Anyone who works in California can show you a “nexus study” that claims new housing units need like $50k of impact fees on them and also that this has no impact on the level of development or housing prices.

Chapters 2-4 of the late, great UCLA Professor Donald Shoup’s book The High Cost of Free Parking exposed modern parking planning as pseudoscientific nonsense so thoroughly that many states and major cities have thrown out parking requirements entirely.

Who could argue with this?

Crystal Lake with a late push to finish over 17” of rain and make the podium. Meanwhile Mountain High’s North Lodge cam is back up! Also the wildfire cam on top of MH West is up and showing a little fresh snow up there. Hoping for Wrightwood to be back in business soon!

The next Democratic administration should just ban coal. And then when the next set of vice signalers come in, the infrastructure for it will be gone. We’re not going to leave them the tools next time.

Great points in this thread: We don't usually think of 1965 immigration act as on par w/New Deal and Civil Rights, but it was a major liberal achievement and Miller's real project is to undo it. As @larryglickman.bsky.social says this connects w/goal of undoing other great 20th century achievements:

Hispanic Republican Addie realizes the other young Republicans in her focus group are racist

Some photos of storm damage in Wrightwood. Hopefully it’s not too extensive. www.latimes.com/california/s...

Just here to get my Grokcare

Dean Martin, born Dino Paul Crocetti, son of Italian immigrant Gaetano Crocetti Frank Sinatra, son of Italian immigrants Antonino Sinatra and Natalina Garavanta Merry Christmas to everyone except Stephen Miller and his enablers and handlers

Should we talk about how we’ve had three enormous storms this year separated by weeks of hot dry weather?

Here’s how 2025’s climate change fueled winter is going at SoCal ski areas (Snow Summit, Bear, Snow Valley, Mt High)

The only true way is the Canadian way (As much as I wish it was a joke, it is in fact not one and this is exactly how it works here)

Metric is obviously the correct answer for science but I would very much like to cast doubt on it “making sense” for ordinary life that the essential unit of the system is based on it being 10000km from the North Pole to the equator.

In the 80s my parents had a car that we called “the uh oh car” because it broke down so much, culminating in the dashboard smoking up. We had another car where the floor rusted out.

You can be on this side or with the dinosaurs

joining the "cybertruck owners only" group on fb is one of the best decisions i've ever made. every so often when i'm scrolling through fb getting pissed off, i get to see a little treat like this

ICE detain father shopping on Christmas Eve—then steal his family's groceries. Then 3 agents divvy up his paid for food—taking what they want for themselves. "Can I just get the wife's number to call and let her know?" woman asks. "No, guess he should've complied," agent says. Yakima, Washington

Another union that’s going to vote for an obvious anti labor candidate… as we were saying…

I wrote about this exact policy on my substack months ago and it is very nice to see it get the press it deserves in the NYT there should not be a single free parking space in Manhattan imo bettercities.substack.com/p/10-thought...

This is the way. Shame these people for as long as they live.

The American Planning Association: No Fun Allowed (TM)

The American Planning Association: No Fun Allowed (TM)

Zoning for pickleball… I guess we need to focus on the issues of our times, but this is indicative of a complain-oriented way of planning

Merry Christmas, everyone!

One of the earliest-ever modern portrayals of Santa Claus features him gifting Union soldiers with a jumping-jack doll of Jefferson Davis dangling from a noose - as drawn by political cartoonist Thomas Nast. www.metmuseum.org/art/collecti...

I love that he's explaining the housing crisis from the landlord perspective

Accidentally drew Ricardo like an aging Superman. Will substantiate with backstory later. COMIC ◆ www.smbc-comics.com/comic/compar... PATREON ◆ www.patreon.com/ZachWeinersm... STORE ◆ smbc-store.myshopify.com

For the love of God, Montresor!

I love the east Bay Area. People of different races and religions live and work together to build the American Dream. We in liberal society take this for granted but the national rise of extremism stemming from online content seeks to take this away from us. darrellowens.substack.com/p/the-americ...

Selling pardons is ineffably corrupt. Just complete contempt for a rule of law. If this isn’t a high crime or misdemeanor, nothing is.

Further afield Death Valley is again completely cut off from the outside world. This feels like something that has measurably changed in the last 20 years- Death Valley NP gets so many flash floods now that the parks road network is just slowly degrading away.

Evac orders for San Bernardino County areas around Sheep Creek (Desert Front, Piñon Hills, Wildhorse Canyon, parts of Phelan). Though given current state of roads I’m not quite sure how you’d do it.

Even though the atmospheric river has moved off to San Diego County, the air is still very moist and the Transverse Ranges continue to squeeze moisture out.

Here’s how things are going for Caltrans in the Cajon Pass area

Statement from Mountain High CEO as Wrightwood is under shelter in place order and multiple roads are closed. Crystal Lake hit 8” of rain at 1:30p and Wrightwood had 7” as of 12:30p; it’s likely the area has seen 10” of rain by now. Heavy precipitation should be ending within the hour.

As of 12:30pm Lytle creek now at almost 9” and Wrightwood over 7”. Mormon Rocks, not exactly a place you think of as getting a lot of rain, over 6”. I think the slight SSE tilt of the atmospheric river is juicing things at the far eastern end of the San Gabriels where this aligns with topography.

Wrightwood now under a shelter in place

If you’re a SoCal skier looking for some hopium, NWS LA’s avalanche guidance for Mountain High (yes that’s a real product they issue) has snow levels crashing to 7500’ this afternoon and 6500’ tomorrow morning with enough QPF to generate some decent snow. BP to Throop above 8000’… fingers crossed.

All of LA and Ventura Counties, and most of Santa Barbara County, under flash flood warnings.

Crystal Lake and Lytle Creek have past 6” and there’s still a lot of rain to come. Wrightwood past 4” as of 9am already. Seems like the eastern San Gabriels will be north of 10” no problem from this storm.

Honestly we are already seeing this in rising delinquency for auto loans which is going to be a drag on the financing operations of many auto makers. They are surely separate corporate entities from the manufacturing side but the whole model is in jeopardy.

It already happened in Britain. You have a bunch of companies making obsolete stuff that can't compete and they end up getting broken up and sold off. Being a historic brand doesn't count for much.

GM global sales are already down 40% in the last 10 years. We are into the final years of the US motor car industry.

American labor reliably chooses to really fuck themselves in the future to save a few jobs today.

Americans will spend the next 20 years paying the price - a market of last resort for Trump's petrostate oligarch allies whose oil reserves would otherwise go stranded.

Flash flood warning for Sheep Creek in Wrightwood- this is the center and most rugged of the three prominent landslides above Wrightwood. Likely that all roads crossing it, including the 2, the 138, and the 18 are affected. I saw a massive debris flow here in summer 2023 during the tropical storm.

Geology is climate. Here you can see the Transverse Ranges as a solid bar of yellow/red intense precipitation, as the east-west trending mountains intercept moist wind from the south. Even in a storm with no dynamics (internal mojo, if you will), the mountains force the air up and create rain/snow.

Crystal Lake hit 1.30” of rain at 4:30am and the main event hasn’t even started