Huh. I guess Waymo isn't confident in its cars' ability to handle heavy rainstorms? Seems like a lot of places get heavy rainstorms! www-cnbc-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.cnbc...

You can pretend to have your shit together if you want. They don’t really check

Signs of our social immune system kicking in.

"Life expectancy was significantly higher in compact counties than in sprawl. Compactness affects mortality directly [through less traffic violence] & indirectly through vehicle miles traveled (traffic fatalities) and body mass index, a contributor to chronic diseases." www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/15...

If your town's economy would collapse the moment that the nearest large city instituted congestion pricing, you are just a suburb.

But then again a lot of suburban America gaslights itself into thinking they're in a rural small town when they're just in a suburb

This kind of stuff also imo overstates how much of America is actually "small towns"

Catching up on some reading and one notable item: The disconnect between autonomous vehicle experts/researchers and AV social media boosters/marketers just grew into an impassible rift. Real AV technologists are combing through the SF blackout and finding nothing but bad news for Waymo.

This is how much key pollutants are spilling into the sand & ocean annually in Manhattan Beach. 326.6 lbs of Zinc comes from car tires, which are about 1% Zn by weight (UV sunscreen for tires). Implies 32,000 lbs of larger tire crumbs (we breathe smaller ones) on streets, missed by street sweepers

The issue here is that the US is actually just a car company with a pension plan and medicare, play-acting at democracy. Other countries with domestic car industries actually regulate their carmakers. But in the US, the carmakers regulate us. And American drivers defend this arrangement.

Ever since Elon started lying about film self drive a ~ decade ago, I've been amazed by the number of suckers who seem to just not care about their own lives, or the lives of their families. But this faulty door thing -- folks, don't even get in a Tesla. Ever. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

It's funny IMO that Berkeley, California was one of very first jurisdictions to ban straws/plastic bags -- you know, for the environment -- But soon as we learned the actual leading source of plastic pollution? Crickets. Performative progressivism. www-pbs-org.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.pbs....

This is flagrantly unconstitutional but what makes it even more offensive is that two of the most notorious NIMBYs in Los Angeles County -- Denny Zane and Sue Himmerlich -- also served on the Santa Monica city council while being paid by (anti) housing non-profits.

this is why Jews have trust issues with basically everyone. you keep assuring us you're not just trying to kill us and we keep seeing you, saying shit like this. "but he didn't hate the dead families he killed, he hated what they represented in his mind" uh huh. so original, never heard that one

"It is up to autonomous vehicle companies to change their strategy for building trust. I have specific ideas on that. Those ideas do not involve cover-ups of embarrassing facts." [mic drop] open.substack.com/pub/philkoop...

remember left NIMBYs? yeah, that was a whole waste of time wasn't it.

Kids these days.

"And I’m confused as to why using cortisone as an anti-inflammatory in a 2,000-mile race is cheating, and I wonder why putting your own blood back into your body is the crime of the century." -- "Why I’m not angry at Lance Armstrong" by Sally Jenkins (she really, actually wrote this)

All of these bootlegged copies of the 60 Minutes segment flooding my feed (saying, ‘Watch it quick! Before it disappears!’) makes me feel like I’m in the Soviet Union and just got some black market foreign newspaper I need to hide under a floorboard in my house. This is where America is now

The full spiked 60 Minutes CECOT package, clean & subtitled. 5/5

The full spiked 60 Minutes CECOT package, clean & subtitled. 4/5

The full spiked 60 Minutes CECOT package, clean & subtitled. 3/5

The full spiked 60 Minutes CECOT package, clean & subtitled. 1/5

Of all the things I believe deep down in my soul, I believe the United States will rise or fall on the question of, "can we save local journalism?" So far, the response of the crowd with means to bolster local journalism has been anemic -- but: Enough bright lights to be (very modestly) hopeful.

The Olivia Nuzzi story and the Bari Weiss at CBS story are the same story, which is that the upper echelons of legacy media are absolutely rife with people who worship power and don't feel burdened by any sense of responsibility to their profession or the public.

In any profession where there is diminishing opportunity, pole climbers and nepo babies will rise to the top. In publishing, this just results in bad, unreadable books. In journalism, this results in a collapsed liberal democracy.

If you're looking for an example of the systemic ways brittleness filters through systems, causing losses and eroding capacities far from the scene of a disaster, this is a good one. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/22/u...

I lived thru the end of public smoking. Early in my career I presented to city councils who were smoking, in front of audiences who were smoking. Smoking in restaurants, airplanes, hospitals… All of that seems insane now, but it was very controversial when we DID change it. We CAN change things.

This CBS censorship moment is a good time to remind there is a crisis in local journalism that you can help end by supporting local journalism. We can't save the republic from a national media owned by fascist Republicans. But we can save our communities. www.niskanencenter.org/the-state-ca...

California taxpayers gave $750 million to Caltrans to build a carpool lane on 101 to "alleviate traffic." But drivers screamed and cried because they want the lane for single-occupancy vehicles. So, Caltrans is giving it to them. Caltrans is trash. www.sfchronicle.com/california/a...

Little Goebbels clones all over the place, running around in the executive suites of national news media outlets, censoring content disfavorable to regime objectives.

The rate of return here is crazy: for a few hundred thousand dollars, this lab produces literally billions of oysters and supports a seafood industry worth hundreds of millions. And the Trump administration is just like "fuck all that, it's wasteful spending, you're fired"

A Waymo reality check. 🧵 There are 2500 autonomous cars (Waymos) in the US currently approved for operation, out of a fleet of 290,000,000 vehicles. It's the scale of a very, very small science experiment. They are not "everywhere" -- it's just that the people ...

I mean the one thing I'll say in Waymo's defense -- and if you don't know this, you should -- Virtually every community in California failed its evacuation planning/modelling exercises last year, and all for the same reason: You can't escape from neighborhoods designed for cars ... in cars.

Waymo has halted service in San Francisco after numerous videos & images showed its autonomous cars snarling traffic during the blackout. With traffic lights down, Waymos across the city stopped dead in their tracks at intersections. missionlocal.org/2025/12/sf-w...

The Queen was killed so the drones all dropped dead

So we found out today in San Francisco that autonomous cars don't work in a blackout (Waymos shut down, wherever they were, all over city) Participating in live experiments is fun! I still wish I'd been asked beforehand. But it is pretty wild and kind of cool to see them discover their edge cases.

end times shit

French hotel with prefab bathroom pods, common in Euro hotels and other repetitive typologies. Great example of off-site construction as a spectrum: advanced forms (panelization, volumetric modular) come from all-around regulatory hygiene, not pro-modular policy in an otherwise crap code environment

The President of the United States deleted this photo of the drawer full of photos with himself and Jeffrey Epstein from the DOJ's illegally redacted release of the files last night. We are watching a cover up in real time. This is file 468.

The woman was right. The American Hitler has emerged.

The Independent has identified Eric Lendrum as the DHS PR officer responsible for a relentless flood of social media posts on DHS pages using Nazis memes, slogans and images. www.independent.co.uk/news/world/a...

"In California, you can kill someone with your car and not have a point on your license." "Los Angeles Judge Daniel Lowenthal said he’s seen it work well in vehicular manslaughter cases so drivers don’t lose their job or suffer consequences." Of killing someone. calmatters.org/investigatio...

This is amazing -- a few years ago, Oakland made International Boulevard significantly more deadly when it added bus rapid transit lanes while ignoring best practices (a common problem with US traffic engineers). But after just 5 years of advocacy, local activists got deaths back down to zero.

A new World Bank report calls on governments to create dedicated Livable Streets Investment Programs, steadily scaling funding to 10% of road budgets by 2035. Why? Because livable streets deliver some of the highest returns in transport investment—up to €16 per €1 spent: investinlivablestreets.info

If pedestrian deaths can be eliminated on the previously deadly International Boulevard, we should be able to eliminate them on every other street. We just need the will to do it, especially from policymakers and Caltrans. Thanks @tvrr.bsky.social for tireless advocacy to achieve this huge win!

Cities across California are on the cusp of bankruptcy due to the NIMBYs that control them. Build more homes, IMO.

i see Bluesky has discovered David Brooks discourse

I took my friend with only a high school degree to a fancy party and saw his face freeze up at the terminology being used by the elite. “Hebephile?” “Ephebophile?” I quickly asked him if he wanted to go somewhere else and he anxiously nodded yes and so we went to a Trump rally. By David Brooks