I block ad hominem and strawman nincompoops • Opinions my own • Market socialist • SWE • He/him • 🚌🚇🚲🏘🥑
Oakland, CA
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The left really went from “Black Lives Matter” to “slavery can be excused in pursuit of anti-Zionism” in less than 4 years.
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The Portland light rail for $2.50 was shut down because of the heat, so I had to take a Lyft for $43. Whoever says it’s too expensive to mitigate climate change is bad at math.
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So Uber is saying, "vote to continue underpaying your driver by 25-100%." Anyone who is a worker should be deeply afraid of corporations running campaigns like this, this literally could happen to anyone’s job next.
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If you agree that the Bible is fairly common literature for 12 year olds (it certainly was in my conservative, evangelical family), then yes sexual assault is indeed a common theme for that age level.
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If you care about children, don’t drive an SUV.
Car crashes are a top 3 killer of children in the US (along with guns).
And SUVs are responsible for a disproportionately high share of fatal crashes involving children, according to a study from University of Illinois.
Buy a sedan if you love your kids.
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After a decade of building 8,000 apartments in Oakland, market rate 1-bedroom units are now affordable to low income people, as defined by HUD.
Today the SF Chronicle reported:
- Oakland has largest rent decline (-7.2%) among top 100 US cities.
- Median one-bedroom rent in Oakland stands at $1,430.
- Vacancy rate in Oakland rises to 9.4% in September 2023.
According to Oakland’s Housing and Community Development Department, low-income is an annual wage of $58,912, which according to most landlords is enough to accord rent of $1,472 a month.
ALT A “100% affordable housing” sign outside of a new construction apartment.
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If you’re driving the wrong way on a divided street and hit a DFO at 7:15am on a sunny Thursday morning then no, society doesn’t owe you anything.
ALT A wrong-way driver crashed in to a tree near 14th Street and Adeline Street in Oakland the morning of April 18th, 2024. This corridor is part of Oakland’s high-injury network.
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One hour of cook time for chicken? That’s some really dry chicken. No wonder they need $5 of sauce.
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If you’re a Zoomer, please read a history book. If you’re a Boomer, please take a memory loss test.
I was born in 1990: for the first 20 years of my life anti-LGBT bias was considered acceptable among even politically moderate suburbanites.
Without systemic legal and cultural homophobia, there would have never been “Pride.”
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We need to rescind the professional licenses for traffic engineers until we can figure out what’s going on.
ALT A suburban traffic light is surrounded by 5 high visibility flex posts.
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Why wasn’t UCSF using air? If hospital officials read the news they should have anticipated that between motorcades, protests and crowds traffic would be extremely unpredictable.
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Google AI wants me to declare this striped median as a crosswalk. Needless to say, I still don’t trust self-driving tech.
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It’s so you can put a tap in the tree and have the syrup fill up your glass jar. I assume it’s a vestigial design element from a time before maple syrup was industrialized.
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It’s been a while since Twitter has had the “is reading books at bars ok?” discussion, so maybe start there?
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Too many urbanists can imagine banning cars and single family neighborhoods, but can’t comprehend banning the police.
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Overall, the US is a mid-trust society.
But American suburbs are built to foster a low-trust, fortress mentality.
It’s what city planners call “crime prevention through urban design.”
Here me out. I live in one of the most dangerous zip codes in America.
You’d think our neighbors would have zero trust.
But people are hella friendly. This weekend I had a half dozen impromptu conversations with strangers.
When I’ve canvassed for local candidates, I’ve noticed many keep their doors open. People have invited me to come in to their home and chat.
Our UPS guy remembers the names of all our dogs, even though corporate forbids him from delivery after 5pm.
Bottom line: if you over-prioritize safety and security, the flipside is loneliness and isolation.
Moved into new neighborhood, not a single neighbor has stopped by or introduced themselves.
America is not only low-trust now, it’s no-trust.
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I’m typically wary of whataboutism, but given the Jordan Williams case it seems New York juries are just tired of disorderly behavior on the subway, regardless of race.
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According to USA Today a Milwaukee pastor was using the first floor of his church building to help homeless people stay warm in Arctic temperatures.
But local zoning prohibited residential use, so planning officials are suing him.
The pastor’s argument? The suit is a violation of his religious rights because his beliefs require helping others.
Now this is the sort of religious freedom litigation I can stand behind.
ALT An (unrelated) Oakland, CA church advertising a parking lot zoned for housing is for sale by the pastor.
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No lie: I was a supporter of free transit fares until I asked my elected transit director about it and he listed the tradeoffs, like reduced service, fewer transit jobs, etc.
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Someone parked in the bike lane. Their vehicle is now blocked in with 200 pounds of water-filled k-rails.
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My latest gen iPhone 15 has a USB port which also connects with wired headphones. I assume Android has similar technology. It’s just people being rude. You can buy wired headphones if you can’t afford AirPods.
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Occasionally I wonder why California taxes are so much higher than other deep-blue West Coast states.
Then I see stories about wild welfare schemes. Like, California pays drug addicts a $599 sobriety participation trophy… Even if all their drug tests come back positive for illicit substances.
From the LA Times: Every time a drug test is free of stimulants, participants are paid, even if the sample tests positive for other kinds of drugs, including opioids.
ALT LA Times headline: California pays meth users up to $599 a year to get sober California’s Medicaid program is testing a novel approach for people addicted to methamphetamine, cocaine and other stimulants: For every clean urine test, they can earn money — up to $599 a year.
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Biden decided to subsidize 6,500 pound EV trucks for downtown office commuters instead of 60 pound e-bikes.
Now, folks will start lobbying to spend climate budgets on retrofitting parking garages.
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It could be bird guts. Birds are non-human biological pilots. Sometimes birds crash in to flying objects, like when US Airways Flight 1549 crash landed on the Hudson. It's conceivable that a bird strike took down an aircraft the USAF was unable to identify.
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Weird how the real estate industry is spending six figures to defeat the YIMBY-endorsed, pro-housing candidate.
It’s almost like housing scarcity is financially rewarding for entrenched real estate interests.
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Oh come on, when I’m 80 my condo will be under the SF Bay. I don’t expect the local government to do anything.
This was my choice to buy in an area that’s going to be inundated, just like it was Boomer’s choice to pretend climate change was a hoax.
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Lots of people don’t know how to correctly compost. Then they ruin the efforts of everyone who’s correctly composting by contaminating the waste.
The default should make it hard for people to do the wrong thing.
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I grew up in the suburbs, riding the bus. The vast majority of people on the bus were working class. Let’s stop acting like busses are elitist, and instead ask why middle class suburbanites won’t also ride the bus.
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It’s taken WMATA 14 years and counting to return Metrorail to full service after the 2009 Fort Totten crash.
It took officials less than a month to reopen I-95 after a tanker crash.
At the time, WMATA carried 1.2 million passengers daily, while 150,000 cars used that stretch of I-95 per day.
Based on the tremendous progress these crews made over the weekend, I can now say:
We will have I-95 back open this weekend.
We have worked around the clock to get this done, and we’ve completed each phase safely and ahead of schedule.
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Bikes and pedestrians are banned from using interstates and even from some suburban arterial streets. It’s not radical to imagine banning drivers from using local streets.
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Cancelling market rate units to scale down an apartment to exclusively low-income housing:
- Doesn’t create new low-income apartments
- Reduces potential foot traffic for local retailers
- Doesn’t stop gentrification as Lake Merritt is already a super amenity
- Strangles sales and property taxes that make up Oakland’s general fund
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Given that America was only 13 states at the founding, I will only be recognizing votes from the 26 original senate seats (18/26 original senate seats are blue).
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At top speed @sfbart could shuttle passengers directly between SFO and OAK airports in 8 minutes.
This is faster than the 11 minutes it takes to ride on the SFO AirTrain from Terminal 3 to the Rental Car Center.
Therefore SFO and OAK should be one airport connected by BART.
This will also solve most of the weather-based congestion at SFO. Flights could use runways on either side of the Bay.
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It's unfortunate environmalists and urbanists aren't unified. There's a section of environmentalism that views urban living ("Manhattanization") as an ecological nightmare. The real nightmare is Phoenix-style sprawl eating into pristine parks and farms and burning our planet up.
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After observing my parent’s marriage end over “irreconcilable differences” all I can say is that all love is conditional, including when people say their love is unconditional.
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Not to mention how Muslim ban 3.0 is now here for Iran. Meanwhile northern Italians and South Koreans are still free to come to the U.S. This is as much about poltics as it is about public health policy.
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Yes in fact, more men (77.1%) are overweight and obese than women (69.4%) according to NIH statistics.
I think it’s fair to say the “fat wife” trope is misogynist.
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Only 8% of Americans are vegetarian, 4% of plastics are recycled and 3% of cars are electric.
We have barely scratched the surface of voluntary lifestyle changes.
Climate change means adapting how we move, house and feed ourselves. Otherwise nature will change it for us.
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Not only is Emeryville increasing their portion of Black residents while building new apartments, Emeryville Unified School District is also narrowing the achievement gap between Black students faster than other Bay Area cities.
Whatever Emeryville is doing needs to be replicated over every single Bay Area city that declared “Black lives matter” in 2020.
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I’ve put on 14 pounds since the shelter in place started. For the first time in my life my BMI is overweight.
My diet is essentially the same, but I no longer bike to work daily. We could be so much healthier if we designed streets to let folks have an active lifestyle.
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No one in the WFH debate mentions this, but lunch with coworkers is really nice for breaking up the day. Twitter just does not replace informal, in-person discourse.
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My city council member told @baynewsmatters that “bicyclists are primarily white.”
But this doesn’t seem to be what I see on 14th Street in the blocks by my house.
And as a Black bicycle rider, it stings to be told that biking is a white thing.
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Do people realize it costs money to maintain a building, whether you have an HOA or not?
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I was frequently the only Black student in my upper division STEM classes… And my university had more students of color than white students.
The Black students on my campus were majoring in fluff like “sports management.”
A better question to ask is how do we get more Black students on a track to work at companies like OpenAI.
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This is what gentrification looks like. A modest single family home replaced with a beautiful mansion a half mile from a major transit stop.
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The US right straight up opposes public transit, the left treats transit as a service for the poor.
When systems (e.g. Caltrain) have a wealthy ridership, Democrats advocate to defund those agencies.
Places with good transit instead view transit as a social good, not welfare.
Genuine question -
Why does the US have incredibly poor public transportation systems?
Public transportation in cities like HK/Tokyo/Seoul is simply amazing
Not only are subways/buses clean but people follow rules & don't make a scene. And it's incredibly cheap to get around
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When bicycle advocates ask for hard infrastructure we’re told it may cause pollution and needs years of study and community debate.
When Salesforce requests k-rails they magically appear.
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Alito apparantly “cannot recall if (we were) served wine” but he’s “certain” the wine was less than $1,000.
And Kavanaugh admittedly drinks to the level of felony DUI, but says he remembers every part of what happened during drunken escapades.
What an honor it is to live in a country where our judges are so brilliant, they can estimate the price of wine they never drank and perfectly recall every moment of nights they spent vomiting.
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As a software engineer, I would simply rely on the prior knowledge of having had to calculate all these numbers before.
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Before COVID I rode Caltrain every weekday with students, kitchen staff, security guards, bus drivers and nurses. About 40% of Caltrain riders earn less than the area median income.
Gutting Caltrain is regressive. Caltrain actually provides an essential public service.
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I have zero dollars in student debt. Even with a 20% down payment my income isn’t enough to qualify for a median priced home in Oakland — let alone in Silicon Valley. If you’re serious about this issue, please support legislation that builds more homes by jobs & transit.
Owning a home has been a staple of the middle class and the American dream for decades, but many millennials are locked out of that dream today.
The reason: $1.6 trillion in student loan debt. thedailybeast.com/student-lo…
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The government really should be giving out free masks. But why in this neoliberal hell can’t we at least buy masks with an FSA?
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Newsom should walk up the stairs at Civic Center BART and then continue north on Market Street at 11pm on a weekday: no security, no handlers, no press... Then and only then should he decide whether safe consumption sites are worse than today's status quo.
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Government workers should be paid above market rate salaries and receive full 401k matches.
In exchange they become at-will employees who can be fired anytime for any reason and we abolish the government pension.
This is how we make government serve the citizens better… We’ve tried the “underpay government workers but shower them with perks” for decades and it’s just lead to worse and worse government.
Absolutely disgusting government salary.
“New head of L.A. DWP will make $750,000 a year — nearly twice as much as her predecessor”
latimes.com/california/story…
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Trying to wrap my head around how bike lanes allegedly cause gentrification, but also they make the neighborhood ugly, drive away shoppers and cause businesses to loose money.
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I didn’t realize Pleasanton, CA was so scary. Folks might want to consider moving to Oakland. Seems like it’d be a lot safer.
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Politicians please stop seeing transit as only:
1) Assistance for low-income riders (e.g. poor service to captive riders)
2) Congestion relief for drivers (e.g. only running good service during peak highway congestion)
Instead elavate it to an alternative to auto-dependency.
A new $8m annual transit subsidy is better than $0 but KCTA spends $41m to run & maintain buses. Can’t help thinking a 20% service boost might have done more for both riders & ridership levels.
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My dog doesn’t really bark, I pick up his feces and I guide him to permeable surfaces to urinate.
Walking dogs is a net benefit to the neighborhood: dog walkers are extra eyes on the street and walks provide an opportunity for neighbors to connect with each other.
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A majority of zip codes in the Bay Area are unaffordable to people making $100,000. As a techie I can't even qualify to rent an average apartment in San Francisco. Yes, we should fight for a living wage. But a living wage alone is not going to solve housing affordability.
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In New York HOAs can vote on whether a new neighbor is allowed move in (and if they reject an applicant, they don’t have to say why).
There are a lot of progressives who think this is a great policy and would like to apply it to their own neighborhoods via strict zoning.
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There’s no difference between a Harvard MBA pitching lean, just-in-time supply chains and a socialist advocating for 0% housing vacancy.
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People talk about it being impossible to make the suburbs walkable. But my dad lives a 5 minute walk from the grocery store. All they need is a sidewalk and all of a sudden the suburban townhomes turn into a walkable community.
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The bus-only lanes on Broadway are being painted today. It’s exciting to see my street being turned in to clean, green infrastructure.
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Uber will get me to my destination 14 minutes before the bus is even predicted to arrive at the bus stop.
And this problem is solvable without billions of VC dollars… Officials only run two buses an hour on weekends.
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I was helping my neighbors put some mulch down along I-880’s Frontage Road to cut down on dust pollution.
A guy from Caltrans stops by and asks “what company are you with?”
Me: “I’m a homeowner, when is Newsom going to clean this area up?”
Of course he had no idea or explanation for why Caltrans neglects to maintain their Oakland right of way or when they’re going to start.
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Spent $180 on TurboTax this morning.
They put the value “undefined” in to one of my tax forms instead of an empty string (it was a box I didn’t need).
For $180 I shouldn’t be debugging type problems on documents that could send me to jail.
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Each time Dean votes against SF apartments he increases gentrification & displacement in Oakland’s BIPOC communities.
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I’m heading to the coast. It’d take $17 in gas and tolls to reach the beach by car. But by bike it’s $0.
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Let’s talk about how design can reduce crime, even when it’s the police committing the crimes.
My local dog park is a disgusting mud pit of dog waste, mud and weeds. The trash bins are overflowing.
So this morning when an OPD K-9 officer came to exercise his dog he let it run off leash: but on the ball fields. There’s a sign reiterating Oakland’s municipal ordinance that off-leash dogs are only allowed in that filthy dog park.
So how could Oakland Parks encourage police and civilians to use the fenced-in dog park?
By emptying the trash, providing doggie waste bags and giving us a park with hard-surfaces and sand, like what they have in Rockridge.
Unfortunately with half the city budget going to police, there’s barely funding to design infrastructure that discourages crime.
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My moms a preschool teacher. She says the preschoolers do not comply with social distancing. I feel like anyone who’s ever been a kid could’ve predicted this?
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It’s great to see more planners riding bikes. But recreational biking is the least “woke” way to experience bicycling.
To viscerally understand the needs of bicycle-dependent people one needs to ride every day and every night, in all weather: for work, for errands and for fun.
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Saw a reckless guy with a smashed front end almost T-bone another car on Broadway today. I know this is unpopular, but bad drivers should loose their license.
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If every human drove an electric car global auto emissions would still be higher than they are today. We cannot continue building a car dependent future.
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An old man on an e-bike sped passed me and shouted "see you later." Old people bike too. And they deserve safe infrastructure.
(For the record, at a great physical cost, I caught up and passed him.)
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It’s illegal to make budget-friendly homes in most of the US:
• We could build 300 sq. ft. studios for single adults and childless couples. But that’s gentrification.
• We could build family-sized apartments with 2 or 3 windowless bedrooms. But that’s block busting.
• We could build point-access walk up apartments with wheelchair-accesible units on the ground. But that’s ableism.
• We could eliminate condo defect laws that push developers to build less regulated single family homes. But that’s anti-consumer.
ALT A high-density retirement community during sunset over Lake Merritt.
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Middle class renters should be allowed to inhabit modern, well-maintained homes without having to make enough salary to buy a $1MM “starter home.”
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Apropos of nothing, In Mountain View these beefy bois are protecting outdoor dining. If your city isn’t doing this, their first priority is drivers.
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Progressives last year: “Unbanked people should be able to shop with cash and women should have ready access to Plan B.”
Progressives this year: “It’s OK if your neighborhood Target and CVS closes, you can just use a credit card to buy Plan B on Amazon Prime and hope it arrives on time.”
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“SUVs struck 14.7% of the investigated pedestrians and pedalcyclists, but were involved in 25.4% of fatalities. The severity of injuries, particularly head and thorax injuries, and hospital charges are also higher in crashes involving larger vehicles.”
ALT Though pickup trucks were the striking vehicle in just 5.6% of pedestrian and pedalcyclist crashes, they were involved in 12.6% of fatalities. SUVs were similarly overrepresented in fatalities relative to the proportion of their involvement in all crashes. SUVs struck 14.7% of the pedestrians and pedalcyclists investigated here, but were involved in 25.4% of the fatalities. Head and thorax injury severities are examined by vehicle type and age. Hospital charges of pedestrian and pedalcycle crash victims are also analyzed by striking vehicle type and victim age. Practical applications: Findings suggest larger vehicles are involved in pedestrian and pedalcyclist crashes with more severe injuries that result in higher hospital charges.
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COVID19 is not caused by density. It’s cause by stupidity. Cities like London, Paris & Hong Kong have extremely high density... Yet they account for a smaller fraction of global cases than NYC. A lack of urgency in the US, NY & NYC caused the disaster in NYC.
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You just have to:
- replace driving with walk/bike/transit
- learn quick recipes
- log off Twitter
P.S., check out “How to Cook Everything Fast” and “No Recipe Recipes.”
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It cost $24.80 round trip for me and the partner to ride from Uptown Oakland to the Fillmore District. And there was a 20 minute wait just on the platform.
Meanwhile the Bay Bridge would’ve been $6.00 and a 26 minute drive.
I’d hate to even try this in a transit second city.
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Oakland just bypassed all the urban planning “best practices” and “critical urban planning” theatrics and instead let builders build.
In exchange stuff like skipping posted public notices or using non-union labor, West Oakland got blocks of new sidewalks, repaved streets and park upgrades.
Maybe we should stop letting CEQA consultants obstruct basic government services.
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The socialist running for president is going to provide $2 trillion for private EVs and a measly $300 billion for public transit... That’s less than 4 California-size high speed rail projects. So yeah, our trains will continue to look like abandoned infrastructure.
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I used to vehemently argue against the idea that “poverty is a mindset.”
As I’ve gotten older and seen my family and randoms, I’ve changed my mind.
Take for example the simple action of evacuating when the fire alarm goes off.
In my market rate building, most of us leave.
In the low-income subsidized units next to us, no one seems to evacuate (even when there’s a smoke-like smell in the air).
Not a single outcome for black ppl will improve until the majority of black ppl admit that their average group outcomes are the results of their average group behaviors and have absolutely nothing to do with the decisions or actions made by white people.
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Progressives can’t even sell Californians on price controls and decarceration. No wonder the US took a rightward tilt.
Progressives need to rewrite their policy papers with evidence-based ideas:
1) Lower the cost of living (build more housing)
2) Reduce recidivism (shorter prison sentences but higher odds of being punished)
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Per Yahoo! News, these words were actually from a "dicey joke" Biden made in reference to Jill Biden at a 2021 union event: "'By the way, of course, I sleep with a NEA member every night,' Biden told the crowd at an event in the East Room, adding: 'Same one. same one.'"
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Cross tabs located and indeed I was correct: scribd.com/document/43983999…
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California’s $68 billion deficit is the best argument for abolishing the Gann Limit.
The Gann Limit prevents California from saving money during booms… Forcing politicians to waste billions on the one-time “Middle Class Tax Refund” check in 2022 instead of saving for winter.
👏 California’s 👏 revenue 👏 model 👏 is 👏 structured 👏 around 👏 capital 👏 gains 👏 aka 👏 Silicon 👏 Valley 👏 IPOs 👏
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