Writer and editor
Joined May 2011
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106 Photos and videos
Jun 13
"The Economist" compared Trump with Carter, but the real comparison is to Biden. And by that measure, Trump's looking worse and worse.
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Apr 11
Update to an important paper.
Apr 10
For housing politics nerds, @CSElmendorf @j_kalla & I posted an update to our paper on aesthetic judgments in housing politics. We've clarified our main points -- they're not mainly about project design -- and added a new experiment. Updated version in next tweet!
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John J. Parman retweeted
OPINION: Paris, though about the same size as San Francisco, manages to house more than double the number of residents. It does so with one building type — six stories, no notes. sfchronicle.com/opinion/arti…
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Apr 2
Isn't this an opportunity to build genuinely family-friendly housing, too?
berkeleyscanner.com/2026/04/…
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Mar 7
Good analysis. I wrote about Breakthrough in 1976 with Richard Bender, then looked at West Coast factory-built housing (including Katerra) in 2019. Both are posted on my Academia site (linked from j2parman.com).
Mar 6
Operation Breakthrough was an ambitious 1960s government program to industrialize the US homebuilding industry.
This week on Construction Physics, I look at why it failed.
construction-physics.com/p/a…
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Mar 2
Signs of change at @cayimby? @CSElmendorf thinks so.
Of this year's crop of @cayimby bills, this is the one I'm most excited about:
SB 1216 would create an **outcome-based** prohousing designation. Cities that produce a lot of new housing would be partially exempted from several preemptive state laws.
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Feb 28
Given the gazillions blown on HSR, attacking efforts to reconnect the North Bay by transit - 100 years ago, it was - feels almost comically misguided. No, intercity transit connections are a gaping hole in the Bay Region.
This book makes the case that taxpayer support should end for a 48-mile long passenger rail system connecting the Bay Area’s fifth largest city with small cities and towns across two counties. sfchronicle.com/bayarea/arti…
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Feb 23
Finally! @CSElmendorf, meet David Crane! But our tax regime also lets corporations here evade paying their fair share of the public realm they impact massively.
Feb 23
Must-read oped for mayoral and gubernatorial candidates in blue cities/states. ⤵️
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Feb 22
Interesting. The shortfall in new below-market housing reflects a consistent unwillingness to commit the public funding needed to build it at scale. California's RHNA targets for BMR have never been met.
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Feb 17
X post of the day. If it's true, why is it taking so long to parse the Epstein files?
Feb 15
Breaking
Palantir was allegedly hacked. An AI agent was used to gain super-user access and here”s what the hackers allegedly found:
Peter Thiel and Alex Karp commit mass surveillance of world leaders and titans of industry on a massive scale.
They have thousands of hours of transcribed and searchable conversations of Donald Trump, JD Vance and Elon Musk.
They have backdoored the devices, cars and jets of world leaders and accumulated the biggest archive of blackmail material.
Palantir is creating nuclear and bio weapon capabilities for Ukraine and is working closely with the CIA to defeat Russia. They believe they are one year away. They plan to achieve this by keeping Russia busy with meaningless peace negotiations.
Palantir is responsible of the majority of Palestinian deaths in Gaza. They have developed the AI targeting for Israel.
Palantir is an arm of the CIA and all data from international clients is copied into a CIA spy cloud.
Palantir has become the most dangerous company in the world. If you work there you have the right to know that this is what Palentir AI is used for, without your knowledge.
The Palentir data the hackers allegedly gathered will be given to Russia and/or China. I was chosen as a trusted partner for this publication. I’m not involved in the Palentir hack and I don’t know the hackers. But I do know that the hack happened.
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Jan 21
Vickie Wang - @VickieDeTaiwan - speaks up for Taiwan.
Published a new essay with @TaiwaneseAm_org
Taiwan’s future is not a thought experiment, a bargaining chip, or a hot take. It’s 24 million lives.
taiwaneseamerican.org/2026/0…
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Jan 11
Kristi Noem proclaims herself the Sheriff-in-Chief, extending homeland security to take in whatever appears on her X feed, apparently. Illegal immigration is barely on the charge sheet at this point, except that every perp is either an illegal or a domestic terrorist by definition, in her view.
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Jan 10
This is on @CAgovernor - that would be Gavin Newsom, heir-presumptive to the Presidency.
Jan 10
Incredible story. CA “low carbon” fuel standard ➡️ deforestation, conversion of natural land into cropland, higher food prices for global poor.
Plus an $18 billion surcharge for CA consumers.
Where were the environmentalists?! What are they now?
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Jan 9
Posting because I can't comment: if you have an unusual medical condition, gettng it diagnosed is the main issue. I watched a friend go through this. It took her a year and there were many misdiagnoses. A clinic like Cleveland or Mayo might help.
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