Ride The 'D'

I spend some time in LA for family reasons and I usually don't rent a car because (depending) you can actually get around pretty well on public transportation. 

Sure, public transit can take longer and be more inconvenient than transit. I don't expect everyone in LA to ditch their cars and follow the lead of Ed Begley, Jr. But driving in LA does suck, in part because parking is a pain in the ass almost everywhere. It's a big streetcar city/region that lost its streetcars, not a big parking lot-paved suburb.

I do find tremendous personal resistance from people who love using transit in fancy European cities but who never consider using it in their own city. For example, I have friends who live a couple of miles from downtown, on regular bus routes, and it never occurs them to take the bus and in fact find it weird that I would take it (from downtown) to their place. Parking in DTLA really really sucks! 

My favorite DTLA thing is there are metered parking spots you can use until (I think) 3pm and then they become car lanes for rush hour. Tow trucks come out to make it happen! No I was never towed.

Anyway, one more piece.

This week, Metro is set to unveil the first part of a nine-mile subway under Wilshire, one of the most dynamic and traffic-clogged stretches of Los Angeles. Public transit experts say the $9.7-billion D Line extension, which will connect Koreatown to the Westside, is a landmark achievement in L.A. public transit history.

$10 billion sounds like a lot of money, and it probably shouldn't cost that much, but my take on such things is it's actually the useful spending that gets scrutiny and derision, not dumb spending. We're gonna blow a few hundred billion, easy, because of Iran.

A few hundred billion buys a lot of 'D's.

At Least The War Is Over

How long can THE MARKETS soar on these fumes?

Traffic in the Strait of Hormuz remained throttled on Saturday, after naval skirmishes between U.S. and Iranian forces in recent days heightened tensions in the vital shipping route.

For weeks, the narrow passage between the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea has been choked by two competing blockades enforced by each side in the conflict. About 1,600 ships are bottled up in the Persian Gulf.

Morning

Sunday funday.

We Hide In The Dunes By The Seaside

It's all very confusing.

Russia is shipping drone components to Iran via the Caspian Sea, U.S. officials say, helping Iran rebuild its offensive abilities after losing roughly 60 percent of its drone arsenal during recent fighting. The officials spoke anonymously to divulge private military assessments.

The Starmer Project

I don't know how true the stories were about UK Labour advising the Harris campaign (and how much they listened) were true. People like to boast about such things. But it was a bit worrying at the time, because it was quite obvious that Americans generally had no idea what was going on with UK Labour and their already plummeting popularity.

Yes they managed to win the election with a large number of seats, but with a tiny share of the popular vote. That such things are possible in the UK electoral system does not mean they signal anything good about the victorious party.

Right after winning they decided the smart and sensible thing to do was prove how tough they were by announcing some benefit cuts, coinciding with a scandal about all the free gifts they were getting. The Labour party was announcing benefit cuts after 14 years of Tory rule.

Anyway, the UK Labour party was hijacked by the worst people in Labour. Perhaps the worst people in Britain. I am not exaggerating. Continuity Rishi Sunak would have been better, at least.

They've been destroyed in local elections (councillors and mayors in some places) and in the governments of Wales (especially) and Scotland.

I don't know if Starmer will cling to power, but the Starmerites undoubtedly will.

Capital

Occasionally I think about the hugely expensive automated baggage handling system which was built for the then new Denver airport. They invited reporters for a big debut demonstration and it was a disaster. It subsequently never really worked and was eventually removed.

Basically it was a promise that magic expensive technology would let them skimp on hiring airport workers.

Automation is nothing new, of course, and often it works quite well, but you don't have to be a supergenius to understand why it would be extremely difficult to implement such a system with non-uniform bags.

Workers aren't that expensive, either.

And On And On

I think we can put "Iran deal" in the box with "Trump health care plan" and "infrastructure week."

President Donald Trump told CNN on Friday that his administration was expecting to hear back from Iran later that evening about a US proposal aimed at ending the conflict.

Asked by CNN’s Kristen Holmes whether he had received a response from Iran, Trump said, “We’ll hear from them supposedly tonight.”

Pressed on whether he believed the Iranians were slow-rolling negotiations, Trump replied that he did not know. “We’ll find out soon enough,” he said.

Trump has to "win" a war we obviously lost. And with each passing day he cares less and just doesn't want to hear about it.

Morning

Slacker Saturday

Happy Hour

Get happy.

Working Hard Or Hardly Working

I just can't comprehend not taking being a CABINET SECRETARY seriously. I might be shit at it, but I'd figure it was going to occupy all my time and mental space!

oh my god -- Sean Duffy on Fox & Friends this morning announced that he spent parts of *7 MONTHS* (more than half a year!) on a roadtrip with his family to celebrate America's 250th anniversary

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— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) May 8, 2026 at 5:02 PM

Nothing Really Matters

Even in the post-9/11 bloodlust era, most "respectable" commentators felt the need to express concerns and regret about civilian casualties, to discuss war as if it was a terrible, if necessary, tragedy. Most of the time, anyway.

You rarely see any expressed concern at all anymore.  Even if it was mostly fake in the past, or more about the pundits admiring their own morality than actual genuine concern, it still did convey the sense that people dying mattered.

Waiting For A Big Beautiful Deal

We are once again being told there might be an Iran "deal" today, though I suspect that is more nonsense.

Any "deal" that actually happens will essentially involve Iran being the victors in a war they didn't start, with terms set accordingly. I am curious how it will be covered.  If it happens.

I Gotta Admit This Is Funny

I left long before universities were overpowered by mandatory ed tech, but I don't know a single faculty member who actually likes being forced to use this stuff. It's one thing to make tools available, another thing to squeeze everybody into them and make it impossible for them to use anything else.

New York — An apparent cyberattack shut down an education platform used by universities and K-12 schools across the US Thursday, depriving students and teachers of essential classroom materials – at a time when many are taking or prepping for final exams.

Canvas, a popular, cloud-based digital hub for classrooms, has more than 30 million active users globally, with more than 8,000 institutions as customers, parent company Instructure says on its website.

And of course there are monitoring (spying on faculty, eroding any pedagogical freedom) and intellectual property (all your lectures belong to us) issues. 

Morning

Fuckin' Friday.

Happy Hour

get happy

So Much Winning

(WaPo reporter)

U.S. intel also indicates that Iran retains about 75% of its pre-war inventories of mobile launchers & about 70% of its pre-war stockpiles of missiles, per a U.S. official. The regime has also been able to recover underground storage facilities & repair damaged missiles

— John Hudson (@John_Hudson) May 7, 2026

Kavanaugh Stops

Kavanaugh is an idiot, so I can believe it actually didn't occur to him that an immigration stop would never be a one-time thing, like you get your name checked and never have to do it again.

This wasn’t the first time ICE agents stopped and held Garcia Venegas. In fact, Saturday’s encounter marked the third such incident, according to court filings. Garcia Venegas, whose parents are originally from Mexico, had twice before been detained after ICE raided construction sites where he was working, and twice before he was let go after proving his American citizenship. This third detention, Garcia Venegas wrote in his statement, had caused him emotional distress and anxiety. “I live in constant fear that I will be subjected to further baseless detentions just for going about my daily life,” he said, adding, “I only wish to live my life in peace.”

He gave full license to terrorize Latinos constantly forever, and while I doubt that bothers him at all, I can, as I said, believe he didn't get what he was enabling. 

Unreality

I don't know if it's really worse than it used to be, but I do think everyone used to put a bit more work into their bullshit. Now, powerful people lie like crumb-faced kids saying that they didn't eat a cookie, and think it's extraordinarily rude if you don't pretend to believe them.

HERSHEY, Pa. — Chief Justice John Roberts on Wednesday defended the Supreme Court from what he believes are misconceptions held by the American people that he and his colleagues are “political actors” who are making decisions based on policy, not law.

Mr. Trump, Sir, Your Advisers Have Led You Astray

Nothing will shake Trump from his few core beliefs (racism, his own inerrancy), but it would be nice if he got mad at the people who convinced him he could conquer Iran in 24 hours.

Where All My Bed Unshitters At

Our "allies" are getting a bit tired of being turned into a war zone for no reason.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s abrupt reversal on his plan to help ships go through the Strait of Hormuz came after a key Gulf ally suspended the U.S. military’s ability to use its bases and airspace to carry out the operation, according to two U.S. officials.

Trump surprised Gulf allies by announcing “Project Freedom” on social media Sunday afternoon, the officials said, angering leadership in Saudi Arabia. In response, the Kingdom informed the U.S. it would not allow the U.S. military to fly aircraft from Prince Sultan Airbase southeast of Riyadh or fly through Saudi airspace to support the effort, the officials said.

Countries are realizing they can, actually, just say no.