Jeffrey Yasskin

And after he's insisted so much that transportation isn't his "major"...

Nifty, but the image demonstrates that it doesn't work: the lock isn't even attached, let alone around the frame.

News Release: PBOT opens public comment on proposed updates to rules for Automated Vehicles (AVs), encroachments, multimodal incentives and driveways

www.portland.gov/transportati...

since everyone is responding to this with their own trimet governance hot takes, i'd say that personally my gut check top priority would be making it so that serving on the board of trimet was a) a paid position with b) some staffing support

The dynamic by which private sports teams get their cities to give them lots of money still seems abusive and worth opting out of, but this proposal (www.ripcitynotripoff.com) looks like the second best thing.

valentine's day card: you must be 100 million dollars in unspent portland housing bureau funds because I'm glad I found you

valentine's day card: I love you more than dan ryan loves storefronts

valentine's day card: are you a portland city council president vote? because I want to do it twelve times with you

valentine's day card: I just passed a resolution . . . asking the city administrator to report back on the feasibility of asking you out

valentine's day coming up tomorrow, please use these responsibly

PBOT staffer brought to tears after questioning from city councilors With councilors no longer in charge of bureaus, there's no longer a buffer between politicians and bureau staff.

At Monday's Finance Committee meeting, Councilor Eric Zimmerman seized an opportunity to criticize PBOT and an unsuspecting staffer was collateral damage

bikeportland.org/2026/02/11/p...

Whale Evolution:
Flamingo-Legged Watermelon Mouse
Mutant Sewer Rat King
Gator Wolf
Steel-Jawed PollyWorg
Titan MerSausage

FOUND IT!
Subscribe to this and it puts a little "Substack" label on every post that includes a Substack link.

bsky.app/profile/labe...

cover of The Washington Post on Wednesday Feb 4, 2026. Headline on bottom, right: Musk wanted to hook users; his chatbot got more sexual

My story on Elon Musk cutting safeguards at xAI is on the front page of today's @washingtonpost.com. I’m also among 100’s of reporters laid off. I absolutely loved my job my brilliant coworkers & the thrill of reporting @ the center of forces upending the world: AI & Silicon Valley’s political power

What Really Killed Flash Player: A Six-Year Campaign of Deliberate Platform Work This is what it actually took. From the person who architected and drove Chrome’s Flash deprecation from proposal to through the final…

A relevant post materializes.

Anyway: here's to my students. They took it seriously, they argued it out, and they came up with something that I doubted at first, but ended admiring more than any system I've designed on my own.

Last term I tried an experiment: I walked into my Tech and Design Ethics class, admitted that I had *no idea* what to do about ChatGPT - so I would let them figure it out.

As in: their first project was to decide and write the ChatGPT policy for the class.

Here's what happened:

"Racist, Dehumanizing": Chat Images Show Portland Power Players Disparaging Councilors of Color Messages obtained by the Mercury contain a slew of offensive tropes sent during a council president election

The Mercury has obtained a series of images of group messages that show racist, sexist, and homophobic tropes used by a local developer and other local conservative political activists during a council president election. Readers may find this content offensive.

Abolish ICE Before They Kill Again, Impeach Trump & Noem Before They Incite More Murder

Renee Nicole Good was a 37-year-old award-winning poet, a mother of a six-year-old, and a wife who had recently moved to Minneapolis. That all ended yesterday when a masked ICE agent murdered her in broad…

I want AVs to succeed at making cities safer. To do so, however, AV companies must offer real data transparency and systems-thinking rather than object-thinking

I want AVs to do testing in messy complex cities. But we need companies and regulators to think about appropriate pace of scaling
12/

An Epidemic of Wage Theft Is Costing Workers Hundreds of Millions of Dollars a Year Millions of Americans struggle to get by on low wages, often without any benefits such as paid sick leave, a pension, or even health insurance. Their difficult lives are made immeasurably harder when ...

Is there anything y'all can do about wage theft? Given statistics like www.epi.org/publication/...

Mercury 2025 Recap: Portland City Council's First Year This year marked a new beginning for Portlanders after 100 years of local government operating at a glacial pace. It was the first under Portland’s new form of government. A series of voter-enacted ch...

This year marked a new beginning for Portlanders after 100 years of local government operating at a glacial pace. It was the first under Portland’s new form of government.

We asked councilors to reflect on their achievements and give us a sneak peek at what's to come in 2026.

#TIL that this is where "shouting fire in a crowded theater" comes from.

The description in that article makes her sound like a standards body chair, looking for consensus rather than trying to order the group to do her bidding. That seems like a good way for a council president to behave, even if US legislative culture tends toward more authoritarianism.

This is Republican thinking: government should be preventing wildfires (funded by taxes), managing congestion (directly with tolls), and building affordable housing and services (again funded by taxes), not just reducing my tax bill.

Okay, so at the request of the lovely @trance.bsky.social , I'm going to tell a story about what happens when a shitty person is "just joking", and then discovers there are consequences.

AKA That Time Kat Started An Antifascist Hallway Riot In The Third Grade.

Grab your beverage of choice.

On vacancy fees: Due to a budget note I proposed in June, the administration is researching options and modeling out impacts for different types of long-term vacancy fees, both residential and commercial. That report comes to Council 2/28, so likely at a public meeting in March.

And yet our state and local leadership are trying to prop up real estate prices and so rents, instead of encouraging the market to correct and get more affordable. 😡 Yes that would hurt property tax revenue, but they should serve people, not just the government budget and banks.

First-of-a-kind study shows encouraging data for trans kids who socially transition Ninety-four percent of participants in a new study stood firm in their trans identity after five years, and "detransitioning" is rare.

The name "Popular Science" doesn't mean we shift our coverage depending on public opinion. It means we cover relevant subjects that are rigorously researched, reliable, and grounded in reality.

And trans lives are grounded in reality.

We see y'all. No matter what.

www.popsci.com/science/tran...

What is "the Web"? We have some too-narrow definitions like "that thing Chrome, Firefox, and Safari browse", and some too-broad definitions like "anything built with HTML, CSS, and Javascript."

So far I've got that the #Web is composed of documents (resources? objects?)
1. that can be visited […]

Super Dreidel | Hanukkah Game Super Dreidel is a fun twist on the traditional Hanukkah game, perfect for family gatherings, interfaith games, and holiday fundraisers. Complete with a game mat, dreidels, betting tokens, and more, S...

Someone in Portland invented superdreidel.com

Person carrying rainbow umbrella clearing drains with a stick. Not the ideal tool for the job.

Person w rainbow umbrella next to a storm drain. This time with a small rake and shovel. That's all you need to clean out most storm drains!

More people we ❤️🌈 cleaning storm drains -- it's so satisfying and so important to prevent local flooding.

Here's Claire (BikeLoud volunteer + Board Chair of Oregon Walks) clearing drains. Thanks Claire!

photos of @contraireclaire.bsky.social by @tigard-stripes.bsky.social

OK so here is my Music Theory Explainer for why Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” is a genius piece of songwriting.

First, you have to be aware that Cohen is of Jewish extraction (It’s in the name - Cohen).

Next, know that figuring out which key Hallelujah is in, is not easy or straightforward —

I'm on Chrome, so probably discount me, but it's a terrible UI pattern. Checkboxes serve the same use cases, and don't rely on color changes to identify which state means "yes". Like with Toast, just because Native made a UI mistake doesn't mean it needs to be in HTML.