tptacek

5 ms·

61.
by tptacek 29d ago
Nobody disagrees, though "calling 911" is exactly what he's supposed to do if he thinks he's being followed.
62.
by tptacek 29d ago
This again sounds like national politics and not local. They really are totally different. In local politics the electeds are your neighbors. They serve part time. All of them have full-time jobs (except sometimes the mayor). You don't
63.
by tptacek 29d ago
Random people calling 911 on other people filming them is a staple of Youtube; banks, coffee store workers, hairdressers, most especially restaurant managers. I don't know why anyone would expect technicians from Flock to be different.
64.
by tptacek 1mo ago
They should have exactly the same say as everybody else in that electorate who votes. They should not get an extra say.
65.
by tptacek 1mo ago
If you have your own private back yard you're not allowed to refer to condominiums as "luxury".
66.
by tptacek 1mo ago
Yes. I'm specifically not saying that working the refs with canvassed public comment invalidates an underlying substantive grievance. Public comment can be used "for good" or for evil. All I'm saying is that people using
67.
by tptacek 1mo ago
Mostly it's stopped the construction of housing.
68.
by tptacek 1mo ago
In the campaign I'm a part of to end exclusionary zoning ("Yes Oak Park"), housing reform opponents claimed to residents that we were advocating for the construction of rock quarries next to people's houses. It's li
69.
by tptacek 1mo ago
Yes, that's a multifamily development.
70.
by tptacek 1mo ago
We arrange to have everybody vote on a designated day. We publicize that day. We make a very big deal out of getting people to vote. We don't do it too often. People show up and make decisions. They should then be able to leave and ass
71.
by tptacek 1mo ago
No, I did not! I've written at length about how I engaged with my local municipality on Flock cameras. The search bar will avail. None of it involved public comment.
72.
by tptacek 1mo ago
Texas is a weird case because they're the fastest growing state in the country and they run their own independent power grid --- badly (see: the winter outage a couple years back). And even then: data centers are going to get built in
73.
by tptacek 1mo ago
People naturally have varying levels of skin in the game on various issues. They should not have varying levels of voting power. But that's essentially what public comment process does. And your natural inclination is to assume that tu
74.
by tptacek 1mo ago
The only evidence you've provided is a vanilla MZ/DZ study from 2008.
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by tptacek 1mo ago
I'm really not sure how I can be clearer about the fact that I don't agree with the prevailing sentiment on these threads about data centers† but that my reason for commenting here is that public comment processes are a nightmare
76.
by tptacek 1mo ago
Zoning laws accomplished what they were intended to do, which was to enforce economic and racial segregation by preventing new affordable housing from being built near areas of opportunity. I don't think anybody working on housing affo
77.
by tptacek 1mo ago
We don't agree, but either way, the only thing I'm here to say is that public comment distorts democratic process and entrenches concentrated local interest groups. You're happy about it (in the abstract, apparently) because
78.
by tptacek 1mo ago
See, I think it's better if every vote is counted equally, and people with concentrated or high-amplitude opinions about specific issues don't get extra votes. Different strokes, I guess.
79.
by tptacek 1mo ago
I did and was not referring to the article. Also: Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that".
80.
by tptacek 1mo ago
We can agree to disagree, so long as we can at least recognize NIMBYism when we see it. "Public comment works great because it enabled us to organize to keep a multifamily development out of our vicinity" is like the archetypical
81.
by tptacek 1mo ago
This sounds like porting assumptions about national and statewide politics into local politics, which is a totally different animal. I hear this a lot from people, and if you're referring to local electeds as "politicians fucking
82.
by tptacek 1mo ago
It's literally "don't build on this one spot I really like". It's in the name!
83.
by tptacek 1mo ago
That's literally what NIMBYs exploiting public comment say: whatever else is happening, at least they're striking back against the psychopathic Private Equity firms who are building all this evil housing.
84.
by tptacek 1mo ago
Like, I'm not moralizing about it or anything; I'm extraordinarily AI-positive. But I think if you're trying to help people break through the noise to communicate to developers, "it's fine to have AI write your post
85.
by tptacek 1mo ago
Public review in practice is a mechanism for concentrated local interest groups that don't have enough democratic legitimacy to win at the ballot box to instead win via a series of Tuesday night meetings normal people don't go to.
86.
by tptacek 1mo ago
Ansar Allah is an operational arm of the IRGC, with devolved autonomy over local matters --- approximately the same relationship an American state has with the federal government. What's your issue with "Iran-backed"? They&#x
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by tptacek 1mo ago
We've seen Sunni majorities in Syria and Lebanon run for generations by oppressive Shia-supremacist regimes, so while I agree that the resistance against Ansar Allah doesn't have a lot of local legitimacy, I think you have to be a
88.
by tptacek 1mo ago
I don't know, this sure sounds like NIMBYism to me. Public comment was used to organize against multifamily housing units. That's approximately the whole story; I think you pretty much just have to add "organizing against new
89.
by tptacek 1mo ago
I think you have to actually do local politics (I'm assuming you do) to really get just how fucked public comment is as a process, and I think this is an important and useful thing to talk about that just won't be possible to talk
90.
by tptacek 1mo ago
Yes, that sounds about right. And it's very, very bad.

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