It’s inaccurate to say Mario is brave and Luigi is cowardly

Luigi is afraid of death, so he runs away from danger. Mario is afraid of living, so he runs towards death. Both brothers are cowards in their own way

My devices are all in french so most websites default to me in French haha. But the content I'm writing there is en anglais 🫡

Innovation Theater, or Just Getting Albuquerque Wrong? Reading Charles Marohn on Albuquerque Rapid Transit, From Albuquerque

@strongtowns.org wrote about Albuquerque Rapid Transit, and they didn't do their research. I explore what went wrong with the article and why ART is far more of a Strong Towns aligned project than many may think

open.substack.com/pub/abqurban...

So denser housing subsidizes lower density housing, & keeps taxes artificially low for the same low density home owners that ironically commonly protest against that higher density housing in their neighbourhood.

It’s not surprising that people can be hypocritical. But they should be called on it.

Successful Transit in Albuquerque? It’s Real. Why Albuquerque Rapid Transit is far from a “Lemon”

Working on a post about a recent Chuck Marohn article that got a lot wrong on Albuquerque Rapid Transit - but while I scaffold that, figured I'd share older writing about the ART from 2023 that I did for Urban ABQ. ART is good, actually!!

open.substack.com/pub/abqurban...

The Final Judgement
Oil on canvas, 1912

An amazing write-up that connects all the things together. Zoning, voting …it is all about who gets to say who “we” are. 💙🔥🙏

Ranked Choice Voting, NIMBYism, and Total Luxury Boomer Communism There is a specific type of yard sign you see in every neighborhood in Albuquerque. You know the one. It sits in front of a carefully restored home in Huning Castle or the North Valley, framed by m…

“We just can’t stand for that.”
From duplexes to democracy, Albuquerque’s politics of scarcity is holding the city back.
reimaginingalbuquerque.com/2026/04/14/r... #abq #albuquerque

Proposal to increase housing in Elmwood alarms shop-owners, who worry for the viability of their businesses A monthslong struggle over zoning is playing out in District 8’s Elmwood neighborhood, where numerous storefronts, pillars and the Rialto Cinemas’ box office are plastered with “Save Berkeley Shops” s...

California: cities need to plan for new housing.

NIMBYs: we don’t want any change in our neighborhoods and we don’t want to displace any tenants so let’s rezone to put all the new housing capacity on commercial corridors.

Planners: you got it.

NIMBYs: wait no we need to save our small businesses!

Advocates against free fare transit often point to the idea that it degrades the social view of transit by making it an object of welfare and not utility, and thus also subject to the whims of govt, susceptible to service cuts and bad service. Now ABQ Ride, a free service, is facing large cuts 🙃

But let's be honest: there's a large cadre that basically cheers on chasing off any lib/centrist/academic who's the punchbag of the day. There's a culture of saying "fuck off back to X, then". And the anti- bedtime leftists set too much of the culture.

Unique daily likers as a graph over the last year. It's down from about 1.6 million a day a year ago to 1.1 million a day now.

I tend to get dogpiled every time I say this but: as someone *who likes bluesky and benefits from being here* we have a problem.

The network is shrinking, not growing. It's shrinking a lot: only about 1.1m people a day even like a post. This time last year it was 1.6m.

I worked at BuzzFeed. Here’s the truth about why it’s on its last legs The once-mighty website’s ‘failure’ exposes a fatal flaw in what’s expected of millennial media

"There are almost no newsrooms aimed primarily at an audience under 50. That seems unlikely to end well for anyone, least of all society itself."

open.substack.com/pub/thenewwo...

Are condos the answer to Downtown Fresno’s housing hopes? ‘One piece of the puzzle’ Condominium construction has plummeted across the state. A bill proposed in California’s Legislature could change that.

📝 Today's daily dose of condo math comes from CA:

Home deposit reform (AB 1406) + construction defect reform (AB 1903) = more home choices near amenities.

So-called “inclusionary zoning” is bad policy that worsens the problems it is supposed to address.

If cities want new apartment buildings to include units set aside for poor people, they should pay for the necessary subsidies.

“Build to rent is essentially home builders switching their construction from building homes for people to building homes for large institutional investors,” said Jim Baker, the executive director of the Private Equity Stakeholder Project, a watchdog organization focused on the impact of institutional investors. “It puts homeownership further out of reach for individuals,” denying them an opportunity “for building wealth for themselves, their families and their children.”

I hate this shit so much. My family rents, and we are also people! www.nytimes.com/2026/03/25/b...

Why Albuquerque’s NIMBYs Fear Neighborhood Life Pete Dinelli wants Albuquerque to believe that more homes, more neighborhood life, and more flexibility are an attack on the city. But what his op-ed really reveals is something older and more familia

Yapping about the #abq nimbys, this one in particular Pete Dinelli, a former mayoral candidate and city councilor.

open.substack.com/pub/abqurban...

Why Does New Haven Have Later-Night Transit — But Albuquerque Doesn’t? In September, I found myself in New York City.

Wrote a little bit about how #Albuquerque and #ABQRide are ready for late-night transit service. All we need is political will with good leadership and planning

open.substack.com/pub/abqurban...

slopulism generator:

Eliminate

*spins wheel*

Sales Tax

*throws dart*

for Teachers

*draws card*

on DoorDash

Saw | ContraPoints YouTube video by ContraPoints

NEW VIDEO
youtu.be/uiGIbdrQjbI?...

Albuquerque mentioned!!! Great nuanced video on free fares. Touches on a few issues, explores Albuquerque a bit, and how we have poor service (like, why in the world did Mamdani cite US as an example??). We need ABQ to put tons of attention into transit.

I think it's pretty easy to avoid being part of the problem, there's room enough in ABQ for everyone!

Good morning. Someone is always going to make money on housing.

Personally, I think it is better for developers to make money building new homes for people to live in than for landlords and homeowners to continue getting rich off of artificial housing scarcity.

It Is Time for Albuquerque to Rescind the NARO Albuquerque’s Neighborhood Association Recognition Ordinance gives outsized power to a vocal few at the expense of the entire city.

My latest blog entry is about Albuquerque's Neighborhood Association Recognition Ordinance and its unusually quirks that make NAs exceedingly powerful in abq, while having standing on issues that can have citywide implications open.substack.com/pub/abqurban...

The trend shift in adults per family household is so insane.

its even more insane that every important policymaker and economist thought we were slowly soaking up a glut of homes even into the 2010s.

And it’s even more insane that there are still supply-crisis skeptics today.

Lots to say about antirenter prejudice, how it serves to bundle & obscure deeper biases re race & class & age, and about the electoral assumptions required for a councilor of a majority renter city to take this stance, but the thing I keep coming back to is just: what an absolute dick thing to say

American planning in a nutshell: building apartments in a wealthy neighborhood? You need special permission and must rent 20% of them at a loss to poor people.

Combining 10 apartments into a mansion for one extremely rich family? By-right process, no subsidized housing requirement, and a tax break.

Picture of a social/supportive housing project in the Yaletown community in downtown Vancouver. Text says “if we don’t build housing to solve homelessness, we don’t really want to solve homelessness.” Logo of the urban truth collective in the corner.

If we don’t build housing to solve homelessness, we don’t really want to solve homelessness. #UrbanTruth

We’re now at 150% AMI for housing programs in New Mexico. In higher i come counties this is well into 6-figure incomes. It’s bonkers. The worst part is we’re already seeing funding pulled away from the lowest income/hardest to serve folks.