This summer, I co-organized a month-long 1,300-person "popup village" in Healdsburg, CA called Edge Esmeralda. This gathering was incredibly fun and rewarding, and it was also a huge accelerant to the creation of the permanent village we are building, Esmeralda. Edge Esmeralda is happening again next year! Mark your calendar: May 24 - June 21, 2025 A huge challenge when building a town is that the feedback loops are very, very long. Instead of accepting this fact, I decided that we have to get creative to find ways to learn and adjust, because within a few years we will literally be laying our plans in concrete. Edge Esmeralda was essentially a prototype to learn about how we want to approach building the Esmeralda permanent community, both the "hardware" (urbanism, infrastructure, architecture, etc) and the "software" (events, programming, culture, etc). The Edge Esmeralda "popup village" was 30 days long, and it took place scattered throughout a charming 11,000-person town in Sonoma County called Healdsburg. This extended gathering gave us an opportunity to put our ideas into practice and learn firsthand which ones we want to incorporate as we the permanent community — more importantly, which ones we'll want to leave behind, or at least adjust. These learnings ranged widely, such as: What makes a great town square How to integrate kids while maintaining expert-level programming Where to provide the lightest amount of structure and routine for the group to allow the emergent creativity of the attendees to make awesome things happen How to approach local outreach to make existing residents feel included Which restaurant layouts and acoustics make for the best nightly community dinners How far apart is too far apart for things to feel easily accessible on foot It's hard to capture EE in a blog post — it was really more of an ecosystem like a college campus or city than a single tracked event — but these stats will give you a sense of what the month looked like: ~1,300 people joined us during the month of June 80 kids attended Edge Esmeralda 6 weeks old & 86 years old, the ages of the youngest & oldest attendees 25 expert-led program tracks 551 sessions throughout the month 93% were organized by attendees, with just 7% planned directly by the Edge Esmeralda organizing team! 167 unique session hosts 3x increase in Bird Bike usage in the town during the event – and that doesn’t even count the bikes people rented or brought, separate from Bird, which was a much larger number! 350 redwood trees funded by donations from a solar-powered night market, organized entirely by attendees Read the Edge Esmeralda 2024 recap → The coolest thing to me is that our design principles focused on emergence, so we didn’t actually know precisely what would happen. Instead, we created the container and then watched it unfold. In other words, all the cool things that happened were because the attendees saw it as an opportunity to make something awesome out of it. One of my favorite examples was the Solar A-frames project, catalyzed by Nick Foley and Anson Yu/ Over the course of a few weeks, they led a group of attendees to build an A-frame made out of solar panels up in a formerly burned redwood forest close to town, which ended up hosting the spectacular Golden Future Night Market and the memorable Closing Ceremony. I feel incredibly lucky to have gotten to collaborate with Edge City to make Edge Esmeralda a reality. It's one of the most rewarding things I've ever worked on, and they were incredible partners in bringing this to life. "Edge Esmeralda was one of the weirdest, wildest, most ambitious, most unexpected — and most fun — things I’ve ever watched unfold in Healdsburg." — Simone Wilson, Healdsburg Tribune In fact we had such a good time, and so many people asked us to do it again so they could come longer next time, that we have decided to organize Edge Esmeralda again! Mark your calendars: May 24 - June 21, 2025. Hope to see you there! .post .post-content table { margin: 18px 0 18px 0; } .post .post-content tr div {padding: 6px 0 0 0 } .post-content b a, .post-content b {font-weight: 900;} @media (min-width: 1200px) { table {min-width: calc(100% + 190px) !important; margin-right: -90px !important; margin-left: -90px !important}} @media (min-width: 768px) { table { min-width: calc(100% + 140px) !important; margin-right: -70px !important; margin-left: -70px !important}} @media (max-width: 768px) { table tr > * {flex:none !important; width: calc(100% - 12px) !important}} .row hr {margin: 20px 0 !important;}

One thing I like about Georgist land taxes is they reflect a deep-seated intuition many people have that land should be owned by the community, while still employing markets to ensure efficient use of this limited resource. People feel that land is special and should serve the collective good and reflect community interests. This intuition manifests in behaviors like NIMBYism, where residents oppose changes to their neighborhood and try to stop people from doing what they want to their own property. These behaviors essentially reflect a belief that they as a community have rights over the property in question, even if they don't own it. One reaction is to scoff at this behavior, because it violates a basic interpretation property rights. But another reaction is to ask ourselves, why do people have such strong intuitions that land is different than other forms of property? One way in which natural resources (including land) are qualitatively different than other forms of property is that you can't make more of them (with minor exceptions). As a result, natural resources aren't the fruits of someone's labor. One reaction is to say that no one should be able to individually own them, and that they should be collectively owned by the community. However, the history of the 20th century shows us that giving over the land to the state isn't a great idea either — government's aren't exactly known for making best use of opportunities to their best and highest use, to say the least! Henry George proposed a different solution – tax the land rent while allowing private ownership. Land rent is the value of the property created by society rather than individual landowners (e.g. its location, views, and other natural resources), so taxing it would essentially recapture this socially-created value for public benefit. While society is recapturing the socially-created value of the land, use of the land is in the hands of private actors who have the incentive to use it efficiently, so the system maintains the productivity benefits of private ownership while addressing issues of unearned wealth. Markets are still generally the best tools we have for organizing human activity and resources, so by allowing private actors to own land but then simply tax them on the land rent leaves us with the best of both worlds!

I’ve now done two egg retrieval cycles. Given that I had a zillion questions before I started, I thought I’d share my notes for others who might have similar questions. Things I would’ve loved to know beforehand Overall the process was way easier and less intense than I expected. It was mostly annoying, because I had to go to tons of doctor’s appointments and get my blood drawn multiple times a week, but in terms of symptoms and pain it was very low key. I also had a very serious hand injury and series of three surgeries shortly before starting this process, so this may have felt minor in comparison. A lot of people report IVF being very difficult and uncomfortable, and I also may have just gotten lucky. But I wanted to share my experience so people can understand the range. Shockingly, I came to look forward to the injections each night. This was shocking because before this, I had a medium phobia of needles. Mixing the medications is a relaxing process (took ~20 mins each time), and I’d always feel really proud of myself after doing the injection. To be clear, I never enjoyed doing the injection itself, and the very first time it was really scary, but I was really proud of myself for how quickly I got used to it. Neuroplasticity for the win! Symptoms during/after the retrieval: After the first 4-5 days, I had minor discomfort in abdomen if I moved or bounced, but really almost nothing. Slightly more acne for the first round, but not the second. Maybe because I had to go off Tretinoin? Or maybe because of hormones? The day of the retrieval itself, I felt groggy and sleepy and ended up napping all afternoon. The very next day after, I was up and about and felt almost totally normal, to the point where I was already gardening and lifting heavy things (which in retrospect was probably pushing myself sooner than I should have, but I think it turned out fine!). Things to know regarding medications: Prenatal vitamins – wish I’d started sooner the first time around; the longer you do them ahead of time, the better. The second round I started them sooner. Since I am young and had a particularly large number of eggs, I’m at higher risk of OHSS (Ovarian Hyper Stimulation Syndrome), so they gave me meds to reduce that risk. I believe the category of drugs is called "GnRH antagonists". If you have a lot of follicles, make sure they give it to you. A friend of mine didn’t get it for her first round, and she got OHSS and her recovery was awful; when she did her second round, they gave it to her, and it was way better. The genetic reports (PGT-*) take a while to receive (as you can see in the calendar below). The funnel math is brutal from eggs → fertilized → frozen → genetic testing → implantation. Make sure you understand it well, otherwise you may be very disappointed and surprised by the results, even if you get a ton of eggs! Calendars One thing I was surprised to not have more information ahead of time was the scheduled of appointments and medications I would be taking. The dosage and timing of everything are determined based on your day-to-day blood test results, but I thought there would at least be some example calendars I could look at to get a sense of the rhythm to expect. Nope! So for anyone who's looking for the same thing I was, below you'll find the calendars of the two retrieval cycles I've gone through (and here's a link to the Google Doc, in case that's easier to read). Round 1 calendar: June 2023 Round 2 calendar: March 2024 table tr > * {padding: 0 8px !important} .heading {margin: 16px 0 8px 0; font-weight: 600 !important; font-size: 24px;} table .caption {line-height: 1.4} .center {text-align: center !important; text-wrap: balance} .post h3 {font-size: 18px; padding-top: 8px !important} .post .post-content table {margin-top: 12px !important; margin-bottom: 16px !important;} .grey-border{padding: 0 !important;} .grey-border img {border: 1px solid #eee; } .grey-border {padding: 0 !important;} /* Use to make the images bleed past the text */ @media (min-width: 1200px) { table {min-width: calc(100% + 190px) !important; margin-right: -90px !important; margin-left: -90px !important}} @media (min-width: 768px) { table { min-width: calc(100% + 140px) !important; margin-right: -70px !important; margin-left: -70px !important}} @media (max-width: 768px) { table tr > * {flex:none !important; width: calc(100% - 12px) !important}} .row hr {margin: 30px 0 30px 0 !important;} img {box-shadow: none !important}

A new city has been proposed in California, and I’ve never been more captivated by a vision for the future of my home state in my lifetime. This post is part of a series I’m writing about this bold proposal. Up until recently, the new city’s potential impact on Travis Air Force Base had been a source of questions about the project. California Forever’s holdings extend to land that borders Travis, and although the city itself will be on the opposite side of this assemblage, officials raised concerns about whether building a city in the area would interfere with the base’s operations. To address these concerns, California Forever updated its plan to give the base more room for flight operations. These changes satisfied the base, and on February 15, Travis Air Force Base came out in support of the proposal. I think it’s instructive to understand the background of this episode, because to make this plan a reality, over time California Forever will need to develop many more productive relationships like the one they’ve cultivated with Travis. According to California Forever’s website, they had made the original plans in a way that "fully complied with the Air Installation Compatible Use Study published by Travis, and the Land Use Compatibility Plan published by Solano County". In a post titled Our partnership with Travis Air Force Base, California Forever walks through the considerations they took into account to protect and support Travis AFB. Here are some highlights pulled directly from that post: "The New Community is located entirely outside of Accident Potential Zones." "The New Community is located entirely outside of 50 dB CNEL noise contours." "The Initiative nearly doubles the security buffer around Travis AFB where no residential or commercial community development is permitted." (And that's even before the changes announced on February 14.) "There are fewer flights going over the New Community than over the cities of Suisun City, Fairfield, and Vacaville." "The New Community is located entirely outside of Accident Potential Zones." "The New Community is located entirely outside of 50 dB CNEL noise contours." "The Initiative nearly doubles the security buffer around Travis AFB where no residential or commercial community development is permitted." (And that's even before the changes announced on February 14.) "There are fewer flights going over the New Community than over the cities of Suisun City, Fairfield, and Vacaville." But after the details were unveiled in January, Travis still had some remaining legitimate concerns. As a result, California Forever updated the plan to remove those remaining impacts. The adjustments included changing the zoning to create a buffer between the base and residential zones, which included relocating industrial uses to the area closer to the base in order to separate the residential areas from the base. They also zoned the westernmost portion of the new city to only permit solar farms, battery storage, and other infrastructure such as wastewater and water treatment plants. As a further protection for Travis, the new initiative also requires Travis to accept the siting, technology, and design of these facilities. It appears that after Travis AFB reviewed these changes, they determined that the revised proposal addressed all of their concerns, and on February 15, Travis Air Force Base came out in support of California Forever’s proposal. Their press release said "Travis AFB will be able to continue flying its full mission, including all of our operational, exercise, and local training flights consisting of multiple patterns and landings to all runways", and added that California Forever’s plan has the potential "to improve the wellbeing of our Airmen and families into the future" Here is the old map from California Forever's original proposal published in January Here is the new map reflecting the February 14 changes, which addressed Travis' concerns I’m very encouraged by the constructive relationship that Travis AFB and California Forever appear to have cultivated with each other. It’s a great example of how win-win solutions can happen if both sides get creative about what’s possible. I hope California Forever is able to develop similar productive relationships with other stakeholders as it moves forward. If you’re interested in understanding more about the new city that California Forever has proposed, here are the other posts in the series: Intro: The new city in California Part 1: The story of California Forever so far Part 2: Clustered development will preserve California’s landscape Part 3: The first walkable city in America in a century Part 4: Success is tied to benefiting existing Solano residents Part 5: Relationship with Travis Air Force Base (this post!) Part 6: Is the proposed new city in California climate resilient?* Part 7: Building new cities in CA vs building more in existing cities* Part 8: What’s next for the proposed new city in California?* *These are planned posts, still works in progress! I will publish them soon. table tr > * {padding: 0 8px !important} .heading {margin:8px 0; font-weight: 600 !important; font-size: 20px;} table .caption {line-height: 1.4} .center {text-align: center !important; text-wrap: balance} .post .post-content table {margin-top: 12px !important; margin-bottom: 16px !important;} .grey-border{padding: 0 !important;} .grey-border img {border: 1px solid #eee; } .grey-border {padding: 0 !important;} /* Use to make the images bleed past the text */ @media (min-width: 1200px) { table {min-width: calc(100% + 190px) !important; margin-right: -90px !important; margin-left: -90px !important}} @media (min-width: 768px) { table { min-width: calc(100% + 140px) !important; margin-right: -70px !important; margin-left: -70px !important}} @media (max-width: 768px) { table tr > * {flex:none !important; width: calc(100% - 12px) !important}} .row hr {margin: 30px 0 30px 0 !important;}