Scott Feeney

Maybe he's just an idiot, but maybe he's working the refs on purpose. He knows the corporate owners of this supposedly-but-not-actually decentralized service are on his (pro-AI) side. He wants them to more aggressively moderate and cut off any backlash to elite, but otherwise unpopular, opinions.

Who cares what people did in a campaign five years ago. Do you support spending an amount equal to the Prop I revenue on social housing, or not?

Man, San Francisco city rents are going crazy. Listed rents for new apartments* are up 16% YOY for 1 BR.

* Based on a survey of listings. I don't know how well this takes into account things like concessions. And this doesn't hit existing rent controlled units.

www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco...

S.F.’s Union Square comeback is taking shape — despite two major question marks Retail vacancy is decreasing and visitor numbers are increasing for San Francisco’s premier shopping district.

"S.F.’s Union Square comeback is taking shape — despite two major question marks"

Somehow neither of them is the lack of bike lanes or the complete absence of bike parking anywhere near the block-wide, 7-story Macy's. Biking to and around Union Square sucks.

The Kirkham Neck-Down Works Great - Streetsblog San Francisco Mainstream media manufactures a conflict where none exists

Previously:

Notable at this hearing:
👍 Item 1: Slow Golden Gate Ave gets concrete diverter
🙅‍♂️ Item 7: Kirkham neckdown to be removed, replaced by less effective traffic calming

On a sunny day west of Divis (rare) you can even use the sloped lawn at the bottom for a picnic like it's Dolores Park

No public restrooms nearby though :( I tried to have a birthday picnic there and learned day of they had removed the Pit Stop

A wide park path rises up a gentle incline with wooden steps to a bench, under and surrounded by coast live oak trees.

The underside of some coast live oak trees, showing how their branches grow in a spirally fashion.

A wide and tall coffeeberry shrub fills 3/4 of the frame, while beyond it across the street is a three-story Victorian apartment building with bay windows. The shrub has deep green leaves.

Oak Woodlands has long been my favorite part of Golden Gate Park, but only recently have I come to appreciate Buena Vista Park for its own coast live oak forest... and even more recently noticed this enormous coffeeberry shrub at the bottom of the hill

Interesting! I didn't realize it was under BOS jurisdiction.

State bill? City ordinance? Who would put in poison pills? I thought we can do it at the city level but unclear on process.

We gotta get single-stair building reforms unstuck in San Francisco too. The BOS unanimously passed a resolution in favor, but in our strong-mayor city I think the actual decision is up to a department effectively controlled by the mayor. Get on that, Lurie.

I've heard pre-ordering a forthcoming book from an indie bookstore is especially helpful.

Fund San Francisco's Social Housing Program with Prop I Property Transfer Tax Revenue, as Promised! In 2020, San Francisco voters passed Prop I which levied a transfer tax on properties worth over $10 million dollars. The Board of Supervisors unanimously passed a resolution assuring voters it was th...

On that note, here's a petition to Mayor Lurie and the current SFBOS to fund social housing:

actionnetwork.org/petitions/fu...

If someone's response to an effort to fund social housing is to complain about how a ballot campaign was run 5 years ago, I'm going to interpret that as they oppose social housing, and they are an obstacle to be routed around.

better be hashed AND salted or I'm not eating em

Oh my god, the 19th Avenue repaving project is going to be going on through the November 2026 election, when must-pass transit funding is on the ballot. "...will be completed by December 2026." 🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️

The ugly mirror phenomenon, by which ruling elites encourage forms of popular participation that continually remind the public just how much they are unfit to rule, seems, in many modern states, to have been brought to a condition of unprecedented perfection. Consider here, for example, the view of human nature one might derive generalizing from the experience of driving to work on the highway, as opposed to the view one might derive from the experience of public transportation. Yet the American—or German—love affair with the car was the result of conscious policy decisions by political and corporate elites beginning in the 1930s. One could write a similar history of the television, or consumerism, or, as Polanyi long ago noted, “the market”.

Graeber is also appropriate company!

“The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something we make, and could just as easily make differently,” including our streets.

And consider what he writes of the “ugly mirror” phenomenon in “There Never Was a West,” an essay in that collection:

I'd love to be interviewed by him. My worldview is morally consistent, so I would come out looking good, unlike all those other people.

But not a lot of people

We did it! It's the world's worst, most expensive train!

I'm not too worried about specifically that, as Esk's sources claim that even the backers of this idea know they can't win a vote to undo K. I am worried about this putting voters in a bad mood and hurting other stuff, having negative coattails for other progressive candidates, etc.

"Tech people"/"techies" unhelpfully conflates workers with owners and executives of the companies.

Thank you for saying this. There is a mindlessly pro-robotaxi urbanist crowd now and it drives me absolutely crazy, as someone witnessing firsthand their erratic behavior, the congestion they cause, and my city's politicians trying to replace public transit with them.

A reminder that cars aren’t a technology problem. They’re a geometry problem.

Hot take: dark mode being easier on the eyes is a fiction invented by tech companies to distract us from the negative health effects of staying addicted to our devices and consuming.

Wow. Vitale wrote The End of Policing, advocating for community-based solutions for safety instead of policing.

One of my favorite things is getting to tell friends who are new to NYC that the subway "stand clear of the closing doors please" voice is a trans woman named Bernie Wagenblast and she's amazing.

Also, wouldn't you want to subdivide the single-family houses then? Much more eco-friendly than building brand new apartment buildings!

I'm aware of this phenomenon, but not aware of it being so dramatic as to counter a 55% population drop. Do you have data on Pittsburgh to that effect?