I've got a followup to what's going down in the legislature with the elevator bill.

I've lost the thread on the Lawrence Summers story. Hasn't he been fired/resigned from Harvard like 5x in the past decade?

As Easter Eggs, I've added Schumann's Forest Scenes, Op. 82 to my neoclassical playlist.

ICYMI it yesterday, I wrote about the head of the Seattle civil rights department, whose staff have accused him of a litany of civil rights violations. Their union, PROTEC17, sent a detailed memo asking Mayor Katie Wilson to remove him in December.

Outstanding local journalism from @ericacbarnett.bsky.social at @publicola.bsky.social. Stunning stories and quotes here from angry Seattle's Office of Civil Rights employees about the Harrell-appointed SOCR director who remains in the Wilson administration.

I invented a new poetic form: A Tanku, a combination of a Tanka and Haiku. There's already a Hainka form, but that consists of 1 stanza combining the 2 forms in one 8-line stanza/poem. My Tanku is done w/ each Tanka and Haiku (as many as you want) as its own stanza in any combo you want! #poetry

Noise Complaints > No Noise Complaints. A rambunctious neighborhood is gentrifying. The new professional class that’s moving in is complaining about noise. I’m not taking sides. But I’d rather live where a standoff between social vibrancy and economic vibrancy exists, than where it doesn’t.

I'm All Lost In... the 3 things I'm obsessing about THIS week.

You can get rid of those Gemini gmail summaries by going into your settings and unchecking “Smart Features.” I committed this minor act of resistance on Tuesday. When you disconnect from these dumb dispatches it feels like that moment when the crying baby on your flight finally falls asleep.

Not taking sides here. Just like the whole thing.

I'm All Lost In... the 3 things I'm obsessing about THIS week.

For someone who’s so obsessed w/ crowd size and ratings numbers you’d think Trump would get that it’s a good thing to have lots of immigrants. To be the most popular country.

This.

And so, I’ve come to think of short blocks as enjambed lines of poetry where one block leads you to the next and the rush of surprises you’ll find there. www.joshfeitpoetry.com/blog/im-all-...

You always throw staff under the bus? Have you ever taken responsibility for mistakes that happen on your watch? If it’s true you aren't to blame, are you concerned that people working for you could see that & still post? That shoot people exercising their 1st Amendment rights dead in the street?

I'm All Lost In... the 3 things I'm obsessing about THIS week.

I have a column up on @publicola.bsky.social about an important piece of city infrastructure. Elevators.

Lee dropped his video on behalf of local pro-housing group @sightline.org . They teamed up to make the case that the clunky elevators dictated by current code are incompatible with producing the relatively smaller mode of multi-family housing needed to increase housing stock.

I used to be fond of telling my news team "There are no metaphors, only results." But I was wrong: There are metaphors, there are. (And results too it would seem.) @ericacbarnett.bsky.social, @Jonah Spangenthal-Lee

The 3 things I'm obsessing about THIS week.

... And the @nytimes.com shows its willingness to continue to make a fool of itself. The FBI search doesn't "show" Trump's "willingness to..." blah blah blah. Trump is pursuing his 2020 grievances. And he's been pursuing them outright since November 2020.

Our ball kids are Better than your ball kids.

I wrote a mini-essay titled "Subway Synecdoche." It starts : ”The trains were free./ I mean: No one checked your ticket.” Those are the breathtaking concluding lines to Richie Hofmann’s cascading city poem Men’s Beds where the subway stands in for city values in general ... #poetry

The 3 things I'm obsessing about THIS week.

"Our columnist writes" is clunky and undercuts the impact of the headline, I post on Bluesky.

Fun Fact: The last person to invade Denmark was Adolf Hitler.

Oh my. The lead from a post this time last year: "Their conversational sonics ended in a feedback crescendo when they crawled toward one another and pressed their Fisher-Price handhelds together in a musical kiss."

Loved how light rail gate crashed the TV shot during the Australian Open coverage yesterday....

Urban infrastructure is often reimagined as rebar for resistance. Buses of Montgomery. Hi-jinxed street signs of Prague vs Soviet tanks. A gay bar rope-a-doping cops on Christopher St. Today, Kyiv’s subway as bomb shelters. “‘The streetcar sympathized with us,’” Wilson quotes one Warsaw memoir.

This week's obsessions roundup LINK IN BIO also comes with an X > Y (x is greater than y) report. Three of them: Allowing Housing in Residential Zones > Allowing Housing in Commercial Zones; Woke History > Trump’s Fake History; and The # 8 > The L8.

I'm All Lost In. The 3 things I'm obsessing about THIS week.

“Who on earth is Luciano Darderi ? and how is he 22nd in the world?” —Catherine Whitaker, the Tennis Podcast, 1/15/26 @thetennispodcast.bsky.social

Anti-urbanism will be their undoing. Warsaw. Leningrad. Hitler's generals warned him. I point you to Ch. 12 in Ben Wilson's history of cities, Metropolis. They will ultimately lose in Minneapolis. They already are. www.instagram.com/p/DThCdVkjK3...

You'd think they'd won a Pulitzer. You guys. Interviewing the president is what you do. It's your job. This fawning over yourselves (and the president) is not classy. Save the navel gazing for your therapist.

God bless @NYTPitchbot for routinely saving me from becoming the wild-eyed crank in the famous “I’m mad as hell” scene in Network. But if you'll allow me, I’d like to become the wild-eyed crank in the famous scene from Network for a second ...

I'm All Lost In... the 3 things I'm obsessing about THIS week.

First tournament of the year winding down. You'll notice: No Anisimova, no Rybakina, no Andreeva in the late round. But one player always seems to be there. : )

The next time a Trump mob storms the Capitol to overturn an election it will be ICE. : (

I can imagine the Stephen Millers of the world feeling righteous about the Good murder, thinking: "Burn on the woke left. They're always complaining 'This wouldn't have happened if she was white. Well, see, we're not racists. We can gun down whites too if we want.'" ....

Armed Federal agents gunned down a woman during a show of force in a U.S. city. Isn't this the milita-right wing's longstanding nightmare scenario. What say you children of Randy Weaver?

Inevitably, Trump's ICE clampdown was going to result in either a Reichstag Fire moment or a Boston Massacre moment. Boston Massacre it is.

The way A.I. writing strains to awkwardly adhere to the rule of three has murdered the rule of three.

A heck of a chart: in every single one of the 10 major US cities that built the most housing between 2017 and 2023, rents for older, existing units fell—often by quite a bit.

Love it. But how about putting some of the money toward affordable, dense housing in the burbs where people are trekking in from. Share the density.

Transit Miracle: The conductor on the Amtrak train from Providence to Moynihan Hall at Penn Station pronounced Moynihan as 1 syllable.

The 3 things I'm obsessing about THIS week.

I'm All Lost In... the 3 things I'm obsessing about THIS week.

I think what websites don’t understand is you don’t want to “earn a fan badge.” And when they send you a “congratulations,” it’s mortifying and you immediately stop going to the site.