A nice detail in this picture of a Chinese car testing lab is the prominent piece of American equipment, the big blue piston labelled ServoSled by Seattle Safety. So we have something, or at least one thing, to trade! www.nytimes.com/2025/12/23/b...

Lol even Marlon knew he committed PI there what on earth

CBS paid the president of the United States millions in bribe money and now they censor news reports so it does not annoy him. I don’t know how much plainer we can put this.

Cleaning up the house this morning and came across a copy of Jane Mayer's book, "Dark Money", on how the Kochs pioneered new ways to use money for political influence. My first thought was that this 2016 classic might now be outdated, but an hour later I saw this: www.nytimes.com/2025/12/20/u...

Virginia Heffernan wrote this shortly after the 2016 election and it still holds true

"He took every Advanced Placement class he could, earned a scholarship to Brown and worked at Wawa over the summer to make enough money to buy a laptop, according to his two sisters."

Grading and googling hallucinated citations, as one does nowadays, and now that LLMs have been around for a while, I've discovered new horrors: hallucinated journals are now appearing in Google Scholar with dozens of citations bc so many people are citing these fake things

One of my most delightful academic experiences this semester was our reading seminar on infrastructure. Here were the ground rules: 1. we all read 12 of 15 books new to us 2. no laptops or phones 3. read widely bc of our polycrises Reading books was just great. Here's what we read and reactions:

Seeing Alien as a high school student visiting a college film or lit class, and then having the professor hand out a journal article titled “Alien as an Abortion Parable”.

Watching Memento at Lincoln Center. When the movie ended, I had the very un-New York experience of all of the strangers around me suddenly talking to each other saying “wait, what happened?”.

Last month when I was watching One Battle After Another in New York, two guys were openly doing cocaine one row over until one staggered off and one vomited, and the whole crowd shifted. It was such a terrific, engrossing movie, I barely noticed.

The time when a friend and I went to see Scarface re-released in an afternoon matinee in Times Square. We looked down the row to see a 9-year old by himself, positively beaming.

The opening night in New York when we all waited in line for an hour, and then I watched Return of the King next to fans wearing helmets and chainmail.

The time that a fight broke out behind me in NYC at a showing of “28 Days Later”, because some of the audience members objected to someone’s INFANT talking too much during the film.

A nice reminder after the term that all that work of teaching produces … educated, thoughtful, creative people. I went to a small energy workshop this week and saw three former students in various stages of their lives and careers; one parent and another employer of former students approached me.

Drinking hot soup from a mug.

Our noble and beautiful dog Penny turned eighteen today. She's been through everything with our family. Photos from the first days and weeks we got her in 2008(!), to this year, and still counting!

It's time once again for my annual #treebybike post. This is the 12/19/42 cover of @newyorker.com, so one full year after the attack on Pearl Harbor. This would be the first real Christmas alone, or without a family member, for millions in the US. Gas and tire rationing had begun earlier that year.🗃️

What is the opposite of Prime?

It's not just happening in Massachusetts, but for all of the same reasons in most places -- and in my opinion -- electricity and gas prices are likely to get worse before they get better. Nice article in the Boston Globe by @shankman.bsky.social. www.bostonglobe.com/2025/12/06/s...

Read this: www.wgbh.org/news/local/2...

Now what are you going to do about it?

“Right to repair” and “Rage Against The Garage Door Opener” www.nytimes.com/2025/12/04/t...

“This is more of a comment than a question. Our city’s ______ totally sucks. Actually, I do have a question: what do urban planners have to say about THAT?!”

A very nice visualization here of how an office floor can be converted to residential. www.wsj.com/real-estate/...

Day Zero arrives for Tehran, a city of TEN million people.

84% support stricter oversight of gambling in pro sports. One of the first polls showing how gambling scandals are changing how fans watch, trust and care about sports. Full results: www.sacredheart.edu/media/shu-me...

The gambling ad backlash is real. 68% of gamblers say sports betting advertising encourages risky or unethical behavior. This is from people who already gamble on sports, not the general public.

Accountability is completely split: • 47% blame players/coaches • 20% blame leagues • 13% blame sportsbooks Younger gamblers are much more likely to blame betting platforms than older ones. Generational fault line.

A new national poll on sports gambling from Sacred Heart: - 79% say the recent scandals have shaken their trust in the NBA, 38% say its shaken trust a lot. - 90% are worried about corruption across sports. - 75% of gambler believe corruption is more widespread than the NBA

A classic essay by Toni Morrison. You know some of these lines even if you perhaps didn't know where they came from. www.newyorker.com/magazine/201...

Just when you thought that your new interest in baseball might linger in the glow of an all-time great World Series: www.nytimes.com/2025/11/09/n...

We’re hiring! Our new resume portal is live, and we’re looking for top talent in NYC to help build this administration and deliver on our affordability agenda. Could that be you? Apply using the link below. transition2025.com/apply

Here are the books that ChatGPT recommends that you read about itself: fivebooks.com/best-books/t...

WHATEVER your goals for the energy system are, rising energy bills are going to stoke more anger towards incumbents. Every incumbent needs a plan to deal with this issue. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/04/u...

Corruption is a small investment for these corporate donors: “Fourteen of the two dozen publicly named corporate donors face federal enforcement actions or have had such actions suspended by Trump administration officials since the start of his second term, the report states.” wapo.st/4hD7dm0

“Don’t boo. Vote.”

I don't live in Lexington (I'm in the next town over), but I found these op-eds fascinating. Lexington is where the American Revolution started 250 years ago and has since remained a low-density suburb BY DESIGN. What kind of town does it want to be in the future? www.bostonglobe.com/2025/10/31/o...

November 1, 1965 – “Fortune” magazine covers carbon dioxide build-up allouryesterdays.info/2025/10/31/n...

Knickers

I’ve been thinking a lot about a new kind of polling I’d like to see. We have polling that measures public opinion, which is obviously important, but I’d love to see a little more empirical work on public knowledge: what do voters know about politics and policy?

I thought this was a very good essay. Title and subtitle: "The Great Reckoning: What the West Should Learn from China". Last week my class read Mazzucato's "The Entrepreneurial State" and next week is McGee's "Apple in China", so it is particularly well-timed. www.theideasletter.org/essay/the-gr...

I asked my grad students to summarize chapters 6, 7 ... no response.

lol look what they hid under the insole

Thanks to @bmcnoldy.bsky.social & @drkimwood.bsky.social for help with this story. We were all struggling to find sufficient words. “It’s this frustrating combination of, scientifically speaking, we know this is possible, but as humans we are flabbergasted at seeing manifest in this way.” -Kim 🧪

Climate change DEFINITELY affects hurricane: STRENGTH: Warmer water is hurricane food RAINFALL: Warm air holds more water vapor SURGE: Warmer water expands, warmer ice melts, sea levels rise PREDICTION: hotter seas mean faster intensification

Send prayers and support to Jamaica. wapo.st/47u2iz4

This is not only a climate emergency. It is a cultural one, shares Anchorage Daily News. buff.ly/zUpOkHe

Last week I walked the East River waterfront in Lower Manhattan, a portion of the city I worked on in NYC government 20 years ago. Visited the new seawall, the new Seaport area, and Edison’s Pearl Street Station site on Fulton Street.

There are still heroes in journalism. “On Sunday, the newspaper inserted an acknowledgement of the Amazon donation into the editorial – but only once [ @bgrueskin.bsky.social ] noted its absence in a social media post and made inquiries at the paper. It did not flag the alteration for readers.”