Max Dubler 🏳️🌈
@maxdubler.com
Certified urban planner doing policy stuff at California YIMBY. Posts about housing, skateboarding, and cameras. Tradeoffs are real. he/him 📍 San Francisco
Gen X and millennial hipster craft gastronomy genuinely changed the world.
Constantine@ajaxsinger.bsky.social · 14h agoFood, man. Food is so much better than it was in 1986. All of it. Poor-people food, restaurant food, fresh food, frozen food. Food is just a hell of a lot better.
My observation, especially in the last year, is that the real insidious thing isn’t even the rise of outrageously obvious antisemitism. It’s the complete refusal by many on the left to call it out or do anything about it. After over a decade of calling out every kind of niche reactionaryism.
Dalassa@dalassa.bsky.social · 21h agoRight now there doesn’t seem to be any movement in the US opposed to antisemitism.
They hated Will because he told the truth.
Will Stancil@whstancil.bsky.social · 19h agoI think the reason people get so obsessed with “boots theory” is because it lets them tell themselves that buying cheaper stuff represents an injustice being done to them. The fancy boots are more cost-effective, but they’re unjustly deprived of that advantage
Data are clear: Speed safety cameras are arguably the fastest, most effective, most affordable way to cut traffic fatalities
David Zipper@davidzipper.bsky.social · yesterdayA story of cause and effect: Last November, Ontario banned cities from using speed safety cameras to issue tickets. Reckless speeding immediately surged in Toronto, Ottawa, Guelph, and cities throughout the province. A 🧵 about my latest in Bloomberg (gift link)
My favorite thing about the Sam Vimes Boots Theory is that I actually buy more expensive US-made boots and have them resoled, which is how I know that I would save money over the long term if I bought cheaper Vietnamese-made boots and replaced them when the soles wear out.
Yeah, for days people have been citing “boots theory” at me and I want to shout DO YOU REALIZE THIS IS A RANDOM IDEA TOSSED OUT BY A FANTASY WRITER AND MAY NOT ACCURATELY DESCRIBE REALITY
@xibochay.bsky.social · yesterdayThis is a reference to the Sam Vimes Boots Theory, sort of made famous by Terry Pratchett in one of his Discworkd novels. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_t...
Starting next week pools are gonna be closed on weekdays in Sac while temps are still in the 100s. One may think “Huh maybe we should raise the tickets above $3-5$ so we can keep the pools open” But user fees are inequitable. So in the spirit of ensuring equal access the pool will be inaccessible.
We're working with @metroabundance.bsky.social to collect cost drivers in California building codes and standards above and beyond national model codes/standards. See here for more – please circulate among architects, engineers, etc. in the state! admin.centerforbuilding.org/wp-content/u...
admin.centerforbuilding.org
Personally I am very much looking forward to seeing what the 2020s-30s California small lot apartment building and townhouse vernaculars look like.
Alt Bureau of Labor Statistics@domesticshoggoth.bsky.social · 2d agoThere's something to be said for designs which are mass-produced within a region but distinct to that region. The issue is, you'll never get a distinct regional design without a mass build-out of housing in your region that can sustain that design.
While I don’t agree with it, I can totally understand aesthetic NIMBYism about Victorian San Francisco. I do not understand aesthetic NIMBYism on behalf of Palo Alto, which is a bland postwar sprawl suburb full of strip malls and tract homes that now sell for three and a half million dollars.
Genuinely, the vast majority of American voters believe that only laziness or criminal intent could be stopping the average immigrant from obtaining US citizenship. The truth is that becoming a US citizen takes years upon years of work and requires navigating a baroque bureaucratic nightmare.
Secretary of Defense Rock@sodrock.bsky.social · 2d agoI remember a family member of mine saying “isn’t it like going to the DMV?”
I think this thread is basically what I believed when I began covering the consumer system and while a lot of what Nathan is describing is factually correct as to the mechanisms by which the system itself works, I’ve eventually had to admit that a lot of people also do just love cheap bullshit
Nathan Tankus@nathantankus.bsky.social · 2d agoI think this is fundamentally wrong but in an interesting way I will need to write about sometime. The key is a) consumers do not choose what is produced, or how, they choose between what is produced. This is a crucial difference
You heard the man: we can't solve a housing crisis without building more housing.
Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani@mayor.nyc.gov · 2d agoWe can't solve a housing crisis without building more housing. Today we broke ground on the Casanova Residence, which will soon be nearly 100 affordable and supportive homes with on-site services for New Yorkers. Every new home is a step toward a City that everyone can afford.
A group of mediocre cis women downhill skaters staged this whole protest about trans women competing in a small regional race in British Columbia this year. Leaving aside the wack transphobia, that was a LOT of energy for a race where first prize is a refund on your entry fee and a cheap trophy.
Marisa Kabas@marisakabas.bsky.social · 2d agothe obsession with trans women in sports is, apart from the abject bigotry, a symptom of how we take amateur sports participation way too seriously in this country.
“We can't solve a housing crisis without building more housing.” SHOUT IT FROM THE ROOFTOPS 🗣️
Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani@mayor.nyc.gov · 2d agoWe can't solve a housing crisis without building more housing. Today we broke ground on the Casanova Residence, which will soon be nearly 100 affordable and supportive homes with on-site services for New Yorkers. Every new home is a step toward a City that everyone can afford.
Vimes’ boots theory except it’s both rich and poor would rather throw out their boots every year than resole them because labor cost of resoling and opportunity cost of going to a cobbler and back to pick them up are higher than ordering a new pair to your door. Vimes-Baumol-Amazon prime theory.
In every human endeavour, repetition is how we figure out time/cost efficiencies. Same goes for housing.
Max Dubler 🏳️🌈@maxdubler.com · 2d agoThe only way we are going to solve California’s housing shortage is by having every city in the state “rubber stamp” unremarkable new apartment buildings and townhomes.
I have reached the “people fantasizing about murdering me” phase of Bluesky virality.
as max notes, the beloved victorians were copy-pasted apartment buildings, built at industrial scale. same for the iconic brooklyn brownstone.
Max Dubler 🏳️🌈@maxdubler.com · 2d agoSan Francisco architectural beauty Discourse is maddening to me because people just ignore the fact that 2/3 of the city is mass-produced plywood and stucco garbage and much of the beloved Victorian housing stock in the other third is also mass produced “cookie cutter” housing.
The only way we are going to solve California’s housing shortage is by having every city in the state “rubber stamp” unremarkable new apartment buildings and townhomes.
David Pollack@davidmpollack.bsky.social · 2d agoIf you reduce the barriers to entry for building, more local, small developers would invest in architecture for personal, subjective reasons and there would be fewer mediocre hot takes on design. www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/open...
You gotta look views like this in the eye; they might be true! (Don't let yourself get distracted by the private equity thing; the main point is that revealed preferences—that, when our money's on the line, we behave differently than we'll say/talk about, even about that very purchase!—are a thing)
Max Dubler 🏳️🌈@maxdubler.com · 3d agoI think my most genuinely unpopular take is that a widely held and genuine consumer preference for cheaper, lower-quality goods, not private equity, is driving the decline in quality of consumer goods like clothing and housewares.
this is not true. there was no conspiracy. it didn't matter whether the streetcars were publicly owned (seattle, detroit) or private (los angeles, atlanta). a thread (because i wrote a whole-ass book on this): 1/?
David Ho@davidho.bsky.social · 3d agoIs everyone aware of the General Motors streetcar conspiracy? In the mid-20th century, auto and oil interests bought up electric streetcar systems across the US and systematically replaced them with bus routes and paved roads, funneling commuters toward private cars.
Before I went to grad school, I spent about ten years working in the downhill skateboarding industry. I used to do photography, marketing, and some product design at a skateboard company called Madrid Skateboards that operates a factory and woodshop in Huntington Beach.
No they couldn't. People unironically get madder about housing than data centers.
GodlessPrimate@godlessprimate.bsky.social · 3d agoIt's all about priorities. The tech bros gave politicians a lot of money.
The real trick is knowing what you can safely cheap out on
I think my most genuinely unpopular take is that a widely held and genuine consumer preference for cheaper, lower-quality goods, not private equity, is driving the decline in quality of consumer goods like clothing and housewares.
NIMBYism is impossible to satirize because their thought process is always more insane than yours wdym garbage bins will ruin the character of your neighborhood by replacing cars???
Max Dubler 🏳️🌈@maxdubler.com · 4d agoI avoid the term “gentrification” when talking about housing affordability because it mostly describes *how people feel* about neighborhood change, not the change itself. For example, this author talks about how containerized trash pickup will “gentrify” NYC’s streets by replacing parked cars: