Take Infinity: Mini Exasperations #1
I feel compelled to do a few things this year. Writing consistently is one of them.
By the end of 2026, I will have published 52 Weekly Exasperations.
My goal is to follow the following format:
1. An Observation with a Focus on Urban Politics and Infrastructure.
Pretty straightforward. This could be a few paragraphs, a poll, a cool map(s), just something that connected with me or very obviously did not. I may highlight a local or state or federal agency that’s done great, interesting, or bad work. I may seek some engagement. Just a way to get the thoughts out. This should be a peek in to my exasperation.
2. A Few Articles That Piqued My Interest and a Contextualization
Between 1-4 articles that I found on my travels through the web. Often, I’ll try to link back to The Overhead Wire by Jeff Wood (which you should DEFINITELY subscribe to), or another interesting pathway. I’ll try to give some context that pulls together my exasperated expertise. That’s where the gold is. That’s what you want.
3. A Writer / Substacker I Think You Should Follow
I’m trying to continue to build community online—and so I feel that highlighting another writer whose insights I find inspire mine shouldn’t be gatekept.
Exasperated Survey [~5 minutes of your time]
I’ve been at this for 5.5 years now, and I’ve amassed almost 2,000 of you as subscribers, friends of the newsletter, and first timers! I want to know more about you, why you tune in when I publish, and what could make you more excited for the future of Exasperated Infrastructures.
I’m going to leave this survey open for about a month and hopefully collect interesting and meaningful data, which I’ll then publish with some other metrics and transparancy.
If you’d like, you can enter to win a free year of archival posts and a handful of stickers to show off your support! All you have to do is associate your email with the response and then tell me you’d like to be entered in the drawing.
Articles I’ve Been Reading
This week I’ve got three new ones—two rail and an off-the-rail one.
Sound Transit Board Sets Aside Idea of Skipping Second Downtown Tunnel
Ryan Racker for The Urbanist
I’ll let you read this one—and it’s a great example of technical writing made clear for public consumption. A few things to look for in the meta-argument:
False equivalence: between the different “tunneling” choices. There are often many options to address problematic infrastructure development and management of decay. These are often uncovered during environmental review as the order of operations demands…ideas whose environmental impact we1 need to judge. Alternatives analysis is deeply political insofar as boosters of a specific idea or another, or the no-bult/null alternative, make their case to guide the criteria toward the politically expedient choice. A 3-σ estimate of savings or costs or impacts that puts a hard limit on a specific choice, even if it’s the most logical choice in a vacuum. There is no such thing as an apolitical correct choice.
Cost comparisons: cost is the one variable a non-technical audience can directly connect to, vis-à-vis a $3, $13, or $30 billion project. These numbers, meaningless on their own, signal a willingness to invest in place. There’s a difference of differences between $3 billion and $0, just as there is a difference between $3 billion and $30 billion. The how and why of cost is what to look for here. What happens if we don’t do the smaller project? What happens if we do the big project? What happens if some of it gets done? Who wins? Who loses? Is there an effort to reconcile these actors/stakeholders?
What do you think?
California drops lawsuit seeking to reinstate federal funding for the state’s bullet train
by Sophie Austin for The Associated Press
“Moving forward without the Trump administration’s involvement allows the Authority to pursue proven global best practices used successfully by modern high-speed rail systems around the world,” a spokesperson said in a statement.
That’s telling and perhaps a bellwether for the future of transportation funding for large projects. California is lucky(?) that it can forego federal oversight for this project voluntarily since it’s entirely self-contained within a single state. It’s not necessarily subject to Interstate Commerce Oversight. Since it’s foregoing funding from the feds, mostly similar. I can foresee a project problem arising with materials sourcing: parts not fully chained in California will be subject to tariffs, and I wouldn’t be surprised if these morons running our country into the ground attempt interstate tariffs from “red”-to-“blue”2 states to punish people for existing differently than them. What a world.
Long live the doomed project that is CAHSR!
Are You Enjoying Our Linguine?
by Francesco Pacifco for The Dial
I loved this piece that is both about linguine and determinedly not. I often think about how to be a bobobo3 in a world that pacifies them and reviles them in a great equivocation of the Pale Blue Dot as a matryoshka doll. You see that small dot amongst the great blue shift from Voyager I? That’s us. You see the piazzetta, right there, represented on your Google Map as a Pale Blue Pin? That’s us. You see the agglomeration of all the palest, bluest, likeliest dots on all the panoptical illusions i.e. smartphones? That’s us, in the future.
Don’t be a culture vulture, but don’t ignore travel for fear of not being able to do it “correctly.” As Tony Bourdain made it his life’s work to not be a tourist, but a traveler, so too must you try to experience the world, not through [insert LLM-likely]-colored glasses, which, if you’re lucky like me, will be themselves pale blue dots with a simple dollop of pupil.
I’m going to keep the parable loose here about how this article relates to infrastructure planning, but I promise it has to do with BABA4 and not bobo.
A Recent Writer I’ve Enjoyed
A big fan of Marco Chitti’s “Italian (urban) Letters” as a site of technical essays and fantastic insights that often enhance or bump up against my own.
Who is “we?”
Every state is a purple state in some way or another. There are states that vote majority one way or another, but even in the bluest of places, there always exists an appendage of Republicans, and even in “red” states, there exists a violently marginalized population of Democrats. These ideas should be parallel, but they’re not because of conflict theory vs. mistake theory.
Bourdain bohemian bourgeois.
“Build America, Buy America,” which means well in theory, but is ultimately going to kill us.
Thanks so much for the h/t!