Homeland Security is lying? Say it ain’t so!

Hobby Japan has started posting a series of mini articles titled ‘Brick Break’ - where Gundam Thunderbolt creator Yasuo Ōtagaki gets to share some of his frankly incredible Lego builds. First up, the Salamis! 🔥 Link: hjweb.jp/article/2680...

apparently this road is 'closed' 🤔

This is wild: homelessness is now so intertwined with low-wage work that *proof of employment is actually a prerequisite* for housing programs like this one.

Do you think they did a shadow study before building these so tall and close together?

Every Californian who cares even a little bit about their city’s financial health should read this thread. Take two minutes to thoroughly read it and then share it. If this measure goes to the ballot and passes it would destroy El Cerrito’s budget and those so many other California cities.

This partial recreation of Kowloon Walled City looks pretty impressive. randomwire.com/kowloon-wall...

We had a great time today canvassing about Metrolink cuts! When they hear about what's going on, people are excited to take action. Sign up here to canvass another time: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

This week on Planetside… Timbuktu’s archives can inspire worlds far beyond traditional fantasy norms. Learn more from “Unearthing Timbuktu’s Legacy: Using West African Manuscripts in SFF Worldbuilding” by Jason Collins, read by @geekartzentner.bsky.social: sfwa.org/2026/05/19/u...

Banger

Starbucks done EFFED up in Korea. Bad. May 18th just passed, Democratic Movement Day, when rose up after the military dictatorship sent tanks to mass-murder citizens. Some inappropriately call it "Tank Day." Starbucks commemorated Tank Day with a sale on tank tumblers. It gets much worse...

This is a pretty crucial point. Any Democrat who wins in 2028, whether AOC or someone else, will have to both rebuild our democracy, hold a Nuremberg 2.0 for Trump officials and ICE employees, while also bringing down inflation, especially grocery prices. No pressure.

Parts of Kansas City was designed to have neighborhood shopping centers every few miles. It used to have a trolley (paved over & recently revived with a streetcar). It also has wide tree-lined thoroughfares in some places. You can also tell how at one point, that kind of planning stopped 😔

Pictures from the most recent Sandy Wildfire are up and available for print purchase. 50% of all proceeds of wildfire photos go towards the California State Firefighters’ Association represents thousands of fire service professionals. seanbecknercarmitchel.shootproof.com/gallery/2938...

Shoutout to folks for rallying support. I counted 43 public comments in support of the BRT and 66 against. Phone comments were 11 for, 8 against. With a much more organized opposition, I'll take that as a W (especially considering the meeting's 3pm Weds time) www.slackerstuff.com/p/follow-up-...

I think about this every time I see a proposal to plant trees to fight heat islands in like, Phoenix. I like trees too, but also... desert. Stuff like this is faster and doesn't require water.

missing midrise you say?

Hot Fuzz is about the violence of stasis, the villages inability to change with time and process loss ultimately causes it to become reactionary as it increasingly aggressively polices its own idea of itself. The escalation to murder, including of their own, the ultimate expression of that futility.

“It is a story of civilians trying to survive.” Valerii Minenko, Founder of Twigames Hollow Home, a game based on a 14-year-old boy navigating the Siege of Mariupol, is set to be released on Steam by the end of 2026.  Thank you Crunchy Leaf Games for your support in sharing this vital message.

Fighting heat islands can be beautiful. Here's a street in Granada, Spain. Zohran should do stuff like this all over NYC.

Four-wheel FAFO www.fox6now.com/news/driver-...

There's a plan for that. (A long plan with a lot of steps, but a plan. Short version starts with front yard setbacks and single stair building code changes). impossibletoronto.ca

New apartments are 76% electric-heated, and their residents drive less and use less land. Building more of them cuts carbon emissions by up to 14% in metro areas, while also lowering rents. Housing abundance and climate progress are the same investment. www.sightline.org/apartments-a...

Add it to the pile of stuff that's complete bullshit but also widely accepted conventional wisdom. This is why data and charts are important, so you don't elect clowns who make policy based on nonsense

408 years ago, on the 23rd of May 1618, two Catholic regents and their secretary were thrown out of the window of the council room of Prague Castle. Known as the Third Defenestration of Prague, the event was a signal of revolt against the Habsburg emperor right before the Thirty Years' War. #otd 🗃️

America should embrace the ornamented box. The form is exemplified by this lovely residential hotel in #Watsonville. It's a simple five-story box with 100 car-free homes and terra-cotta ornament. Locals love it with a fondness not seen for the dull, sterile façades of its modernist counterparts.

Strongly second all of this

Pasadena approved 133 homes for fire survivors over neighborhood opposition, thanks to state density bonus and transit laws. laist.com/news/housing...

Remove cars. Restore life.

Spending time in France and Switzerland, it’s clear that the “missing middle” in North America isn’t townhouses and duplexes. It’s mid-rises. Especially mid-rise neighbourhoods. Our denser urban fabric (Montreal, Chicago, etc.) is still mostly 2-3 storeys, not 4-8 like is so common here.

Legislators from San Mateo, Lamorinda and Marin tried to advance legislation this year that would have destroyed the legal e-bike market in California because they could not understand this difference.

Your Cherokee words for today. The top word is English followed by how it is written in the Cherokee language followed by how it is spelled in English then how to pronounce it phonetically.

Hunkerousness [HUNG-ker-us-nes] (n.) - Old fogy-ism; political conservatism; an inexplicable opposition to compassion, kindness, progress, and equality.

California holds 72% of U.S. geothermal capacity and utility regulators keep ordering more. Yet Newsom vetoed AB 527, permitting reform that passed nearly unanimously. CA is simultaneously the national leader in geothermal and its own biggest bottleneck. www.wri.org/technical-pe...

The hero of the French resistance is making a comeback as an affordable electric car. The original #2CV was never created to become an icon. It became one because it gave people freedom. The new 2CV will carry that same spirit forward.” www.topgear.com/car-news/ret... #ElectricVehicles #ActOnClimate

Watch Duty now has nationwide coverage, incidentally. A membership is pretty cheap, lets you see firefighting aircraft, and supports one of the very best public safety orgs and its app that the US has.

Trump 2024 and the anti-woke backlash were a backlash against empathy and personal sacrifice for the greater good. Slopulism is an attempt to harness that sentiment for the Left. I do not think it leads to a good place.

A catastrophic infrastructure bill.

"About 1 in 11 CA workers—8.9%—spends at least an hour driving to work, ranking the state third in the nation. Only Maryland (9.8%) and Georgia (9.0%) have higher rates. At the other end of the spectrum sits Nebraska, where just 3.3% of workers face such long commutes." www.ppic.org/blog/super-c...

Nimbys don't see apartments as family homes. It's so good that California has continued to take the power away from them.

Important thread about a big California housing issue that few people are talking about:

The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam is home to the stunning Cuypers Library, the largest and oldest art history research library in the Netherlands #museum #rijksmuseum #travel #books #library

Fixating on the nominal prices of new houses is pointless, because lower-priced new houses push down *used* home prices -- and 90% of buyers buy used homes. Just like how a lower-priced new car pushed down used car prices: economictimes.indiatimes.com/launch-of-na...

Kamala Harris ran during a garbage time for incumbents worldwide and still managed to do better than she should have. But we should also not lose sight of the fact that if we elected a president through a national popular vote, not only would Harris have won in 2024, but so would have Clinton in 16.

For what it’s worth, the “greedy developers” who build housing operate exactly the same way. I hope the people who voted for this measure and also actively hate new construction and developers have an awakening that perhaps they aren’t so greedy after all. This is how housing is built & managed

LAMBO!!!!!💥💥💥💥 #WorldBollardAssociation

Even amid Vancouver’s soaring condominiums and natural surroundings, Sen̓áḵw is a showstopper. But one of its most radical technological innovations is almost entirely buried underground. @novakovicto.bsky.social on the energy revolution shaping its development: www.begiant.ca/stories/idea...

Local activist group VC Defensa shared a video this morning showing two Ventura County Sheriff (Thousand Oaks Police Department) patrol cars cooperating with a known ICE vehicle. They are out early together, terrorizing our community. Sheriff Fryhoff protects ICE, not us. #WeProtectUs

It's The Sisko Day. Here is this scene on human existence in the Deep Space Nine pilot.

People love to yell at cyclists and pretend they don’t pay road taxes so they don’t deserve road infrastructure, but the reality is that drivers don’t pay enough to keep up with our road infrastructure and roads require us all to pay and subsidize driving.