The fact that Kif's face doesn't go from sad to happy while the others' faces do is such a small, brilliant piece of characterization

Also pedestrian safety--you can futz around with the design, but getting hit with a 2,000 pound object traveling at a given speed hurts less than getting hit with a 4,000 pound object.

Yeah, I'm firmly in the "none of these people deserve my money" camp for Maine. I'm not rich enough to donate to every contested race, and I can find Dems who suck less elsewhere.

Opinion | Older Americans Are Hoarding America’s Potential

"Raise taxes on wealthy older adults" is terrible politics but good policy. Property tax exemptions for older homeowners stem from good intentions but are actually regressive, because they reduce the availability of homes for younger, less wealthy renters.
www.nytimes.com/2026/04/21/o...

Don't you wish that Kalshi had a market so you could hedge that outcome?

Love this, but missed opportunity for a "transplant" pun in the lede there

Can telemedicine help here? Psychiatry seems well-suited to it; given educational polarization, convincing a bunch of doctorate holders to live in WV seems like a heavy lift.

I missed that when it came out, thanks! I'll give it a read

7-story TOD → drive-thru, and some developers call it a win.

Costs matter, but why is the easiest thing to permit next to transit in Los Angeles a car-centric use?

Yeah, this gets at another pernicious aspect of the public hearing model, which is that disparities in participation tend to reenforce themselves, leading to a feedback loop. If you go to a public hearing, you'll get on the email list and you'll get reminders for more. If you never go...

That's a really good analogy and I will steal it for future conversations

21/ People want you to solve their problems (that's a big part of what local government is). But they'll tell you what their problems are, if you listen correctly and with understanding. The rest is up to you, planners and city officials. (end thread)

20/ Principle Three: Once you've gathered data about what problems there are, let the experts work on them--and give them cover to do so. Yes, a small group of people will get mad at any proposed change. But you can and should ignore them, confident that they don't represent public opinion broadly.

19/ That means representative surveys. It means street team work--setting up a booth at a farmers market or a Mets game and having people answer open ends. Gather your public opinion data in places where people go naturally. Only freaks like me naturally congregate at a community board meeting.

18/ Principle Two: Surveys are the worst ways to gauge public opinion...except for all the others. If you want to understand what the public wants, what their problems are, you can't rely on the public to come to you (open houses, public meetings, etc). They're not interested or willing. Go to them.

17/ So the key thing to ask the public isn't "what should we do about <problem X>". It's "what problems do you have"? How do people want their lives to be different? What can city policy and infrastructure actually do to help them?

16/ But people can understand that they pay too much in rent, or that they can't afford to buy a house. They can even correctly identify this as a problem that's getting worse over time (this is a major accomplishment, in the low-bar world of public opinion)

The Folk Economics of Housing (Summer 2025) - Why is housing supply so severely restricted in US cities and suburbs? Urban economists offer two primary hypotheses: homeowner self-interest and political fragmentation. Homeowners, w...

15/ Principle 1: people are better at identifying their problems than they are at coming up with solutions. The public is not, by and large, well-informed about technical issues. They often misunderstand even basic concepts like supply and demand for housing (h/t to @stano.bsky.social)

14/ The key is to design the public feedback process to avoid this, and make people understand the true shape of public opinion--what things the public cares about, and what they don't.

13/ And that simulacrum can look kind of convincing, to an elected official who has no other sources of knowledge. In a city council district of 100,000 people, 70 people yelling at you might be the loudest signal you get, even if those people don't represent anyone but themselves.

12/ When you have a bunch of public meetings, you're essentially attempting to extract an opinion from an entity (the public) that largely does not have one. But that entity can produce the simulacrum of an opinion, if pressed. It can produce a room full of 70 cranks willing to give a two min speech

Democracy for Busy People Abstract. How do we build a more equal democracy? Democracy for Busy People investigates the problem that many people lack the time or inclination to engag

11/ I'm cribbing a lot of this from "Democracy for Busy People" by @kjephd.bsky.social, which is well worth your time academic.oup.com/chicago-scho...

10/ The reason most people don't want to attend public meetings isn't because they can't secure childcare, or they can't make it to the meeting venue, or whatever. The overwhelming, biggest-by-far reason is that they simply don't want to go. They have better things to do--and that's fine.

9/ (Incidentally, score one for nominative determinism there, and also I'd be remiss not to mention that Professor Einstein was truly kind and generous when she spoke to the @opennewyork.org book club about her research way back in the day)

More research is needed to identify engagement models that balance democratic accountability, representative participation, and efficient project delivery. Some early evidence (PDF) suggests that newer forms of engagement—such as digital outreach—may not fully resolve long-standing participation gaps. https://www.housingpolitics.com/docs/Einstein_Glick_Godinez_Puig_Palmer_Still_Muted.pdf

8/ Freemark expresses surprise at the fact that holding meetings on Zoom doesn't increase public participation. But with all respect to Professors Einstein et al, I was not surprised when they published this finding.

7/ A different version of this plays out in the typical public meeting process. Another thing I recommend doing: try to get your most normie, non-local-politics-knowing friend to go to one of those. It's like pulling teeth!

6/ By the time you're on your third battery, hell, maybe you can convince yourself that "a brand for people like me" describes Pumas somewhat well, vs. not well at all for Air Jordans.

5/ I truly, genuinely, don't care about whatever happens to be covering my feet. But if you're spending ten minutes answering a whole-ass survey, you start to feel a little bad about consistently clicking "I don't know". You start to devote more thought to the process than you ever would in reality.

4/ If you want to understand this phenomenon for yourself, I really recommend signing up as a panelist with @today.yougov.com or some other polling outlet. I got pushed a market research survey about shoe brands the other day. People who know me IRL will know that I am...not fashionable.

The Difference Between Polls and Public Opinion What respondents tell pollsters doesn’t always make sense. But working out policy complexities isn’t the average voter’s job.

3/ The thing about poll respondents is that, by and large, they want to be helpful. So they'll answer questions, and register opinions, even if they don't actually have an opinion on the thing being asked. @jerusalem.bsky.social has a good take on this phenomenon www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...