The Emperor is Naked

Truth is like water...

[The Emperor is Naked @Pick6TrixiePix]

@txsalth2o @AlexForbesOps Growing up the cake was the only item outsourced but my aunt worked at a bakery. Parties were hosted at home.

[Paula Pant @AffordAnything]

Let's lay out the math:

You own an NYC apartment that's been occupied by the same tenant for 30 years. It's rent-stabilized, so the tenant is paying substantially under market rate.

The tenant moves out / passes away, and legally, you're required to invest $100k into lead abatement, wiring, asbestos, etc., to bring the unit to code before you re-lease it to the next tenant.

But because of a 2019 law called the HSTPA (Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act), you can't raise the rent enough to cover the renovation costs.

You go to the bank to ask for a renovation loan. They say, "Can you pay it back?" You say, honestly, "No." They say "Denied," as they should.

Your only other option would be to pay cash out-of-pocket if you happen to have that kind of money laying around.

Your financial advisor says, "Why wouldn't you just put that money into T-bills, or TIPS, or long-term Treasuries? Or heck, even a high-yield savings account? Or a CD?"

You run the math and realize all of the above would pay a higher return.

So it doesn't make sense to pay cash. You can't get approved for a loan. And you can't legally rent out the apartment without doing this renovation work.

So you leave the apartment vacant.

There are 57,421 rent-stabilized vacant units in NYC, according to the latest data, which was released in June 2026.

That's about a 16.18% increase over the previous year, when NYC had 49,426 vacant units.

That trend line is worrying. And it's about to get worse.

[Joe Colangelo @Itsjoeco]

Rather than muster the fortitude to remove sleeping vagrants from chairs, planners decided to not install chairs in the first place.

So you have aesthetically beautiful space that's functional equivalent of a city sidewalk.

And don't get me started on Amtrak boarding process.

[Walter Kirn @walterkirn]

Surveillance apparatus is always pointed down when it should be pointed up.

[Seán Ono Lennon @seanonolennon]

Many people trying to scare you will say ‘your chances of this bad thing happening have doubled!’

But they fail to mention that the double was from 0.0001% to 0.0002%.

You still have almost zero chance of that thing happening.

Don’t be fooled!

[Walter Kirn @walterkirn]

The problem isn't that surveillance tech can fall into the wrong hands.

The problem is that touching it can turn most any hands into the wrong hands.

What we need are unceasing retellings of basic fairy tales. We're not just getting stupid, we're getting wolfboy precivilized.

[The Emperor is Naked @Pick6TrixiePix]

@EmilyVBurns The Secret Garden, Stuart Little.

[Thomas Massie @RepThomasMassie]

I’ll soon be introducing a bill to withhold all federal funding for cameras used to track American citizens.

[𝗦𝗵𝗼𝘄 𝗠𝗲 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗗𝗮𝘁𝗮 @txsalth2o]

@MrDigit this is what happens to every product the government subsidizes

[The Emperor is Naked @Pick6TrixiePix]

@ManhattanInst @HMDatMI I now call them vagrants. Among the problems we now have is that no one in urban areas under age 50 remembers a time when there weren't vagrants all over most central business districts.

[The Emperor is Naked @Pick6TrixiePix]

@JohnnyWalsh__ I lived or worked in Philly from 1986-2007. It was known as the Broad Street Line or sometimes just the subway. Market Frankford was the El.

[FischerKing @FischerKing64]

Jefferson in an 1821 letter: ‘I am sensible of the inroads daily by the federal, into the jurisdiction…of the State governments…The judiciary branch is the instrument which, working by gravity, without intermission, is to press us at last into one consolidated mass.’

[The Emperor is Naked @Pick6TrixiePix]

@BenNollWeather It’s called August…nothing to see here…

[The Emperor is Naked @Pick6TrixiePix]

@EmilyVBurns 💯

[Bryan Beal 🎧 @bryanrbeal]

Go to any ER in America and look at the 12 hour wait and ask yourself: “what if this was totally free for everyone all the time.”

[𝗦𝗵𝗼𝘄 𝗠𝗲 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗗𝗮𝘁𝗮 @txsalth2o]

The year is 1990

It’s a random Wednesday in August.

You wake up at dawn, woof down some peanut butter & honey in a tortilla, strap your surfboard in your bike rack, and head to your friend’s house.

You knock on the door and he rolls out, half awake with a pop-tart in hand (he’a rich) grabs his board and bike and you ride the 4 miles to the ocean.

You drop your belonging on the shore and spend 6 hours getting absolutely trashed by waves you have no business trying to surf.

Finally succumbing to exhaustion and dehydration, with nothing but the $3.00 you earned from turning in empty soda cans waiting for you in your shoes on the sand, you return to your unlocked bikes, and head to Juanita’s.

Leaning your bikes against the stucco wall of the small shack, you purchase a burrito for $2.68, you drink water because it’s free. The rest of the patrons are laborers and contractors, none speaking English.

The bike ride home seems daunting, 4 miles and mostly uphill.

At the payphone outside you make a collect call. When told to state your name at the tone you blurt with as much speed as possible, “pick us up at Juanita’s” Mom isn’t home, so sunburnt, salty and sandy, with that lone burrito to fuel you, you hop on your bikes and begin the long ride home.

36 years later Juanita’s still stands, but now its been discovered by all the people from LA and Orange County that infest that once quiet and quirky beach town.

Visiting home you consider going to Juanita’s for lunch, but now that burrito is $14, so it’s a splurge, a special treat. With a full time job and a nice home you think back to those days 30 years ago and realize that you may have more money, but back then- when your dad was unemployed and you turned in cans for coins, you were richer than you are today.

That’s what the burrito debate is about.

[AJ Kay @AJKayWriter]

1. Most men are not predators.

We still keep ALL of them out of women’s private spaces because we can’t know which ones are predators.

This is true irrespective of whether they wear pants or skirts.

2. If the skirts some men wear make them feel vulnerable in men’s rooms, they can opt out of wearing skirts.

Women cannot opt out of their bodies.

[The Emperor is Naked @Pick6TrixiePix]

@Kiradavis This had been going on for quite some time.

[The Emperor is Naked @Pick6TrixiePix]

@chrisbriem Having THE Ohio State University in Columbus doesn't hurt.

[Justine Bateman @JustineBateman]

We CA citizens sure would like you to get back that ~$30B you threw out the window to fraudsters during the shutdown. And the ~$24B in state homeless "solution" spend that resulted in nothing. And the ~$15B to build a high-speed train track that gave us no track at all.
You are financially irresponsible and if I were your parent, I would not allow you to have one more cent until you cleaned up your own budget and demonstrated you were someone worthy of handling money.