“There’s a place like this in Fairfax County, a gyro-ish place, that got social-media-famous for it’s discounted 'bowls' if you bring a half-eaten bag of chips. I’m a curmudgeon, and I find pretty reliably that if I find something repulsive, it’s going to be a hit.”

A great deal of what older folks perceive as “entitlement” is the belief that adversities we’ve become accustomed to are downstream of policy and are therefore optional/remediable thedeletedscenes.substack.com/p/new-and-ol...

TLDR, garage sales are really cool thedeletedscenes.substack.com/p/garage-sal...

"Quick Robin, grab the Bat-floppies!"

“Seeing all this stuff makes you aware of how much bigger the world is than the little routines you have; in a way it tricks you into thinking your life must be narrow.” thedeletedscenes.substack.com/p/garage-sal...

It seems like a garage sale is always a bit behind the current state of retail. Very roughly, most stuff people get rid of at garage sales seems to be 20-30 years old, and/or bought when the homeowners were in their accumulating-stuff phases. thedeletedscenes.substack.com/p/garage-sal...

I remember reading a book in college about dumpster diving, and the guy said something about how dumpster diving gave him an expanded understanding of the world, because he saw so much stuff that he wouldn’t otherwise have seen. thedeletedscenes.substack.com/p/garage-sal...

“When you read about video game history, you’ll read about all those other things that were made, but a lot of consumers at the time never even saw them in stores. This is one little example of why history isn’t the same as the past.” thedeletedscenes.substack.com/p/garage-sal...

Garage sales are so cool. If you go to enough garage sales in different places and see all kinds and ages of households, you’ll start to see duplicates of things. You start to get a very rough statistical sense of what sold or was popular, what most families owned, etc.

The fact that regular people can create their own little proper histories of tiny little stories nobody has ever bothered to comprehensively collect and narrate? It’s amazing, really. thedeletedscenes.substack.com/p/the-point-...

Heard a guy on talk radio talking about Mamdani and people complaining about costs of living, and he says "It's supposed to be hard." That is really what YIMBY comes down to: a belief that unaffordability in dynamic cities is not an irreducible law of nature or fact of life.

An appreciation of the "dull men's" deep dive on obscure bits of history thedeletedscenes.substack.com/p/the-point-...

One of the central reasons I write is to try and highlight the character and vitality of places whose forms and land use are not the most interesting. Knowing these bits of local history, in other words, add a sense of place. thedeletedscenes.substack.com/p/in-a-sligh...

Of course, this is precisely why we expect law enforcement to wear badges and uniforms and show identification. Anyone could have foreseen (and many of us did) that this would be a serious side-effect of ICE's insistence on behaving like unaccountable thugs.

There is so much that simply doesn’t get written down or doesn’t survive. And “history” by definition works with sources or evidence. The question of actual history—as in, the past as it actually occurred—being literally unsourceable is fascinating. thedeletedscenes.substack.com/p/the-point-...

An appreciation of the "deep dive into a seemingly random, low-stakes, but really fascinating story" genre of writing, and why the newsletter format is perfect for it thedeletedscenes.substack.com/p/the-point-...

As a newsletter writer, you just don’t have the constraint that an actual magazine does of not publishing completely random, niche, obsessive pieces on things you happen to find interesting. thedeletedscenes.substack.com/p/the-point-...

This is so good and interesting. Obviously, I appreciate the shout-out to Snack Stack BUT it's really a broader ode to the "pointless" deep-dive investigation, which is one of my favorite types of story to both read and write.

Sharing a really great piece I read from @douglasmack.bsky.social, and some thoughts on "dull men's" stories and newsletters as a format uniquely fitted for not-quite-newsworthy deep dives thedeletedscenes.substack.com/p/the-point-...

"Part of me wishes I were unsophisticated enough to be content with stuff that in reality I consider substandard. I’m exaggerating, kind of, making fun of my snobbery." thedeletedscenes.substack.com/p/is-it-immo...

Some part of me never really was able to shed the notion that my fussy preferences are some kind of imposition on the “real Americans.” I think this is maybe a thing conservative-leaning folks who like food run into. thedeletedscenes.substack.com/p/is-it-immo...

Having refined my own cooking to a rotation of recipes that I consider very good and which I can execute very well has made me more judgmental, less gracious, and less able to unselfconsciously enjoy other people’s hospitality. thedeletedscenes.substack.com/p/is-it-immo...

"I think the idea that you wouldn’t eat 'your' cuisine most or every night would be strange to most Chinese people. It’s kind of weird to me to think that you *would* eat 'your' cuisine every day." thedeletedscenes.substack.com/p/is-it-immo...

"Some part of me never really was able to shed the notion that my fussy preferences are some kind of imposition on the 'real Americans.'" thedeletedscenes.substack.com/p/is-it-immo...

I’ve been thinking about food a lot, with inflation and restaurant bills so high, and I increasingly realize how much of a habit I’ve developed of critiquing food. I’ve almost forgotten how going out to eat is a little special thing and should be fun. thedeletedscenes.substack.com/p/is-it-immo...

How do you not let high standards and expectations make you less grateful? thedeletedscenes.substack.com/p/is-it-immo...

Well

This isn’t just an improper blending of church and state. It’s a twisted mockery of Christianity that ought to offend any actually devout Christian. Showing armed soldiers moving into battle as you lip service “… as we forgive those who trespass against us” sorta misses the point.

Urbanists believe building more housing reduces homelessness. There could be many mechanisms: - At the margin, lower rents help some people make rent. - More vacancy means landlords are more forgiving on late rent. - Lower asking rents mean subsidies go further Has anyone quantified any of this?

Killing time in an airport, I was thinking how much more "urban" most North American airports are compared to European peers. Even those built far out like Dulles have been overtaken by sprawl now.

the assumptions made about the target audience by making the first two items "OnlyFans' and 'child support' are kind of incredible

I like him too, I actually think there's an outside chance that some of these very forgotten small towns will be platforms for opportunity and will reemerge in some fashion. This was one of the thoughts I had reading Yoni Appelbaum's book Stuck.

My last Halloween as a Controller. Time for a (Nintendo) Switch.

My favorite house in the area

hal is celebrating halloween by dressing up as the scariest monster of all: a BAT lane

"It’s this dilution of specialness I feel when I see eggnog coming out for Halloween, as it did in 2021....I *liked* the fact that until recently you could only find eggnog a couple months each year." @ad-mastro.bsky.social from the archives: www.thebulwark.com/the-happines...

Nick Fuentes is probably too young to remember when folks used to say "...or we'd all be speaking German" www.thebulwark.com/p/one-of-the...

Academics’ and planners’ single-minded focus on making *brand new* homes affordable to the poorest people has been a disaster for poor people’s’ ability to afford housing.

This is like the conspiracy theory that modern supermarket chicken breasts are 3D printed

JD Vance makes an eel look like a piece of sandpaper

Vinyl doesn't "sound better," per se, but the physicality of the format is part of the listening experience. It’s analogous to playing retro video games on original hardware. The “content” is not reducible to something less than the entire experience. thedeletedscenes.substack.com/p/okay-the-b...

The car gives you a sense of constantly frustrated control. If it weren’t for that pedestrian or that red light or this traffic jam I could have gotten there earlier! Its potential imposes a sense of frustration, because it can never be met in real life. thedeletedscenes.substack.com/p/on-not-rou...

It may be true in some sense that this stuff is in reaction to what was perceived as overzealous COVID-era policies - or at least some of the anti-vax people may think that's the line they're drawing in their heads. But what does that really *mean*? There's no logical relation between them.

Costumes for Smarter Growth

Cuomo seems incredibly disliked in real life. My parents are old school conservative former New Yorkers and even they would choose Mamdani over Cuomo

D.C. night

Really neat lighting in Herndon, VA

"I was hungry, and you gave me no food. Whatever you did not do for one of these least of mine, you did not do for Me. And they will go to eternal punishment." Perhaps this phony Catholic has heard those words before.

THE ANDREW FORMERLY KNOWN AS PRINCE

"I hold the keys of hell and death" is an incredible line from the Bible