Scott Feeney
LightNews LightNews
banner
graue.bsky.social
Scott Feeney
@graue.bsky.social
1.9K followers 660 following 4.7K posts
car-free urbanist, socialist, semi-lapsed techie, gardener, guitar player. he/him

also on fedi https://carfree.city/@scott/
blog https://scott.mn
Posts Replies Media Videos
graue.bsky.social
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
Urbanist think tank SPUR unveils plans to revamp S.F. charter Blueprint to enhance mayoral power a likely preview of 2026 charter amendment Mayor Lurie's pick for Sunset supervisor ran pet shop that 'smelled like death,' new owner says The woman described Beya Alcaraz as someone who "cannot run a business," and said the mayor's office never spoke to her about the new supervisor's track record as a business owner.
November 11, 2025 at 6:40 AM
graue.bsky.social
One way to do it: check out the proposed wealth tax rates from Thomas Piketty's Capital and Ideology, p.982. The book that made me a socialist, btw!
Table 17.1, Circulation of property and progressive taxation Part of the table shows a "progressive property tax (financing the capital endowment to each young adult)" with effective annual rates of 0.1% for an 0.5 multiple of average wealth, 1% for a 2 times multiple of average wealth, 2% for a 5 times multiple of average wealth, 5% for 10 times, 10% for 100 times, 60% for 1,000 times, and 90% for 10,000 times average wealth.
November 8, 2025 at 1:11 AM
graue.bsky.social
The blue wave has reached this warehouse
warehouse painted red, but recently patches of light blue around some doors and windows same warehouse in all light blue
November 7, 2025 at 11:05 PM
graue.bsky.social
November 6, 2025 at 1:02 AM
graue.bsky.social
www.kqed.org/news/1205527...
When the fountain’s water was shut off during California’s energy crisis from 2001 to 2004, then-Supervisor Aaron Peskin introduced a resolution to remove it, saying it looked out of place without the freeway and was too expensive to operate.
November 4, 2025 at 6:14 AM
graue.bsky.social
Note too that the “bolder rezoning plan” SF YIMBY is demanding is not actually more density, but just less affordability and less funding for affordable housing and public services. It’s a pivot to austerity.

(from: www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/f...)
Jane Natoli, organizing director of YIMBY Action, said “this is why we have been asking for someone to verify the math independently.” “We support the family zoning plan but we wanted to make sure it’s going to do what it says it’s going to do,” she said. “Now we know, based on independent verification, we are going to have to try more than we are right now if we want to meet our state mandated goals.” She said the board should pass the rezoning and then redouble efforts to streamline and incentivize development, look at cutting inclusionary housing fees, lowering the real estate transfer tax and cutting other fees.
November 4, 2025 at 4:35 AM
graue.bsky.social
centrists are so thirsty for power, they'd kill an unaligned ant if they thought it would get them elected
Still from the cartoon Adventure Time of Finn crouching on the ground looking at a tiny ant
November 2, 2025 at 11:53 PM
graue.bsky.social
One proposed member project is by @hiimmikey.bsky.social, on surveying people in the Castro on how they use transit and how to improve it!
A man speaking and gesturing in front of a projected photo of the Castro.
October 30, 2025 at 2:18 AM
graue.bsky.social
At the first SF Transit Riders member assembly! They plan to hold these quarterly to update members, hear feedback, and let members propose projects.
Person in Giants cap speaking and looking at display where an agenda is up with pictures of Muni buses and light rail vehicles to the side
October 30, 2025 at 1:10 AM
graue.bsky.social
A GenX white woman complained to her visitor from France that this building and park were gentrification, and the area “used to be fields.” The French guy actually corrected her: he remembered it was a parking lot on his last visit. The apartment building is also 100% affordable
City park (In Chan Kaajal) with 8 story gray and white building behind it
October 29, 2025 at 9:45 PM
graue.bsky.social
Ouch. www.wired.com/story/ai-pr-...
What people were actually witnessing as they watched a particular product get worse—enshittify, to use Cory Doctorow’s coinage—was not the slow approach of some inexorable fate, as many believed. It was, as the tech writer put it to me, “evidence of a company doing very well by being very bad.” A lot of sharp people still don’t see it, in part because of a faith, not yet exhausted, in some kind of self-correcting market mechanism: A costly and degraded product would be punished somehow. It simply had to be. Forget generative AI. That faith is the biggest bubble of all.
October 28, 2025 at 5:21 AM
graue.bsky.social
It's literally a dictionary definition
aunt, noun, 1. The sister or sister-in-law of one's parent. 2. The female cousin or cousin-in-law of one's parent.
October 27, 2025 at 8:51 PM
graue.bsky.social
Annual plant sale at Sutro Stewards nursery! I picked up a couple of rare San Francisco wallflowers and some little coast buckwheats.
View downhill to the nursery, on a long strip of land from left to right. It’s foggy and there’s a euc forest behind Sutro Nursery Plant Sale. Hand-drawn propped cardboard sign with art of purple and orange flowers. Two gallon pots of wallflower and several thin deep pots of buckwheat in a bike bag. None are in bloom currently, it’s just green leaves.
October 25, 2025 at 11:03 PM
graue.bsky.social
Boo. Instead of closing it, they should just have a sign next to it that says “escalator temporarily stairs. Sorry for the convenience”
A blocked off escalator in a BART station
October 25, 2025 at 4:02 AM
graue.bsky.social
Sunni Khalid, the interviewer from KALW, says he (coincidentally) grew up in Detroit (the Motor City, he reminds us), and his elementary school was demolished in 1965 to make way for Chrysler’s world headquarters
Sunni Khalid speaking on a Litquake stage while Doug Gordon and Sarah Goodyear listen
October 25, 2025 at 2:25 AM
graue.bsky.social
This book has an unusually pretty spine. Cheers to the designer (Joel Holland it says) for making it fun
Spine of the hardback of Life After Cars. Above the book title, between the title and authors’ names, and below the authors’ names, there are drawings of roadways with flowering vines growing over them. The background is yellow.
October 25, 2025 at 2:08 AM
graue.bsky.social
At KALW for the Life After Cars book talk! @thewaroncars.bsky.social
I’m holding a copy of Life After Cars: Freeing Ourselves from the Tyranny of the Automobile as I sit in the audience of a Litquake/KALW event that has yet to start.
October 25, 2025 at 2:00 AM
graue.bsky.social
Spongebob meme of looking out the window wistfully at others having a good time
October 23, 2025 at 2:37 AM
graue.bsky.social
If you're free Wednesday night in SF, check out this panel on social housing at 518 Valencia, 7:30pm! Sounds like it'll be good (I unfortunately can't make it)

www.shapingsf.org
Wednesday, October 22, 7:30pm Social Housing: Challenging YIMBYs and NIMBYs Public Talk at 518 Valencia Image: a distinctive 7-story very wide apartment building, Karl-Marx-Hof in Vienna. What we’re doing on housing isn’t working. We’ve upzoned, streamlined, deregulated. We’ve chased the promise of supply-side solutions. And still, the crisis deepens. Across San Francisco and the state, we’re told that zoning and deregulation will solve the housing crisis. But real solutions require more than zoning maps — they need public investment, tenant protections, and community-led planning that puts people before profit. Deregulation is politically convenient. It makes headlines without asking the wealthy to pay. It shifts blame from capital to planners. It offers the illusion of action—without the substance of redistribution. But it doesn’t build homes for restaurant workers earning $40,000 a year. It doesn’t produce family-sized units. It doesn’t build trust, or coalitions, or equity. Because deregulation isn’t housing policy. It’s land-use policy. And land-use reform without capital isn’t a solution. It’s a stall... There is a movement waiting to be built—beyond the tired binary of YIMBY and NIMBY. One rooted in care, solidarity, and the belief that everyone deserves a place to live. with FTC Manning (SF Community Land Trust—SFCLT), Quintin Mecke (Council of Community Housing Organizations—CCHO), and Shanti Singh (Tenants Together)
October 22, 2025 at 6:57 AM
graue.bsky.social
Foreground: a large shrub with long narrow pointy leaves glowing yellow-green in the sunlight. Middleground: a brown grassy hillside descends down, and a path runs across the ridgeline below another hill topped by cypress trees. To the left, backyards of two houses. Background: various buildings, mostly rowhomes, line city streets that curve up to Mount Davidson, thickly tree-lined on the left with the forest ending at its peak.
October 20, 2025 at 11:15 PM
graue.bsky.social
Nice new accessible trail in #McLarenPark from Mansell Promenade to John F. Shelley Promenade. No more need to loop around and up a steep hill on Shelley to get to the part with the great views west
Paved path branching off the Mansell Promenade, itself a wide paved path with designated areas for walking and for biking in each direction. Path continues, curving around higher ground on the left. Cut tree branches lie in a barren area to the right of the path, a tree is off to the left. Path continues and meets up with another paved path, turning right to the road (Shelley Promenade). Path ends onto Shelley Promenade with a curb ramp. To the right, Shelley descends a steep hill.
October 20, 2025 at 10:49 PM
graue.bsky.social
This is maybe amusing to like 2 people
A back-and-forth argument using the American Choppers meme template. "This is my favorite time of year in California." "It's getting darker and colder every day." "Beginning of rainy season makes it the perfect time to sow annual wildflowers." "That also means Oxalis pes-caprae is coming up everywhere." "The bulbs were in the soil all along. Now that it's showing itself you can rip it out!"
October 18, 2025 at 2:19 AM
graue.bsky.social
with alt text
Screenshot of a headline: "Mamdani is dominating the NYC mayoral debate" Sub-heading: "The front-runner has made no major mistakes, and his opponents haven't landed any serious blows." At the top it says "LIVE."
October 17, 2025 at 2:08 AM
graue.bsky.social
This sounds pretty bad. All the SF permitting is gonna go through software that was rated poorly after Mayor Lurie's deputy overrode recommendations to use a vendor with ties to Lurie.

sfstandard.com/2025/10/15/s...
“The general consensus of most testers is that Clariti is the most suitable of the 3 Products,” states a July report with feedback from 16 technical city staffers. The report added that OpenGov’s technology had “gaps so significant” that it “shouldn’t be considered.” A scoring sheet shows Clariti was rated significantly higher than OpenGov in all eight technical categories, including how it handles data, security, and customer management. Across the categories, Clariti scored an average of 4.42 out of 5, while OpenGov scored 2.88. A third company, LeapThought, scored 2.5.
October 15, 2025 at 9:32 PM
graue.bsky.social
Those slides got me so excited but then at the end, despite all the progress with in-motion charging and the talk of expanding trolleybus routes, it says they're not going to increase the number of trolleybuses. Why?!
Future Fleet Composition graph, hybrids decrease over time (eliminated by 2043), battery electric buses grow consistently, trolleybuses stay fixed at 278 until 2033 when they're reduced to 246 and then stay there through 2043.
October 15, 2025 at 5:06 AM