David Welton

So, so instructive to compare media response to Afghanistan withdrawal -- months of hysterical garment-rending & catastrophizing, relentless criticism of the admin -- with the response to an unprovoked, unmotivated, illegal war of aggression, ie, "some critics say maybe Trump should have reasons."

Glad he’s stepping down. Even though the emails in question were strictly about business, why did he send so many of them even after Epstein’s initial conviction and prison sentence

Platner sat for lengthy interview with antisemitic conspiracy theorist, said he was ‘longtime fan’ of his show Weeks before Graham Platner promoted an antisemitic conspiracy theorist in a now-deleted social media post on Thursday, the controversial Maine Senate candidate appeared on a popular YouTube show whos...

At a certain point you just cannot keep extending someone the benefit of the doubt. www.yahoo.com/news/article...

Iran has a line of succession, just as we do — so there’s going to be some Vice Ayatollah Couchfuck McTurban ready to take over, and be just as repressive a bastard as Khamenei was. but Donny can’t be bothered by any of that ‘what comes next’ shit. he’s just going to wipe his hands and throw the Iranian people to the wolves, because psychopaths gonna psychopath.

AYATOLLAH KHAMENEI IS DEAD, BUT DONNY HAS NO PLAN FOR WHAT COMES NEXT, BECAUSE HE'S A BRAINLESS DUMBFUCK WHO SHOOTS FIRST AND THINKS NEVER. GOOD LUCK, IRANIAN PEOPLE — YOU'RE ON YOUR OWN. I LAY IT ALL OUT IN TODAY'S VERY ANGRY POST LIKE FEW THOUGHT POSSIBLE. LINK IS HERE: bit.ly/3OFYhSA

Ok Bend, Texas looks like it has some... character to it. maps.app.goo.gl/KACoKkTCSYsW...

Isn't Bend the only actual "Bend"? There are several North Bends, a South Bend (yay @petebuttigieg.bsky.social ).

Looked it up and there are a few more, but they're tiny

The SW corner of that has seen buildings like

maps.app.goo.gl/oKSkCQaxCCrY...

Which is decently large for Bend. More could be built there pretty easily.

The NE corner of that is the historic preservation area where people will fight you if you try and replace your windows with the wrong thing 😩

One awful piece is housing discourse is that people don't realize that with shrinking household sizes an area needs more housing units just to maintain the current population. Not building inevitably leads to a smaller population and fewer children.

Dear Cities:
If you find yourself writing ordinances to ban #Ebikes from parks, please take a look at your streets. Are they safe enough for people--all people, including kids--to ride bikes? I'd bet a lot of money they are not.
Fix your streets first, and everybody wins.

To me the dividing line is when people criticize a specific person (Schumer for instance) or position or something vs people constantly going off on "the Dems"

Khamenei Is Dead, but Iran Is Not Yet Free His death closes one chapter of repression, but the Islamic Republic’s entrenched security, political, and economic power structure remains intact, and the fight for a truly free Iran is far from over...

Multiple things can be true:

1. Congress must vote to stop Trump’s illegal Iran war.

2. Trump decapitated the regime but has no plan to stabilize Iran.

2. Don’t mourn fascist Khamenei. He mass murdered Iranians, collapsed the economy & exported terror & chaos. He was vile.

The United States reminds me of Garry Hoy (1954-1993) from the law firm of Holden Day Wilson.

We keep hitting our unbreakable society every day with new blows of stupidity or malice, confident that all the amenities and advantages the majority enjoys will always be there anyway.

YouTube video by Ray Delahanty | CityNerd Suburbanites Will Flock to This 15 Minute City and Like It

The bike paths in Sunriver are pretty cool though!

From @nerd4cities.bsky.social www.youtube.com/watch?v=-b6w...

That was a great race - lots of uncertainty, gaps opening up all over and a worthy winner

Romain Grégoire (Groupama-FDJ) wins the Faun Drôme Classic ahead of Matteo Jorgenson

I don't know if it's the absence of MvdP, but this has been an exciting race so far; worth watching

Tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has all but stopped since yesterday.

Read the @financialtimes.com Economics editor, Sam Fleming's analysis of what the impact the war in Iran will have on the global economy
www.ft.com/content/31bf...

Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post offering “financial runway." This month it gutted its newsroom—more than 300 layoffs.

Whatever you think of legacy news, the hard data shows us that newspaper closures hurt Americans. Here's how: 🧵

As a kid, I ate this kind of futuristic thing up, and while I thought maybe it was kind of out of reach, I sure as shit didn't think things would be in the hands of a demented pedophile setting us back decades

"Smoke season" is real, but it's not 6 months a year 🙄

Why Bend Needs Neighborhood Commercial — Central Oregon LandWatch

Check out this initiative from both YIMBYs @bendyimby.bsky.social and environmentalists @landwatch.bsky.social to re-legalize neighborhood commercial

www.centraloregonlandwatch.org/neighborhood...

YouTube video by FishboneVEVO Fishbone - Servitude

@fishboneband.bsky.social, an elegant band for a more civilized age

www.youtube.com/watch?v=59_F...

It's going to take people advocating for it to be more than an afterthought - as well as more efficient land use to provide a more concentrated user base

Out in the Anti-YIMBY bunkers, the last holdouts cling to their tattered copies of Freemark (2019), the most-abused & misleading study on Chicago "upzoning". (Chicago did discretionary overlays, not upzoning!)

Real upzoning in high-demand places unlocks growth that you don't need a PhD to see

'Middle housing' slowly makes Bend more dense - The Bulletin The six- and seven-story apartment buildings dotting Bend’s skyline aren’t the only new developments making the city denser. The city isn’t only growing up, its growing in. Townhomes, duplexes, triple...

Yeah you should take up @melaniekebler.bsky.social 's offer to talk.

Much of Bend's growth was during the post WWII Suburbia era.

It's going to take some time and work to go in a different direction.

There are green shoots

bendbulletin.com/2025/12/13/m...

Sam Altman & @sama It was definitely rushed, and the optics don't look good. We really wanted to de-escalate things, and we thought the deal on offer was good. If we are right and this does lead to a de-escalation between the DoW and the industry, we will look like geniuses, and a company that took on a lot of pain to do things to help the industry. If not, we will continue to be characterized as as rushed and uncareful. I don't where it's going to land, but I have already seen promising signs. I think a good relationship between the government and the companies developing this technology is critical over the next couple of years.

Keep going Sam! One more post ought to do it, whatever it is you’re trying to do is working.

Getting mad at specific people makes sense and is justified

Getting mad at "the Dems" is useless and potentially harmful

WOW. 19 people, all who were imprisoned and mistreated in a foreign prison at the direct command of the United States, are brave enough to say “We are innocent, and we will endure more time imprisoned to prove that.”

I can only admire the enormous courage such a move takes.

How it started. How it's going.

AI, draw me an image of bombers dropping dozens of pineapples on pizzerias across Italy