In celebration of Mamdani's first day in office, the map from our 2016 NYC atlas celebrating Queens as the most linguistically diverse place on earth. (800 languages spoken in NYC, according to NY's Endangered Language Institute, which collaborated with us on this map.

Transparency & uniformity in pricing—treating likes alike—is a big part of what people demanded from the platform monopolies of a century ago, the railroads. Today platforms use "algorithms" to make wages and pricing opaque enough to enable price discrimination and theft. It's the same story!

This incident encapsulates the current ruling party perfectly, in ways that go beyond Trump: (1) Government's agenda set by social media influencers. Ignore actual investigations and prosecutions. (2) Nationwide "fraud" is a plausible emergency (3) Families needing child care is not an emergency

Congratulations, Bibi! Just 5 years ago you were in the truly enviable position of having both American political parties firmly behind you. Now you're down to one. And you kept the one with the eschatological Christian Nationalists and lost the one with most American Jews. Incredible work!

Useful data reported here. Watch this space in a year: will we see numbers out of NSF for FY 2025? These figures seem like one of the best overall measures of what on earth is going on in federal science funding, flawed only by being fiscal years rather than calendar years, & reported a year late.

This is not breaking news to most of us, but I appreciated this opinion piece from current Harvard undergrad @alexbronzini.bsky.social making concrete some of what the new regime of campus speech restriction looks like. We need more of this, especially students describing their direct experience.

Insane but true fact: making US roads as safe as Canadian, Australian, or European roads would save more lives than eliminating murder from the US.

All of the money that changed hands in the Teapot Dome scandal totaled less than $10 million after adjusting for inflation, and it was considered so corrupt we still teach it in high school government classes a century later.

We are getting to the point where white collar criminals are thinking, "why take the plea deal my high-priced lawyer negotiated when I can just bribe the President and skip jail altogether?" donmoynihan.substack.com/p/pardon-the...

Imagine watching Sinatra, son of Dolly & Antonini born in Genoa & Sicily, respectively, and Martin, son of Gaetano & Angela, born in Montesilvano, Italy & Ohio respectively, (Angela to parents born in Monasterolo, Italy), and crusading against the value of children of immigrants to the U.S.

Maybe if we publicize enough that this is Trump's argument, we can at least get some polarization on it: get Democrats who oppose Trump to think, huh, maybe this argument for protecting home values by not building housing is actually a bad, let's-make-the-rich-richer sort of argument...?

So many of my older Jewish friends and relatives, including much of my own family, supported the Anti-Defamation League, literally for generations, for reasons including: — They cared about civil rights — They cared about fighting antisemitism — They understood that the two are inseparable 1/

Brilliant article. 😉

Bari Weiss has inadvertently created a crucible in which the hermetically sealed system of one party’s ideological commitments comes into white-hot contact with the system of norms and mores of professional journalism. Melting down CBS into a FOX News-like alloy is somehow both slow and explosive.

Kudos to @martylederman.bsky.social , who’s most responsible for this good result.

It’s interesting that the administration wants you to know that Bari Weiss is in league with them.

We really need to clear out the thicket of junk that has built up in these local building codes in California. We have a statewide code and there is virtually no oversight over, or analysis required, of local code amendments.

There is so much in this comment. If only we could make some of the travesties of the present U.S. government a little more hidden —the way so much of it is openly corrupt or openly destructive really kills public interest in the story!

Weiss has only been on the job two months and already has all of Bluesky raptly watching "60 Minutes"

I would have said, confidently: "it's not over till Hans van Spakovsky jumps ship." He did! 😲 Not to worry, says Heritage fundraiser Olivastro, "Demand to join Heritage far exceeds available roles." In other words, it's cool, we're not literally out of people willing to work for us. ❗ ⁉️ ⚠️ ❕🤡 🍿

This is quite damning in its way. Well done @chrisgeidner.bsky.social for checking. I suspect NPR would say “well yes, but WE reached out to Josh Blackman 700+ times. That’s different.” That’s the damning part.

a note from @lawdorknews.bsky.social to @npr.org: here is my quick search results on the npr website for the professor you singled out and two other professors carl tobias - 207 results jonathan turley - 434 results josh blackman - 778 results

"Get the principals on camera" is such a telling phrase here, because it tells us that for Weiss there's no world in which the victims of these horrific actions can actually be seen as the subjects of the story: They're background noise, and the people who matter are the ones sending them.

14 two-year postdocs for academics of any nationality who cannot continue their research due to US politics. Do share if you know of such.

baller

I was just looking at the history of the estate tax. It started in 1916, but we set up the modern version in 1977, with an exemption (no tax) on estates up to $120,000. At the time, median household income was about $13,500 so back of the envelope, median lifetime income might be about $540,000.

Except this time the Bari Weiss version was apparently to refuse to even have the meeting!

“These men risked their lives to speak with us. We have a moral and professional obligation to the sources who entrusted us with their stories. Abandoning them now is a betrayal of the most basic tenet of journalism: giving voice to the voiceless.”

2/ So presumably the brass caught wind of something at the last minute or trump or Stephen Miller made a call and that was it. The subject matter and the players seem too potent for the details to stay secret for long.

In the summer of 1950 most US newspapers ran an AP story about how race had become the main issue in the upcoming Georgia governor's race. Segregationist Herman Tallmadge, governor from '47 to '55 and then a Senator until 1981 made a name for himself by refusing to "apologize for being a white man."

Russia’s public officials/influencers competing for the employee of the month title

I'm late to the party but this is a genuinely terrific thread—a vindication of the usefulness of this entire platform, by @seancasten.bsky.social. Keep an eye on what benefits energy producers vs what benefits energy consumers, he argues, and you'll see why a lot of punditry is way off the mark.

I was a history major in college and was 5 years into a US History PHD program before I learned that the county in Central PA in which my family had lived in for 4 generations was a hotbed of Klan activity DURING MY GRANDPARENTS LIFETIME. In the 1980s/90s that history just seemed utterly irrelevant.

It was such a joy to celebrate Hanukkah with Mandy, Kathryn and their son, Gideon. As Jewish New Yorkers across our city prepare to light candles and mark the seventh night today, I wish you and your families a Hanukkah full of light and love. youtu.be/KIxAKyioXng

Question: When the head of the DOJ’s Civil Rights division tweets out a false statement about an individual that results in them being barraged with death threats based on their religion and ethnicity, which governmental agency would look into whether that student’s Civil Rights had been infringed?

I got my first home in 2018, 41 years old. I had been in my career for 11 years, plus 5 years in a related field. I had my Master's degree in my field. I could only get a house that was WAY under market with the help of my parents.

Sabrina Tavernise did a nice job reporting this. She quoted people talking about everything from vacations to eating out to their closet, but really she's tracing the cultural reverberations of the fact that housing costs too much. The average first-time homebuyer is now 40 (up from 28 in 1991).

Zohran Mamdani scares the ADL more than these guys and I think it's fair to ask why

What I learned from 2025: mattdpearce.substack.com/p/four-big-t...

Holy crap chart from Gallup

There is no "carveout" that guarantees healthcare for intersex youth-there are exceptions for intersex genital mutilation in infancy and childhood. Youth who need care like hormones will face hurdles to "prove" they qualify. Coverage might still be denied if care doesn't align with sex stereotypes.

Under the proposed rule issued by the Trump Administration today, any Medicare- or Medicaid-participating hospital would be barred from providing gender-affirming care to *any child*, even if the care is not paid for by Medicare or Medicaid. public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2025-23465.pdf

@nytimes.com: no one is proposing to stop "gender-related care": The vast majority of kids who get the same specific hormones—cisgender kids who are trying to conform to their assigned gender or slow early puberty—will get the drugs. The ban will single out and apply exclusively to trans kids.

Strongly agree! Short, straightforward, and important argument that applies in many areas but is particularly acute in the area it discusses: the killings off the coast of Venezuela by our armed forces.

You know where this kind of discussion across differing viewpoints *actually* happens on a daily basis? In university classrooms across the country.

"there's a new serif in town"

When you hire a white man because they’re a white man that’s not identity politics. Identity politics is when you get hired and you’re not a white man. The anti wokeness hysteria was always a backlash to integration of white collar jobs bsky.app/profile/jami...

Absolutely essential reading. Brilliant and chilling analysis from @audrelawdamercy.bsky.social. ballsandstrikes.org/law-politics...

Even AI can’t believe it

Evan Turnage launched a campaign for Congress today, in the one Democratic district in Mississippi. He'd be a terrific member of Congress. On the compacency-vs-fight axis, in my opinion, he falls solidly on the "fight" side. I've worked with him, including on the No Kings Act. www.evanturnage.com