Her father fled China because he organized student protests during Tiananmen. He was a political refugee. The story of this family, and Alysa Liu, would have played out very differently today. This is what we're losing. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/19/w...

Alysa Liu: "THAT'S WHAT I'M FUCKING TALKING ABOUT" 🗣️

The men’s big air finals with the snow pouring down are an absolute treat to watch

In 2026: -20K will be a soft but not terrible jobs report +15k will be a decent jobs report +50K will be a good jobs report +100K will be a great jobs report

ICYMI: I looked through a published archive of Boston newspapers from the 1760s, when British troops were stationed in the city. The accounts read remarkably similar to what's happening in Minneapolis. radleybalko.substack.com/p/two-cities...

The people of Minnesota have executed one of the most impressive civil resistance campaigns I can remember: - Organized a city wide general strike - Maintained nonviolent discipline amidst violence - Mobilized 10,000s in subzero temps to protest and watch ICE - Flipped public opinion against ICE

Happy to help, sir. From Judge Ellis: "Bovino admitted in his deposition that he lied multiple times about the events that occurred in Little Village that prompted him to throw tear gas at protesters."

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.

This is how I learned I’m a better fit for finance culture and tech culture. You only succeed in tech culture by fully embracing the Current Thing and being all-in on it: danwang.co/2025-letter/

Wanna see real-life miracles? Fund scientific research. A team of US scientists just cured Alzheimer’s in mice — and there is now hope that the disease can be reversed in humans. futurism.com/health-medic...

Beyond that: -there’s no problem that doesn’t immediately become easier to mentally handle after petting your dog -MOVE. walk, run, stretch, pick things up and put them down, whatever -eat protein -sugar is bad -don’t let pursuit of health turn you into a hermit

There have been a lot of bullshit narratives this year, but I think the "AI capex is the only reason the US economy is still growing" is possibly the most annoying because it was just a question of math ffs

Among the many things one could say about this: Journalists will not—and steadfastly refuse to—write similar stories about queer kids who were rejected by their families and forced into poverty and homelessness. The children who were harmed never get sympathy in these stories. It’s telling.

Not every hard thing ought to be done simply because it's difficult: You don't have to use a screwdriver if a cordless drill does the job better. And grief is hard, but it's worth actually engaging with it, because you might just learn some important stuff - about the deceased, the world, or you.

Good evidence for the theory that the US just lost it a bit societally in a large number of ways, beyond the murder spike and inflation, post-Covid but is coming back together a bit since

If, OTOH, we treat complaints about affordability as proxies for a subjective sense of precariousness in American economic life, we can try to get to the bottom of why Americans feel like things are more precarious than hard data says they are. www.offmessage.net/p/taking-aff...

Rational brain: “early snow often sets up dangerous backcountry conditions all winter” November skier brain: “I got a fever and the solution is more powder”

Also, maybe we come up with, like, two more holidays, say in the early and late spring, that involve walking around the neighborhood and talking to your neighbors?

Grid scale batteries are changing our electricity system. Excellent new visual story on batteries in FT today shows just how far this technology has evolved. Fasten your seatbelts, this is just the beginning. ig.ft.com/mega-batteri...

This is huge: “A drug that provides near-perfect protection against H.I.V. with shots just twice a year will be made available at $40 per patient annually in low- and middle-income countries, offering new hope… making lenacapavir a realistic choice in countries with constrained resources.”

The man who gifted Musk his infamous chainsaw is now begging the US for a bailout…

Since immigration’s effect on job growth is in the news: @taraelizwatson.bsky.social & @stanveuger.bsky.social and I explain how breakevens are affected by current immigration policy. There’s lots of uncertainty but my preferred estimates from the paper are in this table. www.aei.org/wp-content/u...

I’ve seen so many people spreading the misinformation that PBS is shut down or is shutting down. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting has been shut down and PBS has been defunded. HOWEVER!!! PBS still exists. It is more important now than ever that you donate to PBS if you can.

Great background on what power Trump has over DC: www.stevevladeck.com/p/172-federa...

1. This week, the FBI released its comprehensive crime report for 2024, which revealed that both VIOLENT CRIME and PROPERTY CRIME reached their LOWEST LEVELS SINCE THE 1960s This a massive story. But you might not have heard about it, even if you follow the news closely. Here's why.

Folks often assume that sheer number of wildfires in West must be linked to intentional arson--despite abundant evidence to contrary. But this partly stems from profound underestimation re: just how easy it can be to spark a fire under right conditions... www.nytimes.com/2025...

3/ Final point - it’s interesting that the labor market has been very undynamic along one dimension (low hiring, low firing) and very dynamic along another (employment delta due to business creation/destruction)

As US population growth slows, we need to reset expectations for economic data. Payrolls, GDP, expenditures, and income will all grow more slowly now that the immigration surge has ended. That changes how we interpret ... everything. My first piece for @piie.com www.piie.com/publications...

A niche complaint but in histories, it always seems more effective me to have the unit of account not be an inflation-adjust currency but rather relative to an avg daily or monthly wage given how much real incomes have risen over time.

Increasingly convinced the main damage cell phones have done to creativity isn't decreased attention spans or what not but the elimination of productive boredom. Inspiration comes from the mind filling the void inside. Hard to make art when you're constantly silencing the silence with "content."

NEW: There’s been a lot of discussion lately about rising graduate unemployment. I dug a little closer and a striking story emerged: Unemployment is climbing among young graduate *men*, but college-educated young women are generally doing okay. www.ft.com/content/a9ea...

1. We interrupt this programming for some LEGITIMATELY GOOD NEWS Violent crime in Baltimore has PLUMMETED to historic lows How did the city do it? Baltimore adopted a comprehensive set of "woke" policies, treating violence as a public health issue

Some of the best advice I’ve ever read was to “do things for which you will later experience nostalgia.” Checked that box for sure on Sunday.

people argue that rooftop solar policy discourse can get in the way of the real land use issues with mass solar energy production, but in fact it's all the same problem with how nothing can get built in America

NEPA and CEQA were enacted with the best of intentions, but the reality of their implementation in 2025 is an unsustainable status quo of car-dependent exurbs flung into the path of unstoppable megafires. The idea that change is always bad is an idea which the environmental movement must abandon.

Wondeful piece on the importance of day to day existence vs productivity & work in defining one’s life. Work is a part of life but unless you’re a very unique person in a very unique role, it shouldn’t be all your life open.substack.com/pub/theparis...

Industries that rely more on unauthorized immigrants are adding jobs at a slower rate than the rest of the private sector. Gap opened up shortly after border encounters dropped last year.

What's a "good" jobs-report number? The breakeven job level needed to keep employment steady is just 50k, vs 160k a year ago. The immigration surge is over, and peak boomers are aging into retirement. Our rules of thumb about slack, overheating, etc, must adjust.

For all the talk about “hard truths” etc that propagate our discourse we really don’t discuss how coddling conspiracy theorists has made things worse for everyone.

Pretty wild for May 18th

It's hard to overemphasise just how right @jaredb-econ.bsky.social is with this argument. He's as right as a right whale which has the right to right itself to your right. (Not right-wing, that's a different thing.)

• In broad strokes, the lower China tariffs announced today have 2 main effects, assuming they stay in place: 1. They reduce the economic damage of 2025 tariffs by 40% (judged by price & GDP); 2. They raise $300bn *more* over 10Y, showing how suboptimal 145% was. 2/13

a thing I’ve noticed in my time in research: many people really want to believe that Data™ is some sort of magical object that contains objective truth but the thing is, just like everything else, data is _produced_ via processes and mechanisms that profoundly affect the shape of the data

The Fed's dilemma: Navigate a recession or manage a period of stagflation. The result: “This is not going to be a cycle where the Fed pre-emptively cuts because there’s a forecast of a slowdown. They’re going to actually need to see it in the tangible data." www.wsj.com/economy/cent...

Thread on “hard data” vs “soft data”: 1/ Current conventional wisdom: the split between resilient “hard data” (e.g. government-published series on employment & activity) and weak “soft data” (sentiment surveys). IMHO this CW is mostly wrong.

Bruce Springsteen: The Rising Johnny Cash: American IV or V U2: All that You Can’t Leave Behind

It is my always and forever take that most people, perhaps especially finance, would be best served by a dual major pairing history/philosophy/poli sci with physics/math/CS/stats

An interesting read on life in America lacks My experience was been somewhat different after 2y in the UK. DC allowed for and utilized public spaces wonderfully, Dallas not so much. In many small outdoorsy towns there’s a greater use of public space that carries over from recreation into town too

Third time we’ve had tickets to see Sturgill Simpson. First time we’ve been able to (Covid beat the man up). Well worth the 5y wait