I used to say this until I got into cube. Cubes are super fun, don’t cost anything for the other players (and not much for the owner depending on the cards), totally remove the issues around the meta, and only require that players are familiar with the game and a few hundred cards (or less, I have a 2-4 player cube with only about 45 unique cards that’s a ton of fun). Still not for everyone but it has made me willing to recommend my favorite game to anyone who I think will like it.

I sometimes ask if something is spicy or “gringo spicy”.

I definitely think that RCV is a step in the right direction, but I’m also interested to see where Fusion Voting goes. It also helped Mamdani get elected. Lee Drutman has written some interesting stuff about it: https://leedrutman.substack.com/p/how-fusion-voting-builds-the-new

Volts had a good podcast about this: https://www.volts.wtf/p/can-second-life-ev-batteries-work

I agree that at a national level the NEC should absolutely be the priority, and that is where I would hope my federal taxes go. However, as Amtrak Cascades is a state-supported route which is primarily paid for by Washington and Oregon, I don’t see the problem with pushing those states to invest more of their transportation budgets in those routes.

Here in the PNW I’d take hourly Amtrak service in 5 years over high speed rail in 20. We should push for both, of course, but if we can drastically improve regular rail for a fraction of the price and in so doing build the constituency for HSR, we absolutely should.

It’s hard to overstate the impact cars have on childhood. As a parent I’m not worried about some rando snatching my kid, I’m worried about someone hitting them with a car. There are so many places in the US where it is unsafe to walk, and there’s a reason why our traffic deaths are going up while the rest of the world’s are going down.

I’m active in trying to make my city a place where kids can have the freedom to explore and grow, but it definitely feels like a “planting a tree the shade of which you will never know” situation.

Starting later this month, it will be legal to set speed limits below 20mph in Washington state, so maybe in a few years we’ll start to see autoluw streets. https://www.theurbanist.org/2025/05/19/governor-signs-washingtons-first-in-the-nation-shared-streets-law/