Okay now that I've celebrated Mamdani's win, and now that it looks unlikely he'll face any real trouble in the general, I'm going to re-up my concerns about his free bus proposal and cross my fingers that he gets some good advice as mayor. publiccomment.blog/p/no-such-th...

Great post from @dpearsonphl.bsky.social

I think the closest thing to this is the Philadelphia @inquirer.com

Hilariously on-the-nose paragraph about a Cambridge NIMBY: white professor of African art history uses ChatGPT to analyze the city’s demographics if you exclude…uh…any young adult affiliated with a university (but of course not the professors like her) www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

BREAKING: Trump administration's effort to stop NYC's congestion pricing is blocked, as Judge Lewis Liman, a Trump appointee, issues a 109-page opinion granting a preliminary injunction to the challengers defending the congestion pricing program. Opinion: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

People love to claim that Americans just don't want to ride trains but even the inadequate service offered by Amtrak is super popular.

City Council and local Democrats are leaving Philadelphians vulnerable to protect a political ally. Even worse, their support for Bilal undermines their criticism of the President at a time when we cannot afford hypocrisy. www.inquirer.com/opinion/edit...

There were no drones, and (I think) the government was nervous about telling the public that given the number of politicians who lost their minds to drone delusion. reason.com/2025/05/09/w...

Ken Burns is doing a Nimby college town circuit!

If you did not get to purchase a fresh soft pretzel right in your classroom for recess in grade school, I’m sorry.

Update: Commonwealth Ct has ordered judicial candidate Michael Huff removed from the primary ballot. TL;DR: It was his burden to prove that he no longer intended Bala Cynwyd to be his permanent home, and the Court did not find his testimony credible that he had fully moved to Phl & intended to stay.

1. The Philadelphia Inquirer isn't owned by a cowardly and conflicted billionaire, but a nonprofit foundation. In 2024, we tackled the "The Trump Threat" of authoritarianism head on, with more than 40 hard-hitting editorials. Many of you took notice, and now, so did the prestigious Poynter Institute

Instead of forcing devastating cuts on the system, Harrisburg Republicans should be crowing about how their past efforts have kept SEPTA from seeing the same level of cost inflation as similar transit agencies. www.inquirer.com/opinion/comm...

Too many Americans lose their driver's licenses b/c of debt (which doesn't affect other people's safety) and too few b/c of reckless driving (which absolutely does).

Good morning from … {checks notes} … the Supreme Court of the United States

Constituents to Chuck Grassley: "Are you bringing back that guy from El Salvador?" Senior Citizen: “If I get an order to pay a ticket to pay $1200 and I just say ‘no’, does that stand up? Because he just got an order from the Supreme Court and he just said ‘screw it’” “I’M PISSED!”

I can’t believe I’ve sunk a decade of my life into covering this asshole, I wanted to do other things like I’ve never gotten back into video games

Even (especially) on TikTok they know that norms around bus fare have broken down

State Rep. Morgan Cephas is right. “We have to invest in each other in order for Pennsylvania to thrive” www.inquirer.com/transportati...

This man is a rabid dog and I love him

So this is how the National Security Council works now.

I am rooting for this because to hell with Strom Thurmond.

Elon doesn't have proper American values. Maybe in his culture it is acceptable to father children on multiple women and deprive nearly all of them of your fatherly presence, but in this country we call that behavior shameful, or at least we used to.

A good research project to do is to tally up how many housing units get collectively removed between ZBA, Historical Commission, and RCO meetings across the city in a year. Almost certain this tallies up to 3-400 at least

Let me guess, they’re expressing concerns in private.

damn, oil companies are telling the dallas fed that trump is killing them www.dallasfed.org/research/sur...

The entire administration is basically daring Goldberg to release the entire chat (which he very much should)

When Wanamaker’s opened in 1876, the Philadelphia Times wrote shoppers would be “struck dumb with astonishment.” That’s how I felt when my family visited on the store’s last day. #longreads defector.com/one-last-tri...

Holy shit: the weirdo running Social Security added administrative burdens to service delivery in Maine after its Governor disagreed with Trump over trans athletes. The idea that public services should be provided consistently and honestly seems beyond them. www.nytimes.com/2025/03/24/u...

DOGE/SSA marked this person dead and *removed his savings from his bank account,* cancelled his social security and Medicare. #seattle https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/heres-a-dead-person-on-social-security-in-seattle-with-plenty-to-say/

Charles Darwin to Harvard’s Asa Gray, April 19, 1865: (1) I congratulate you on Lee’s surrender (2) I always thought that the destruction of Slavery would be worth even a dozen years war (3) How could the wind fertilize “reciprocally dimorphic” flowers like Primula? www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter

"Hello darkness, my old friend..."

Philadelphia City Council held up a bill allowing for speed cameras near schools today, basically out of the blue. The Councilmember who drove the action rattled off a bunch of mistruths and nonsense before doing so. Not a great way to start the week.

Adopting the Gov's proposal to cap cyber charters seems like the easiest way to free up money for other educational priorities. www.spotlightpa.org/news/2025/03...

GOP Rep. Don Bacon: "Why is a White House official, that's not even elected, why is that person belittling the Polish foreign minister? It's not appropriate. It's not right. We need more discipline in the White House."

My version of a protest on Twitter is that I always always always put the link in the tweet. I know that Elon throttles traffic bc he hates out-linking. I don't care! There to share info, not get clout likes on a site that's half bots.

the markets really said short $BOER today

In seeing reactions to Ezra’s column and book, it’s interesting to see some people on this site reduce the conclusions of Transit Cost Project’s work to “hire more in-house staff.” That may be some of it, but…their reports are very long (and still being written), and identify many issues beyond that

Meanwhile in the real world, Sikorski is a former AEI fellow.

Police officer in Vermont who struck and killed a bicyclist with his vehicle had a Matt Walsh anti-trans youtube video playing on his tablet at the time of the crash. vtdigger.org/2025/03/07/s...

A group of labor unions are asking a federal court for an emergency order to stop Elon Musk ‘s Department of Government Efficiency from accessing the sensitive Social Security data of millions of Americans www.thebaltimorebanner.com/national/elo...

US DOT Secretary Sean Duffy pens a letter to DC Mayor Bowser apparently asking her to "address" murals within the road right of way, seemingly on the basis of the claim that these murals are causing pedestrian safety problems [there is no evidence for that claim]. ops.fhwa.dot.gov/memorandum/D...

The stupidity… “photos seemed to be flagged for removal simply because their file included the word ”gay,” including service members with that last name and an image of the B-29 Enola Gay, which dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, during World War II” apnews.com/article/dei-...