miscforma.bsky.social

“We are gonna do pre modern mafioso politics but you still get a fixed rate mortgage and cheap goods” is honestly such a funny pitch if you really think about it

Let's get it straight: when we want a bike lane, it takes 1.5 years of advocacy and someone dying to get a single block of paint. When Ed Flynn wants a bike lane removed, he just needs to whine for 2 months. Message received, Mayor Wu.

I emailed Patrick Healy, assistant managing editor for standards and trust at NYT, to ask why their story about a House report with new details of rape allegations against the President of the United States included neither those details, nor a single use of the word "rape." archive.is/1s9AM

I can't stress enough how counterproductive it is for campaign sites to hit visitors with a donation pop-up they have to close before they can see anything. A week out, most visits to these pages are voters trying to make up their minds.

I am DOCTOR SHIVA AYYADURAI INVENTOR OF EMAIL and I am here to LOSE A LAWSUIT

LA is basically run by a "good old chuds" network. Incumbent officials who have run the city into the ground playing petty-tyrant machine politics are furious that Nithya might actually follow laws and professionalize operation of the city. www.politico.com/news/2026/10...

By making it illegal to spread the land cost over many apartments, single family zoning effectively acts as a subsidy for rich people who want to own mansions on extremely valuable urban land.

So-called “inclusionary zoning” is an attempt to outsource a key state responsibility—providing subsidized housing to poor people—to private for-profit actors so the state does not have to raise and spend tax money. It is profoundly neoliberal policy.

This is why 99% of existing homes in Boston are illegal according to the city's own zoning code. Making it impossible to build anything - even the type of homes that already exist - strengthens the city's leverage in these negotiations.

"The rule of law, but for land use" remains an *profoundly* radical position.

Hey Boston area folks, now that Circle Furniture is no more, where's a good place to get furniture?

She then asked me if I have liability insurance for my bike (Yes, both through my car insurance and specific bike insurance). "I don't believe you", she said, then illegally turned right on red and drove off.

Development and transportation policy in Berkeley has been largely dictated for the last 55 years by people who inherited their homes and have never had real jobs. Incredibly they are still one side of the 2026 local election campaign. If you have a job and pay rent, vote accordingly.

"[Our research] found: - Every additional 100kg of vehicle weight was associated with a 6% increase in odds of pedestrian fatality; - Every additional 10cm of height was associated with an 11% increase in odds of pedestrian fatality. " theconversation.com/big-us-style...

my reaction when a Massachusetts suburb that hasn’t meaningfully changed its restrictive housing laws in over half a century tells us to leave housing reform entirely to them saying; “we’ll change, we promise. This time is different.”

I love history, particularly Of the built world. But there are those that would forestall all change out of a sense of fealty to what has come before, and that is not preservation.

The fact that there’s a town in Massachusetts that would rather drink its own sh** than let more people move in tells you everything you need to know about the exclusionary attitudes that created our housing crisis.

housing discrimination is insidious and the cases are some of the most difficult to prove because most of them are not stupid enough to tell you in writing that they’re doing it

it continues to be funny to me when i hear people go "but obviously these dsa types just want to destroy the market and implement stalinism" while, meanwhile, they are actually *more* pro-market than the mainline democrat incumbents they're challenging

(Cambridge, of course, has also undertaken by-far the most radical pro-housing turn of any of the would-be NIMBY ritzy college towns. 6 story apartments citywide!) www.cambridgema.gov/news/detail?...

Anyway, big lesson is when you live in a nice place, you have two choices: -Engage in the constant and hard work of making it nicer for more people. More housing, more density, fewer cars. Cambridge. Berkeley tiptoeing there (also Sacramento!) -Try to hoard the niceness for yourself. Boulder, Davis

Halloween is next week, but we were too excited to wait. Family Bike Ride 10/18/26

"We are not losing our young people because of the weather. We are losing them because of zoning." www.bostonglobe.com/2026/10/24/o...

recent MBTA 40ft diesel hybrid bus procurement is the most expensive* US bus procurement of the past decade per data from EnoTrans (enotrans.org/transit-bus-...) *adjusted for inflation, bus type (40ft diesel hybrid), procurements of >=25 buses

Something something golden rule

Just as a private equity firm buys out a corporation and strips it for parts, a consultant class is raiding the Democratic Party and getting “generationally wealthy” along the way New from me and @adambonica.bsky.social newrepublic.com/article/2163...

And if you're a new member or an existing one, vote SMC. We have a world to win, and we don't have time for sectarian nonsense or infiltration by reactionary cranks who own dressage horses and hate the poor.

Weird way to phrase taking away voting rights

BREAKING: Supreme Court rules student IDs can’t be used to vote in New Hampshire, a win for the GOP in a Senate battleground.

Ah yes, you support gentrifying a neighborhood that was built exclusively as a whites only enclave, where the chief of police once called in the FBI to investigate how a black man was allowed to rent a home there. You gentrifying scum.

If you pretend to die they will show up with 100 police officers, but if you actually die they will show up with 1 to fill out the paperwork.

Shocking news, protected bike lanes result in more people riding to work share.google/8asAE1wmfyV8...

Postwar attempts to rebuild American downtowns for the convenience of suburban drivers fail because cities cannot compete with the suburbs on ease of driving and parking; and attempting to do so destroys the vibrant street life that makes cities worth living in or visiting in the first place.

It was a “good” lesson in not trusting the walk signal—motorist was about to completely blow through the red. Had to yell to stop my son from walking out in front of it, now he’s upset because he thinks I was mad at him. We deserve better than living in fear of dying at the hands of the careless.

This is a perfectly good home for three families! It shouldn't be illegal. Yet Boston's zoning says it is.

Maddening to hear because they assigned me the task of researching this in California. I did all of the work and documented it in far more detail than you ever find in code development. I got three independent estimates, one of which came from the federal government! docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Robert is trying to explain "what is the housing crisis?" "It's not that we don't have housing, we have a lot of housing. The problem is we don't have affordability" [omg omg omg no no no[

This morning the cargo bike dad yielded for me as I walked my kid to daycare. But the SUV driver behind him blew the stop sign and drove right at us. Spare me the “when will the bikers follow the law” shit.

Over to 24 Seaverns Ave in Jamaica Plain today. It's a classic triple-decker built in 1905, and like 99% of Boston homes, it's illegal under Boston's zoning code.

Literally, yes. Citizen’s time is finite, there’s nothing inherently representative about the people that show up to the meeting, and delay has real and tangible costs in terms of what gets built. A project millions will benefit from being held up by some random cranks is not meaningfully democratic