Being a student (undergrad and later grad) I watched housing affordability deteriorate.

- In the 2000s I knew grad students who bought condos or small houses
- By mid-2010s, finding a small apartment on a grad student stipend was difficult
- Today you need a roommate or personal savings

#a2council

Also, incoherent NIMBY confusion over basic economics. Erin is worried that The Developers will cram “unlimited” units into four story buildings like the Weasleys’ car from Harry Potter; meanwhile Kitty thinks the housing supply is a zero-sum game where homes can only be replaced, never added. 🤦‍♂️

We’ve seen this movie before. Refusal to build is a choice to create an in-place retirement community.

First step will be school closings and “where did all the trick-or-treaters go”? Then it’ll be “why are so many restaurants closing” and finally “I guess I’ll retire to Atlanta where my kids live”

If you want a world class university in your city but you don’t want housing that employees and students can afford, then you are an unserious person who is advocating for traffic creation.

And for a competitive disadvantage where faculty and students will simply choose to go elsewhere. #a2council

Much of California’s housing and transit dysfunction is explained by the endemic idea that free parking is equivalent to equality.

Decades of thinking “no need to build more homes when people can just drive here” is how you end up with free parking for Cybertrucks next to $3M homes.

I can’t stop thinking about how blue cities’ failure to build is creating a Malthusianist society. The median NYTimes reader now believes the solution to the housing crisis is to accept that homeownership is impossible, or wait for a fraction of society to die off. Just completely bleak stuff.

Man, the comments on that article are so bleak. Beyond the usual blaming of immigrants, wealthy homeowners, the Fed, and Airbnb, we have insightful ideas like “actually wanting a home is bad for the environment” and one person openly advocating for a large fraction of the population to die 😬

I know booking my flight to London six months out reveals my pathological obsession for meticulous planning, but I’m genuinely curious about this person in 18B who booked even further in advance just to ensure they would have a middle seat.

Cinnupdate: baking went OK-ish, there was definitely some butter leakage and a couple fell apart, but the texture and taste is pretty good!

I suspect the recipe is a solid 9 out of 10 when done correctly. I’d grade mine at about 7.5 (some of the filling leaked and overcooked).

Croissupdate: had some minor dough tearing on the third lamination, and the cinnamon-butter mixture was too thick to spread all the way to the edge without risking more dough tearing. But we push onward regardless!

Thanksgiving dinner host is sick with a fever, so I’m making croissant cinnamon rolls instead. (No I have not done this before. Yes it will probably end in disaster.) 😅

I added custom instructions for Claude to use chain-of-thought reasoning and optionally respond in the persona of Roy Kent if the mood strikes, but now I’m worried I have created a monster 😅

Self-driving car discourse feels a lot like ride-sharing app discourse circa 2016: valid concerns about safety & regulation, but inarguably convenient & being normalized fast.

IMO better to focus on thoughtful implementation than wholesale opposition (or worse, letting it become a partisan issue 🫤)

The Ann Arbor ballot measure to prevent this (instead turning the site into a “park”) changed how I view city development. Six years later it’s still a concrete void, with no park for the foreseeable future. Could have been homes for hundreds of people and millions in tax revenue. #a2council