Vallery Lancey
@isthelaststop.bsky.social
📸🎞️ Photographer, 🚎 transit advocate, 💻 tech worker. I know way too much about Kubernetes. she/her
Pinned
I've created a starter pack for high-signal Bay Area transit advocates! These are all people I respect for their knowledge, thoughtfulness, and dedication to improving transit funding and transit systems.
go.bsky.app/S4DKnPH
go.bsky.app/S4DKnPH
I wonder at what point do I make a fresh bluesky account to work around being delisted? Being un-Googlable ongoing sucks.
November 14, 2025 at 3:25 PM
I wonder at what point do I make a fresh bluesky account to work around being delisted? Being un-Googlable ongoing sucks.
Reposted by Vallery Lancey
Being on the east coast is crazy. I wake up and there aren't any posts, and then I try to go to sleep but sports aren't done and a San Francisco politician is having another scandal and wait they've resigned?????
November 14, 2025 at 6:27 AM
Being on the east coast is crazy. I wake up and there aren't any posts, and then I try to go to sleep but sports aren't done and a San Francisco politician is having another scandal and wait they've resigned?????
Reposted by Vallery Lancey
Violent rhetoric is not only strongly embedded in our cultural expression, it is an extremely well-known phenomenon that people consistently rate violent rhetoric used against them and people they like as significantly more severe than violent rhetoric used against people they dislike.
November 12, 2025 at 9:08 PM
Violent rhetoric is not only strongly embedded in our cultural expression, it is an extremely well-known phenomenon that people consistently rate violent rhetoric used against them and people they like as significantly more severe than violent rhetoric used against people they dislike.
November 13, 2025 at 5:14 PM
Reposted by Vallery Lancey
These stories dropped on the same day
It's good-government reform to let the mayor unilaterally appoint department heads. By the way, he just appointed a supervisor who couldn't run a pet store
It's good-government reform to let the mayor unilaterally appoint department heads. By the way, he just appointed a supervisor who couldn't run a pet store
November 11, 2025 at 6:40 AM
These stories dropped on the same day
It's good-government reform to let the mayor unilaterally appoint department heads. By the way, he just appointed a supervisor who couldn't run a pet store
It's good-government reform to let the mayor unilaterally appoint department heads. By the way, he just appointed a supervisor who couldn't run a pet store
Animal cruelty and creating a public health hazard should utterly disqualify someone from getting tapped as an inexperienced supervisor.
Mayor Lurie failed due diligence and should seek to reverse the appointment.
sfstandard.com/2025/11/10/s...
Mayor Lurie failed due diligence and should seek to reverse the appointment.
sfstandard.com/2025/11/10/s...
SF’s newest supervisor accused of leaving pet shop in squalor
Mayor Daniel Lurie’s pick for Sunset supervisor, Isabella “Beya” Alcaraz, is under scrutiny after the new owner of her former pet store says she found dead mice, filth, and trash left behind.
sfstandard.com
November 11, 2025 at 6:51 AM
Animal cruelty and creating a public health hazard should utterly disqualify someone from getting tapped as an inexperienced supervisor.
Mayor Lurie failed due diligence and should seek to reverse the appointment.
sfstandard.com/2025/11/10/s...
Mayor Lurie failed due diligence and should seek to reverse the appointment.
sfstandard.com/2025/11/10/s...
Reposted by Vallery Lancey
All right, I've got it everybody: if it's AI, it's bad; if there's AI doing something good; it's not AI.
November 9, 2025 at 9:17 PM
All right, I've got it everybody: if it's AI, it's bad; if there's AI doing something good; it's not AI.
“No negative externalities allowed” results in blanket anti-actionable-change politics, because the status quo is so good.
Never mind how real or unreal the negative externalities even are.
Never mind how real or unreal the negative externalities even are.
the congestion pricing thing was kinda a massive red flag here. even the median progressive believes that improving overall outcomes is bad if a single hypothetical poor person might be negatively effected
November 11, 2025 at 5:15 AM
“No negative externalities allowed” results in blanket anti-actionable-change politics, because the status quo is so good.
Never mind how real or unreal the negative externalities even are.
Never mind how real or unreal the negative externalities even are.
Reposted by Vallery Lancey
country violently allergic to acknowledging the existence of policy trade-offs, and steadfastly convinced that this allergy is virtuous and even a skeptical rejection of the powers that be instead of a prolonged temper tantrum by the most privileged people to ever live on this earth
November 11, 2025 at 3:08 AM
country violently allergic to acknowledging the existence of policy trade-offs, and steadfastly convinced that this allergy is virtuous and even a skeptical rejection of the powers that be instead of a prolonged temper tantrum by the most privileged people to ever live on this earth
Reposted by Vallery Lancey
The Enterprise-D bridge we got is my favourite from all the shows, so things worked out well. But I've always found these ideas for a much more casual, democratic bridge to be very appealing. I'd still like to see something like this in a Star Trek series one day. /1
November 8, 2025 at 4:05 PM
The Enterprise-D bridge we got is my favourite from all the shows, so things worked out well. But I've always found these ideas for a much more casual, democratic bridge to be very appealing. I'd still like to see something like this in a Star Trek series one day. /1
Reposted by Vallery Lancey
people hate hearing this but it's 100% true, creating a huge pay gap between political leaders, their staffs, and other elites is a recipe for corruption. of course the flip side of that is taxes on the rich should be jacked way the hell up
The Mayor of New York only makes $260k. I bet there are police that make more than that in NY with overtime.
We need to pay elected leaders more money and stop pretending it's some sort of calling. They're managing hundreds of billions of dollars in investments and millions of people's lives.
We need to pay elected leaders more money and stop pretending it's some sort of calling. They're managing hundreds of billions of dollars in investments and millions of people's lives.
November 7, 2025 at 3:24 PM
people hate hearing this but it's 100% true, creating a huge pay gap between political leaders, their staffs, and other elites is a recipe for corruption. of course the flip side of that is taxes on the rich should be jacked way the hell up
Caltrain's electric trains run faster and smoother - and people LOVE it. Make service better, and riders will come, which means more people will vote to support transit.
We love good news! 🤭
Survey Says: Riders Love Caltrain! Read more: https://www.caltrain.com/news/survey-says-riders-love-caltrain.
Survey Says: Riders Love Caltrain! Read more: https://www.caltrain.com/news/survey-says-riders-love-caltrain.
Survey Says: Riders Love Caltrain | Caltrain
2025 Customer Satisfaction Survey shows widespread exuberance over electric service
www.caltrain.com
November 5, 2025 at 7:44 PM
Caltrain's electric trains run faster and smoother - and people LOVE it. Make service better, and riders will come, which means more people will vote to support transit.
My Bluesky account will not show up in Google search results, and I’m entirely at a loss.
November 3, 2025 at 4:24 PM
My Bluesky account will not show up in Google search results, and I’m entirely at a loss.
Reposted by Vallery Lancey
Bill Gates hasn’t made sense on Climate since he teamed up with Bjorn Lomberg in 2009. This is just a restating of Bjorn’s book from this year about how we have a finite amount of money and we shouldn’t use it for climate. What they get wrong is that climate solutions are now fully profitable.
Bill Gates has a new memo out calling for a “strategic pivot” on climate change, downplaying “doomsday” talk to focus on filling enormous post-USAID budget gaps in global health and vaccine funding. I got an early glimpse of his thinking last week:
7 New Takes From Bill Gates on Climate ‘Doomsday’ Talk and Global Health
“I mean, God bless the Europeans for caring about climate.”
heatmap.news
October 29, 2025 at 11:43 AM
Bill Gates hasn’t made sense on Climate since he teamed up with Bjorn Lomberg in 2009. This is just a restating of Bjorn’s book from this year about how we have a finite amount of money and we shouldn’t use it for climate. What they get wrong is that climate solutions are now fully profitable.
Reposted by Vallery Lancey
"It's always DNS" is fun but gets reductive like DNS is a force of nature.
DNS failures are downstream of other interesting socio-technical failures, from missing validation to complex infra/DB/monitoring failures that spill over into a bad (or stale) DNS records (eg in many public cloud outages).
DNS failures are downstream of other interesting socio-technical failures, from missing validation to complex infra/DB/monitoring failures that spill over into a bad (or stale) DNS records (eg in many public cloud outages).
October 31, 2025 at 9:09 PM
"It's always DNS" is fun but gets reductive like DNS is a force of nature.
DNS failures are downstream of other interesting socio-technical failures, from missing validation to complex infra/DB/monitoring failures that spill over into a bad (or stale) DNS records (eg in many public cloud outages).
DNS failures are downstream of other interesting socio-technical failures, from missing validation to complex infra/DB/monitoring failures that spill over into a bad (or stale) DNS records (eg in many public cloud outages).
The response to a WILDLY popular program is to cancel it and put the money somewhere less effective. Thanks Carifornia.
From the CalBike Blog: Response to CARB on Ending the E-Bike Incentive Project
CARB’s decision to absorb the remaining funding from the E-Bike Incentive Project into Clean Cars 4 All is a telling political moment—one that mistakes “cleaner cars” for genuine progress.
CARB’s decision to absorb the remaining funding from the E-Bike Incentive Project into Clean Cars 4 All is a telling political moment—one that mistakes “cleaner cars” for genuine progress.
October 30, 2025 at 2:32 AM
The response to a WILDLY popular program is to cancel it and put the money somewhere less effective. Thanks Carifornia.
“Given absurd premise A, terrible situation B is rational“.
*everyone fights about B*
*everyone fights about B*
There is a type of, let’s call it “weaponized clowning”, that is highly effective against the participants in rational civil society, that involves saying outrageous bullshit in order to get adversarial subjects to add legitimacy to a larger frame (that may be entirely unrelated to the bullshit)
October 28, 2025 at 6:53 PM
“Given absurd premise A, terrible situation B is rational“.
*everyone fights about B*
*everyone fights about B*
This is a cool model of fare “gates”:
- Cheap
- Not a bottleneck
- No problems with wheelchairs/bikes/luggage
- Where to pay the fare is obvious and easy
- Cheap
- Not a bottleneck
- No problems with wheelchairs/bikes/luggage
- Where to pay the fare is obvious and easy
Good point. The threshold markings in Amsterdam airport made it much more obvious when it was time to tag
I also wish there were tag-on and tag-off stations inside the train.
I also wish there were tag-on and tag-off stations inside the train.
October 28, 2025 at 5:59 PM
This is a cool model of fare “gates”:
- Cheap
- Not a bottleneck
- No problems with wheelchairs/bikes/luggage
- Where to pay the fare is obvious and easy
- Cheap
- Not a bottleneck
- No problems with wheelchairs/bikes/luggage
- Where to pay the fare is obvious and easy
I’m proud of how the spooky L turned out! Always lovely to see so many families enjoying the Great Hauntway from all over the city.
Thanks to @sunsetdunes.org for all the work that goes into the Great Hauntway, and the support in getting the Spooky L authorized again.
Thanks to @sunsetdunes.org for all the work that goes into the Great Hauntway, and the support in getting the Spooky L authorized again.
October 26, 2025 at 11:56 PM
I’m proud of how the spooky L turned out! Always lovely to see so many families enjoying the Great Hauntway from all over the city.
Thanks to @sunsetdunes.org for all the work that goes into the Great Hauntway, and the support in getting the Spooky L authorized again.
Thanks to @sunsetdunes.org for all the work that goes into the Great Hauntway, and the support in getting the Spooky L authorized again.
Come to Embarcadero Station by 12:50 for something spooky.
L Taraval headed to the Great Hauntway at ~12:55.
L Taraval headed to the Great Hauntway at ~12:55.
October 26, 2025 at 7:27 PM
Come to Embarcadero Station by 12:50 for something spooky.
L Taraval headed to the Great Hauntway at ~12:55.
L Taraval headed to the Great Hauntway at ~12:55.
The amount of life I have spent waiting in traffic on this bus…
Nothing to see here, just me and my 26 taking 8 minutes to travel the 500m from Saanich/McKenzie to McKenzie/Quadra. On a Saturday. 🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃
October 26, 2025 at 4:08 AM
The amount of life I have spent waiting in traffic on this bus…
Going Places
Glen Park BART, 2023
Glen Park BART, 2023
October 24, 2025 at 4:22 PM
Going Places
Glen Park BART, 2023
Glen Park BART, 2023
This is a great example of how the new Clipper 2.0 discounts will effect real trips.
The “transfer tax” for regional trips is punishing, especially when a lot of regional trips are a pattern of local feeder + regional train/bus + local bus to destination.
I’ll save on my 2-agency commute this way.
The “transfer tax” for regional trips is punishing, especially when a lot of regional trips are a pattern of local feeder + regional train/bus + local bus to destination.
I’ll save on my 2-agency commute this way.
But far and away the most exciting part is the new free transfer scheme: an East Bay hiker traveling to Marin can save 40% off their fare compared to today!
October 23, 2025 at 1:14 AM
This is a great example of how the new Clipper 2.0 discounts will effect real trips.
The “transfer tax” for regional trips is punishing, especially when a lot of regional trips are a pattern of local feeder + regional train/bus + local bus to destination.
I’ll save on my 2-agency commute this way.
The “transfer tax” for regional trips is punishing, especially when a lot of regional trips are a pattern of local feeder + regional train/bus + local bus to destination.
I’ll save on my 2-agency commute this way.