this is why I find climate dooming so frustrating there is no point - none - at which throwing up your hands and going “well we’re fucked” is the correct response every tenth of a degree matters and can make a big difference and is worth fighting for

Mister President, we must not allow an Alf hog gap

I Love Boosters was quite fun. Absolutely no subtext, or if it was attempted it kept turning into text.

Science fiction has shown us many futures for San Francisco and Los Angeles... but what about Sacramento? What stories does it have to tell? I'd like to think that in a future where basic services like healthcare are provided by government rather than corporations, Sacramento would have a big role.

"Coming up in the next hour, President Clark accepts a report from the Ministry of Peace on how crime has been virtually eliminated ever since the extremely popular martial-law declaration was issued."

You've got a dinner date tonight where you're the cook, but you're out of food. The only way you'll make it back home in time is if you checkout via the 5 item max Super Express lane. What are the 5 ingredients you're getting to make a meal that'll impress your crush?

(reminding myself not to post about bluesky on bluesky) does anyone th- (also don't post about bluesky users complaining about bluesky) is there a- (also don't complain about complaints about bluesky on bluesky) what's everyone's favorite toilet bowl cleaners

Why am I feeling the urge to release my own cryptocurrency? --Oh, I see.

CARB is proposing major changes to CA's Cap & Trade program -- a new carbon allowance program for promises of future reductions -- that the LAO estimates would cut $2B from revenue, and economists at UC Santa Barbra putting the cuts at $4B.

“Shoulda gone to my wedding, dad,” he whispers from the bushes.

I was really suspicious this was an AI image, but it seems to have been a protest art installation

Me: How are you? Are you safe? My sister: I’m literally begging you to look at a map of California just once.

Yeah I’m pretty pro-panopticon for anything involving cars. Speed governors, automated license plate readers, ignition interlocks for people with more than one DUI. Sorry, your rights to privacy ended when you began operating a multi ton piece of heavy machinery around me!

need a Fun Will Now Commence Pacific Time companion account

Just not true at all. Reckless motorist folk story/cope. Follow the law and drive safely if you don’t want a ticket, Speedy McGee. Also put down your phone.

Hello, is this thing on? Here's a site I made to make it easier to track public meetings. Automatic transcripts and agenda parsing. Please take a look, tell me if it's useful, and what meetings I should add public-meetings.burke.services

The website for the California Governor's budget proposals, the hip and modern information superhighway exit ebudget.ca.gov, has now been in continuous use for 21 budget years, and will soon be old enough to drink. web.archive.org/web/20060508...

Since Gabbard isn't a cabinet secretary I reran the numbers with everyone Wikipedia considers broadly a Cabinet member, including CoS but not VP. Of the eight women in that group appointed in 2025, four remain. Of the 14 men, 14 remain.

Yeah the whole “See! Look at these devs losing their shirts! Land use reform works!” bit is a fun proof of concept but ultimately not sustainable in the long term. You can’t bank on devs being perma-morons to be the affordable housing strat. Building housing should be a low risk/ low profits affair

We also had developer bankruptcies in Austin, and some of the new towers foreclosed in Oakland. While this shows capital can overshoot on supply when allowed (developer ability to restrict supply is limited), I think we need to get construction costs down for a healthier long-term market

This is a backdoor way to ban speed and red light cameras and should be opposed

/26 But I digress. This gets worse and worse. And even when we get a different administration, DoJ will be permanently crippled by this. You can’t get that trust back. There need to be severe consequences. Personally I think a lot of this is less truth-and-reconciliation and more pock-marked wall.

If you live in LA, the most important mayoral election in decades is coming up. thankfully, the best candidate is obvious: It’s Nithya. Vote for Nithya Raman.

Left nimby academics can’t even produce their own slop anymore. They just have LLMs do it. Sad.

They're building a 500,000 sf distribution center in my neighborhood and not a peep of opposition from anyone. Maybe I should have told people it was going to be an AI datacenter.

SB 1117, a bill from @cayimby.bsky.social that would reduce most local impact fees on an 800-sq.ft. ADU by 94%, and on a 1,200-sq.ft. one by 63%, has passed the Senate 37-0. With zero amendments! Precisely as introduced.

Something is happening with multifamily housing. Starts +20% YoY and share of deliveries is ripping back towards the pandemic-era record. Big efficiency improvements too - implied completion times are down dramatically even as volume picks up.

Wow, I didn't even clock when Jr. divorced Guilfoyle in 2024. Good for me

Maybe Toobin's body is more cogent than the headline the NYT slapped on it. Fuck them both anyway at this point

Gripe: this bill was amended down a bit before passing Senate, not horribly so, but then more amendments in Assembly are predictable, even if Assembly would be equally happy with 1st round of amendments if they were responsible for them. Amendments as signal of moderation rather than substance

The fact that the DNC didn't want to release the post mortem because it was done incompetently and not because they are so smart and good at secrets should be a teachable moment.

Join us for brews and transit organizing on Wednesday June 10th at 6pm. We're meeting at Two Pitchers in downtown Oakland to celebrate the Connect Bay Area signature campaign and to kick off the campaign to see it passed in November. Featuring BART director Robert Raburn.

Fundraising for a special summer program for non-college roofing contractors in Tulsa to become better rounded citizens by learning the kinds of jobs real Americans do: project management for a large social services nonprofit

Two months ago Caltrans took out the Oak St bike lanes in violation of Oakland’s 2017 constitution access guidelines. I’ve been bugging them about it via @bikeeastbay.bsky.social ever since & this week the bike lanes are finally being reinstalled, w work continuing through Friday.

Discourse flattens every issue into a few positions, and if you are someone whose life falls into the many cracks between those positions, it can feel like an attack when someone with a large platform is, like, "Why don't you just..."

Bezos says that the US has one of the most progressive tax codes. This is true by some measures. But our tax and transfer system reduces inequality far less than countries with broader tax systems. Tax cuts can't help people who don't have an income, but a generous tax financed welfare state can.

Got a new washer dryer delivered today and have to give a callout to the Costco delivery guys, one of them literally stepped out into the street to stop traffic to let a pedestrian cross and then again when our school bus arrived and drivers weren’t stopping for the bus. Every day hero

let us take a moment to remember the jack the ripper babylon 5 episode.

... ........ bluche

it does help to hire a good actor to play sherlock holmes, which is something the BBC forgot to do.

🧵(11/11): So, public housing serves the underserved, keeps construction workers and capacity whole, helps soften downturns, and disciplines market prices. And a healthy, well-regulated market for private housing lowers prices for other market-rate housing, AND the cost of building public housing.

🧵(1/11): Public & Private housing go together like chocolate and peanut butter. Both offer their own unique benefits, but they also make each other better. Here's why:

Great! This makes it far easier to build starter home developments (esp. townhouses, but also bungalow courts) on decently sized units. It gets rid of the density catch-22 (conflicting minimum & maximum) that reduced usability of big lots. Some of the final amendments for those following:

SB 1116 (Caballero), which strengthens the Starter Home Revitalization Act, just passed the State Senate by a 30-0 vote! It now goes to the State Assembly for their consideration.

Substack whose purpose is to convey what the cool people are doing/saying behind garden walls, like the people in the Georgian era who for a subscription fee would send you long letters on the gossip and happenings in London

While I never took the vaunted Texas History middle school class, the books I had access to in elementary school left me with the strong impression that Santa Anna had been more or less the Hitler of Mexico

Kind of feel like we especially don’t need fancy law explainers at the moment. “Can the president just take money when he wants?” A third grader could answer this. A Yale law prof is likelier to write the wrong answer so their 2L can work for Alito