The banality of bad driving, winter edition. Someone managed to drive into this pedestrian median island warning sign, and direction of impact suggests it was someone coming up hill, or turning from a stop sign. Which is just 😱

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11 units per acre can be easily achieved in single family homes with 4500' lots. This is a streetcar suburb not high density multifamily ...

This is a specially created zoning district with about 30 property parcels, and count 'em four different subdistricts with slightly varying sets of regulations within this one "district". Make it make sense ...

This from Brad DeLong and the linked Paul Musgrave post seem like useful responses to student assessment in the AI age braddelong.substack.com/p/university... musgrave.substack.com/p/face-to-fa...

Intra-factional disputes can be interesting even if--sometimes, precisely to the extent that--the actors are being opportunistic. Discussing those disputes and noting how the participants choose to frame them is not at all the same as accepting those frames as sincere.

CFP: Society for the Study of Measurement will be held at the University of Edinburgh June 22-25, 2026. Submit proposals for papers, symposia, & poster on any topics in the theory, history, philosophy, & application of measurement by January 15, 2026 app.oxfordabstracts.com/stages/80364... #HPS

This episode of Who Killed the Starter Home is great. Alain Bertraud talking about how the arbitrary numbers of US land and housing regulation are akin to communist regulation. It gets hidden because markets emerge, but shaped by very arbitrary rules starterhomepodcast.podbean.com/e/communism-...

Shoveling snow rules. You’re outside getting exercise, you get to listen to podcasts or music, and best of all, you’re making the world more accessible. It’s an act of self-care and civic care. I enjoyed it when I lived at my parents’ house, and I still do!

I checked out a house in Chantilly, Virginia that has been the subject of a surprising amount of consternation and local news coverage

Fun question on a semi-holiday Monday is what is the functional or emotional equivalent of this station in other cities? (Now I'll go out and perform municipal shoveling for my block) nyc.streetsblog.org/2025/12/29/e...

That’s a cat

Inspired by @besttrousers.bsky.social, I tried to figure out how many gig workers there are kevinonthemargin.com/the-great-gi...

Metro Transit runs a solid (for the US) transit system, but their shelter design is strikingly inappropriate for our climate. I can only assume that open sided "shelters" for the new "BRT" lines are so mediocre because of a fear of homeless gathering there. One extra pane of glass would be low cost.

Good day to post this Mike Mosedale classic: "... the risk of freezing to death was a major concern for early Minnesotans. Reports of frostbite and self-amputation are common .... the most persistent hazard of the Minnesota winter was not cold ... it was starvation" web.archive.org/web/20041211...

Extracting value on the front end of development (community benefits) instead of the back end (taxes) is eating the seed corn. It'll never produce as much community benefits as planting a good harvest and sowing it when it ripens.

Even McDonald's wants more bollards @worldbollardassoc.bsky.social... and yes, this is real

We were talking the other day about the decline of intercity bus in New England but it’s nationwide. In cities you need trains for capacity, at longer distances you need trains for speed, but I do think the liberal focus on rail has hurt intercity buses for the distances & OD pairs they work for.

Read Jim's whole thread! I also want to add some historical context. During the 1918 pandemic, there was so much confusion because many scientists still thought that a bacteria, not a virus caused the flu (because, as Jim notes, we couldn't even see viruses under a microscope yet).

Muhammad Alameldin on the Housing Voice podcast with a quote that just sums up a lot of US policy development www.lewis.ucla.edu/2025/12/17/1...

The when to shovel advice is top tier forecasting

#Caturday contentment on the couch

Who cares if it's real? #Caturday

The closure of the North Star illustrates the challenges of doing the halfway thing as a strategy to build support for the whole thing. Sometimes this works, even in public transit. But the halfway thing has to be more than usually good is probably the lesson

This is one of the most essential things to understand about the economics of public transit

For a contemporary example of this, look at the extremely precise parking requirements in the ITE Parking Generation Manual.

Canada has internal tariffs??? danlewis8.substack.com/p/the-worst-...

In case you missed it, we got a new website!! Have you ever wondered what “upzoning” means? Or, what are “missing middle” homes? Well, you are in luck! Because you can find answers to those questions and more on our new Policy FAQ page! www.moreneighbors.org/policy-faqs

They move to Miami and discover humidity and then come back. We’ve been through this cycle before.

I don’t know that it was in doubt or anything, but this offseason has been absolute proof that the #MNUFC front office is going to act without sentiment or nostalgia.

Crime is very high on the Northstar ... already solved one murder puzzle and have 98 to go streets.mn/2025/12/16/o...

Obviously there are some different issues in a climate where it freezes regularly, but public toilets with 10 minute time limits and scheduled overnight "robotic" cleaning have existed for at least 30 years. www.startribune.com/minneapolis-...

Zoning for pickleball… I guess we need to focus on the issues of our times, but this is indicative of a complain-oriented way of planning

Curious question: have other twin cities people noticed signal priority for Green Line in Minneapolis getting worse? I think I've seen/experienced it stopped more often on Washington and University than I used to.

I’m curious for more local lore and history about Minneapolis’ most iconic Christmas lights: the Poo Poo Pee Pee house in Northeast. I have only recently incorporated a pilgrimage to this (with running buddies) into my holiday traditions, and it just makes the holiday season complete.

Nobody would call it a "boom", but since rezoning the entire city for missing middle housing, Saint Paul has had multiple consecutive quarters of record-high development in 1-6 unit buildings... with a grand total of 23 buildings in a year and a half.

Schrodinger's touchdown if you ask me

First ball of the Boxing Day Test, the reason for the season! I am full of festive cricket cheer and I hope you are too

Presents and food are great, but have you ever just had the opportunity to do all the Christmas dishes in a glorious 45 minutes of alone time with carols in the background?

Looking for an *extremely* last-minute gift? Why not give someone a subscription to The Friscalating Dusklight, the Substack where I write essays about Dad Life and the world around us all? Link below/ thread of some of my favorite pieces this year thefriscalatingdusklight.substack.com/subscribe

Merry Christmas from all of us at Sports Reference! Have a safe and happy holiday 🎄

#Caturday comes early for this one

This essay from @bschmidt.bsky.social on how history rejected computational methods, & so "quantitative history" ended up in the social sciences, & "digital humanities" in literature, with no historians doing computational work, is fascinating, & worth a read: dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/read/computa...

I submit that 2018 Grinch film may be the most pro density and pro public transportation of Christmas films.

Merry Christmas to all!

If your “protected” bike lane is “protected” with something that doesn’t cause severe tire and/or body damage to a car or truck then your “protected” bike lane isn’t “protected”, it’s decorated.

We can back this up with a stacked diff in diffs too: weiyangtham.com/files/tcps_f... (new conditionally accepted version out soon) We find that a funding interruption... increases the probability of not working in the US by 3 percentage points (40%) .

I laughed too but we all know in reality this place would be heritage protected and have a well connected Residents Association that obtained priority traffic calming for the street and the building replaced by a 69 storey tower was an 18 unit modernist apartment on an arterial road.

Despite the perception of insane drivers, lax seat belt enforcement, recklessness etc, New Zealand's road deaths per 100k population was about 5.5 in 2024, less than half of the US rate and similar to Australia, Canada, and the EU

It wasn't at all obvious to me that the function of this tick button in Canvas was to give students full marks for their answer 😱. In a lot of other contexts the buttons beside dialog boxes in Canvas confirm that you've entered something, and want to input it