Aaron 🏗️🚲🌲🏀

one big recurring problem: they kept wanting to tell a story of "here's a problem Korra can't solve by punching", but then the only resolutions they could come up with were "a different special kind of punching!"

the resolutions to Seasons 1 & 2 suffer particularly from this

I do think the show gets too much hate, but it's also true that the first two seasons in particular were a mess

might have helped if they'd had more time or a more solid commitment from Nick, idk

Season 3 is legit great though, Season 4 v good, and there's good stuff in the other two

but also I don't think it's true that different VMT per capita explains traffic death differences in US vs Canada

in 1997 Canada's VMT per capita was 20% above the US [https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/onh00/bar4.htm ]; US VMT per capita is only up 10% since [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=lls ]

both metrics provide meaningful information

We can't expect rural areas to design and deliver intercity rail projects by themselves. Caltrans' understaffing of rail and transit hurts rural areas and outer suburbs - who seldom have well-staffed transit agencies of their own - the most.

(also, I was indecently hopeful about Miller, god damn)

I still wonder sometimes how many hundreds of thousands of lives might have been saved in the delta/omicron waves if MAGA nation had seen him or someone close to him die of it

was an incredible night, but the aftertaste is sour

pretty grim how the dril tweet about drunk driving is basically how most US policymakers treat this

every traffic death is a policy choice

I always think it's funny that the US developed pretty much the optimal--by revealed preference--kind of suburb (close-in streetcar suburbs) in the early 20th century and then spent the rest of the century trying furiously to undo that good idea

scammer solidarity

the ancestors of redwoods were contemporaries of the dinosaurs

imagine a sauropod browsing on a giant sequoia, and you are imagining a real thing that happened

the ride between Fruitvale & Lake Merritt BART really is notably long

could use an infill station!

three redwoods rising tall from a shared base, with red duff on the ground around them and more trees in the background

a small figure looks up at a circle of redwoods rising up out of view, with moss clad bay laurel trunks arcing above her from the other side

Redwood Coast: Mendocino

waves roll in on a wide beach as the sun sinks behind a tree covered headland

an arc shaped beach with waves rolling in, seen from above as framed by the branches of a conifer

a redwood trunk clad in moss and lichen

Redwood Coast: Humboldt

Spokane continues on the most extraordinary run of urbanist policy wins I have ever seen

lot size?

a giant coast redwood rising up into a gray sky, in a redwood forest

a cool thing about redwoods is that they are older than the land on which they stand and even the Pacific Plate

their ancestors would have been browsed by sauropods

the security forces should be under civilian control!

People who think mass deportations are a housing affordability strategy have no place in the YIMBY movement.

All sheriffs are bad

the people yearn to be free of the dread machine

hell, could they point to any adverse outcomes in the 40+ year history of doing this thing in Berkeley?

the current era of Board leadership has (wisely!) backed off the exurban extensions, but I too am baffled by the apparent hostility to an infill station at San Antonio

lol

"I didn't think they actually meant in *my* back yard!"

I would also have taken the Supervisor position if offered

and the Housing Accountability Act!

Elon just thinks “alpha” means “alpha male”, and who is more alpha male than Achilles

next Dem AG gonna be busy