I'm serving as a guest editor of a Cityscape Symposium on pro-housing reforms with Nathan Bossie and Leah Lozier of HUD. We're interested in studies that examine the effectiveness of policy changes in: ✅ zoning ✅ permit processes ✅ building codes ✅ impact fees ✅ housing finance

I got PCA as my top match, but ELCA i was raised in was 2nd

Lite beer is the same thing Michael describes Fro Yo as in The Good Place - the very human choice to make a thing worse so you can have more of it

Single-family, starter homes, duplexes, triplexes, condos, apartments, special needs housing – we need more all across the state. It’s going to take all of us coming together to solve North Carolina’s housing challenges.

Carolinas ascendency

this is the most millennial dad joke ever conceived

I'd like to see Comey, Rice, and Powell ask for reparations

Today I signed an executive order directing a whole-of-government approach and hired a Senior Advisor for Housing Policy to lead this work to make more homes of all types more accessible and affordable for all North Carolinians.

People want to live in North Carolina, and our housing market is not keeping up. We can and must do more to increase housing supply and strengthen the construction workforce that will build it.

Janneke Ratcliffe to lead new initiative in NC to boost housing supply and affordability www.wral.com/news/local/n...

MetLife decline to give me life insurance because of sleep apnea, which there is only a record of because I treat it using a CPAP

Its different than the book but both are great and its good to have kids movies enjoyable for adults. Admittedly having my own sheep adds to the enjoyment.

" When a city like Greensboro is cracked into multiple districts, it increases the odds that Greensboro will be overrepresented at the NCCSM and that rural people and places may be drawn out of the opportunity to attend one of the best high schools in America."

Say what you like about money launderers, but they are -- through vape shops, candy stores, barbers, etc -- perhaps the only segment of society still deeply committed to expanding their presence in our town centres. bsky.app/profile/pick...

".. Federal government payrolls lowest since May 1966." - Schwab #NFP

I am going to ireland this summer and was worried about driving on the opposite side of the road but now mostly worried about the cost of gas. Fortunately its advertised in liters instead of gallons to it looks cheaper.

Sabato’s Crystal Ball moving #nc11 from likely to lean Republican #ncpol centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/...

I wish this meant as of March and September instead of the more likely December and June (ie winter and summer holiday months)

State universities setting up campuses in DC is further example of the nationalization of politics and policy, and how national capitals swell in importance under autocratic, personalist regimes. In this essay... www.unc.edu/posts/2026/0...

More canned drinks should use nitrogen

Some useful public speaking tips from Freud here.

I love a story involving property record research

New HUD research funding opportunity: www.grants.gov/search-resul... Topics of interest include direct rental assistance, property tax alternatives, and regulatory barriers to housing construction.

25% of non-homeowners in the US expect to buy a home in the next five years. That's the lowest percentage since @gallup.com started asking that question in 2013. news.gallup.com/poll/708995/...

A (con't): ...lots of benefits to the least well-off. I don't think the pandemic inflation came from over-weighting employment side of the mandate. It was a global shock related to closing/reopening.

Via Sportsnet

NY Post: "residents and critics" say Asheville is actually bad. Resident: the last Republican city council member Critic: the current Republican candidate for US Senate Quite a diverse set of voices the NY Post found for this story.

In the chaotic aftermath of Helene, an illegal mined popped up along the Nolichucky River and just kept going even after being discovered

GSEs and FHA announcing they will be accepted Vantage credit scores. This will have different impacts by loan type.

I would love to see a state legislature adopt proportional representation *within* US House districts (e.g., X state legislators for every US House district). That gives the House member a council of state representatives across political lines within their own district to consult (1/2)

A lot of public service work is task specific, i.e. there is not a big private market for it. So one logic for civil service protections to recruit and retain people who see it has their career, and invest in improving their expertise. Harder to do that now. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Keeping track of the plethora of streaming services is annoying, but it is SO MUCH WORSE when the same channel has different services. So while I have the Disney+Hulu+ESPN bundle and the Bruins game is on ESPN, I can't actually watch the game with my subscription.

This is so incoherent that it only makes sense as a billionaires reactionary brain farts. Eg: public employees are not “priests” and are over compensated. Reality: they are underpaid and have been serially abused. Next point, people engaging in public life (read: DOGE, Palantir) deserve our grace.

“Working with Madison was like babysitting a TikTok influencer who thought he was Winston Churchill." The quotes in this story are quite something...#ncpol www.notus.org/2026-electio...

I've seen this paper presented and have a few general complaints about appraisal bias research, not necessarily unique to this paper: 🧵

My dad was a naval supply officer and has a crazy story of being given a gun and 2 marine escorts to drive through Beirut in 1983 in order to buy cases of Coke

Hegseth on an AI video of Jesus shared by Iran: "As far as a video like that, of course that's disgusting. Iran says a lot of things in the propaganda space based on complete lies."

Here is an easy solution: Food stains are humiliating, as they suggest you're a little baby who can't feed themselves. Oil stains, such as those you'd get from working on your car, suggest you're tough, independent, and skilled. Thus, simply cover your food stains with used motor oil.

another example of the confusion from Pulte making himself GSE chair. He fired workers after accusing them without evidence of fraud in the company's charitable donation program. That sounds like an internal matter for a nominally private company. But he gets legal immunity as a federal employee.

Its not surprising to have a racist Jim Crow law still on the books, it is surprising that multiple attempts to remove it have failed.

The Roman/Byzantine empire, the Catholic Church, the British Empire... Western civilization loves bureaucracies

Corporate profits: all-time high. Consumer sentiment: all-time low. This is one reason why both can be true: (via MetLife)

Those lions are really giving me Gozer The Gozerian's terror dogs, Zulu and Vinz Clortho, vibes.

Win I win the space race in Civilization

It seems like one option for trump would be to keep fighting until the 60 day window under the War Powers Act expires and then say Democrats are stopping him from opening thr strait by not approving more fighting.

Hot take: the Old Testament is important context for Christians, but what separates them as a religion are the teachings of Jesus. You need to find some New Testament citations to support your views if you want to call yourself a Christian.