In October 2024, I backpacked into the remote Tehipite Valley in Kings Canyon National Park.

The Rae Lakes area is reputed to offer some of the finest splendor in the high Sierra. I like loop trips, and also splendor, and as of recently, backpacking, so I gave this one a go. In July 2024 I ventured the Rae Lakes loop as a 4 day, 3 night solo backpacking trip.

I thought about getting an ebike for a few years before I finally pulled the trigger. With almost two thousand miles on the odometer, I’m happy to report that these are utterly magical machines. If you’re even remotely considering buying one, do. I’m pretty confident you won’t regret it.

Even if you already type pretty fast, LLMs can help you type much faster.

Most people hate paying for parking and fiercely resist attempts to make them do so. I wonder how much of that resistance isn’t to cost per se, but rather to the annoyance of the process of paying.

The fine people of Grant’s Pass are fed up with homeless people sleeping in public, and are taking action to prevent it. Naturally, their first step must have been to repeal the laws making it illegal to build homes for such people. That would just be common sense, right?

Lake Merritt sporting some very fine spring textures at the moment.

I’ve been reading a lot about legislative efforts to address our catastrophic housing scarcity problem, and found myself struggling to keep track of all the attempts. I figured someone must have made a database of them all. But evidently not! So I made one:

Proposal: after repealing mandatory off-street parking requirements, go a step further and impose a significant annual fee on curb cuts.

Gambling on sports has been legalized, normalized, and placed at the immediate disposal of every vulnerable dopamine hound. Prediction markets, on the other hand…

Walking around downtown Oakland last night I found myself thinking, as I often do, “where are all the people?”

I got a little obssessed with California’s Prop 13 recently. I knew it was very bad but I didn’t grasp the full magnitude. So I dug in and channeled my ire into building something.

Lately, when I walk around the city, I often hear myself thinking, “Land value tax fixes this.”

I see YIMBY legislative wins reported and discussed on social media regularly.

Reading and thinking a lot about housing policy lately, I’m finding myself ever-increasingly YIMBY-pilled.

Nice study out of Harvard JCHS, more evidence for “filtering”:

Here’s some La Jolla property tax madness:

I really love this space tomato story:

What if we administered our industrial policy as a collection of advance market commitments?

Could gene drives help eradicate bedbugs?

Anyone interested in aging science should listen to both of these episodes of Peter Attia’s podcast:

🤯: “…simply imagining something bright like the Sun also causes (a smaller, but still measurable) constriction. Aphantasics show perfectly typical pupillary responses to actual changes in light. However, their pupils do not change to imagined light.”

I learned this weekend that there’s a spectacular Diego Rivera fresco at the City Club in San Francisco on the stairwell between the 10th and 11th floors.

The Serious Eats mapo tofu recipes are seriously delicious.

Automated bike lane enforcement is good, I’m glad it’s happening.

Where lanes are concerned, 9ft is the new 10ft.

Thirty busybodies shouldn’t have the power to use the courts to strangle democratically enacted policies.

Judging by personal experience riding a bike around San Francisco over the last few months, I’d say the AI drivers are less inclined to endanger my life than the human ones.

I think you should memorize some poetry, even just a little. I’ve been attempting this lately and I can recommend it highly.

Here’s a backpacking trick: open the freeze-dried meals at home, remove the desiccant packets, and add a quarter teaspoon each of salt and msg powder.