We're now beyond that stage, because you can have the federal government approved ID and have them not accept it.

I am a big white guy, but I have an aggressively Hispanic name. The whole thing (all three parts) is extremely common in Mexico. While both of my parents were born here, none of their parents were. Most of them came from Europe, but one was a Mexican citizen. I have an allegedly real ID. When all this bullshit kicked off, I refreshed my passport, and I carry the passport card.

The question is, if it ever comes down to it, will they even accept my passport card as proof of citizenship?

P.S. I've sworn two formal oaths to uphold the constitutions of the USA and California.

I don't know too much about that particular situation in Malibu, I'm a NoCal guy. Most homes in general have flammable roofs, they are made with wood covered in various asphalt, paper, and plastic products. Perhaps Malibu had more tile or metal roofs, but they certainly would have had plenty of flammable ones in between them still. I don't think it would have made a big difference there though, since fire was moving from structure to structure. I was thinking about that more from a NoCal standpoint, where we have even more trees.

Buses use very few of the narrow streets in SF, and where they do, they're terrible. For example, when the bus leaves Bernal Heights it takes FOR. EVER. winding its way out of there, ugh.

The tight streets of SF are also already inaccessible for the disabled, because of all the homes with narrow tall staircases where there's no room for a stairmaster.

I envision the ideal size of PRT vehicle about like a shortish minivan. (put the motors on the track bogey, and the battery under the floor.) If you made some of the seats fold up you could get fairly large items into it. There's also no reason you couldn't have lightweight cargo cars delivered by the same network, which might be a better idea overall. If you don't actually eliminate the streets, and instead cut them down to a single lane with a siding in the middle of the block (or more than one for long blocks) then you can still bring in emergency or construction vehicles.

Another option is to still allow NEVs. They take up less space than normal cars, and they produce less pollution — mostly just tire dust, and not too much since they are light in weight and don't go quickly. You could still delete some of the roadway since they are narrow. SF permits some lightweight vehicles around at least parts of the city now.

HahAAHHahAHAHHAHAHA

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snort

AHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA

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This we have a little bit of, but the catholic court is eroding that.

Thanks for the laugh, scum.

That's a problem on the narrowest streets, while the others can and should have turning lanes. But I'd argue that you shouldn't have cars where the streets have to be that narrow to begin with, see below.

The spaces are, but the streets as they are now aren't. They're only a car necessity. For example, you could have plants in half of that space improving air quality instead of decreasing it, while still leaving a full width lane which could be used to bring in emergency vehicles, and which otherwise function as paths for cycles and scooters and whatnot.

No. That's what a singly exposed photo negative shot through the most ideal lens possible with the best possible film in good lighting is, or as close as you can get anyway. A photograph as presented to you might be any number of things and it is extremely typical to for example dodge and burn specific regions of a photograph to emphasize or hide specific details. When I took a B&W photo class quite some moons ago, one of my most appreciated photos was of a sign. It was too dark so contrast was poor, and I made a little flag and dodged the sign during exposure of the photograph so that it lightened up and you could read it. What the viewer experienced was in fact not completely accurate even given the limitations of the camera etc.

This is more accurate to what I thought I saw when looking at it, because of the process of rendering that image in my mind, but still absolutely not "completely" accurate. But since no camera actually captures every detail as it was because of the limitations of the lens, and the film, and the lighting, all photographs are approximations and distortions.

Yes, I was just saying something similar in a discussion about public transport in Humboldt, where I now live. In particular, the city (which it officially is, based on the number of residents) I live in now only gets a bus every two hours. Meanwhile, there is an abandoned rail line which could reasonably be restored between here and at least the town past the next city without dramatic expense. (Going farther south would require a substantial bridge project. I haven't surveyed the former line too much further to the north.) And the former depot building at the spur highway in between is even still standing and occupied.

Though I do not expect you to be familiar with the fact, I have spoken repeatedly here about the need for California to disallow flammable exteriors. In particular, allowing the construction of flammable roofs is batshit insane. Forest fires can broadcast burning material for miles from the point of ignition, especially when the woods are dotted with rural homes with propane tanks. These have safety features which are supposed to make them burn externally instead of internally, but when a fire is moving rapidly enough they don't really function that way (they do both) and the tanks do literally explode. The last people to leave Cobb mountain during the fires in Lake county got to hear that happening.

But the short short answer would be yes, if the only way to bring about fire safety is to alter where we are building homes, we should absolutely be doing that in California as well. In some areas it might remain acceptable to build almost entirely below grade, with steel roofs and shutters, and rock wool insulation. In other places that wouldn't work either, because we too have flood zones. I live right next to one.

The humans in the cars are not more important than the humans in the cars. If the humans go after the cars then you just have people in cars waiting for people not in cars at a different phase of the use of the intersection, it doesn't actually improve anything.

If you don't care about the noise, pollution, and use of space from the cars then that must seem true.

The problem with FEMA funds is that we ALL pay into those, not just other people who have chosen to live in flood zones. Despite this I am, once again, not against federal flood relief. If a person (including but not limited to you) wound up living someplace which floods, they still need a place to live if that happens... but we need to not repeat our mistakes — and that is specifically what you are advocating for.

They have a subway in the places where it's practical, but there are two problems. First, a bunch of SF is on landfill. Second, lots of it is on hills where you can't send the subway. That means the only thing you could really retrofit in would be elevated PRT with some type of steel truss railway. Elevated PRT is especially interesting because it can share existing rights of way, or be placed where you cannot create one because of the requirements on the ground.

You can't solve the parking problem with a single garage btw, because then you're increasing traffic for the vehicles going to and from it. You'd need a bunch of them in different boroughs, and SF is not really known for having a lot of unused space. The only available land is public park land, and giving that over to a private company for their beta test slightly-self-driving taxis would be offensive.

You're talking about Israeli settlers, right? Who have been doing this since the 1940s. They ran newspaper ads promoting their literal self-described colonialism. Or maybe you're talking about the Jews who wrote themselves a book promising them those lands 3,000 years ago and then proceeded to try to take them from the other people who were already living there, and who have outnumbered them throughout all of history. Which, by the way, you think began on October 7, 2023. I don't think a two year old has any historical perspective, and that's how old you would be if you were right about the beginning of time.

No. That's not even close to what I said. You can rebuild if you want to. You just don't get to do it with other people's money. No one should help you rebuild in a place that's just going to flood again.

Don't buy in a flood zone. Don't build in a flood zone. Then you won't be affected.

Good. If I am paying for it, which is what federal flood relief is, then I say you don't get to build in a flood zone again. If you are paying for it, you can rebuild where you want, even if it's stupid.

This is something they could be doing better, but automobiles are just inherently problematic. Adding more of them demonstrates the fact. On a rail line that can handle the same number of people, you have lots of room for more cars. The cars are truly awful in every major city. They take up a terrible amount of room and even modern ones produce a lot of pollution.

(We've discussed here in the past that gasoline vehicles produce a lot of unacknowledged PM2.5 and smaller soot which is simply not found by typically used means because the bulk of it is smaller than can conveniently be detected, but I'm having trouble finding the article now due to ongoing enshittification at Google.)

The fact that adding a really frankly small percentage of additional cars can cause so many problems is an indictment against any idea which involves more of them. SF tries to solve its transport problems with buses, but its multitude of narrow and twisting streets designed to wend their way over and through the hills make that impractical for many neighborhoods. The result is that a trip that's 15 minutes by car or an hour on foot can become an hour and a half by non-car public transit because there's no convenient way to get a vehicle that large from point A to point B. I lived in Bernal Heights and worked at the foot of Potrero Hill, and I had to take a bus to get to rail to get to a bus in order to commute by MUNI. But if you ran an elevated PRT line more or less straight there, it would get you there in five minutes or so.

Alas, we let the greediest and most ruthless people run off with the money, so we can't have nice things. We clearly have the technology.