Someone posted this in a comment on my "sleepy seaside town" post, but this rant goes so hard that I think it deserves its own post:

I haven't spoken to the guy since he was a mere hardscrabble multi-millionaire, but this story 100% tracks.

Rick Perlstein:

My first impression of them came of their response to my small-talk description of my delightful afternoon [walking in San Francisco]. Jaws practically dropped, like I had dared an unaccompanied, unarmed stroll through Baghdad's Sadr City in the spring of 2004. [...]

One participant was a British former journalist become computer tycoon who had been awarded a lordship. He proclaimed that the Chinese middle class doesn't care about democracy or civil liberties. I was treated as a sentimental naïf for questioning his blanket confidence.

Another attendee seemed to see politics as a collection of engineering problems. He kept setting up strange thought experiments, which I did not understand. I recall thinking it was like talking to a creature visiting from another solar system that did not have humans in it. [...]

I knew from the New Yorker that Andreessen had grown up in an impoverished agricultural small town in Wisconsin, and despised it. But I certainly was not prepared for his vituperation on the subject. He made it clear that people who chose not to leave such places deserved whatever impoverishment, cultural and political neglect, and alienation they suffered. [...]

And that's when the man in the castle with the seven fireplaces said it.

"I'm glad there's OxyContin and video games to keep those people quiet."

I'm taking the liberty of putting it in quotation marks, though I can't be sure those were his exact words. Marc, if you're reading, feel free to get in touch and refresh my memory. Maybe he said "quiescent," or "docile," or maybe "powerless." Something, certainly, along those lines.

He was joking, sort of; but he was serious -- definitely. "Kidding on the square," jokes like those are called. All that talk about human potential and morality, and this man afire to reorder life as we know it jokingly welcomes chemical enslavement of those he grew up with, for the sin of not being as clever and ambitious as he.

There is something very, very wrong with us, that our society affords so much power to people like this.

Previously, previously, previously, previously.

Streetsblog:

No American city has the guts to commit to what Paris did and I'm going to be frank as to why.

The number one obstacle to any safety improvements is local merchants. Business owners and the merchant class believe that any customers they get are drivers. They are unswayed by research consistently showing that increased foot traffic and alternative travel to commercial areas increase their profit. Part of this is because merchants are just as car-brained as the general population. But the other half is that merchants disproportionately listen to their patrons who drive and complain about parking. Transit riders, cyclists and pedestrians don't advertise to merchants that they didn't arrive by car.

Though small in number, the elected interests of most local cities give disproportionate attention to business interests and their pro-driving beliefs. Even in progressive Berkeley, home of many climate scientists from the university, transportation decisions are dictated by science illiterates and business interests, not the city's intellectuals. When Berkeley proposed building a bike lane in my neighborhood, which has no protected bike lanes near a prominent middle school, many locals went uncharacteristically nuts. Plastered on neighborhood businesses were conspiracy theories about a United Nations agenda to force people into plastic cities where they won't be allowed to own cars. Every other lawn has signs proclaiming economic ruin if drivers are forced to park a whopping 30 seconds away on side streets rather than directly in front of businesses. [...]

Sadly, history is repeating itself in San Francisco. Business interests in the West Portal neighborhood where the family was wiped out by a car are already organizing to stop any improvements to the street. This is a major transit hub in S.F., developed before cars were even in mass use, yet the jurisdiction of drivers knows no bounds. If there can't be a car-free commercial strip in West Portal, there can't be one anywhere in America. Some business groups see the death of that family as merely an unavoidable consequence, a price paid to ensure drivers don't have to walk an additional 30 seconds from parking on a side street to reach their shops.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

A recent scientific expedition to the Gulf of Mexico seafloor shows just how little things have improved near the broken well.

The absence of life is noticeable, says McClain, and what is there doesn't seem healthy. Unlike other wrecks, which tend to become habitats for marine species over time, the sunken Deepwater Horizon has remained comparatively sterile. Organisms that typically inhabit the Gulf's seafloor -- such as sea cucumbers, giant isopods, corals, and sea anemones -- are simply missing, says McClain. Perhaps more concerning are the crabs. Naturally red, the crabs McClain and his team pulled up in their traps were tinted an oily black; many were also missing legs, while others had lesions. [...]

Benfield had visited the oil spill site before, including shortly after the explosion in 2010. He also joined the first scientific research expedition to the exploded wellhead in 2017. When Benfield saw the site then, he was shocked by how little it had recovered. Another seven years on, Benfield says researchers are slowly starting to see more animals. There's "more diversity of fishes and macroinvertebrates," he says. But compared with before the explosion, the site remains a desert, Benfield adds.

For those who embarked on the most recent expedition, the dire sight has them questioning how the Gulf will fare in the future. "We may not actually ever see recovery," [...] "Maybe in my kid's lifetime. But it's going to take a long time, I think."

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

Stochastic terrorist and Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan -- who told SF supervisors to "die slow, motherfuckers" and unleashed a mob sending them death threats -- is hosting a "fireside chat" where noted vampire and fascist Peter Thiel will explain his "political theology".

Jesus Fucking Christ:

Christians in Tech, it's time to get together in SF

Join us on Cinco de Mayo for "Holy" Guacamole at my home in SF for a happy hour serving tacos and tequila while DJ Canvas is spinning his famous remixed worship beats. During the second hour, Peter Thiel will lead a fireside chat to discuss what he calls "political theology" - the overlap between theology and various other fields like civil society, history, economics, and morality.

It's absolutely wild that "remixed worship beats" is the least horrifying thing in that paragraph.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.