That's Where The Skyscrapers Are

I've made the point a million times, but the big problem with peoples' understanding of "cities" is they picture contemporary Midtown Manhattan, not Paris, and certainly not South Philadelphia. There's no space in the conception between "people living in skyscrapers" and "detached single family homes with massive yards and setbacks." When urbanist-leaning people say "we need more density" (to allow for more housing, to improve the quality of neighborhoods by allowing for more walkable reatail), people picture a city filled with Trump Towers instead of just a bit more multifamily, buildings between 3-6 stories, etc.

By Any Other Name

Hindsight 20/20 of course, but I'm pretty sure if I had to come up with a list of "creepy sexual harassers (and worse)" in the media, Charlie Rose and Mark Halperin would have topped the list based on guessing. I admit Lauer probably would not have made the list, not because I bought into his TV persona, but because I naively thought the contrast between that and reality would have been too hard to hide for so many years. Not that I was surprised, of course.

Incidents of sexual misconduct by Charlie Rose were far more numerous than previously known, according to a new investigation by The Washington Post, which also found three occasions over a period of 30 years in which CBS managers were warned of his conduct toward women at the network.

An additional 27 women — 14 CBS News employees and 13 who worked with him elsewhere — said Rose sexually harassed them. Concerns about Rose’s behavior were flagged to managers at the network as early as 1986 and as recently as April 2017, when Rose was co-anchor of “CBS This Morning,” according to multiple people with firsthand knowledge of the conversations.

In all 3 of cases I just mentioned, the thing I keep coming back to is... why the hell did anyone think their "brands" were so powerful and lucrative that they "deserved" to be protected? I'm not naive about power and money, I just don't get why anyone thought any of those people had such star power that they needed to keep raking in the money. This not a defense, of course, but who the hell liked late career Matt Lauer?

Color Me Shocked

Shocked, I tells ya!

Giuliani made a oopsy. Can he have a do over?

The Best Clients

I'm no Bob Loblaw, but I'm guessing your typical country lawyer doesn't much like having a client who won't tell you just which fan the shit is going to fly from.

NYT's Michael Schmidt: Trump lawyers are nervous about the New York case because neither Trump nor Cohen will say what they think is in the papers taken in the raids of Cohen's home, hotel, and office.#BREAKING pic.twitter.com/kDwX8ZzbBN

— Maddow Blog (@MaddowBlog) May 3, 2018

I'm A Prophet

Maybe I should stop giving away these opinions for free.

Companies including Uber Technologies Inc., Tesla Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google have been touting self-driving cars as the next revolution in transportation. Pressure was mounting to make the technology road-worthy when one of Uber’s cars killed a pedestrian in Arizona in March. The company halted its autonomous-vehicle test program. Toyota Motor Corp. and Aptiv Plc’s Nutonomy then announced they were temporarily suspending public road testing in the U.S. Also in March, a driver of a Tesla Model X died in a crash in California that occurred while Autopilot was engaged.


“It gives them breathing room,” Grant said. “Now, they can stop telling investors a growth story. They don’t have to be as aggressive.”

translation: they have all been full of shit and this is an excellent "excuse" to stop having to be quite so full of shit for awhile

Early Evening Thread

enjoy

They Took The Passports

And why would they do that?

When the Washington Redskins took their cheerleading squad to Costa Rica in 2013 for a calendar photo shoot, the first cause for concern among the cheerleaders came when Redskins officials collected their passports upon arrival at the resort, depriving them of their official identification.

For the photo shoot, at the adults-only Occidental Grand Papagayo resort on Culebra Bay, some of the cheerleaders said they were required to be topless, though the photographs used for the calendar would not show nudity. Others wore nothing but body paint. Given the resort’s secluded setting, such revealing poses would not have been a concern for the women — except that the Redskins had invited spectators.

Yes, I know the answer. To make them slaves, temporarily at least.

The Best People

Most people don't know this but It is underappreciated that white supremacist gangs are often criminal gangs aside from white supremacy-related program activities.

DALLAS — Federal authorities say dozens of people associated with white-supremacist gangs in Texas have been indicted on drug trafficking charges, including four accused in a kidnapping in which a hatchet was used to chop off a victim’s finger.

...

An indictment alleges the defendants were members of the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas and other gangs. Prosecutors allege the scheme operated from October 2015 through this month as members conspired to distribute methamphetamine in Texas.

Afternoon Thread

The Editors has reappeared.

Nyt wedding announcements, 2020 pic.twitter.com/TuR4K2vxno

— Los Editoros (@LEditoros) May 2, 2018

Building A Few Houses Would Help

I don't think there's any place in the country where the housing situation is as insane as it is in the Bay Area. There are other expensive places, sure, and perhaps Seattle is heading in that direction, but even in NYC...well, you can always live in Newark, the point being that while housing is expensive all around you there are still places you can commute in from which aren't...insane.

Building a few more housing units would help! I really do not understand why people find this to be controversial. No building a few more housing units will not make it affordable for poor people (or even middle class, at this point). Yes you can believe this to be true and still have sensible reasons for objecting to any particular development. But building a few more housing units would mean...there were a few more housing units.

In housing, San Francisco added 4,464 units while 10,000 more people moved in, bringing the city’s population to 884,000. The city by the bay had the state’s third highest total population gain, behind only Los Angeles and San Diego. San Jose, which added 8,500 people, was fifth.

The amazing thing about the Bay Area is that the problem isn't really San Francisco, which isn't exactly building a tremendous number of net new units, but it is building some. It's everywhere else surrounding it, where practically nothing gets built. You might have noticed that there's a particularly hot job sector with a lot of growth in that area these days. The world has an unlimited appetite for new dating apps, it seems.

How Do Horrible People Manage To Get Along

I keep coming back to this, but it is just a mystery to me. I know people give the simple explanation of "kiss up, punch down" as in they are skilled at understanding hierarchies and know where to direct their fists and where to direct their tongues, but I don't really understand that in that I don't think all these horrible people can be so skilled at managing to keep these things straight. They obviously have unhealthy personalities and anger management problems and a general lack of ethics that has to be obvious to everyone.

Who am I talking about in the Trump administration? All of them. That's the point.

The Hour of The Wolf Thread

Because some believe that wolves are most active at 1am.

And for other reasons:

Happy Hour Thread

Still busy with things.

Gripping The Edge Of My Chair

Laughing at you because these are the only small pleasures left to us.

Cocaine Mitch

Is it possible that this Blankenship guy is Actually Good?

Washington (CNN)Don Blankenship, a Republican candidate for US Senate in West Virginia, is defending an ad his campaign released Monday in which he referred to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell as "Cocaine Mitch."

I know he isn't but everything is getting weirder.

Afternoon Thread

enjoy

Javanka

It's interest how they just faded out of the discourse. For awhile they were a constant presence in the narrative about whatever was going on. You know, two sources closes to Jared and Ivanka explained how thy tried to moderate Trump's position on... That kind of thing.

So much silence.

We Do Love Our Children

I am constantly amazed at examples of how some adults think is a perfectly normal acceptable way to treat children. And these aren't even ones that have been shunted into the juvenile justice or similar, which wouldn't make it ok either, but could at least excuse the treatment as being exceptional instead of just... the way things are done.

A network of Chicago charter schools has policies so strict that some menstruating girls are bleeding through their pants for lack of permitted bathroom breaks, an NPR affiliate reported on Monday.

Those Liberal College Students Are At Again

So powerful...and so... illiberal...

FAIRFAX, Va. (AP) — Virginia’s largest public university granted the conservative Charles Koch Foundation a say in the hiring and firing of professors in exchange for millions of dollars in donations, according to newly released documents.

The release of donor agreements between George Mason University and the foundation follows years of denials by university administrators that Koch foundation donations inhibit academic freedom.

Morning Thready Goodness