Virginia Postrel
3.4K posts
@vpostrel
L.A. writer @WorksinProgMag THE FABRIC OF CIVILIZATION @BasicBooks. POWER OF GLAMOUR, SUBSTANCE OF STYLE, FUTURE & ITS ENEMIES https://t.co/lO0ECC3o1W
Student funding in California is now a RECORD HIGH! Since Governor Newsom took office, it’s increased 66%— reaching $28,282 per student as the state makes historic investments in public education.
This is an incredibly unstrategic fight to pick but every time I wade into a battle over whether to allow eighth graders to take algebra I just want to say "actually, a good school offers algebra in sixth grade and a great school offers it in third."
The trouble is, if Houston banned front-loading townhouses and slot houses, there wouldn't have been a townhouse boom. This reluctance to micromanage, even when it results slightly suboptimal outcomes, is why Houston builds and other American cities don't.
Kids in Lower Merion school district in Pennsylvania get iPads starting in kindergarten, switch to Chromebooks in second grade and get their own MacBooks in eighth grade. Hundreds of parents signed a petition asking to preserve their ability to opt their children out of using digital devices during the school day. The school district has pushed back, saying it’s not feasible to let hundreds of students opt out of technology that is essential to the curriculum.
This image has a key lesson for housing advocates. Story time...🍿 I live in Katy's district, and help run a grassroots pro-housing neighborhood group (@WestsideForEv). In 2023, a 24-story building was proposed near transit in this district (1050 La Cienega). Mixed-use, on a vacant lot, with a public pocket park, would singlehandedly double the amount of dedicated Affordable Housing in the area. Still got heavy NIMBY pushback and wasn't clear if it would get through planning commission even though it would probably be illegal to block it. We supported it. We were on good terms with Katy as we had endorsed her, were aggressively supporting her key priority (a 30-ish bed homeless housing facility in my neighborhood) and got ~70 petition signatures from people in the area in favor of the 24-story building to counter the argument that the "community was against it". At the hearing, staff report was that all the NIMBY claims were baseless and approval recommended. Katy said the building was "too tall" but her hands were tied by state law, etc. so she didn't officially oppose. The building was approved. Okay, we'll take it. We kept working with her (successfully) on the homeless housing project. Unfortunately, she rapidly became worse on housing, perhaps because she feared a NIMBY challenger. She led the movement to roll back LA’s ED1 initiative (streamlining for 100% Affordable Housing projects) in areas with "Historic Preservation Overlay Zones" (which IRL cover lots of non-historic parts of LA), delayed meeting with local housing orgs who'd supported her until after the rollback was codified, and then offered nothing new on increasing housing despite LA home production continuing to crater and having promised to build a lot of it in her campaign. She voted to oppose SB79 allowing ~7 stories of housing near train stations. When it passed anyway, she led the effort to hobble and delay implementation. Etc. We were getting nowhere. Then I decided to help campaign against her. @HenryForLA, a Tenants Rights Attorney, wanted to run on a pro-housing platform. I started helping run the digital operation. We're very much underdogs (she is an incumbent who has literally 10x our funding) but we have some viral successes, got endorsements from pro-housing organizations, are being recommended in an increasing number of voter guides, and are criticizing her housing record publicly. Now, suddenly it's night and day. She is literally posting pictures of 2 *67-story* towers and saying "more of this please." Someone who delayed legalization of seven story buildings by transit *six weeks ago.” Who largely ignored housing advocates even when we'd actively fought for her key priorities. She hadn't even posted on twitter in years! All this is to tell housing advocates: Run candidates. Organizing around projects, speaking up for them, etc is good. But if your elected officials aren't giving you the time of day, running candidates against them is like having power tools. You have no idea how responsive government can be until you are publicly running to take their job and telling people how you'll do a better one. Oh, and please support @HenryForLA. You can trust we like tall buildings; we also did six weeks ago.
Sanders and AOC introduced a bill to pause ALL AI data center construction. 300+ local bills filed. Half of planned 2026 data centers facing delays or cancellation. Each one brings billions to local economies. The people who say they want American jobs are trying to block the biggest job creation engine since the interstate highway system.
Watching @ezraklein grill the candidates for CA governor on housing policy was a vertiginous experience. tl, dr: "Abundance" has won the war of ideas, but not the war of legislative attrition in Sacramento. And no one's talking about the second war. 🧵/21
FREE DIAPERS COMING THIS SUMMER!
LA is much, much, much harder to fix than SF tho. SF is a tinny nubbin of a place and has the tailwind of being the epicenter of the hottest industry on the planet. LA is massive, and its central industry is in the pits. Even the love child of Lurie and Bloomberg would struggle with its combo of sprawl and economic malaise. Not saying LA isn't own goal central, but it's a far tougher pitch to play on.
FREE DIAPERS COMING THIS SUMMER!
HUGE NEWS: California just became the FIRST state in America to provide FREE DIAPERS to all new parents. Launching this summer. Since I became Governor, we have made preschool FREE, school meals FREE, and expanded paid family leave. Stop talking about lowering costs for families — DO IT!
fun material of the day... dyneema! it's a special kind of plastic string. it looks soft and white, like a shoelace. but it's super duper strong. way stronger than metal! if you took a piece of steel and a piece of dyneema that weigh the same, the dyneema can hold 15 times more weight. that's why people use it for things that need to be light AND strong. like vests that stop bullets. and ropes on big sailboats. and gloves that knives can't cut through. but dyneema has rules. it only comes in white or gray. that's just how it is. if it gets too hot, like hotter than a cup of tea, it starts to melt. so no putting it near fire. if you hang something heavy on it for a long long time, it slowly stretches. like pulling taffy, but super slow. so it's an amazing material. you just have to be nice to it.
