D. Malcolm Carson

@JamesSurowiecki There's no constituency for a moderate Democrat in California.

How is this guy not running away with the governor's race in California?

@FischerKing64 @Baileybillyb Nothing in that announcement says there's such a distinction.

@Baileybillyb I consider degrees in things like law or medicine professional degrees, I would put them in a separate category.

If by ‘graduate school’ this means PhD programs, there should be no loans whatsoever. Only a grad student who gets a full tuition waiver and stipend (usually through teaching undergrads) has any realistic chance in the academic job market. Everyone else is just getting fleeced.

@SantiagoPombo @rohindhar And it'll filter down from there, people priced out of homes that would've gone for that will start looking at 1.5-2M.

@rohindhar I would extend this to the 2M to 3M market. I’ve seen most houses in this bracket close 500k to 1M over asking, with 1.25k to 1.5k per sqft.

BTW, do not be alarmed While the market for real estate in San Francisco is going absolutely crazy in the $5 to $10 MM range and selling way above expectations right now Below this price point, home prices are business as usual and are elevated, but not any more than the NASDAQ and S&P500 ETC Keep calm and carry on. Yes, it's competitive, but it will be okay.

@razibkhan These kinds of "strategic voting" ideas never go anywhere, nearly everyone votes for who they is the best candidate on the ballot no matter what the more astute observers might think.

not in califoria, but i do think this may be the best move instead of going all in on hilton who will probably lose a two-way race even to a super-lib in CA

@xagreat The "United States" didn't take hardly any slaves from Africa. The British brought them here, and then the United States banned the slave trade in our founding Constitution.

United States of America took about 400,000 slaves from Africa. China took Zero slaves from Africa. But they told you China is your enemy and you believed because you are a clown.

@HistoryBoomer That SF is not even close to gone. The foggy hills are still there. The pizza and dim-sum is better than ever. It's just very hard to move there if you're not an MIT grad, and that does change the culture over time.

Tech $$$$ SF annoys me. I was born at San Francisco Children's Hospital. My mom moved us when I was 7, but I spent every summer visiting my dad. Walking up foggy hills. Pizza and dim-sum joints. North Beach. Cold, mysterious, quiet, beautiful. That world is gone and I miss it.

@teodorio Not really arguing, but Kyoto doesn't have "traditional Japanese aesthetics"?

A lot of people here (especially edgy Americans) always comment on Tokyo-Kyoto-Osaka being "basic" but there is nothing basic of the greatest cities in the world. If you want to explore and enjoy nature and traditional Japanese aesthetics sure, don't go there. But if you want to enjoy great art and the best food quality wise from an objective standpoint then that's the play. That's why people live in Tokyo and Kyoto too. Don't try to seem special and cool by being contrarian for no purpose. It's basic.

@feelsdesperate Sure, being able to easily get around without a car whether you own one or not is also liberating and extremely convenient. It's only politics that puts these things into conflict with each other. More of both works great actually.

Having your own private transportation, a car, is liberating and extremely convenient. If you want to make taking a bus or a train back and forth to your pod each day your entire personality, good, good for you, but that’s not going to be an upgrade for most people.

@JoyceCarolOates Grades should be relative. The best students get A's, the good students get B's, the average students get C's, and below average D's and F's.

Ivy League universities admit only the very top students; it is hardly surprising when these students earn top grades. if you want a wide distribution of grades, admit a wide distribution of students. if you admit only A students, why be surprised when they earn mostly A's?

@devahaz @sm But I do think the "unpopular" areas of the Peninsula are pretty ripe for gentrification. They're just a little windy and foggy, but in return lots of great Asian food and easy access to the City, SFO and the coast.

@dmalcolmcarson @sm Nah you’re prob right

Come down the Peninsula folks!!! Easy drive to SF plus you’re closer to the VCs!!

@devahaz @sm Not sure how that would really even be possible. People live there now, nobody's really selling, and you aren't building significant numbers of new homes in suburban areas ringed by protected lands.

@dmalcolmcarson @sm Very possible imo, so many people I know moved to peninsula and happily paid steep premium just for good public schools

@devahaz @sm Well, let's get moving on the "unpopular" parts of the Peninsula, which are in general closer to San Francisco anyways.

@sm Popular parts of Peninsula not exactly the place for SFH bargains either! But I agree with your general sentiment for sure.

@juliewrites I think that's part of the appeal for some.

The painful thing about the American West is that while it is the most beautiful, the communities are less rooted than the East. The population feels transient, there are less intergenerational/extended family networks. It attracts the drifters, the explorers, the unmoored.

@PeakSeattle There are streets all over Tokyo where the functional speed limit is at best 10 mph. Like, the majority of streets in the city. It's fine. There are also limited access expressways and multiplane boulevards all over the place. It's all fine.

As soon as you're done reading this post, I want you all to get in your cars and drive exactly 10 MPH down a quiet residential street by you. Just one or two blocks is all you need to do. I did it myself, because I felt it was important to really understand what 10 MPH means, and you should understand it, too. Why? Because that's the speed limit Seattle wants us to start obeying. And you need to understand how agonizingly slow that is. This is thanks to a new state law that Ferguson signed a year ago, as described in the Capitol Hill blog: tinyurl.com/2j37sezp "A new state law allowing “shared streets” designed, engineered, and constructed to emphasize pedestrian and bicyclist safety — including 10 MPH speed limits and the ability for those walking and rolling to safely cross a street anywhere they want — is about to get off on the right foot in Seattle. The Seattle City Council’s transportation committee is taking up legislation Thursday to change the city’s municipal code..." Now, in fairness, they're not applying this to every single street. Not yet, anyway. But mark my words, they will expand it, because they've done it before. Remember six years ago when COVID hit? The left saw the opportunity to advance all kinds of agendas that they never would have been able to pass otherwise. One of them was when Mayor Durkan announced that ridiculous "Healthy Streets" program, which gets a mention in the article. The city put up signage and physical barriers to block us from using select residential streets that we pay for. Since we were not allowed to use our parks, they told use they're going to turn some of our streets into temporary "parks." I mean, this is Seattle. If people can identify as whatever they want, why can't a street identify as a park? To this day I don't understand why recreating on a street is safe during a pandemic, but it's dangerous to do so in a park. The unspoken reason was they were doing this because they had turned over our actual parks to the vagrants and tweakers and criminals, because they had kicked them out of the homeless shelters. They didn't want them hanging out in close quarters because of the virus. We wouldn't want them to be doing anything unhealthy, right? Never mind that those people were hanging out in tents doing deadly drugs and sharing pipes and needles the whole time. Meanwhile, and I'll never forget this, I took my kid to go play at a park near us had been shut down. There wasn't a soul around. And yet, after a few minutes, I see walking towards us from 100 yards away a city worker with a vest on. She told us we had to leave the park. I said, "Really? What about that guy in the tent in the trees over there, does he have to leave?" And she said no. I didn't want to cause a scene because I had my kid with me, and I could tell she hated having to tell us that. But I don't think there's ever been a time where I despised my city leadership more than at that moment. These power hungry maniacs stole from us a much needed fun afternoon that I could have had with my child. Anyway, as soon as they announced that program, I correctly predicted that even though they were saying it's a temporary thing for the pandemic, they were going to expand on it as well as make it permanent. And to this day, those streets still have the signage and barriers up. I've been ignoring these signs for years. The only time I respect them is when I see someone actually playing in the street, especially if it's a kid. And that's pretty much never. Back to present day. The article goes on to say, "The change will open up a new era of pavement markings and paint, bike resources, planters, and bollards in Seattle" Oh boy, I can't wait! Also, if you click on the “first-in-the-nation” hyperlink in the article, it'll take you to a piece by The Urbanist (surprise!) that provides a definition for "shared streets:" tinyurl.com/339c6554 (Out of space, see the remainder of this post in the comments)

@MoreBirths Seems fairly obvious that causation is going in the other direction, people who don't have kids are attracted to cities and high rises, people with kids tend to low rise suburbs.

Downtown Shanghai has a fertility rate of just 0.45 births per woman. All over the world, dense cityscapes mean very low birthrates. Could it be that something about crowded urban living itself causes people to have fewer kids? It certainly seems that way. 🧵.

@Jesii_ca_M 2 through 5 are all great.

Which shape do you like?

Also interesting is the list of metros with just one: 📊 U.S. Metros with 1 Big 4 Team (+ Sacramento) Ranked by 2025 Metro Population Metro Area Population ────────────────────────────── Orlando [3.2M] San Diego [3.1M] Sacramento [2.4M] San Antonio [2.1M] Portland [2.1M] Jacksonville [1.8M] Raleigh [1.6M] Columbus [1.6M] Memphis [1.0M] Oklahoma City [1.0M] Green Bay [0.3M]

Largest metros in the US without a Big 4 sports team: 12. Riverside-San Bernardino, CA (pop. 4.8M) 25. Austin, TX (2.6M) 37. Virginia Beach, VA (1.8M) 39. Providence, RI (1.7M) 43. Louisville, KY-IN (1.4M) 44. Richmond, VA (1.4M) 47. Fresno, CA (1.2M) 48. Birmingham, AL (1.2M)

Horrible take. The increase in value means nothing except maybe more debt until you sell it, and if your house is increasing in value relative to wherever it is you might move, you won't ever see the benefit of that increase in value. Maybe your kids will, if inheritance taxes don't get that too.

Every time people complain about property tax increasing when your house appreciates from $500k to $1M and at 1% your property tax goes up $5,000, they always ignore the fact that you also have $500,000 in gains to help cover that

@rohindhar As long as you don't get too emotionally invested!

If you’re on the fence about writing an offer on a property in San Francisco (or wherever) but what’s holding you back is the price likely going “super duper duper high” aka way way over asking price… You should still write the offer if there is a price you’re comfortable with, even if you expect it to sell for higher than that number 1. If you don’t get the home, there is no penalty or cost (other than mental anguish, but no monetary cost) 2. 90% of the time (today) it goes higher than you are expecting. But 10% of the time it goes at or below what you’re expecting. You only discover that (or benefit from it) if you’re in the game with an offer So you might as well take the shot!

@DKThomp It doesn't seem like life expectancy gets enough attention around the causes of low fertility, but the correlation there is as good as anything else and it's highly explanatory on a variety of levels.

I agree with Morgan. The “low fertility is about modern uncertainty” argument, the “nobody has kids bc it’s too unaffordable” argument, and the viral Connor Leahy video about “how much do you have to abuse a mammal to make it stop procreating” all get some things half-right, but they all assume that bc declining fertility is Bad, its causes must also be All Bad. But in the long run, economic growth has pushed fertility toward the replacement rate in practically every country on the planet. Modern industrial affluence has done a bunch of things at once (more female education, more individualism, less farming, less need for child labor, more access to contraception, cost disease, etc) but basically material progress turned children into a high-cost choice, and almost everything flows from that. As children become just another choice among other adult choices, questions about affordability and uncertainty are ruled in, so to speak. You can ask questions like “can we afford 1? 2? 3?” or “are we sure we’ll make enough in 15 years to support another mouth to feed?” These are not easy questions for couples. They are emotional and even painful. But in the grand sweep of history, I think they are questions of privilege, because they really are choices.