wow this will be great for the $5 in trade we do with North Macedonia

real, "sir, this is a Wendy's" moment here

in the imagination of the court system the median british person would see a carton labeled "OATLY! Full Fat Oat Milk! No Dairy!" and go "me no understand? how cow make oat?" www.theguardian.com/business/202...

US construction job growth is finally picking up a bit, with the sector adding 33k jobs in January, but total job gains over the last year remain extremely slow as residential construction has lost roughly 40k jobs

A broad measure of US underemployment—including the formally unemployed plus people who want a job but aren't in the labor force or who are working part-time but want a full-time job—is down from its November high of 11% but has still risen from 9.6% to 10.3% over the last year

The US has lost roughly 82k manufacturing jobs over the last year—though it posted its first monthly gain since November 2024 in January Wood, electronics, and chemicals are the biggest losers, though almost no subsectors are doing well

Unsurprisingly, Trump's immigration crackdown is still not delivering labor market improvements for the US-born Over the last year, native-born unemployment is up from 4.3% to 4.7% while native-born employment has decreased

The US continues losing blue-collar jobs—year-on-year job losses have hit 170k as manufacturing, transportation, & mining industries lose jobs at a rapid pace while growth in construction remains low

The US tech sector continues losing jobs—overall, employment decreased by 8k last month and is down 45k over the last year That's not as bad as the worst of the 2024 tech-cession, but extremely bad compared to the 2022 boom or even pre-2020 norms

Federal government employment is down 324k since the start of 2025 amidst DOGE cuts—that's more than 10% of the Federal workforce The large drop in October was caused by many workers who had been on deferred resignation becoming officially unemployed

The regular annual benchmark revisions to jobs data released today cut roughly 1M from US payroll estimates, revealing a slower pace of job growth throughout 2024 and 2025

NEW US JOBS DATA: Non-farm Payrolls: +130k Unemployment Rate: 4.3% (-0.1%) Prime Age (25-54) Employment-Population Ratio: 80.9% (+0.2%) Average Hourly Earnings: +0.4% Annual Benchmark Revisions: -898k

NEW from me: Data center construction is up 300% since 2022. Imports of Taiwanese electronics are up 670%. Total US computer & software investment has shot up to $1T/yr American companies are making an unprecedentedly large gamble on the success of AI 🧵 www.apricitas.io/p/americas-1...

Oren Cass on Jon Stewart this shit was made in a lab to piss me off specifically

NEW from me: Data center construction is up 300% since 2022. Imports of Taiwanese electronics are up 670%. Total US computer & software investment has shot up to $1T/yr American companies are making an unprecedentedly large gamble on the success of AI 🧵 www.apricitas.io/p/americas-1...

"construction jobs are way up" [EXTREMELY LOUD INCORRECT BUZZER]

for context this is like if Trump started polling +10 on his handling of inflation next year. Carney just completely neutered what was once one of the Liberals’ weakest issues

book haul, “there was a used book popup near my apartment” edition

dread it. run from it. agglomeration effects come for your antiwoke AI company all the same www.geekwire.com/2026/elon-mu...

core part of the ostensible economic justification for mass deportation was that Americans would rush in to take all the jobs immigrants left, but now unemployment rates for native born Americans are rising and the admin is sending people out to do damage control

who told him about the Gordie Howe bridge. I don’t buy that he just found this out randomly. I smell the Moroun family in this tweet

sure why not 10,0000% if we're just making up numbers

oh yeah we’re all feeling the benign

finally, a place for me to dump all the posts I get too anxious to hit send on

I get that they feel the need to shovel money into capex and now desperately need some offsetting revenue source but even as a pure business decision this seems wrong to me, for the same reason shoving ads into Microsoft Word is wrong. are you building a Serious Work Product or not?

1/3 of Boston & Cambridge households are car-free—among the highest rates for major US cities Those households are concentrated near T stations, especially downtown, along the Heath St & Boston College branches of the Green Line, and in parts of Cambridge served by the Red Line

With the most robust rail network in the American Midwest, Chicago has the 2nd largest number of car-free households of any metro area (behind only NYC) Most of those households live around the L, especially the Red Line and western parts of the Blue & Green Lines

STOP NAMING THINGS AFTER LORD OF THE RINGS. READ ANOTHER BOOK

There's plenty of data that waymo is safer than average US drivers But even ignoring that, just think—waymo does 500k trips/week now, if they had were even close to the crash rate of normal drivers they'd be killing a pedestrian like every other week www.understandingai.org/p/human-driv...

the fact that early-stage automated vehicles that still occasionally require remote operation assistance are like several orders of magnitude safer than the average American driver should be the real wakeup call here, not the idea that these vehicles still sometimes need remote operation assistance

As the labor market slows, 17 major metros are losing jobs in data released today Fastest Growth: Charlotte (2.7%), SLC (1.8%), Raleigh (1.3%), Columbus (1.2%), Philadelphia (1.2%) Slowest: DC (-1.6%), Hampton Roads (-1.3%), Milwaukee (-.9%), Las Vegas (-.7%), Portland (-.5%)

NEW CANADIAN JOBS DATA: Employment Growth: -25k Unemployment Rate: 6.5% (-0.4%) Prime Age (25-54) Employment Rate: 83.3% (-0.1%) Employment Level: 21.1M

Today we have US transit data for all of 2025, & DC's WMATA was officially the fastest-growing major US agency, with ridership up 8.7%! The LIRR (NY, 6.4%), King County Metro (Seattle, +6.5%) & SEPTA (Philly, +4.7%) performed well, while LA Metro & NJTransit lost riders🧵

amazon is gonna spend roughly the GDP of Qatar on data centers this year lol

1 dollar still equals 1 dollar tho

google is gonna spend the GDP of morocco on data centers this year lol

Gotta love DC area thrift stores

There no logic, people like Helen just have careers backfilling justifications for xenophobia. Immigrant groups that underperform US-born are lazy morons who don’t deserve to be here, those who over perform are ruthless strivers destroying valuable White Ways of Knowing & Doing. There’s no winning

36% of DC households don't have a car—the highest rate of any major county outside NYC Those car-free households are concentrated near metro stops, especially between Dupont, Foggy Bottom, & McPherson. Green line stops like Columbia Heights, Navy Yard, & Anacostia also stand out

Donald Trump’s favorite economic policy was when he got to sign his name on the stimulus checks during early COVID and he keeps trying to recreate that high through more and more ridiculous schemes

Can international institutions resist rising populism? "Global Governance Under Fire" by Carnegie & Clark shows they aren't passive forums but active (if small) agents capable of sidelining/appeasing populist leaders/constituents to achieve their goals My review: www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

Trump says he's cutting tariffs on Indian imports from 25% to 18% (for the record they're currently 50%, unclear if he's removing the additional 25% tariff for purchasing Russian oil or just reducing the reciprocal tariffs, waiting for the executive order)

US warehouse construction continues inching down to some of the lowest levels since the early pandemic, now 35% from its early-2023 peaks amidst a general industry pullback, higher goods prices, and weakness in US manufacturing.

Carney + 40 in Quebec lmao

EU GDP flash estimates are in today—the EU grew 1.4% over last year, Eurozone 1.3% Fastest: Ireland (6.7%, mostly pharma export), Spain (2.6%), Lithuania (2.5%), Czechia (2.4%), Portugal (1.9%) Slowest: Finland (-.1%), Germany (.4%), Hungary (.5%), Austria (.7%), Italy (.8%)

EU unemployment rates held steady at 6.3% in data released this morning, while Eurozone employment fell slightly to 5.9% Czechia (3.1%), Malta (3.2%), & Poland (3.2%) had the lowest unemployment rates, while Finland (10.3%), Spain (10%) & Sweden (8.8%) had the highest

Canadian GDP was functionally flat in monthly data released this morning, technically shrinking 0.02% compared to October We're still waiting for December data, but the Canadian economy looks to end 2025 with extremely little growth since the beginning of the year

Godspeed to whoever at Bombardier PR/gov relations has to skip dinner with the spouse and kids to deal with this nightmare today

alright fine I'll watch the gay hockey show

another book haul, it’s been too long since the last book haul edition