Geoff Graham
@geoffreydgraham
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Family, forests, fields, urbanism, tech, construction, culture. Tweets are reminders to myself. Replies are me trolling friends. @yeomanpodcast @bigridgemtnclub
Atlanta, GA, USA
Joined June 2008
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If children started school at six months old and their teachers gave them walking lessons, within a single generation people would come to believe that humans couldn't learn to walk without going to school.
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Wee pickups are all over Europe and large pickups are rare. This is a regulatory failure, not a market failure. These are the main reasons manufacturers sell small trucks there but not here.
1) Due to the way Obama-era fuel efficiency standards were written, manufacturers have a
Guess which one is street legal and which one isn’t.
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@stacey_rudin
Intel clearly took some inspiration from Zappia’s Cucina & Brick Oven Pizza in Summit, NJ:
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@KonstantinKisin
I wonder how much the Cobra Effect played a role in the disaster that followed the Deinstitutionalization Movement in the US. From the 60s to the 80s, hundreds of facilities were shuttered & a half million mentally ill people were put out on the streets.
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Zoning is the new smoking. In its 100 year run, it has inflicted incalculable damage to the American landscape, culture, and economy. Thankfully, its broad support has finally fractured and its days are numbered. via
@christianbrits
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@JamesSurowiecki
Do you have children? Are they adults? If it seems like an edge case to you, I am guessing you aren't spending a lot of time with kids between 7 and 20. This looms very large for that cohort.
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People think I am joking when I suggest we demolish the highways inside the perimeter and redevelop the land for people. I am not joking.
"Why do we have too many cars in Manhattan? Because we spend billions to encourage people to drive in. And these cars are killing us"
@NYDailyNews
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A reversal of Euclid would be enormous. The amount of value that has been destroyed and is currently sequestered by this insane 1926 SCOTUS decision is unfathomable. The amount of damage it does to the young and least affluent among us is incalculable.
The only losers in a
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"Doing the wrong thing better" is a such a good description of contemporary environmentalism.
The answer to car-dependant “retail sprawl” can’t just be green tech on buildings in the fundamentally wrong place — & “better cars” isn’t the answer either. It’s to rethink the land-use, the mobility, the whole thing. Otherwise you’re just doing the wrong thing better. HT Singer
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Walkable neighborhoods are the antidote to loneliness! 🚶♀️ When you can easily walk to shops, parks, cafes & see friendly faces, it combats isolation. Proximity to community is key. Ditch the car & get to know your neighbors on foot. Walkable cities = happier, connected people! 🌆
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@Rothmus
Thanks for sharing. Here's the original:
If children started school at six months old and their teachers gave them walking lessons, within a single generation people would come to believe that humans couldn't learn to walk without going to school.
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"Why is construction productivity declining?" asks
@Noahpinion
(and lots of people).
I think an ever more cumbersome regulatory climate is the primary driver, but I think the second biggest factor is ignored by everyone I see commenting on this:
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If their school's website is all you have to go on when choosing who will design your home, do you choose Yale or Notre Dame?
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@MakeSunsets
You're going to find yourself in the difficult position of claiming your efforts worked while denying responsibility for the losses incurred by a farmer in an unexpectedly shortened growing season.
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@AlexBerenson
Certainly Biden isn’t uniquely responsible for this, but it is within his power to end it and he—like his predecessors—chooses not to.
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Wealthy people pay lots of money to travel across the globe to vacation in quaint historic towns where they can enjoy the novelty of sitting in a cafe chair outside a coffee shop that is not subject to parking minimums.
Parking minimums kill small business so that big business is left holding the field.
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Here are my findings after nearly three decades of research.
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@martyrmade
"[California Republicans] learned to harvest ballots more efficiently by setting up drop boxes at shooting ranges, churches, gun shops and GOP offices"
Not really an urban strategy, but I understood this worked for them.
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@sweatystartup
This is an example of conflating what benefits you with what is virtuous.
As a real estate developer, I am well aware that a landlord’s ability to charge large premiums for cheap enhancements is mostly a product of artificially constrained supply due to zoning regs and
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My daughter makes up the half of her bed that is visible in her zoom calls.
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"Returning to property owners some of the freedoms the government took away from them a hundred years ago is how the communists take over."
The End Of The American Dream
Cambridge Massachusetts looking at plan to abolish single-family homes-only zoning
This would allow apartment buildings and developments of rental communists to enter the areas and take over
There neighborhoods in Cambridge where it's actually
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This discussion between
@hubermanlab
and
@ChrisPalmerMD
—on the enormous impact diet can have on brain function, mental health, cognitive decline, depression, and schizophrenia—is one of the most powerful and hopeful things I have listened to all year.
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@fanatic4wisdom
I believe (hope?) employers are starting to pay a little more attention to accomplishment and potential, and a little less to academic credentialing.
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Intellectual property laws do not exist to provide scrappy inventors and poets incentive to be creative. This is why intellectual property laws exist:
Bill Gates wants to imprison African farmers for sharing seeds
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I am not encouraging our children to kick the dirt of this town off their shoes, travel the world, find a faraway spouse, and begin a home in a different time zone or country. Sure, I'd be delighted to have them nearby, but I say this for them more than for me.
Life is so much
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When my neighbors talk about their opposition to up-zoning, I ask them where they like to vacation. They say, Charleston, Paris, Florence, etc. What if we could build those sorts of places here, I ask. They say, It’s not possible to build that way anymore. It could be, I say.
Think of the places you die to go on vacation. You consciously seek urbanism’s
#ForgottenWisdom
: villages with narrow streets, outdoor dining, small frontages, intricate vegetation and no cars on sight.
To get that here is very expensive. So we need more to make it affordable.
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This is a newly constructed "root cellar" at a resort in the North Carolina mountains. I don't know what it's used for, but probably not for the storage of food.
Lots of new "traditional" architecture is wonky, derivative, and comes across as inauthentic. It's especially
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Remember that your picture of success is young parents choosing to live in the same community as their parents and grandparents. The more prevalent this is, the more successful you are.
No matter how much money tourists waive in your face, never forget this. If you let your
Tourism is a curse.
The place becomes unlivable. Real estate values rise but future generations priced out of the market. Convenience stores become luxury outlets. Natives move out, jet setters own empty apartments..
The planet is too small & everybody wants to go to Venice.
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We will have more Michelangelos. I expect we'll have them in my lifetime.
Our most prominent cultural critics are still clinging to their infatuation with Modernism. They don't want you to know that young people like Emily Bedard are creating art like her Liberty Statue.
How is it that one person can produce all of this?
That person lived 500 years ago — so why hasn't humanity produced another talent like him in all the time since? 🧵
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The battle
@VincentGGraham
has been waging since he was a very young man has been for the freedom to build beautiful places. As much as it seems like this should not have to be a battle, it most certainly is.
NIMBYs and politicians have been attacking Vince (and developers like
Worth remembering how revolutionary New Urbanism was in the 1980s and 1990s, and the resistance it engendered from both planners and conventional suburban builders.
They had to prove their case by showing that this stuff would sell (and it did, spectacularly).
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Economists have attempted to quantify the impact of meaningful zoning reform. Understandably, they've had trouble calculating exact numbers, but the general consensus is that reform would unlock roughly eleventy zillion dollars in value, and that would it would be widely
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@ClayDesert
Have you tried to buy a small used pickup lately? I miss my tiny 2000 Ranger. There is practically nothing like that for sale and still in decent shape, and you’ll pay a premium to get what few are available. If you come across a reasonably priced listing in the SE, kindly send
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This evening, I passed along my most recent
@countyhwy
to my next door neighbor because I knew his dad's most beloved dog was a feist. That led to us standing out front and letting our dogs chase each other in the street while his twins shot hoops and we talked about the pollen
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My third visit to
@LasCatalinas
.
@charlesbrew
has an outstanding team here. They broke ground about a dozen years ago.
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Communication mediums ranked from most likely to amplify antagonism to most likely to amicably resolve differences:
- NextDoor after some wine
- NextDoor
- Twitter
- Group email
- 1:1 email
- Letter
- Phone call
- Zoom
- Face-to-face
- F2F w/bourbon
- F2F w/bourbon by campfire
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@SaysSimulation
@nealjclark1
"Having watched Footloose many times as a teenager, I have a robust understanding of rural people and the manner in which they store their long guns."
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Top is both subsidized and prescribed; bottom is illegal to build.
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Charleston, SC. Home of arguably the most beautiful and human-scaled architecture in America. And this.
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@Watchman_motto
Going to Blockbuster was inherently convivial. And what you rented was a semi-public reflection of who you were or wanted to be, so you had some incentive to put your best foot forward. Now no one but the algorithm knows for sure what you watch. I suppose the same applies for the
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Among the greatest commercials of all time.
Take 2 minutes & watch this video.
Strength training is something we should do for the rest of our lives. It allows us to live the life we want.❤️🏋🏼♂️
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Walking is far and away the best mode of transportation. Design your life accordingly.
Solvitur ambulando. - Saint Augustine
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@Mark_Sisson
None of these megalomaniacs will ever accept any liability for the unintended negative consequences of their meddling.
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I will pay you 3% extra for the version of your product that comes without stickers.
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A crew of framers who speak fluent English, are clean-cut, show up when they say they will, cover the lumber, and tidy the job site at the end of each day could name their price.
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First, they stacked the stone vertically with the face side out for a veneer over what is probably concrete block (rather than laying them flat as one would for a structural stone wall).
All over the world since the dawn of humanity, when people build with stone they tend to lay
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@simonsarris
A thing I didn't realize twenty years ago but absolutely understand now, is that of all the features one might want in a home, a workshop is among the least appreciated and most important.
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Why do these people look so healthy, despite the 1930s comparable lack of life extending medical interventions relative to today?
1) 100+ years of subsidy of auto-centric infrastructure (federal interstate highways) + regulations (eg zoning, road design standards, jaywalking
This clip of New York in 1930s starts on Manhattan's West Side, at 12th Avenue and 42nd Street.
It has been restored, colorized, boosted at 60 fps and sound has been added for the ambiance.
[full video, NASS: ]
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I have had this conversation a thousand times:
Friendly, thoughtful, kind, intelligent person: "Wow! It took you three years to get the town to approve your plans! That's crazy! Why would anyone ever oppose you building a place like I'On. It is so great! We need more places like
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@GrantSlatton
@StephenFleming
They have not been financialized. The family is entirely accountable.
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@theflozellify
@dougheinz
I will try to do better. Thank you for your encouragement! If you know of a class that will allow me to overcome my laziness and flimsy analogy-making, I would appreciate the recommendation!
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Observation from
@wgrahamatl
:
“The better dressed I am, the better service I receive.”
So true.
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Seldom mentioned in the debate over who should decide what one can or can’t build on one’s property, is that until 1926, that right belonged to the property owner. It was taken from individuals and transferred to cities via a strange SCOTUS decision.
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‘Yet it was with those who had recovered from the disease that the sick and the dying found most compassion. These knew what it was from experience and had no fear for themselves; for the same man was never attacked twice—never at least fatally.’ – Thucydides, 430BC
To minimize hospital-acquired infections, hospitals should actively seek to hire staff with what is superior natural immunity from prior Covid disease and use them for their most vulnerable patients.
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"Food safety regulations seem like they are an attempt to protect the consumer. The darker truth behind the entire history of this regulation is that it is designed to prop up certain industries at the expense of others. In particular, traditional farms have long been a target of
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Real estate developers: when designing the places you will build, ask yourself, “Will I want to use this spot as the backdrop for my wedding photo, holiday picture, etc?”
You can tell that a building is beautiful when people get on multiple flights and cross borders to have their wedding photos taken in front of it (here, Tokyo Station). Beauty is objective.
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@Swallowtail_die
@ktlannan
I am arguing that it was wrong for the Supreme Court in 1926 to take away the right of property owners to determine what may be done with their land and transfer that right to municipalities.
I appreciate that people have become so accustomed to no longer having property rights
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@jeffreyatucker
An upside (if one can bring oneself to call it that) of the Covid insanity is that the time horizon is so short. Thinking people remember alarmist claims that the passage of time clearly invalidated. This leads them to also scrutinize the officially sanctioned climate narrative.
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@AustinTunnell
Was just quoted $20k for the 2 bedroom, 700sf loft apartment for my barn. 2.5 years ago, paid $12k to the same contractor for the system for a 2000sf, 4 bedroom house.
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@devonzuegel
Southerners don't say "back east". And we refer to every other place as "away" (including jail; e.g. "He is away.").
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We constantly tweaked the plan for I’On as we went along. Here is the in-progress plan (illustrated by Grenfell and his team) in ‘97 vs a ‘68 plan for the same property by an aspiring developer (who happened to be the father of Joe Riley, long-serving former mayor of Charleston).
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@_brianpotter
Modular construction. For the last thirty years, every architecture student has written a thesis on how this will solve housing affordability and all of them have been wrong. It's a daily headline at
@Treehugger
.
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25 years ago, it was radical to say that the unhealthiest aspects of our modern built environment resulted from terrible policy and, if left to our own devices, we would build human-scaled villages and towns, as we had been doing for the millennia preceding the mid-1900s.
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Spent the afternoon with an Italian living in the UK. His work takes him all over the world and it was great to get an outsider’s perspective on the United States. He reminded me that, no matter how much Americans beat ourselves up and no matter how much room for improvement we
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This article was brought to you by the organization that told us all to eat margarine and crisco.
8-hour time-restricted eating linked to a 91% higher risk of cardiovascular death
#EPILifestyle24
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@AlexBerenson
@realDonaldTrump
Mostly correct. More accurate to say that the window customer says, "I am pretty sure I have the money, but if you really care, you should check for yourself." The window contractor never checks. The contractor gets paid. This same thing is repeated countless times by countless
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A great thing about having a number of designers and builders working in concert to create a place—particularly a place where passersby can clearly see an eave detail or reach out and touch a handrail—is competition quickly emerges over craftsmanship and beauty.
Young or chronically underemployed architects should deprogram and join the popular architectural uprisings.
Modernism = a few "starchitects" do a few massive projects, the rest do dormer rebuilds or café lattes.
Vernacular = a million architects create a million townhouses.
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This is an excellent summary of why zoning is evil.
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Disagreements that push people away from each other on Twitter are the same sort of disagreements that, if discussed around a campfire with bourbon, bring people closer together.
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@Pliny_theElder
@ankur_hassecret
@Bugs_Meany
My point was lots of important things can only be learned through experience, but because we tend to view all learning through the lens of schooling, we undervalue experience and overvalue instruction.
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1) Get enough sleep.
2) Break a sweat from vigorous exertion pretty much every day.
3) Avoid sugar.
4) Discern between what is within your control and what is not, and invest your attention accordingly.
5) In the immortal words of Dalton, be nice, until it is time to not be nice.
Open-ended question of the day: What do you think are the most important 3 to 5 things that smart, talented people in the United States should be doing with their lives right now, so as to have maximum positive impact?
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@lexfridman
I'm curious about the implications of manufacturer liability absolution. If manufacturers carry no liability and individuals are compelled by their government or employer to consume the product, what recourse should those who are injured have and who should be liable?
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I have a game camera on my property in the North Carolina Mountains. Right now, it’s pointed at one of my apple trees. This is what it just sent me.
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Ford v Ferrari isn’t about Ford versus Ferrari. It’s about Carroll Shelby and Ken Miles versus Ford. It’s about innovators and risk takers trying to succeed under the umbrella of a command-and-control institution that seeks predictability.
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The lady who cuts my hair sold me 18 eggs from her backyard chickens for $4. The store-bought comparable would cost $10, with the farmer receiving maybe $2 or $3 for her effort.
In this is the solution to a great many of modernity’s ills.
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Reminder: What one does matters a lot more than what one says.
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@sweatystartup
I have friends who are worth hundreds of millions of dollars who fret about vehicle safety, and then take their whole families snow skiing twice a year.
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Exclusionary zoning was legalized in 1926 by the same SCOTUS that legalized forced sterilization.
Zoning is not a right. It is an abusive governmental overreach.
Your great grandparents did not abide busybodies telling them what they can and can’t do with their land.
The notion that single-family zoning is a property right is very widely held but very wrong. At best it's a collective right, which is kind of...socialist. Legally, zoning is not any sort of "right" (or "contract") at all.
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Skillets provide the perfect analogy for modernity vs tradition:
Non-stick pans are easy to use but disposable. They can’t be maintained and quickly degrade. They are expensive and harmful to your health. They are manufactured via a complex process that's protected by
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@MakeSunsets
Trust the science! Right!
U appreciate that you’re futzing w other ppl’s environment w/o their consent, right?
Would u regard yourselves as more confident about the goodness of your work than the manufacturers of glyphosate, the engineers who imported kudzu to the SE USA, etc?
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@Lieboisout
@ComicDaveSmith
This interpretation is a flagrantly reductionist mischaracterization of what he actually said. Just share the actual clip. Here's where it starts:
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@ylecun
@nntaleb
@elonmusk
A better title for that 2021 chart should be “Rate of deaths attributed to Covid per 100,000 people by vaccination status during a period when vaccinated people were not being tested for Covid, vaccine-induced injury was officially deemed impossible by the data keepers, hospitals
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@cboyack
My guess is neither Gadsden nor most of his peers would be too thrilled about the sort of schooling that Jaiden just secured the right to receive.
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Second, the wood walls stand on the face of the actual structural part of the foundation, which leaves the wall inset from the face of the cosmetic stone veneer. This is bad from a moisture perspective (rain will make it’s way behind that sill), and it is also strange to the eye.
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Exclusionary zoning, adopted in ATL (and most cities) in the 70s made it effectively illegal for boutique/local developers to build small-scale/"missing middle" housing, and resulted in today's giant apartment complexes, which are built and owned by financialized mega-companies.
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NIMBYs say they merely want “local” control. They actually want personal decisions made by the politically influential, which generally means affluent Boomers and definitely does not mean poor and young people. Zoning is a near perfect manifestation of contemporary gerontacracy.
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@nntaleb
A ton of people who endorse vaccination are being disparaged as anti-vaccine because they oppose mandates and segregation. Pivoting that conversation to a debate about efficacy distracts from their fundamental point: It is wrong to coerce someone into vaccination.
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I speak with a lot of people who criticize capitalism—especially people who advocate for things I also care about, such as decentralized agriculture or walkable urbanism. In discussion, these critics often agree that it isn’t capitalism per se that they object to, but capitalism
@William_Blake
As defenders of capitalism, we can make a more persuasive argument by drawing the distinction with (and being full-throated opponents of) corporatism.
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@JillFilipovic
Has this experience prompted you to reconsider any other stories from this administration (or others) that you’ve accepted as truthful?
How will it affect your trust in this and other administrations in the future?
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Many affluent people will (obviously) continue to work remotely to varying degrees. Terrible for the commercial office market; awesome for the vacation home market; and a big opportunity for private schools that can accommodate families that are no longer always "at home".
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