Drew

Watch out. If you laugh at the Radical Centrists, they may fight back by prompting Claude to write a blog post about how you are What Is Wrong With California...

comparison of SFUSD and union bargaining positions, and final deal. table from Mission Local article at https://missionlocal.org/2026/02/sf-teachers-strike-sfusd-ends/

Congratulations to San Francisco's teachers union -- as well as to the families who made due during the strike -- for demonstrating what "shared governance" can accomplish

An overview of the final deal from @missionlocal.org:

San Mateo County launches $2 million wage-subsidy program to boost local hiring Residents who earned a degree or certificate in the last three years can apply

Lower the cost of living by permitting more multi-family housing in the wealthiest ZIP codes in the country?

Wouldn't it just be easier to pay people directly say San Mateo County Supervisors...

www.mercurynews.com/2026/02/12/s...

Cisco exec looks at calendar, sees that day of the week ends in "y," announces last acquisition, regretfully announces layoffs...

Hacker News thread

"Singularity or just Chinese New Year?"

Ah, I wonder if that positions Magna to maybe someday become the TSMC of autonomous vehicles for automotive OEMs... then again, presumably the Alphabet IP lawyers are making sure to keep as much control for Waymo as possible

Ah. What a strange set of tradeoffs where Alphabet fully outsources vehicle design and construction to a mainland Chinese company, but then hires a separate contractor to install additional electronics in the US. Sounds like a Thomas Friedman column...

Would it be reasonable to assume that because the Zeekrs are fully custom designed, that more of the overall work is already shifting to mainland China? Much less system integration presumably required

Ha, For what it's worth, almost every City of Alameda public form regularly gets submissions for County of Alameda, including from businesses that should know much better...

"The result? Services have declined ever since California authorized public employee collective bargaining in 1968, even as taxes have increased. Most public sector union websites “read like a pamphlet describing the agenda of the Democratic party.” Is that appropriate for organizations with this much power?"

Grok, please explain the timing and the effects of Prop 13 to Y Combinator president and aspiring politico Garry Tan

California is the innovation center of the world. The birthplace of self-driving cars, the original home of OpenAI, and countless technologies that improve human life. But the biggest special interests in the state want to kill the golden goose. The Teamsters want to ban autonomous vehicles. The teachers unions block school accountability. SEIU and AFSCME control Sacramento. The Carpenters proved you can support workers AND housing. The POA fights for public safety. The distinction is public sector vs. private sector—and whether unions use their power to block progress or build it.

My apologies. Garry Tan likely didn't use Claude to write this blog post because it just doesn't make sense:

Teamsters, teachers, SEIU, AFSCME --> bad

Carpenters, police --> good

But how does that relate to public vs. private sector? Claude wouldn't write such drivel... must have used Grok

photo of Raimondi Park in West Oakland with San Francisco in the background by Paul Kuroda

Props to the @sfstandard.com whose owners may have an agenda (like many newspaper owners do) but who, regardless, are paying for top-notch journalism, including great photography like this:

On slow news days when I forget to post to X, run an agentic workflow to find a local news article that is bad. Draft an article following Axios Smart Brevity format that blames Chesa and/or a union for the problem

Claude, make me a website with a front page like Huff Post

Next write an agentic workflow to run whenever I post to Twitter -- err, X. Turn each post into an article following Axios SmartBrevity format

End each article with a call-to-action related to Abundance

cover of "MFA vs NYC: The Two Cultures of American Fiction"

I also prefer "NYC" to "MFA"

This blog post is just content marketing for a company selling LLM analysis of public meeting transcripts. So I'll stop nitpicking so much.

Still, suffice it to say: Oakland is a city, not a computer.

"Limitations: No migration dynamics, housing construction pipeline models, or state/federal policy changes. Effect weights are calibrated from urban economics literature, not estimated from Oakland-specific panel data. Unemployment uses county-level data (Alameda County via BLS), not city-level. GreatSchools ratings cover 87 of OUSD's schools but not charter or private institutions. Crime data completeness varies by year and precinct. Simulation magnitudes are directional illustrations — the model shows which trade-offs bind hardest, not precise outcome values."

The analysis uses GreatSchools to evaluate public-public schools but not charters or private schools

Not mentioned: GreatSchools is a 501(c)3 funded by the Walmart fortune and other foundations promoting "school choice"

"Simulation Review: The model was reviewed from four independent perspectives: urban economics (feedback loop structure and magnitude), public finance (budget constraint realism), statistical modeling (parameter sensitivity and edge cases), and civic governance (political feasibility of scenarios). The simulation is an educational illustration of policy trade-offs, not a quantitative forecast. It cannot predict council decisions, state intervention, private-sector relocation, or macroeconomic shifts."

If you don't name your reviewers, it hasn't been reviewed

"Simulation Engine: A discrete-time affine dynamical system that models Oakland's 113 census tracts over a 10-year horizon. The engine applies budget allocation across four policy dimensions (education, safety, housing, economic development) with hard budget constraints — every dollar allocated to one dimension is subtracted from the others. Effects propagate through 5 feedback loops: crime suppresses commercial investment (crime→economy), prosperity raises land costs (prosperity→affordability), safety improves school outcomes (safety→education), economic growth reduces crime over time (economy→crime), and rising costs displace lower-income residents (displacement). Diminishing returns ensure no dimension can be driven to extreme values. Governance friction delays housing effects by 35% more than other dimensions, reflecting permitting and construction timelines."

Reducing Oakland to "5 feedback loops" is ballsy. But economists and other quantitative social scientists make these kinds of idealized models all the time

What this blog post is doing that's unforgivable is picking arbitrary parameters. What "diminishing returns" and why "35%"?

Five Futures for Oakland Five policy paths. 113 census tracts. A decade of trade-offs. Press play and watch the future compound.

When you have a Claude Code subscription , everything looks like nail you can hit with that hammer... including the entire city of Oakland district.myhamlet.com/articles/oak...

(I am critiquing myself for pasting some Claude output into Slack :)

Reposting an LLM chat session is kind of like telling someone about a movie you just watched — very easy to bore 'em with unnecessary details

SFFD tending to a tree fallen on a parked SUV and a Waymo robot:

100 block of Sanchez, San Francisco

San Francisco Fire Station 6 is on that block, by Market St.

There was a wind gust warning today. Waymo robots often get befuddled by downed trees, but not often on them.

OP: tiktok.pablotavera83

Benioff must think his off-the-cuff offensiveness is strategically useful -- a cheap way to get some number of staffers to "self layoff." But does the $CRM board of directors want a company constantly riled by the boss or a company that's focusing on their customers and their actual work?

Is it time for the Salesforce board to strongly suggest Benioff retire full time to Hawaii? Dude went from having the best PR in the bay to being an unpredictable loudmouth

Fascinating report. FWIW, at least at in aggregate at national level it looks like transmission (San Bruno) and production/storage (Aliso Canyon) aren't the main drivers. Just the boring old costs of maintaining pipes to every single building across huge territories?

tweet from musk: life cannot be about one sad thing after another

The National: [cracks knuckles, tunes instruments]

Sad Dads Zip Hoodie Composition: 80% Cotton / 20% PolyesterSizing: Unisex

Guess he's a shop.americanmary.com/collections/...

SFMTA Bus Bus 77,857,337 BART Heavy Rail 53,222,212 SFMTA Trolleybus Trolleybus 46,447,945 AC Transit Local Bus 33,931,071 SFMTA MUNI Metro Light Rail 28,230,682 VTA Bus Bus 22,626,518 SamTrans Bus Bus 9,991,507 Caltrain Commuter Rail 7,405,005 AC Transit Tempo Bus Rapid Transit 4,798,970 VTA Light Rail Light Rail 4,723,010 SFMTA Cable Car Cable Car 3,925,803 SFMTA Historic Streetcars Streetcar Rail 3,828,113 Marin Transit Bus Bus 2,823,735 Concord County Connection Bus Bus 2,572,370 SF Ferry Ferryboat 2,388,379 Golden Gate Transit Bus Bus 1,432,232 Santa Rosa CityBus Bus Bus 1,423,226 Golden Gate Transit Ferry Ferryboat 1,421,356 LAVTA Wheels Bus 1,353,810 BART eBART Hybrid Rail 1,273,133 Tri Delta Transit Bus Bus 1,129,025 SMART Commuter Rail 850,270 Sonoma County Transit Bus Bus 744,550 AC Transit Transbay Commuter Bus 536,641 WestCAT Bus Bus 509,486 SolTrans Commuter Bus Commuter Bus 491,870 SolTrans Bus Bus 461,550 BART Airport Connector Monorail 432,021 Napa NVTA Bus Bus 398,093 Petaluma Transit Bus Bus 272,852 Union City Transit Bus Bus 269,375 AC Transit Dumbarton Bus 197,510 Vacaville City Coach Bus Bus 196,473 Fairfield FAST Bus Bus 185,764 WestCAT Commuter Bus Commuter Bus 149,525 Napa NVTA Commuter Bus Commuter Bus 57,376

WestCAT Commuter Bus Commuter Bus $0.61 SolTrans Commuter Bus Commuter Bus $0.89 BART Heavy Rail $1.15 Caltrain Commuter Rail $1.34 AC Transit Transbay Commuter Bus $1.48 Napa NVTA Commuter Bus Commuter Bus $1.49 AC Transit Dumbarton Bus $1.61 SF Ferry Ferryboat $1.71 AC Transit Tempo Bus Rapid Transit $1.85 SMART Commuter Rail $1.93 Sonoma County Transit Bus Bus $1.98 BART eBART Hybrid Rail $2.50 Marin Transit Bus Bus $2.58 Santa Rosa CityBus Bus Bus $2.67 Golden Gate Transit Ferry Ferryboat $2.88 LAVTA Wheels Bus $2.98 Napa NVTA Bus Bus $3.00 SFMTA Bus Bus $3.04 VTA Bus Bus $3.05 SFMTA Trolleybus Trolleybus $3.61 SFMTA MUNI Metro Light Rail $3.65 Concord County Connection Bus Bus $3.91 Tri Delta Transit Bus Bus $4.06 AC Transit Local Bus $4.16 Petaluma Transit Bus Bus $4.31 Golden Gate Transit Bus Bus $4.42 WestCAT Bus Bus $4.91 SamTrans Bus Bus $5.01 VTA Light Rail Light Rail $5.59 SolTrans Bus Bus $5.64 SFMTA Historic Streetcars Streetcar Rail $6.19 BART Airport Connector Monorail $6.47 Fairfield FAST Bus Bus $10.29 SFMTA Cable Car Cable Car $16.62

One single local BRT line in Oakland (AC Transit Tempo) serves more riders than the entire VTA Light Rail system, and has a Cost Effectiveness that rivals our top *regional* transit services

Bay Area should be super-funding East Bay BRT if they distributed funding based on objective metrics