They came for the 90% of the total population that were farmers, and I shut up because woah cool new tractor, nice haber-bosch process, holy heck monoculture works! And now they have come for me the 2%, and only the Institute for Policy Studies will speak out for me.

headlines from the late 19th century

Citation needed. www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/edit...

The history of humanity is basically the slow crawl from rural locations to cities.

Every second of free time you have ever had in your life was subsidized by the existence of the combine harvester.

If you get into a “who can cut taxes more” battle with the GOP, you’re going to lose because they are far more shameless and antagonistic to the idea of living in a functioning society. Don’t concede to their framing that taxes are nothing but a problem to be solved.

thank fucking god

Left YIMBY total victory btw www.politico.com/news/2026/03...

Did Iran resist the “Epstein class” when they received Chinese weapons through Jeffrey Epstein himself?

⚡️US joins Russia, China in opposing IAEA resolution condemning attacks on Ukraine's energy infrastructure. The U.S. voted against a resolution condemning attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure during a meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Board of Governors on March 5.

Asking rents are the most affordable they've been since pre-COVID

Fascinating

one genuine problem with soak the rich stuff is that while we should soak the rich 10x more, taxing the rich is mostly a tax on stock, whereas on-going expenditure typically requires taxes on flows

if we can't tax people making roughly the median household income, we are not ever going to have a proper welfare state. in Sweden the payroll tax alone is 31 percent

I’m sympathetic to the idea that you can tax the super rich and also push broad-based taxes to fund welfare states. Because they’re both necessary. But I do worry that talking incessantly about the former undermines support for the latter.

Glad I got that public policy focused degree, really going to come in handy as politicians compete to destroy the tax base necessary to do any good in this country

We're running out of sky. If Saudi or Azerbaijan airspace shuts, Europe will be cut off from Asia. My newsletter, out now.

Again? Bro

It’s funny that this energy crisis is going to be so much less bad in the US than other countries, but you just know that the American reaction will be among the most intense

This number is one-third of Gen Z men, by the way This basically suggests that this is the result of something like the Mark Robinson Effect, where less Gen Z men are right-wing than older demographics, but the ones who are right-wing are all completely insane

This is I think the most definitive sign that Mark Carney is not going to call a snap election this year, you don’t call a set of by elections if you’re going to dissolve parliament a month later anyway www.pm.gc.ca/en/news/news...

2/ This is a far bigger fuel, fertilizer, food crisis for Asia and Europe than it is for the US. Read @sstapczynski.bsky.social Bloomberg report on the energy shortages facing Asia. No paywall

This is no different from Putin saying MH17 was shot down by Ukraine or Assad saying rebels gassed themselves.

everyone just shadowboxing out there

anyway, the republicans are promising them nothing and have delivered, and tom cotton will still pull down saddam numbers, so i am not going to really worry about what a couple of extreme longshot rural dem hopefuls think

what's funny is that OPEC is literally a cartel preventing supply constraints but applying a similar lens to the Anglosphere housing market would uh, turn the vast majority of suburban homeowners into Housing OPEC

Free trade is hurting local producers

It feels like we get new announcements like this -- more range, more speed, more features, and lower costs -- every few weeks from EV makers. From conventional automakers? Crickets. www.fastcompany.com/91503415/byd...

Jack Schlossberg is now going full NIMBY and fighting against a plan to rebuild a dilapidated NYCHA campus with even more affordable housing and guaranteed brand new homes for every current NYCHA tenant. What a joke this guy is

Imagine how much worse this energy crisis would be for Europe, Japan, etc. if it had happened in October instead of March.

i'm going to kms

Might fuck around and become a “we need modern sortition” guy Having random people run things would probably be a net improvement in many countries

Green degrowth Trump is here

We've launched negotiations with Canada for a Digital Trade Agreement. This will make it easier and safer to do [EU-CA] business online and across borders and provide stronger protections for consumers↓ link.europa.eu/pTTf6h

Today, Europe’s energy system is cleaner, much more diverse - and much more stable than a few years ago. Yet the developments in the Middle East remind us once again of the risks of relying still too much on fossil fuels.

Bruh

Telling poll of which partners Germans trust - France as always on top, with the UK now as joint E3 partner a close second. Trump's USA is just 3 points above Russia.

Americans: we live in a fallen state—embroiled by sin, cheating, lying, and evil. You cannot trust anyone, not even those who claim to know you best Canadians: I love my neighbors and my friends!

Closing Azeri and/or Georgian, Armenian airspace would be a huge blow to European and Asian travel economies… it’s really quite the bottleneck between long-haul Europe and Asian air routes now.

Damn, 14 points

So baffling it had to have been a mistake imo Incredibly stupid to attack Azerbaijan

Quebec's Bill 94 continues to be very fucked up

The Senate votes 53-47 to not exist

This is big.

If anyone is friends with any Georgian air traffic controllers, buy them a nice bottle of wine. As guardians of pretty much the only narrow gap still available between Europe and Asia that avoids both Iran, the Gulf, Ukraine and Russia, they are under some substantial pressure.

Interested in agreement with or challenge to this take: So-called “prediction markets” are pretty worthless for actually *predicting* events, but they are a decent way of measuring “conventional wisdom” or what many people think will happen.