety of single-stair buildings in the US. Here's the session description:🧵

Many govts hope capturing carbon from power plants burning wood will cause "negative emissions." New Nature Sust. paper today finds this likely increases emissions for decades, generates no negative emissions within 150 years, and increase electricity costs ~3.5-fold. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

In France, if you want to build a home above a certain size, you’re legally required to use a licensed architect. Can you guess what that size is

The last time my team put out a big, data-intensive project, we included this in the acknowledgments, and it's something I want to continue to do going forward. Time to sing these heroes.

If the Pope is soft on crime explain this

The SMBC comics guy is a YIMBY?!? Be still my beating heart

the people who collect data for government statistics like the unemployment rate, the census, etc, have boring, tedious, thankless jobs that they overwhelmingly do with integrity and honesty.

🎶 we didn’t start the fiiiiirre 🎶

Want to get involved in IRL housing advocacy and make a real difference in passing great bills? California YIMBY lobby day is next month, and we will help you get to Sacramento! Sign up here: actionnetwork.org/forms/2026-y...

Buying fire engines that fit the city you want is cheaper than building your entire city to fit the fire engines you have. This is true even after taking staffing costs into account.

The triple lock is almost as insane as the UK's housing policy. Benchmarking welfare benefits to economic stats is fine. Benchmarking them so that they strictly grow faster than the economy is a recipe for eventual bankruptcy and the sudden loss of welfare benefits.

The UK is a formerly rich country rapidly circling the economic drain but its voters are deeply opposed to any of the major reforms (housing, energy, triple lock) you’d need to turn things around and its politicians too chickenshit to do a thing about it

If we somehow end up with a Republican Governor, they get impeached like Day One, right? Both of them aren’t even Schwarzenegger style moderate Republicans, they’re straight MAGA

the correct way to understand the protest opsec stuff is that its a shibboleth for guys who attend left wing protests regularly that lets them exert status over recruits. i would regard it as pretty benign if these people werent actively discouraging people from getting involved.

Jeffrey Epstein was banned from XBox Live in 2013

We're proud to present A Better Billion: how New York should be spending an extra $1b a year on subway expansion, in lieu of Zohran Mamdani's free bus proposal. transitcosts.com/a-better-bil... See gift article for a New York Times writeup here: www.nytimes.com/2026/01/30/n...

laughing at all the people who said Trump was a YIMBY

Just an amazing image of @ilhanmn.bsky.social