OCEANIA HAS ALWAYS BEEN VERY CLOSE TO A DEAL WITH EURASIA

This is the street at the base of the Spanish Steps. At some point, and this is past that point, a city should just ban cars as there are too many people there already.

This is the street at the base of the Spanish Steps. At some point, and this is past that point, a city should just ban cars as there are too many people there already.

So the current path is a 22% reduction in social security payments right around Election Day in 2032. Increasing immigration would help solve this, as one option. Gift link.

Exploring Electric Vehicle Driver Activities and Expenditure While using DC Fast Chargers https://findingspress.org/article/162484-exploring-electric-vehicle-driver-activities-and-expenditure-while-using-dc-fast-chargers?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=mastodon

PREMIERE ALERT: Pls plan to tune in this coming Mon, June 8th, at 2 pm EDT for an on-bike chat w/Prof. Kevin Krizek and Tila Duhaime about an innovative approach to enhancing community awareness of the dangers posed by our street designs and how we prioritize speed over safety youtu.be/kOuk4kOvULQ

Dealers and manufacturers are pushing for more dealer maintenance and repairs. I think we can see the edges of the end of dealers as the fleet becomes more electrified. (E.g. fewer sales and less maintenance) This would be good as dealers are in the way of better transport options. Gift link.

Songs Involving Parking: - “Little Red Corvette” by Prince (“the way she parked her car at sideways”) - “Nowhere Is My Home” by the Replacements (“Pitch a tent in a parking ramp”) - ???

This is a great power pop song that should should have been a hit. (It’s early 90s from Minneapolis/Des Moines)

These are absolutely quaint abuses of government spending compared to what is happening in Washington, and it's good they are getting spotted, though the flounder complaint seems weak. Gift link.

I (and others) talked with Todd Woody at Bloomberg about what the high cost of gas is doing to personal travel.

There’s a strong ecological case for getting rid of parking requirements.

Milei posts as much in a month as the US president has posted in total. Yikes. I thought it was tiring and embarrassing here. Gift link.

has any man ever been more vindicated? x.com/stuartbuck1/...

He only had his sentence from last conviction for fraud commuted, so maybe he’s just going for a full pardon but has to commit a bit of fraud to afford the fee.

Never gets old. J-school essay topic: Is there any performance test for essentially life-tenure columnists? A limit on how many big calls you can get totally wrong, before they say: Hey, buddy, how about taking a step back for a while. Maybe a few reported pieces? Where you go out and ask around?

Geographically, the idea that a flight from Chicago to Minneapolis was diverted *to* Wisconsin is amusing. It’s not like Wisconsin is out of the way for that flight.

California is targeting people who live in vehicles. There's not enough housing so rents are too high, but parking is often free. That doesn't provide stability. Gift link.

Phoenix is filled with office jobs at risk. The region has lots of back office stuff, fewer HQs. The regional economy is changing. Gift link.

These preppers can’t even handle dog leash rules during peacetime. There’s no way they make it through something actually bad. Gift link.

The costs of auto ownership and use have increased substantially, but I haven't yet seen data about people ditching cars or insurance or forgoing repairs, which I assume is happening.

That David King guy makes a good point.

This is a conversation I had with Bryce Cristiano about parking, drive-thrus, and opportunities for Phoenix.

How did parking lots swallow one of America's hottest cities — and make it even hotter?

I am excited to bring this perspective to conversations with traffic engineers: “waiting in long lines, idling in your car, is part of the je ne sais quois”

Drive-thru businesses should be banned from sea to shining sea. Drivers lined up for half a mile and waited an hour for flavored drinks. Madness. We should all treat ourtselves better than this.

28th Day is part of the California Paisley Underground scene that created all kinds of lovely jangly power pop.

The final minute of yesterday's race inside the cockpit of Felix Rosenqvist's Indy car... via @indy44 X

I don't particularly care about being in a Bluesky bubble or not, but I care a lot about Buckaroo Bonzai and as more crap 80s IP gets new movies I am still waiting for Buckaroo Bonzai Against the World Crime League.

Paris’ RER is a perfect example of solving phone call problems. Instead of duplicating infrastructure because different agencies controlled it, Paris made sharing work. It saved a fortune and created Europe’s most impressive regional rail network. open.substack.com/pub/infrasto...

Unintended consequences of GLP-1s being so popular is healthcare costs are increasing so much cities are cutting back on basic services due to budget constraints. Gift link.

Waymo is having a rough week scaling back service.

Spatial monopolies be spatially monopolizing.

Walmart reports that the quantity of gas bought is now below 10 gallons per transaction, first time since 2022. Considering the size of an average fuel tank, that seems notable. This is an interesting way of measuring how people are responding to high fuel prices. GL.

The Waymo warning for graduation at my son’s school notes that Waymo’s got stuck looping on campus last year, so have Waymo drop people off campus.

This @blindeke.bsky.social piece is good.

Springsteen has long been a Slim Dunlap fan and recorded a cover of Slim's "Girlfriend" a few years ago. Slim's two albums are great, as is the Songs for Slim compilation:

In my view Harvard shouldn't even have grades, just pass/fail. The students who are admitted get straight As as it is, and they are already going to do well in their classes. Artificially limiting the number of A grades to students who already have proven they know how to get A grades is silly.

I don't know how widespread this issue is, but this piece suggests that the new tax is hitting too many commercial and multifamily parcels, which inhibits redevelopment into new apartment buildings by raising costs ebyond what will pencil out. Gift link.

First two books of summer reading.

I’m not sure why this isn’t being mentioned more, but: IRS policy for 50 years has been that the sitting president & VP get audited every year, in an effort to reassure the public they’re not corruptly abusing the office to enrich themselves.

What do car-parks have to do with Australia's housing crisis? More than you'd think. Mandatory parking rules are adding as much as $137,000 to the price of a typical two-bedroom apartment. Grattan’s new report, ‘Wasted space’, says it's time to axe the rules: grattan.edu.au/report/waste...

32 years ago today, Moe Szyslak taught his first class on Funk Dancing for Self Defense. “Secrets of a Successful Marriage” first aired May 19, 1994.

According to the agent, part of the $110M value of this estate is the walkability: "Rodriguez said the price of Wright’s compound is warranted by the location in a guard-gated community within walking distance to Sunset Harbor’s shops and restaurants." What exactly is the walkability premium here?

The Chicago parking meters lease is being sold. Since 2008 when the LLC bought them for $1.15B they've collected $2B in revenue, and will sell the remaining 57 years for about $3B. The city thinks this is too expensive but I think Chicago buying the meters back for $3B is a Coasian bargain worth it.

A really nice feature of Seattle's population growth is for most of the last decade the number of cars hasn't increased with the number of people.

I’ve ordered this and can’t wait to start reading it later today.

$1.8B could buy every living American a McRib

Collapsing car dealership power will have positive effects from federal to city policy. Cities should be salivating at the highly accessible land they take up, which is ripe for redevelopment. The sales tax implications are real, though, but not so real we shouldn’t get rid of car dealerships.