I do think this is a kind of novel problem with our current media environment - Serious people aren't good at making content, they have other things to do, but content is what drives attention. Tastemakers used to highlight the serious people but they're gone, replaced by content creators.

Can someone explain to me how Metrolink is only 8 min faster than the A line, despite significantly fewer stops and what should be better infrastructure along the route

‘The three-month correlation between energy and the S&P 500 has reached its most negative level on record.’ thedailyshot.com/2026/05/22/t...

Incredible that Amazon is one of the largest companies in the world and we just tolerate them selling counterfeit and stolen goods

The average age that a Spaniard leaves their parents’ home is now 30.2, and per-bedroom rent has risen 85.4% since 2022. Spain can’t rent control its way out of the problem of tons of unmet demand for household formation when there does not exist the housing supply to meet it.

Kigali Airport (gdp pp $1000) now has better public transit access than oaxaca city (gdp pp $16000)

did you know that at Michigan and Walton the CTA has buses scheduled for every 1.2 minutes? maybe we should have some bus lanes

this is a great example of an idea that could plausibly save quite a bit in government spending but at the same time it's the exact type of thing that Elon and his DOGE goons would cancel because "hurr durr why is the government buying bath mats"

Yeah there’s a moral panic about shoplifting but there is actually a practice by organized crime of industrial scale shoplifting that Facebook marketplace has greatly facilitated that even a half serious effort to regulate them would greatly impede

An actual ‘tough on crime’ thing that would be huge would be expanding the liability that Amazon and Facebook marketplace have for all the shady shit sold via them.

I think that's why the shortage shows up so clearly in adults per family household. The rise is because of adult children who don't move out of their parents' homes. That is a natural inflection point in historical housing consumption. When children become adults they form new households. 1/

One big blind spot they have is that their methodology can't account for the highly regressive pattern of rent inflation when there is a housing shortage, so that they don't capture that the cost of living over the past decade has risen 15% more for the lowest income quintile than for the highest.

I think the odds that they really wanted this conviction specifically because she is someone prominent online are pretty high tbh. She’s a legit victim of polticial persecution.

Going into the holiday weekend that marks the start of summer and it is too cold and windy to go outside and bike around aimlessly. I am aggrieved, where is my compensation fund?

"How much more time do you think the war in Iran will last?" More Than A Year: 37% A Month To A Year: 46% A Week To A Month: 10% A Week: 2% Already Over: 6% YouGov / May 18, 2026

This columnist starts by whining about how her BART station is raising commuter parking prices in response to demand, then immediately pivots to venting her frustration about not being able to find a spot at current prices. She does not make a connection between these issues. Remarkable stuff!

You'll see this everywhere soon especially as immigration remains necessary but harder and harder to sell to the public.

"If they can do this to me they could do it to anybody." Actual quote! The mind reels

I don’t actually know if the Ivies have attached farms/animal science programs but every big public U system has a variety of agricultural & mechanical programs, facilities, and partnerships. “Students don’t have the opportunity to know what real life work is like” is the silliest of complaints

Not to mention places with truck traffic (or other excuses) that actually need wider lanes and things like that. People live near industrial areas and they have the right to not die in traffic violence as well.

NYT: "no one has ever thought of teaching ranching at university" Every ag school: um, would you like to meet our cows NYT: "No, not like that. More romantic. More dilletante. Ugh, we're not /farmers/."

A familiar story for Californians and Washingtonians, and elsewhere in the US: An agency takes a crayon at 5% design - when scope, schedule, budget and risks are largely undefined - to the voters for money to advance preliminary designs AND construction for FTA local match.

In conclusion

No! Taco Bell is the cheap fast food chain. If you spend more than $7-10 you’re doing it wrong!

Say what you will about suburban drivers but we charge them for suburb-to-suburb and city bypass trips that have basically zero transit alternatives while keeping the expressways that parallel our train lines free, actively undercutting the most effective transit service we offer. That's backwards.

This feels more like farming/ranching cosplay than anything else. The idea that agricultural work is somehow purer or more virtuous than any other kind of labor has led to a lot of bad policy.

Only one man can save us.

A lot of lefties seem to want a world where labor intensive services are cheap and incomes are high and I’m not exactly sure how that’s supposed to work

It was extraordinarily grim to watch in real-time, and left me with the inescapable conclusion that despite pop-leftism being hegemonic in a lot of our social/cultural spaces has virtually nothing to contribute to any actual social democratic project.

We need a fundamental reconstruction of our traditional liberal bulwarks like journalism and universities. Not every existing institution has to go, but a lot of them do, and the most prestigious have frequently proven to be the least resilient.

I think the biggest issue with the leftist theory that I learned in college and graduate school and used to fervently believe is that it made its antagonists way too cool and powerful like, the fundamental issue seems to be "why are we always losing, since we're obviously right"

The Colorado Democratic Party has formally condemned and censured Governor Jared Polis for granting clemency to Tina Peters. Polis is hereby banned from speaking or being honored at party events. 90% of CDP central committee members voted to reprimand Polis.

one of the defining crises of pretty much the entire developed world is no one being willing to tell the electorate to eat their vegetables and pick one of increased immigration of working age pop, increased taxes, or decreased pensions.

I think Democrats like Cory Booker should take a hard look in the mirror and consider why Jeff Bezos loves their tax cut proposals so much. Billionaires would love to see a weak state with a gutted fiscal capacity.

My favorite moment at my work was when I needed to some survey or training but the email looked like the laziest phishing attempt so they had to send another email informing us that it was NOT in fact a phishing email

good LORD @ossoff.bsky.social

I guess the answer to who'll own this potentially unlimited legal exposure is... everyone's index funds

Swinging by Trader Joe's to pick up a few frozen meals on your way home is a lot cheaper than DoorDash and still pretty tasty but people lose their minds over that suggestion. "So poor people only deserve crappy frozen food" like 4/5 of the shit you order on DoorDash isn't frozen and reheated.

Anyways, can’t wait to see retailer Jeff Bezos cook his brain to the point where he’s advocating for a national sales tax, hammering his own businesses

may have to update my banner

As I mentioned earlier today, the US Census Bureau just released small-area estimates of air conditioning prevalence down to the tract level. This afternoon, I spent a while exploring the data and wrote a quick blog post about it, with a few maps! Thread! dwrowlands.com/new-census-d... (1/4)

The takeaway from this thread is that even if you ignore HOUSEHOLD income for zoomers still living at home, Gen Z is STILL doing a bit better than previous generations

NEW "We even have to include a tabletop exercise of me getting arrested" — Maryland's elections administrator Election directors across the US are preparing for everything from ICE showing up at polling locations to officials being arrested during November's midterms www.wired.com/story/electi...

no actually I think the complete collapse of epistemological rigor on the left is really, really bad and I'm not going to wait until we're all dying in some kind of hallucinatory fascist hellscape to say so

Gov Jared Polis told a Colorado Sun event that his decision to give clemency to Tina Peters "will be remembered fondly." He was later interrupted by protesters carrying an enormous banner reading EAT SHIT POLIS coloradosun.com/2026/05/19/j...

I didn’t expect Measure 120 to pass, especially after the war with Iran, but also didn’t expect it to fail by such a huge margin

All natural horse hooves

Don't think I've ever been quoted in 2 different articles in one week before! 1) I talked briefly w/ @kristoncapps.bsky.social about rail-oriented freight development www.bloomberg.com/news/newslet... 2) @mass.streetsblog.org covered the MBTA long-range plan mass.streetsblog.org/2026/05/19/m...

This is how you deal with trash