Bezos is right. A teacher in Queens doesn't need a little more money. If they live in Eastern Queens they need a subway expansion & faster busses. They need a housing expansion to drive down rents. They need cheap clean energy. This requires state capacity that works, not just a larger budget.

The problem in the US is that parties can't really vet their candidates. People are elected primary voters and there's no mechanism to remove someone from a primary. The party may not endorse Fetterman and he calls himself anti-establishment. Parties in other countries can remove members.

LIRR workers are striking because, despite their relatively high salaries, they say costs are rising even faster, especially housing. Large scale zoning reform could put hundreds of thousands of new units close to transit. Otherwise higher wages are passed to landlords and property owners.

In many places across the country, including New Jersey, it is against the law to build solar panels www.inquirer.com/life/outdoor...

There is roughly 2 TW of mostly clean energy which we are unable to actually use in our homes. www.therebuild.pub/p/the-tsa-li...

Reasonable Republican playbook: 1. A Republican goes against the grain 2. Media fawns over them 3. Dems point out their exact words and policies 4. The media rushes to defend the R against mean attacks 5. R is allowed a partisan response 6. Dems are seen as mean and partisan

The sequel shows to All in the Family like Archie Bunker's Place continue to explore dark and political issues but lack the same base humor in the writing, which helps the viewer take the topics seriously but does show the growing darkness of American culture in the late 70s/early 80s.

"Beekeeping and apiculture have seen a significant global increase in recent decades...the number of honey bee colonies worldwide reached approximately 101.7 million in 2024, marking a 47% increase since 1990." www.destatis.de/EN/Themes/Co...

The residents of Sardinia have spent years fighting back against wind turbines, calling it "energy colonialism". There is a growing tension between the need for clean energy (and clean energy mandates) and a public who seem eager to resist no matter what. spectrum.ieee.org/sardinia-ren...

Medical influencers are a plague

Wind power produces some of the cheapest energy in all of history. Yet it seems illegal to build with the fake excuse of national security. www.nytimes.com/2026/05/04/c...

It's weird when people misspell my last name. It's like failing an open book test.

"Nobody protests clean energy or transit" People just make things up www.wktv.com/news/jordanv... www.bbc.com/news/article... patch.com/new-york/upp... www.courierpostonline.com/story/news/2...

The same people use the same arguments to protest housing, transit, clean energy, and data centers. You don't have to like data centers but those same people will protest an affordable housing project next week.

Class mobility is rarely discussed in terms of intergenerational. None of my grandparents went to college and I have a masters in engineering. Many children of immigrants have far more financial success than their parents. These are good things.

Here's some great monumental photos from the Wikimedia Foundation wikimediafoundation.org/news/2026/04...

Ironically reading this book this week

Seems bad? www.theverge.com/science/9187...

I think this makes a lot of sense and yet it doesn't seem better service is treated as a priority.

Don't ask AI for medical advice

The president going after the SPLC and not Hasan Piker should be indicative of which is a greater threat to fascism.

If you get COVID you become sick. As a person in charge of the nations health this seems like an unhelpful statement.

🤌

Should we privatize our energy grids?

Here's a short sci-fi story for your weekend. In the future, what if people are paid to create new images for AI training? open.substack.com/pub/fleker/p...

There are 36 new homes in Dublin and over 200 applicants. The US is not the only country struggling to build enough homes. www.irishtimes.com/ireland/hous...

While I do support expanding immigration, I don't like how it's often framed in terms of anti-racism. The average person is not convinced by that. NYC spent billions on a small migration flux, so simply redirecting ICE funding isn't enough. Our immigration policies can't be just laissez-faire.

The NY-12 candidates can be summarized by a Q on infrastructure projects: Schlossberg: We should have free busses Lasher: I will push for Nadler's freight rail Conway: trump won't build anything so there's no point Bores: here's many esoteric ideas including Roosevelt Island

After visiting Iceland I was inspired to write a fictional Pokemon game based on the country with 78 new Pokemon. fleker.medium.com/pok%C3%A9mon...

A milestone in March: for the first time ever, renewables provided more power on the US grid than natural gas.

MTA announcement: it is prohibited to smoke on the subway Okay but they probably should remind people not to bring machetes in the subway instead

Artemis II arrived safely, a genuinely impressive mission from beginning to end

A bank in Mexico was recently hacked by North Korea using malware co-written by Claude. It's long been clear we need much better cyber security.

It was really cool to attend the @planetmoney.bsky.social book launch on Monday. I even got a bunch of signatures.

"I need to be fed every day or I get hungry."

I wonder if a military coup would provide more stability right now.

There's only been negative outcomes of the war for everyone

A new photo of the planet from the Artemis II rocket

I enjoy writing, though maybe that's because it's a hobby for me and not a full time job.

NASA actually has a great ROI on new technologies. NASA publishes "Spinoff" every year, a magazine highlighting all the innovations that have moved into products. spinoff.nasa.gov

Seems great if you've got a bunch of oil. Probably bad if you're buying.

I'm feeling excited

Trains are awesome but it does suck it took 18 years to do

I've been drafting a sci-fi novella about the healthcare system and there's an interesting challenge. I'd like the story to be about the institutions, but how do you make the institutions the hero? Systems don't make for good characters.

There's a cool website, WikiShootMe, which shows you locally tagged wikipedia articles that are missing photos. You get the chance to easily contribute. wikishootme.toolforge.org

Last night I said no kings to Mr Koopa and saved all the Poppins

They do the theory, Trump does the praxis

Protests alone are not enough. You need electoral results. (And the great news is that we are seeing big electoral swings)

I think today's No Kings protest is bigger than the last one.