Madison's Common Council continues to stay focused on sensible, well-aligned transit and housing policy. It's hard to even keep track of everything they've done in just the past few years

#Baltimore has now removed all minimum parking mandates, citywide. It’s going to become a city with more affordable housing, fewer homeless people, less traffic, and less pollution. Happy Tuesday!

Guess the place

Shoutout to the indie diva that controls the aux cord in Bandit Coffee in Madison, WI

They're playing early 2010's alt radio in this coffee shop, and it's making me wistful for when I had a car in college with no ability to play my own music. I don't think I've heard a single song in here that was released before 2007 or after 2013

Great stuff

Just published in @jpube.bsky.social: "Parenthood and the gender gap in commuting" By Aline Bütikofer, René Karadakic, & Alexander Willén www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... #econsky #publiceconomics #gendergap

The problem with trying to regulate building aesthetics to ensure “good design” is that you have 3 bad choices of how to do it: - prescriptive design rules that kill creativity - subjective design review that empowers NIMBYs - an appointed individual with authority that can be wielded capriciously

Local policy is ground zero for the housing crisis (shared closely with state policy). I'm glad to see Madison continuing to take action, year after year, to ensure that this city has enough room for everybody www.cityofmadison.com/news/2025-07...

anytime I enter a prescription on glasses websites, I get called a weirdo

Qué partido es?

E-scooters are remarkably safe: Seattle had fewer than 300 injuries in more than 4 million rides. www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news...

Politics and the Federal Reserve do not mix! It's not just bad for the Fed's reputation, it's also bad for the economy. Investors will be less willing to buy US assets if they can't trust the Federal Reserve to do its job without political interference.

This is art

It's probably an unpopular opinion, but the more I do research, the more I realize that it's almost IMPOSSIBLE to do transparent and reproducible research without strong programming skills.

What I love most about studying urban housing development is that this counts as data validation (Whittier Heights, Seattle, 1 home in 2011 ➡️ 4 homes in 2017)

"Yes, change can be uncomfortable. But equity was never about comfort—it’s about a city willing to realign its practices toward shared access, stability and dignity." isthmus.com/opinion/opin...

We're so close to fixing key drivers of California's housing crisis: ✅️ SB 79 would legalize apartments near transit. ✅️ AB 130 would end frivolous litigation against infill. ✅️ AB 253 + AB 1308 would prevent permitting/inspection delays. ➡️ Here's how you can help.

This afternoon, every Republican and every Democrat in the North Carolina House of Representatives voted to end costly bureaucratic parking mandates & give property owners full flexibility over how to handle parking. What a stunning bipartisan awakening there has been on parking in 2025.

The Global Human Settlement Layer program of the EU e.g. concludes that only about 40% of US residents live in urban centres of at least 50,000 people. That project takes a fairly aggressive stance against distant sprawl counting toward city population which is important when discussing vibes.

If you come across a beautiful pedestrian street in Europe, chances are it was a mundane street for cars until recently.

mood

I feel like every year, Madison's mayor proposes (and usually passes) a new spate of housing reforms aimed at expanding supply. Local elections matter (from the Madison Minutes Newsletter: link.citycast.fm/view/63d1b18...

La rebelión contra instituciones vinculadas a las élites no es exclusiva de Estados Unidos. En América Latina, la proporción de ciudadanos que dice preferir la democracia a cualquier otra forma de gobierno ha caído desde el 65% de 1998 hasta un 52% en 2024

Through May, Baltimore has recorded 54 homicides, the fewest through the first 5 months of a year on record. The previous low: 65 homicides, in 1977. At this point in 2022, just three years ago, there had been 138 killings, and in 2017 there had been 146 people killed.

Actually yes my post was offensive in the exact same way you thought. When I didn't mention that other thing that's kind of similar it's because I'm evil and oppose it. And when I said that a thing was good it was because I think the people who can't do it are bad and dumb

Today was a great day to scroll the feed looking for accounts to mute

I see these girls (herons) every day and every day I'm like 'ooh a heron'

1960 was a great middle name election. We’ll never again reach the dizzying heights of Fitzgerald vs Milhaus

my lil piece about the DC accent and my complicated love for my hometown is now free to read without a flaming hydra subscription! flaminghydra.com/issue-288/#t...

Did we ever get a clear answer on why Pope Benedict resigned?

Improving public service provision increases the use of public services? Wow. I didn’t know that. You’re telling me now for the first time (From Madison Minutes newsletter: link.citycast.fm/view/63d1b18...)

A few facts everyone knows about 1890s cinema is that the viewers were prudes shocked at a glimpse of ankle and films like THE KISS (1896) caused a scandal with the open smooching-- What's that? THE KISS wasn't offensive at all? It was actually a comedy & was even screened at church fundraisers?

This is correct

I was 22 in 2016 and I was relentlessly bullied in middle and high school under tacit endorsement of my teachers; this passage is just delusional. Back-filling historical reality with contemporary grievance. The quintessential retcon

Not important but if low IQ and fluoride exposure are inversely correlated, that would imply that smarter kids had more exposure

@danny-gold.com (University of Wisconsin-Madison) presented an interesting (future JM) paper on “Regulatory Hurdles and Costly Delay in Housing Development”. Paper is discussed by Aradhya Sood (UofT). More on Danny's work: danny-gold.com/about (P.S. I love the preview picture of your website! 😍)

I tried malört for the first time tonight, and it was fine. Y’all are being dramatic

Harvard scientist Kseniia Petrova has been in ICE custody for about two months. Her colleague and friend Leon Peshkin says her case is causing some scientists to reconsider working in the U.S.

I cannot express enough how much I love my fellow UW-Madison grad atudents

Any economist who defends steep tariff hikes on the grounds that they'll lead to long-run re-industrialization should hand in their badge. Short-run effects aren't the biggest costs; the reallocation of resources from high- to low-productivity sectors limit long-term growth. This is day one stuff

Over the past 20 years, Paris has undergone a major physical transformation, trading automotive arteries for bike lanes, adding green spaces and eliminating 50,000 parking spaces. Part of the payoff has been invisible — in the air itself.

Rand Paul: "The whole [tariffs] debate is so fundamentally backwards & upside down. It's based on a fallacy & the fallacy is this: that somehow in a trade, someone must lose. That somehow when you trade with someone, someone is taking advantage of you... I have a trade deficit with my grocery store"

"I, Pencil with Tariff Rates Added" 😞 www.econlib.org/i-pencil-wit...

Something few have recognized re: the WI supreme court race is that this was the GOP's only realistic shot of taking the majority this decade. To take it back before 2030 they need to win *all three* races in the next 3 consecutive years

New @nberpubs: "Where Have All the Good Jobs Gone? Changes in the Geography of Work in the US, 1980-2021" www.nber.org/papers/w3363...

Real photo of an econ seminar during the introduction slide:

annoying that as of this week 14 times a day you can now get on a commuter train in New Bedford, Massachusetts and end up 60 miles away in Boston (with at most 1 brief transfer) meanwhile to get from Baltimore to Annapolis requires 2 hours on a bus and getting to Frederick is functionally impossible

Carney: "The old relationship we had with the United States based on deepening integration of our economies and tight security and military cooperation is over."