mutator's comments

Have there been proposals to tax secondary properties, or is it just easy to evade those, or is the electorate just way too anti property tax. It does feel a far more sustained source of taxation revenue that a one time tax on select individuals.

Its a one time tax that is expected to raise $100 billion over 5 years, with a bulk of that payment going to preserve existing medical, education and food support programs due to federal budget shortfalls. However without a concerted effort to make these programs more efficient and accountable, its very likely that we are faced with the same budget crisis over and over again. We see this all the time with the government shutdown theater every few years, but guess this is just how the country functions. At some point this has to break the system though!

> San Francisco cable car system map, 1892

Wow! Its great to see parts of the system are still active today. Just took the Hyde & Beach car a couple of days ago, and although we had to wait for double the time including a car that could not stop due to being full, it was a memorable experience.

On the flip side, for a city that perhaps was one of the early movers in envisioning a robust transportation system, it is somewhat disappointing to see that in over 100 years, parts of the city still feel so disconnected from the transportation lifeline, making those places really hard to live in and commute.

What went wrong? NIMBY'ism, lawyerly society, more regulation; and what is there to hope for the future?

It looks as though this is just a brick with lights and sounds. I still think the Mindstorms are a better platform for "smart" play.

The quality of the outcome of the street cleaning process is at best meh. Certainly not worth the high dollar amounts they are charging for the fees.

I recall the bill that made it easier to install ADUs from a few years, and in passing I've seen a number of modular housing construction companies that may have also lowered the cost to build and install one.

However, I'd be curious if the something similar applies here with the upzoning bill. If construction costs remain high, are we going to hit the expected numbers of housing to fulfill the shortage.

The discourse around high density housing does not make it clear what specific type of development do advocates prefer. Its likely that the market will have to decide for itself, but if we end up with an abundance of just 1/2 bedroom rental apartments, targeted towards transient younger people, I fear it's just going to enrich the property management class, and families with kids/older parents looking for larger places and hoping to establish roots are still going to stuck fighting the pricing/supply wars.

Very curious to learn about what classes one can take to build up a rudimentary knowledge of plumbing, electrical and HVAC.

Given the general degradation and lack of investment in physical infrastructure to support any growing baby boom, eg. childcare, education etc, what worries me is life being a lot more competitive for this lot of babies.