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California Isn’t Special: California’s housing problem isn’t what you think it is

Jerusalem Demsas at The Atlantic:

California’s housing policies are the same as everywhere in the US, but population pressure has made the housing situation here far worse.

In blue and red localities across the country, researchers find a “California-style” preference for single-family homes, hostility to density and renters, a tendency to segregate types of development (industrial, commercial, and residential), and a default toward delaying or blocking the construction of new homes, whether affordable or market-rate.

…

What has made California the worst in the country for housing is not uniquely bad policy but population growth running up against generically bad policy. If both San Francisco and a small, economically disadvantaged town in Mississippi enact a home-building moratorium, that’s going to hurt a lot more in the former, where millions of people want to live, than in the latter, where just a handful of people do.

Jobs and state population growth in California outstripped housing development. From 2010-20, the state permitted—not built, just permitted—one home for every 2.54 jobs it added. That leads the country; Utah permitted one home for every 1.57 jobs.

Legislation to legalize high-density housing is proving politically impossible in California, and elsewhere around the US too.

Terrible housing policy isn’t California’s legacy; it’s America’s.

I’d love to see a Star Trek miniseries focused on young James Kirk, in his first posting to a bridge crew.

I always preferred the TV series Kirk to the movie Kirk. In the series Kirk, follows the chain of command and obeys orders, even when he thinks the orders are stupid. Movie Kirk is a cowboy.

So let’s call the series “Ensign Kirk.” We know that Kirk in Starfleet Academy was a grind, so how does he transform from that to the swashbuckling youngest Captain of a Constitution-class starship in Starfleet history?

"Picard" seemed to be setting up a spinoff focused on Seven of Nine, and I'm there for that.

I love Jeri Ryan. And not just for the usual reasons men love her; she’s also an excellent character actor.

I’ve only ever seen her in a narrow range of roles, but she excels at that range. She plays beautiful, powerful middle-aged bitches. Sometimes she plays villains, sometimes—as in the case of Seven of Nine on Picard—tough heroes who don’t take shit or suffer fools.

Cox shut down Internet service for scheduled maintenance this morning, because apparently it’s 1983 and people don’t need Internet to work from home.

I am not feeling a lot of love for Cox right now.

I had no blue checkmark before having no blue checkmark was cool.