Guy who thinks anybody who would write a 4-volume book called "Capital" must be a neoliberal.

My riming was one month off.

Corner store for rent, 2500 feet from where Trump grew up. www.nestseekers.com/5246030/prim...

Okay I've finally pushed out this blog: Free public transport is easy to say and easy to sell, but it’s the effects and benefits are complex danielbowen.com/2026...

Story of the 86-year-old widow arrested by ICE gets much worse (even if you didn't think it could). Turns out she was fighting her stepson over the estate. The state judge handling the dispute says that the stepson used connections to get his stepmother arrested. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/16/u...

In Marin County, the very birthplace of growth controls, new state laws mean a 24-story building is going up. Yimby is winning in California. sfyimby.com/2026/04/mari...

Trumpist Supreme Court halts Trump move to deport Haitians & Syrians because upholding it would render Administrative Procedures Act meaningless. Legal brain take: The APA is a guarantee of liberty. Reality: APA is what the Court uses to hobble Democratic presidents. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/16/o...

Some people (especially online) are anti-Zionist but not antisemitic because they support genocide against all minorities seeking freedom from left-authoritarians. Jews, Uighurs, Rohingya, Ukrainians impartially & without prejudice. It **really doesn't matter** whether this is antisemitism or not.

I think we spend way too much time on here complaining about stupid or offensive takes that are from chatbots & paid trolls. Before you engage, especially with commenters, check out the poster's timeline and judge how human they are & whether they are honestly wrong or stupid or just pushing a line.

The "people who think the economy is bad are factually wrong" argument fails to reckon with the axiom of consumer sovereignty underlying market econ theory & economic statistics. The assumption is price paid = consumer satisfaction. When total satisfaction ≠ sum of prices paid, that must be wrong.

Here's the provision with the ACT amendment. Before it was passed, this was further amended to include land owned by the city of Baltimore.

Maryland legislature last night passed @govwesmoore.bsky.social's Transit Oriented Development bill with amendment proposed by @actfortransit.bsky.social. The ACT amendment exempts mixed-use development on @wmata.com station parking lots from all local zoning rules that limit density & use. 1/2

For those interested in the new book about the Bund, this video presents an overview of the Bund that is much more accurate than what I see in the book publicity. (Haven't yet read the book itself.) Tony Michels is a leading historian of the Jewish left in the US. www.youtube.com/watch?v=uigz...

"We will just put these signs here so cars won't run into them."

Anyone unable to see a motorcycle, whether from poor eyesight or inability or unwillingness to pay attention, should stop driving and turn in their license.

Historical analogue for Iran War: the War of 1812. Maritime insurance played key role. Lloyds stopped insuring cargoes after US privateers preyed on shipping in Irish Sea & English Channel. British, world power with dominant military advantage, accepted status quo ante peace that favored rising US.

For no particular reason at all today, I am recommending one of the wonders of Wikipedia. The French-language article on Chateauneuf du Pape wine. Special highlight: which Pope liked to drink white Chateauneuf du Pape as much as the red. fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C3%A...

Purchase of the day: Biodegradable paper straws enclosed in a plastic package that weighed almost as much as the straws.

Republicans today

I think there's a lot today's American Jews can learn from the Bund. But it's very different from what Molly Crabapple thinks. Most relevant is how Bundists in the US combined economic progressivism with vigorous defense of Jewish interests. I wrote about it here. www.jta.org/2025/06/26/i...

Wow. “NASA's EPIC camera aboard the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite captured this unique view of the Moon as it moved in front of the sunlit side of Earth. This view shows the fully illuminated ‘dark side’ of the moon never visible from Earth.” www.planetary.org/space-images...

Don't tell US nimbys about this. They believe every tree is sacred if it's located near a proposed building project.

Nobody is talking about completely automating the roads (banning cars with steering wheels). It will be voluntary. And either the AVs will violate the laws & be unsafe, or the unsafe lawless drivers will not use AVs. AVs will replace safe drivers. They won't replace the unsafe drivers.

Trump (and Kushner's) bribers / fellow corrupt rich guys in the Arab Gulf states are taking fire and staring down the possibility of Iran controlling their economic conduit and demanding transit fees. They're telling Trump to escalate and have at least some influence. I agree, an underrated factor.

Pedestrian Refuge Bunkers can give people a puncher’s chance.

The problem here is not the complexity. The problem is that half of the groups on this chart, were they ever to gain state power, would arrest the other half and put them in concentration camps. And that the other half won't point that out because they'd be accused of "punching left."

And apropos of a lot of housing discourse too.

apropos of today's discourse on public goods, I've long wanted to write a satirical 'I support free on-street public parking. Just not for luxury cars' piece but have never gotten around to it

This is a very good & thorough compilation of the evidence. I still think that the political power of Georgetown colored everyone's actions & the outcome. "Georgetown successfully fought to keep Metro out" is a true statement, even though other factors pushed the planners in the same direction.

While National Park Service spent 7 years slow-walking studies of fixes to a badly corroded sewer pipe until it burst in January, they & other agencies rushed through an OK for toll lanes through the same park that will do vastly more harm if built. www.washingtonpost.com/investigatio...

This is exactly the reason FHWA & MUTCD tell you not to mark crosswalks on high-speed multilane highways. There are more crashes on marked crosswalks than unmarked crosswalks.

Fire hydrant in the sidewalk? It's ok, you can just go around. Your trip isn't important anyway; if it were, you'd be in a car. Plus the fire hydrant has to go somewhere, and it's not like we can put it in the road, that would be dangerous!

Great article recalling the enactment of the Clean Air Act, featuring MoCo's Leon Billings who later became a state delegate from Kensington. Leon's amazing library of Congressional hearings on pollution back to the 1930s was a great help to my research. [gift link] www.nytimes.com/2026/03/28/c...

Here's a poll for all the blueskiers who tell Democrats not to talk about the economy. (And, yes, the talk needs to be a big attack on inequality, not pro-business pablum.) marylandmatters.org/2026/03/31/p...

An unregulated market will underprice retail parking. It makes economic sense for a store owner to make non-drivers subsidize drivers (effectively charge non-drivers higher prices) because the drivers have easy access to more stores, creating more competition for their business.

Read this thread -- the bait and switch being pulled around the new football stadium at RFK is already beginning!

This extremism - and not repression - is the main reason why anti-Israel demos on campus have faded away. Demo organizers now face a choice: either split their base by explicitly opposing antisemitism & ethnic cleansing of Jews, or drive away wider support by allowing such slogans. 3/3

This fish guy gives every sign of being a paid foreign troll. Not just the stilted (and in this post worse) English. His defenses of China are the official domestic ones, not the tankie ones. Even more to the point, US tankies are never calm & polite; irony & anger are intrinsic to their politics.

Here's a big point that I haven't seen addressed by any BRT advocate. Before boarding a center-running BRT, riders must wait through the signal cycle on 2 legs of a round trip. On a curb-running bus, only 1 leg. Plus 2 bus lanes up crossing time. 150-sec cycle, 10-sec walk phase => 39 sec/trip 1/2

You don't understand. The suburban homeowner has an inalienable right to an empty curb space in front of their house. It's essential to maintain their social standing and that of their neighborhood. It's what Thorsten Veblen called "conspicuous consumption" or "conspicuous waste."

After the Biden auto-pen thing, Trump better sign every dollar bill himself

Important finding in @ggwash.org's poll of MoCo Democrats. Among candidates, housing issue cuts across moderate/progressive divide & leading anti-housing candidates claim to be progressives. Yet voters divide sharply btw pro-housing "very liberal" & anti-housing moderates. ggwash.org/view/102850/...

Signaling weaknesss! US stopping attacks without opening the Strait would be an IRGC victory. "Rubio discussed with G7 foreign ministers the possibility that Iran, even after the conflict ends, could try to impose shipping tolls through the Strait of Hormuz." www.reuters.com/world/asia-p...

Much needed is at least a brief bio of Hugh Pomeroy, the inventor of large-lot (acre plus) zoning. He went on to be Executive Director of 1 of the 2 predecessor organizations of the American Planning Association. A forgotten name but one of the most influential figures in the history of US land use.

Happy birthday to the Washington Metro, which opened 50 years ago today with service on 4.6 mi of Red Line between Rhode Is. Ave & Farragut N. System now serves 130 mi. The DC Metro shows that, with good planning & enough investment, the public sector can succeed & build something extraordinary.

Probably the stupidest privatization of all time was the US selling off its helium reserve under the Helium Privatization Act of 1996. Physicists objected strongly but were ignored & the bill went through Congress unanimously. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationa...

Even more impressive than the train itself are the cheers that greeted it. You won't see this for cars on a new highway!

Poll of MoCo Democratic primary voters on housing finds giant differences by age, homeownership & politics. Renters, under-45s & "very liberal" voters strongly yimby, over-45s & homeowners lean nimby, moderates overwhelmingly nimby. ggwash.org/view/102850/...

As Uber Eats & Doordash raise their fees, restaurants have started using a higher-priced menu for online delivery orders. Then it's cheaper to call the restaurant & pick it up yourself. www.thebanner.com/culture/food...

The DC Streetcar: Victim of bad politics, not bad planning. ggwash.org/view/99934/b...