Even though it will be painful to lose our beloved and historically significant liquor store parking lots, I still think as a city Berkeley can figure out how to incentivize redevelopment on our most important corridor, within the SB 79 influence zone less than 400m from a subway station. No?

It's funny how fast the NYT's account page folds. Them: Your subscription is going up to $25/mo! Me: Zero. Them: $2/mo then, please?

Vote for worst gym guy. [a] January guy [b] High school kid [c] Going for world record leg press reps in single set [d] Kicked out of crossfit gym for being too weird, too barefoot

I worked in this building, and I feel sorry for OpenAI peeps. Some clueless architect decided it would be "green" to have a rainwater collector on the roof. Said water drains in uninsulated pipes through open-air offices, chilling the office no matter the weather. www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco...

Is there a strategic tape recorder reserve, used for staging Cold War spy films?

The mangled sign on the ground says pedestrian crossing.

Most people who do not already own homes also have zero retirement savings. Most retirement savings are held by the 10% wealthiest households. Allowing people to tap retirement savings to buy homes will not help anyone who needs help.

Bike share trips in the East Bay: not bad for a December.

If your anti-autonomous-vehicle stance is that "AVs pale in comparison to my plan, which is to simply have universal high-quality transit and robust law enforcement" then I can't take you seriously.

Yesterday, I narrowly avoided getting smashed by what appeared to have been a 90-year-old man driving an F-150 Lightning, on my own block, which is why I'm not really entertaining your anti-Waymo psychoses today.

A heck of a chart: in every single one of the 10 major US cities that built the most housing between 2017 and 2023, rents for older, existing units fell—often by quite a bit.

How much abuse should I heap upon the recruiter who suggests I work at Andreessen-backed "Palantir for mid-market"? [ ] A lot of abuse [ ] More abuse than usual [ ] An unprecedented category 5 gyre of abuse

lot of things i could say here but mostly i guess i would like to implore everyone to find a personality other than "least favorite roommate during a house meeting in portland, oregon"

The daily presentation of precipitation that the state Department of Water Resources provides doesn't tell the reader much about how exceptional the current rain year has been. Luckily, it's easy to just grab their data into a notebook. Verdict: almost exceptional.

Legacy journalism outlets have reached a level of dissonance between their demands for payment and the uselessness of their product that nobody could have imagined even ten years ago.

Begging mainstream journalists to never say that Venezuela has "vast oil reserves". Hugo Chávez woke up one day, in a Trump-like frame of mind, and simply declared it was 300 billion barrels.

I admit I am delighted to watch Oakland Nextdoor pile the ratio on a NIMBY octogenarian from Santa Rosa who is trying to block senior citizen housing built by the Red Cross on the basis of shadows. Maybe we are done humoring these people.

Is it considered a problem when the water is running out of the storm drains, instead of into them?

Tower crane at multifamily housing construction in Berkeley. @stephenjacobsmith.com since you wondered.

Housing news, from Berkeley, not Caracas. In Q4, of the few leases registered, 47 leased down compared to their previous tenants in inflation-adjusted terms, while 11 leased up. There was only 1 perfect comp; all the others were on the market for 15 months or more.

Stylometry's greatest hits: Boomer on Nextdoor using their real name vs. pseudonymous Facebook "group". Neither entity has a working space bar.

It's too bad we're doing this Panama/Haiti/Grenada thing again because I wanted to spend Saturday morning talking about how internet cranks are whipping conspiracy theories about the Fed again.

I can't even think of a way that I, and therefore any normal person, would be exposed to the effluent of CBS News.

I think a 10-mile-long bridge for bikes, connecting that Bay Trail in the East Bay with, I dunno, Coyote Point on the west side, would be fun. If it was only for pedestrians and bikes it could be made out of plastic and aluminum on friction piles. We have this technology. Come at me, BCDC.

There are a LOT of English majors writing articles in newspapers about AI data center size and power. These guys, on the other hand, are doing it right with first principles estimates benchmarked to public data and press releases. By the way the huge building in the center? Was a Gatorade factory.

I understand why they can't zip up this section of the building while the hoist is still there, but installing fiberglass, then just leaving it flopping around in the weather all week makes these buildings seem ridiculous. There has to be a better way.

Sneaked in a little bike ride between rain clouds. It's a beautiful ... hour, if not a beautiful day. Happy 2026.

Oh my God, this murder spree continued for days

I am confident that there are American jurisdictions where, if someone tries to force their way into a day care, you can legally shoot them dead.

Speaking of my heater: current PG&E bills are the direct consequence of minor, long-forgotten tax revolts of the 1920s. In 1923 Sacramento decided to tax itself to build their grid. In the East Bay we decided to do water only. SF voted down MUD bonds 8 times.

I'm always abstractly interested in building a home but winter is when I sit around in the evenings drawing hypothetical wall assemblies because my current home can't be effectively heated :-[

The what party?

Based on the dates of blocking, virtual all of the people blocking me did it because I can do arithmetic and I know how much water a data center uses. I am genuinely please these people removed themselves from my universe.

I don't know why the discourse around 2442 Haste St. has reappeared, but here is a reminder that even the incredibly lax and gullible staff of the Berkeley Landmarks Preservation Commission disrespected the hideous house that is being demolished.

When your local NIMBY group is conspiring to violate tax laws, election laws, and housing laws during the monthly meeting.

An elderly woman was knocked unconscious Monday night when a driver struck her in a Berkeley crosswalk, according to early reports.

@mtcbata.bsky.social you here?

Post a perfect album from the 90s that isn't Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden or Alice In Chains.

This is fine, and it raises my opinion of Schiff slightly, but the numbers here are ridiculously low in proportion to the problem. If this was proposing a ten TRILLION dollar loan fund, then it would be something.

Soon to be condos in Napa. Actual for-sale condos.

Li's Knife Cut Noodle is exactly what downtown Berkeley needed. I assume when the university resumes it will be impossible to get in there, but this week it's perfect.

@idothethinking.bsky.social Rents in post-2000 construction in Berkeley, by bedroom, according to the rent registry. Data at observablehq.com/@jwb/rents-i...

I saw this Chinese EV on campus today. Very cool.

I should sue the regents of TAMU for devaluing my transcript. Absolute clown show.

Bit windy, it was

Very cool of Contra Costa County to have fixed Wildcat Canyon Road so that I can get run off the side of the road by Deep East Bay teenagers driving clapped out Miatas while I'm just trying to enjoy a park.

Area bicyclists in mourning

We don't have to canonize bad people just because they get a disease.

People said "Stand By Me" was Reiner's masterpiece so I watched it and I was throwing things at the TV at the end. Apparently it did not face contemporary or modern criticism for the Boomer victory lap of the last 5 minutes. Makes me want to enroll in a venue where I can denounce this film.

The new clout chasers are all about making up stories about what AI cannot do. People love these posts. But they are easily falsified. Actual results on the right. You can quibble about the legend, of course. The smarter way to use the tool is ask it to write a program that makes the map (3rd pic).