ok, fine: critical support for “big ass truck abundance” idk if I’d call it a “policy” but: if you want a giant truck, if the carbon emissions are taxed appropriately, if they make ones where a kid running in front of it isn’t invisible to the driver, then yes, I want you to have it

“we should balance our criticisms with praise when political actors do what we want” for *politicians* yes, because it’s zero sum and there’s gonna be *someone* in office no matter what for news outlets: no actually! just walk out! you can leave! if it sucks hit da bricks etc

Serious scholars have examined what happens when we change the number of H1-B visas issued. Cities that get more H1-B immigrants subsequently see the wages of natives *rise* substantially. Skilled immigrants bring new ideas, fill labor shortages and make us all more productive.

technologically advance a band: One Remote Operator of a Fleet of Twenty One Drones

if you have the kind of job where you are posting on X about your public policy proposals, then you definitely know H1B visa holders, and if you’re proposing derailing their lives out of some sense that strangers who share your citizenship deserve their jobs, you have a badly broken moral compass

"As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny...Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master." -Commissioner Pravin Lal

Everyone’s always talking about recency bias - I’ve heard a bunch of people mention it in the past week alone - so it must be the best.

Donald Trump is a feebleminded, frail old bigot with no redeeming qualities, who is unsuited for any office, let alone the presidency. I am superior to him in every respect, as is every person I’ve ever met. Anyone who treats him as a model of virility or statesmanship ought to be laughed at.

guy who doesn’t like the term “gateway cities” because it implies the natural course of things is that people end up moving elsewhere

Pressuring a TV broadcaster to silence a comedian who has been critical of the president is nakedly unconstitutional and intolerable. Everyone involved must be removed from office and any officeholder or party that prevents that outcome must lose your vote.

sometimes I think most of the problems I have in life would disappear if I were a completely delusional megalomaniac

soon we will have progressive anti-anti-Group Groups started to counteract the moderate anti-Group Group

Free markets are an intrinsic part of human freedom and the rule of law, and it was a mistake for serious people to ever give in to the “we need industrial policy because the jobs on offer aren’t butch enough” narrative

Overlay this map with the map of the circle that contains half of the human race I rest my case

it’s really linguistically fascinating how applause still sometimes just means “good job” but sometimes also means “we all agree this is done now”

Here is my political platform: any event RSVP where you select which entree you want or list food restrictions etc should feature an option that’s like “just give me some rolls, I’ll figure out any other food on my own”

Liberalism is an extremely radical idea! America is a poorly executed version of some of the most radical beliefs ever brought forth in politics!

despite being libertarianish, on reflection I think my views on this are leftist, or at least best expressed in the language of leftism: i am gay and understand myself as part of a class on that basis, one which includes anyone with non-normative sexuality or gender. my principled sex-positivity…

[BILL ALERT] SB 79, which broadly legalizes more homes near high quality transit stops, has passed the Assembly floor! The bill now goes to the Senate for concurrence, then the Governor’s desk. cayimby.org/legislation/...

This is bad in the short term, but good in the long term. Breaking down every aspect of the filibuster or procedural tools that make Congress not work will be crucial to the Third Reconstruction.

the question of what is newsworthy is too important to be left to journalists

I love this comic partly because I think it holds an important lesson for policymakers: when you’re trying to convince the public of your grand vision, don’t underestimate how many of their concerns will be stubbornly pragmatic

100 years from now when transportation is fully autonomous, people aren’t gonna believe we used to drive ourselves around “So people just had to get really good at driving so no one died in crashes?” “Oh, people died all the time. There were actually more car deaths than murders every year.”

maybe it’s just because it’s a big state, but it feels like Texas has a uniquely bad issue with freedom of expression in schools and colleges. weren’t the school that forcibly cut off a student athlete’s dreads and the school where the principal tried to impose a dress code *on parents* also there?

the thing about San Francisco is there’s a class of if you will “normie leftists” (often work in the arts/academia/education, have lefty views but are not sufficiently online to have weird beefs about coalitional politics) and *those* are the people decades of NIMBYism have forced out

for various reasons I have to be circumspect about what I say about this, but I think expanding “abundance” past YIMBYism into a general philosophy risks undermining one of YIMBYism’s great strengths, which is understanding which audience you’re talking to and what you’re trying to convince them of

Solving post-material politics will require us to make social status - which now appears zero-sum - a positive-sum thing

it is IMPOSSIBLE for me to respect an animal as a vicious killing machine if it’s also depicted as cute and cuddly, everyone knows fuzzy animals can’t also be deadly predators pic unrelated

yet again tapping the sign that the reason governments aren’t racing to roll out full UBI is not because elites are pretending it doesn’t work, but because it’s phenomenally expensive at scale and would require huge tax increases and/or cuts to existing benefits

as I constantly repeat, the type of “abundance” I think we should be pursuing is none of these specifically but rather “eudaimonia”

the thing about the idea of “the West” is that the entire concept is basically: “Christianity (and [whispers] white majorities) were necessary to the rise of democracy and human rights so you should care about them even if you don’t think they’re valuable in themselves” and that argument is wrong

the rise of short-form video really makes the most relatable line in Star Wars, in hindsight, the part where Luke sees the hologram of Leia and goes, “Who is she? She’s beautiful! Wait, where’d she go? Bring her back! R2, bring her back!” I think about this line daily

i don’t think anyone genuinely believes that trans acceptance is a plot by Big Pharma to sell puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones. i think literally everyone who has advanced that argument is just reaching for an anti-trans argument they imagine will appeal to leftists.

Thesis: Taylor Swift’s exploration of a nuanced, ambivalent moral code, centered on the tropes of suburban US high schools, which nevertheless accommodates vivid moral outrage and resentment means that Taylor Swift is an emo band. In this essay I will

imo the key to this whole insane genre of writing is: 1. “friend” is a vague term used to describe lots of different relationships 2. not all of them are people you actually like 3. the people who write this stuff don’t get that, and assume it’s normal to resent your friends

Striking again how when leftists ask “why are young men embracing fascism” they often give an answer that boils down to “we’re too mean to them”, while when right-wingers ask “why are young women embracing socialism” they only ever answer “because they’re dumb”

the professional class is the real forgotten men and women of America I mean literally it’s taboo to appeal to us politically, and politicians’ “authenticity” is defined by how unlike us they are. eventually a critical mass of people will get sick of this!

the bad framing from the New York Times will continue until you unsubscribe

I'm the kind of person who thinks flag-burning is fine and good and healthful Lese majeste is bad, a strong and free nation is not bothered when people curse it out

The thing about “is therapy-speak making us selfish” is that there have always been some people who neglect their own needs to accommodate others and some people who are jerks & there’s no way to give advice at scale to the former without the latter being able to use it to justify themselves!

-open borders -no zoning; urban planning should basically be diminished to transportation/street grid planning; the city should grow as the people demand -not quite ban cars, but all cars should be autonomous and either public or part of a fleet owned by a heavily regulated utility

what governments are doing to the internet is *exactly* like if they were trying to make sure trees only existed in walled gardens because it’s theoretically possible for children to fall out of them

the sexy murder poets vs pleasantly boring bureaucrats dichotomy is cisheteronormative send skeet

The thing about “buy-in from local communities” is their representatives in the state legislature voted for this bill! By “local communities” he means “the community of local officials”, like how “the environmental community” means “activists” instead of “people who benefit from the environment”

every day is a good day to unsubscribe from the New York Times

“And so I couldn’t help but wonder - was my interest in dating women just a phase? Was I just making a quick stop on my search for MR RIGHT to have some fun with MS NOW?”

working-class reactionaries worldwide who used to support the left are now materially comfortable enough to prioritize fascism, but elite fascists know their window to turn back the clock is closing as greater education creates an ever larger base for consistent anti-authoritarianism

there’s a lot of stuff that I care about on principle for the good of humanity, but one thing I want to make absolutely clear is: freedom of online expression is the number one *material* issue that is most important for *my quality of life*

the constant nagging belief that I could absolutely kill it as an influencer who leverages toxic masculinity for urbanism

two things can be true: New York City is a major cultural capital, with urban design generally better than any other US city, and a strong culture of tolerance and cosmopolitanism; and also, there’s a NYC chauvinism that discounts the progressivism and urbanist development of *other US cities*