Doug Letterman

As of tonight, licenses of trans people across Kansas are being invalidated en masse, enabling the overnight criminalization of an entire group of people for going about our lives. It’s often said you never know when you’re living through history, so let me assure you: that’s what’s happening now.

Urgent dispatch from the desert: it is bunny bullfighting season

Screenshot of a data table from data.transportation.gov comparing cost per passenger mile, cost per passenger and farebox recovery ratio for BART and SF Bay Ferries.

According to the NTD (2024 data):
Farebox recovery for SF Bay ferries is ~21%, while it's 24% for BART.
Cost per passenger mile is $1.71 for ferries, $3.37 for BART.
Cost per passenger is $25.26 for ferries, $18.07 for BART.

"It’s not the years, honey, it’s the mileage."

A fence blocks the path to Lake Merritt.

It would be nice if the Lake Merritt Channel path actually connected to Lake Merritt.

I'm a gravel noob, so that hill route looks *legit*. The McDonell descent, in particular, gets me white-knuckling my brakes the whole way down.

Hypocrisy is a feature of fascism, not a bug.

I know most people don’t spend a lot of time with kids, so they only know what a 5-year-old is in theory. He is still learning his letters,to count to 100, spell his full name, and mom’s phone number. His mom still baths him, and now he’s locked away in a concentration camp without a familiar face.

A patch of orange lane delineators are packed together in a field in Alameda

Time to harvest the lane delineators.

"KNOW YOUR PROTEST RIGHTS: You don't need a permit to protest in response to breaking news and you don't need a permit to march in the streets or along sidewalks, as long as you're not obstructing traffic or access to buildings. You have the right to photograph or film anything in plain view, including federal buildings and law enforcement, so long as you are not trespassing or violating a lawful order. You should not interfere with the actions of the government officials you are recording. If you believe your rights have been violated, when you can, write down everything you remember, get contact information for witnesses, and take photographs of any injuries. If you get stopped by the police, ask if you're free to go. If they say yes, calmly walk away. If you get arrested, you have a right to ask why. Otherwise, say you wish to remain silent and ask for a lawyer immediately. Don't sign, say or agree to anything without a lawyer present. If you get stopped by a member of the military or any law enforcement officer at a protest, you have the right to remain silent or to tell them that you'll only answer questions in the presence of an attorney-no matter your citizenship or immigration status."

"If you interact with ICE in public: Ask if you are free to leave. If so, you may calmly walk away. You have the right to refuse consent to a search. You have the right to remain silent. You do not have to discuss your immigration status with anyone, such as about where you were born, whether you are a citizen, or how you entered the country. If you have valid immigration documents, you should show them. Never provide fake documents. If you are arrested, say that you wish to remain silent until speaking with a lawyer. You have the right to record your interaction with immigration agents as long as you do not interfere."

If you're taking to the streets to protest, know your rights.

Glen Ridge, New Jersey maintains an entire network of gas streetlamps just for looks.

Ooh, are we rejecting discovery doctrine now? I'm sure indigenous people are going to love that discussion.

the New Jersey Legislature is about to functionally ban e-bikes because the Senate President is a car accident lawyer who's mad he theoretically cannot make money off e-bike crashes since they aren't insured (because insurance largely isn't offered)

NYC absolutely cookin'.

Yes it did. Saturday Jan. 3 #KingTides

December 2025 will end up the warmest in the modern record in much of the West. It's not particularly close in many places.

Salt Lake City is running +13F above normal, smashing December 2014 by more than 5 degrees, the previous record. These temps are typical of early November, not late December.

See from above, water covers an off-ramp of highway 101 and a parking lot next to the highway and bikepath.

The Bay took over the highway during this morning's #KingTides in Marin.

Picture 1 is signal of something that is ~240 km away (if it's an earthquake). 2 is signal of a non-seismic/non-explosive source (nearby machine oscillating at ~15-ish Hz). 3 is noise/no signal at all. 4 is local signal of non-seismic/non-explosive source.

I think entirely too much about how California’s climate plan explicitly says that converting to EVs is not nearly enough to meet our greenhouse gas reduction targets so we need to reduce VMT 25% by 2030, and then we do basically nothing to try to achieve that goal

I will like and repost anything about the Edison Elementary bike bus.

This confused me for a minute because your user handle is the zip code for Alameda, CA, but the quoted post refers to the Alameda Bike Bus in Portland.

In February, 7-year-old Dolma Naadhun was crossing the intersection of Newtown Road and 45th Street in Astoria with her mother and sister when the driver of a 2021 Ford Explorer blew through a stop sign, striking and killing Dolma. One month later, New York City Department of Transportation commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez visited the crash site with other officials, met with community members demanding a traffic signal be installed, and promised to make changes to the street - including "daylighting" the intersection using curb extensions and plastic bollards. State assemblymember Zohran Mamdani also visited the scene that day and realized that something else needed to change. "When you take a step back and think about traffic violence in New York City," he said, "you start to understand that this is a systemic issue that is incentivized by the policies that we have in place with regard to the design of our streets and what kind of vehicles we allow to be on our roads." Whether a driver runs a stop sign or a red light, statistically, certain cars - namely, bigger SUVs and trucks - are more likely to kill a 7-year-old. This is why Mamdani is co- introducing legislation for a weight-based vehicle-registration fee intended to discourage people from purchasing heavier vehicles. "The car industry is pushing the sale of heavier and larger vehicles," he says. "The state has to make it clear that these types of vehicles come with a certain kind of cost."

soar above adult shoulders. But there may be another way to disincentivize the purchases of such vehicles, says Edwards. "One other potential idea would be for someone, maybe a city's DOT, to start keeping a list of the different makes and models of vehicles that are killing pedestrians and cyclists, or kids specifically, and post that publicly," he says. "That could bring awareness to which cars are more dangerous and also potentially affect insurance rates, which would possibly convince people not to buy certain cars." There's a bit of accountability in New York's bill, which would require the State DOT to track all fatal crashes by vehicle weight. But the other encouraging aspect of the proposal is that the collected fees stay local, by county, and, after the annual dedications to highway, bridge, and transit trust funds are met, a full 75 percent of the funds raised will go toward safety improvements like bike lanes, bollards, road diets, pedestrianization of streets, and raised crosswalks. This means the neighborhoods most impacted by large vehicles are likely to see the biggest changes. And that might be the most important part of the legislation, says Mamdani. "This is an initiative to make our streets safer for our children," he says. "And we are making sure a significant portion of this funding goes toward creating the very streetscapes that we know will save their lives."

Two years ago I interviewed a 31-year-old NY state assemblymember about a 7-year-old girl killed by an SUV driver in his district. I hung up the phone, astonished that I'd talked to a legislator who so thoughtfully articulated what actually needs to change on our streets.

He'll make a great mayor

Smoke rises from a pile of boxes in front of a garbage truck with its back hatch open. It is stopped in the middle of a city street. A person in a hi-viz vest stands next to it. Flames are faintly visible in the back corner of the truck.

OM NOM NOM

White smoke rises from a pile of trash dumped in the middle of a street. A garbage truck is parked in the foreground blocking a lane of traffic. A perosn in a hi-viz jacket directs an SUV around the blockage.

Everything's fine.

A U-2 Dragon Lady spy plane flies low over a gold dredge east of Yuba City.

Sometime in 2023 a Google Street View camera captured a U-2 Dragon Lady flying low over a giant gold dredge east of Yuba City.

maps.app.goo.gl/VjQjYpDMnoWf...

Protesters fill a crosswalk at the entrance to the bridge to Coast Guard Island, Alameda.

The bridge to Coast Guard Island this morning.