L. David Baron

The state should impose "builder's remedy" zoning on local governments that do this, if too high a percentage of existing properties don't confirm to current zoning. Both citywide and on a more local scale. (I'm not sure what the right local scale is, though, but maybe specific to a zone.)

California's hottest races are between Democrats, and all about housing. To understand the dynamics to replace Pelosi (and her own heavy hand) and become LA's next mayor, you have to read this @jetjocko.bsky.social piece: www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

One thing about living in New England is that you learn which websites format US postal codes as numbers and drop the leading 0. (See the yellow area on the map at the top of en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZIP_Code if you need more context.)

Happy 32nd Birthday The first proposal of Cascading HTML Style Sheets! On October 10, 1994, the Norwegian programmer Håkon Wium Lie published the first proposal of Cascading HTML style sheets.

This seems like a good guide. And, as a former Californian, I'm strongly NO on 6. Using propositions to lock in chunks of the budget is bad: it makes budgeting more complicated, and often spends less than the legislature would, or too much. Voters aren't good judges of whether X million $ is right.

Ossoff's superpower is that he correctly thinks his opponent is a contemptible piece of shit and he is willing to explain why in clear and direct language. bsky.app/profile/atru...

This is Nazi rhetoric, full stop. It's not only a call to instigate a race war in the United States, but it's reminiscent of historic European justifications used to incite pogroms against Jews. People who say things like this are incredibly dangerous, as there is nothing they won't eventually do.

I think it counts as bad planning when an elementary school does picture day photos after lunch on a day when the school lunch was spaghetti and meatballs and marinara sauce. (...looks at a few tomato stains on kid's shirt a little below the collar...) (I'm sure planning this stuff is hard...)

Just did some number crunching using latest (Oct 1) ECMWF seasonal data, and I must say that I've never seen such high predictive confidence in a very wet California winter. This is a truly extraordinary forecast amid a record-strength El Niño event. [Thread: please read to end.]

I saw cars 1500-1501 in service on the MBTA Red Line today (at the Alewife-bound cab end). I think they're the 2 oldest cars still in service on the line (from 1969), but hopefully won't be for too much longer.

This is the problem with a significant percentage of ballot questions.

Absolutely scorching endorsement, bringing serious heat for Weiner and against Chan, but a blast furnace at Pelosi for her role in this race and her true reasons for it. Never read an editorial this heated in Chron www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/edit...

Last night, moonlight illuminated Hurricanes Nolo, Odalys, and Polo churning over the Pacific Ocean.

This is a great article. I've always been sus about the hype around JPEG XL, as it never stacked up when I actually tested it with web use-cases. giannirosato.com/blog/post/ca...

Jeremy's whole post is worth a read, and I would underline + bold the last point: the web is the superior choice for privacy and security, and it's anti-web *and anti-user* to be preferencing native app install affordances: adactio.com/journal/22757

I need younger generations to understand how weird it is that trump is such a unique terrible fuck up that it’s actually correct to blame the president for a demonstrably shittier economy and costs

Trump's political superpower is that he has somehow convinced the American political system to look at a poll result of "28 percent" and see the word "silent majority"

NEW: Our analysis found that from 2020 to 2025, the rate of deaths involving ectopic pregnancies nearly doubled compared with the previous six-year period. The uptick was steeper in states with abortion bans.

This isn't too far off, but I've seen quizzes with 10 questions rather than 60 that seemed more accurate (with sound questions only, not vocabulary). I've never lived in New Jersey, though, and most similar quizzes correctly place me in the Philadelphia area.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog: pluralistic.net/2026/08/25/g... 2/

Countless people will report the new H-1B tax as a “fee”. It is not. That word is used by advocates of the tax in order to avoid legal jeopardy for agencies with no authority to tax. Like the new OPT tax, it is a tax. I clarify in part of my new paper —> www.rfberlin.com/network-pape...

"Accuse your enemies of doing scandalous things, especially when it might be true" is not, like, some fourteen-dimension political jujitsu, even if too many Democrats have basically spent a decade explaining to each other why the savvy move is to NOT accuse President Malfeasance of malfeasance

Pinyin IME keyboard conventions (v for ü) creeping into actual product labels.

Older (yellow point access blocks on the right side of the street) and newer (gray/beige high rise towers further in the distance) styles of Chinese apartment construction.

“I’m mad that I can no longer get away with breaking the law and endangering others with my selfish and reckless behavior.”

The fundraising texts you delete are working on someone. It’s infuriating and heartbreaking. An 85yo in Ohio gave more than double the value of his home. A 91yo in an Indianapolis senior facility gave 25K times. The DCCC/DSCC don’t just tolerate the spammers who exploit seniors. They take part.

So why is this story important rather than comical? B/c as the WSJ notes, for years the Navy has resisted this push, for obvious reasons. That resistance has now collapsed. Unless this is a dumb show for his benefit — “Yes, sir, we shall be removing those mysterious magnets, right away sir…”

We must: (a) Shift from unit targets to price targets. (b) In cases of outstanding local progress, preferential funding and deference on implementation. (c) In cases of extreme local failure, strip local governments of entitlement/permitting power. Our small version: cayimby.org/legislation/...

An observation from "small city" China, after not visiting for 7.5 years: the conversion of most of the motorcycles and scooters from gas to electric has been a massive improvement for air quality. (It feels like the worst air pollution is now the cigarette smoke.)

New from me: More than a trillion dollars flow through the federal government in grants. We have more and more evidence that the Trump administration has been directing those grants on purely partisan grounds, denying them to blue states. 🧵 donmoynihan.substack.com/p/governing-...

"Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband, recently appointed to the role by the new Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, meets Secretary of State Rubio in Washington" is one of those lines that would sound perfectly plausible to anyone in 2015, but explaining the intervening period would give them an aneurysm.

Just this year, 40 military officers have been forcibly removed from those promotion lists. Over half of them are either women, or people of color. There seems to be a pointed effort to get rid of people who are not white men who are on the promotion list by merit.

“Trump has rejected disaster aid for Democratic-run states at the highest rate in the 47-year history of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.” Right now people in blue states are basically paying federal taxes as if they’re colonized territories of red states. www.politico.com/news/2026/03...

Policy tradeoffs are real and trying to maximize social benefits while minimizing costs and bad second-order effects is often complicated and difficult. Engaging with these facts in public does not make someone a neoliberal sellout.

Before he was picked to lead the Navy, Admiral Daryl Caudle found ways to signal his support for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s anti-diversity goals. Caudle’s path to the top job is a case study in how the military promotion process at the Pentagon under Hegseth has deviated from tradition.

Take it from west coasters. Do not exercise in this shit and mask up or limit time outside as much as possible

Time Change xkcd.com/3272/