Parker “Austin Needs Approval Voting” Welch

“Well you see, they thought coal dust had an interesting patina”

If you’re pushing housing in lowrise n’hoods, eliminating useless sideyards is the unlock for the urban design everybody says they want.
In exchange for sideyards that no one uses, you get better units, lush interior courtyards, space for trees and play, higher density and lower energy use.

• The federal government spends about twice as much on procurement (about $750 billion according to some estimates) than it spends on federal employees (about $360 billion). • State and local governments spend about twice as much on procurement as the federal government.

Maybe you are wondering “how big of a deal is procurement and contracts to current modes of governing?” The answer: a very big deal.
Political attention is focused on government employees, but we spend more on contracting, often funding the ideological opponents of the government.

May 2nd DART Election Schedule Voters will decide the future of transit in Addison, Highland Park, and University Park

May 2nd DART Election Schedule

It is actually bullshit how much of my young adulthood has been wasted by this fucking moron

Most asphalt is reclaimed, but it still has to be crushed up again, stockpiled safely away from contamination, pass decantation & plasticity tests, and stay below certain maximum ratios of recycled material in the new mix

COA Spec 340.3F talks about it more: library.municode.com/tx/austin/co...

And of course, you have to pay for testing on that material to make sure it meets spec

Compare to asphalt or concrete, which have to be poured out with new material all over again every time you sawcut & demo the pavement for utility work

Syria's Kurds caution Iran's Kurds against aligning with US against Tehran Kurdish residents of northeast ​Syria warned Iran's Kurds against aligning with the U.S. to fight the Iranian government, citing their own experience in Syria in recent ‌months as evidence their Irani...

Syria’s Kurds are warning their Iranian counterparts not to align with the US, saying Washington will eventually betray them and citing their own experience in the last few months as proof.

(More seriously, I have no idea how high fuel costs have to go before electrifying a quarter of a sun belt city’s bus fleet becomes a good decision, but it’s funny to think about)

I may need to make a Randy Clarke apology form about battery buses…

Get ready to learn how to speak bus buddy

They can get to 20% approval, if they dig deep and remember their training, I believe in them

What could go wrong

Sounds great 👍

And even if he chooses to cut and run, whatever embittered regime remains will be much less restrained in using the strait as leverage.

We will essentially be teaching them that the fool-proof way to get what they want is to target civilians in the Arab nations & maritime traffic in the Gulf

Source for the map, was current as of ~2019: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:CN...

CBS News and BBC News join forces around the globe The two news organizations are announcing a global newsgathering relationship

www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/cbs...

Map of CNN’s bureaus around the world, with US states containing a bureau marked in blue and each country containing a bureau marked in salmon pink (some countries, like Germany, have more than one bureau office) Coverage includes the broader Anglosphere, Mexico, the Southern Cone of Latin America, Western Europe, South & East Asia, American security partners in the Middle East, & three Sub-Saharan bureaus in the largest Anglophone countries there (Nigeria, Kenya, and South Africa)

In hindsight one of our biggest blindspots as a country was forgetting that information relies on infrastructure beyond the minimum you need to physically transmit it

Soon we’ll lose most/all of CNN’s foreign bureaus and their only world competitor is the BBC, whose US collab deal is with…CBS News

The sum effect will be the near total collapse/disappearance of non-crisis or sustained foreign reporting on American television. Probably forever.

And what we'll be left with is videos of questionable authenticity clipped from social media tracked with a VO from one of 15 people left in London.

A small one-crew foreign bureau costs something like $3m a year, probably double that if you're in a war zone. Each additional crew is another $3m. 25 bureaus*2 crews = ~$150m. And Fox News and MS-Now don't really have them and get better ratings so... this is where the bean counters go first.

By this time next year, CBS News will probably be entirely folded into CNN with massive redundancies. And CNN will likely see its bureaus and newsgathering apparatus slashed in favor of talking heads, which are comparatively much much cheaper.

Seattle’s climate and housing efforts collide against an unexpected bottleneck State and city lawmakers have mandated denser housing and the electrification of new homes. A weak link has emerged.

We need to figure out why underground power costs in the US are so high. Lower-income countries in Europe do it, why can’t we? First place I’d look is what our standards are for it and whether they require more overdimensioning than in Europe www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news...

CNN gas tracker: $3.41

vibe check: CNN now has a gas tracker on their front page

At Largest ICE Detention Camp, Staff Bet on Detainee Suicides, AP Reports Camp East Montana has received several 911 calls in the span of five months about immigrants trying to harm themselves.

Staff at the nation’s largest Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility have placed bets on which detainee will be the next to die by suicide, according to new reporting from the Associated Press based on 911 calls and detainee accounts.

Adding Up What Urban Highways Really Cost A new report maps the economic toll that downtown freeways exact on 142 US cities — and tallies up what that land could be worth if it was developed for other uses.

A new report by @thedotcity.bsky.social quantifies the economic toll of downtown freeways, and the economic potential of tearing them down.

The 66K acres that downtown freeways occupy could yield more than half a trillion dollars of development and over $5b annually in property taxes.

Videos shows run-up to immigration officer’s fatal shooting of Texas man The clips, from multiple angles, don’t include everything, including key audio. But lawyers for the man’s family argue they refute the Trump administration's explanation that his killing was self-defe...

NEW: Renée Good. Alex Pretti. Before: Ruben Martinez. Friday
TX DPS released body cam + docs for the 23yo who DHS
agents killed while on vacation in South Padre. Videos shows him driving while brake lights on, before gunshots.

w/ @aydenrunnels.bsky.social

www.texastribune.org/2026/03/06/s...

Will it actually solve their Hormuz problem? Lol, no, but neither will almost anything else, and FTA at least codes as “doing something” about it

Honestly I’m hoping the right people use this to convince them to start handing out FTA grants like hot cakes

What’s a few million between friends?