Life from the viewpoint of someone who needs to be in three four places at once.
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I get asked a lot if I drink tap water. It baffles me. Why wouldn't I drink a cheap, highly regulated and tested product vs an expensive product with minimal regulations, and with a huge carbon footprint? Last Saturday, I listened to a Webinar with Metropolitan Water District Chair of the Board, Adán Ortega, Jr. He mentioned how distrust of tap water has spread like a contagion since they first…
I just can't make up as self-serving as the Dark Roof Lobby . We live in the post-truth society so they are even successful despite having no science to back up their assertions. [I learned about this issue, and about Floodlight News from the non-billionaire-controlled social media site, Bluesky . You can find me there under the handle, gspeng .] Remember in 2012 when we replaced our dark asphalt…
San Francisco Trolley Bus powered by overhead catenary lines. Photo courtesy of By Pi.1415926535 - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=64552498 I am not a fan of Battery Electric Buses (BEBs) due to their expense and operational difficulties. We need to stop burning stuff that produces greenhouse gases, but we also need to provide the most bus service for the…
I wrote an LA Voter newsletter (for members of League of Women Voters in Los Angeles County) article about Motonormativity and the way that local, state and federal governments reinforce it with their laws and actions. Professor Ian Walker wrote in the 2023 paper, Motonormativity: how social norms hide a major public health hazard , “Decisions about motor transport, by individuals and…
A college student reached out to me after reading SCAG, HQTA & RHNA: Acronyms you never heard of but should understand and I found the questions so intriguing, they deserved to be answered right here on the blog. First off, I think it's important to state that I used the Torrance Transit 8 bus line as an example, but I do not want to pick on Torrance Transit in particular. The example is just…
Sometimes, you need a name for something before you can see it. But, once you see it, you can't unsee it. I first heard of Motonormativity from this 2023 paper: Motonormativity: how social norms hide a major public health hazard . Lead author Professor Ian Walker recently gave a lunchtime talk to Streets For All and I highly recommend watching the video and reading the paper. There is a pervasive…
I have written many times previously about Parking Angst in the Los Angeles region. But, I want to write a quick post about why we should permit new homes without parking. Why do we vacation in places without parking and then deny ourselves the pleasure of living in a car-light place in everyday life? People who live in places that look like this (photo from Livable Communities Initiative ) do use…
I often hear from people that I normally agree with on other issues that supply and demand don't apply when it comes to housing. I don't know why people who study housing all say one thing, and a corner of the advocacy space says another. I do have experience with Berkeley housing markets (albeit from the 1980s) and that soured me on rent control as the sole method to manage scarcity of an…
My local wastewater treatment plant is one of the original CDC Sentinel sites where the CDC samples flu variants circulating in the population. I know that sewage-sheds are not perfect proxies for the general population. But, my wastewater (and that of 4.8 Million people in LA County) goes to the A K Warren Facility in Carson, CA . It's the largest treatment facility in LA County, the US, and…
Cleaning up browser windows, I am going to write a couple of quick blog posts. I am pretty laissez-faire about most things, but I am very judgmental about people who use nail salons. Nail salons should not exist. No one needs nail polish or acrylic nails. The chemicals used are not just toxic to the clients, but they poison and permanently disable the nail salon workers. From Nail Salon…
