Damned Architect

🇺🇸 Architect, NYC native, Old-School Liberal and Feminist, anti-BS (MAGA, Successor Ideology, etc.) Woman = Adult Human Female, no pronouns in bio

[Damned Architect @darianfernando]

@Leslieoo7 @leonalioness6 Reminds me of the time in 2010 that a young black man in The Bronx had his hands on my iPhone and I gave him $20 for it. He was returning it to me after I lost it on the subway – I was sorry I didn’t have more of a reward for him! There are good people everywhere for sure 😊

[RodeoProfessor @RodeoProfessor]

I see we are doing the “zoomers are anti social weirdos” discourse again. Well, I was recently talking to some zoomer students who were laughing at a 60s hippy lib prof who was scolding them for not “working a season or two as a Warren Miller ski bum” like he did in the 70s. The connections he made there launched a career for him in western tourism and business. The reason they were laughing was because in their eyes, that door was closed for them, despite having the interest and the ability to go and work those jobs for a similar career path.

I wanted to look into who exactly was responsible for the decision to replace American kids at Vail and Park City with J-1 labor from Argentina. Obvious answers like Vail Mountain are to blame of course, but something surprising to me was that American companies cannot sponsor J-1s on their own, they need to do this through a pass through NGO approved by the State Department as a type of “cultural exchange” for students (not our students, foreigner students).

There are two main NGOs that do this for Rocky Mountain skiing and both of their CEOs make well over a million a year keeping your kid from these seasonal jobs while claiming American kids just don’t want to work, and need more diversity in ski towns (look at their promotional material if you don’t believe me). The truth is the pay is barely enough to cover resort dorm housing, so the big resorts barely enable young workers to make rent.

The two that bring in the most J-1s to my local resorts are USE and PIEE. The Council on International Educational Exchange and the Universal Student Exchange. USE is headed by a Peruvian CEO Rafael Espinoza. The other group is headed by James P. Pellow who has an EdD (lol). These guys and their lobbyists benefit from a low paid foreign underclass of workers staffing ski resorts. Their organizations (plus the State Department) are responsible for taking away “ski bum” jobs from American teenagers under the guise of cross cultural exchange.

The main lobby group that advocates day and night to keep your kids out of these jobs is the National Ski Areas Association. They lobby Congress, the State Dept, and Lawmakes to make sure the j-1s flow. Their materials claim that diversification and multi culture exchanges are much needed in ski areas! Vail Resorts and Powdr corp partners closely with USE and CIEE to keep their cheap foreign labor flowing. I never voted for any of this, zoomers surely did not, zoomers are being told they’re weirdos for not working these gigs, but good luck getting rid of any of this system as this is probably the first time you’ve heard of these groups.

[𐡀 @Xyleniqq]

My grandma has been catfishing scammers for six months and she's weirdly good at it.

Okay so my grandma is 74 and lives alone since my grandpa died. We got her an iPad last year so she could FaceTime with the grandkids and she's become dangerously online.

She got one of those typical scam messages like two months ago. The "Hey beautiful, I'm a soldier stationed overseas, let's get to know each other" type thing. We've all told her about these scams.

But instead of blocking him, she decided to "play along and waste his time so he can't scam real victims."

Her words.

So she's been talking to "Raymond," who claims to be a 58 year-old Army medic stationed in Syria (red flag central). But my grandma has created an entire fake persona. She told him her name is Carolyn (it's Janet), she's 62 (she's 74), and she owns a "successful cupcake business" (she's retired from accounting and once burned brownies so bad we had to replace the pan).

She sends him stock photos of cupcakes from Google Images. He sends her clearly stolen photos of some random handsome dude in fatigues.

Here's where it gets weird: she's actually doing research. She watches YouTube videos about common scam tactics. She's in a Facebook group about scambaiting. She has a NOTEBOOK where she tracks details of their conversations so she doesn't slip up.

"Raymond" recently tried to move to the "I need money for a phone to call you" phase and my grandma strung him along for THREE WEEKS with excuses. "Oh the bank was closed." "My account is frozen, something about taxes." "I sent it but maybe it went to the wrong place?"

She's never sent him a cent, obviously. She's just wasting his time.

The family is divided on this. My mom thinks it's hilarious. My aunt thinks grandma's losing it and this is early dementia (it's not, she's sharp as ever). My uncle thinks she's going to accidentally get doxxed.

But grandma is having the time of her life. She's started messing with two other scammers. One thinks she's a wealthy widow in Miami. Another thinks she's a former pageant queen.

She showed me her notebook last week and it's incredibly detailed. Different backstories, different names, relationship timelines. She's put more effort into this than I put into my actual job.

I asked her why she doesn't just block them and she said, "Every minute they're talking to me is a minute they're not stealing some poor lonely person's retirement money."

Which is kind of sweet? In a chaotic way?

Anyway "Raymond" is getting frustrated because she won't send money and keeps changing the subject to cupcake recipes. I think he's about to give up.

Grandma's already got her eye on a new scammer who claims to be a widowed oil rig worker. She's workshopping a new persona. Thinking about being a "former Vegas showgirl."

I've stopped trying to talk her out of it. This is her retirement hobby now.

[Damned Architect @darianfernando]

@MW42546506 @EliNorthrup @MarkRuffalo He can plant a seed of 500k and get 199 more rich folks to match his gift! It won’t be too big an impact for him 😃

Why 100 million? I forgot to mention the 50 million to actually purchase the church, plus a contingency

[Batya Ungar-Sargon @bungarsargon]

In a new poll, Haley Stevens is cleaning Abdul el Sayed's clock with working class voters—by nearly 20 points. And she's ahead with Black voters by 46 points (!). This is the same trend we've seen with all the DSA candidates. Socialism by and for white elites.

[Emma Camp @emmma_camp_]

What can a vintage refrigerator tell us about capitalism? Quite a lot, actually!

Find out more in my latest for @WSJFreeEx

[Christina Smyth @christinaasmyth]

Eighteen days since my resignation under protest from the Rent Guidelines Board.

Eighteen days since an unprecedented two-year rent freeze on nearly one million rent stabilized apartments.

In my resignation letter, I said this outcome was predetermined. I am not asking anyone to take that on faith. Here is what the record shows.

On May 21, 2026, the Mayor’s Office of Equity and Racial Justice testified before the Board.

To my knowledge, no mayoral office had ever done so.

MOERJ presented its “True Cost of Living” report. By its own description, the report was built by microsimulation.

No one was surveyed for it recently.

Here is what the report is based on:

The data is from 2018.

Underlying survey: 2018 American Community Survey, projected to 2022 by computer simulation.

The median rents are pulled from 2023, while including the majority of non stabilized market rents which inflates the median housing cost by almost 50%, health premiums from 2024 (and the report includes employer paid health costs as if they are a cost borne by the employee), caregiver wages from 2023 — all deflated backward to 2022.

Examine this with clear eyes, a report used as justification for a multi year rent freeze has zero observations from the last four years, yet is presented to the specific dollar: $159,197.

This is the evidence placed before a Board setting rent adjustments for 2026.

I asked MOERJ directly why the Administration is not enrolling more seniors and disabled New Yorkers in SCRIE and DRIE, the programs that actually freezes rent for the people who need it most.

The income cap to qualify is $50,000. Albany has not touched the threshold since 2014.

There was no meaningful answer from MOERJ.

I asked why if the report simultaneously credits “stabilized housing” as a government benefit lifting families over the threshold, the government refuses to pay for it like every other government program. Again, no response.

Compare it to the Board’s own staff research this cycle.

The 2026 PIOC shows insurance up 10.5% in one year and 99.9% over five years. Fuel and utilities came in at +11.0% against a staff projection of -4.4%, a 15.4-point miss.

Property taxes rose 2.6% citywide, but that average hides the buildings in trouble: +13.08% in Brooklyn Community Board 1, +10.92% in Brooklyn CB2, +9.38% in Bronx CB2. Net operating income in the older, outer-borough buildings that need the most help is falling.

So, the record now shows a Board that set aside its own staff data documenting rising costs, and centered a report built on eight-year-old survey data with no primary collection.

A freeze does not lower the cost of running a building. It does not pay for a boiler, a roof, or an elevator. The buildings absorb the loss until they can’t.

If you care about this city’s housing stock, stop watching from the sidelines. Show up. Testify. Follow the litigation now underway. Get involved.

We are the professionals in the room. Our collective experience matters, and we have to be heard.

[Anthony LaMesa @ajlamesa]

I have seen zero fare evasion in Stockholm. Similarly, in Mexican cities, I never see fare evasion. This is to say that cities both rich and not-so-rich have all figured out how to enforce fares. We just choose not to do what’s necessary in the United States and, as a result, our transit agencies struggle to preserve order and fund service.

[Damned Architect @darianfernando]

Banger of a tweet from ms wu over here 🫡

[Brianna Wu @BriannaWu]

If Free Palestine were to succeed and Israel were eliminated, it would be the worst thing that ever happened to the Palestinians.

First of all, let’s just be honest. Palestinians are not interested in democracy. They are Islamist extremists who openly executed and celebrated October 7. If they actually won, they would slaughter 7 millions Jews and 2 million Israeli Arabs and Palestinians they considered collaborators. That’s not remotely controversial if you’ve actually paid attention to what these groups say and do.

Then what? Gaza doesn’t have an economy. The West Bank is deeply dependent on Israel and international aid. They’ve spent generations fighting Israel instead of building the institutions of a functioning state. So after the evil Jews are finally gone, what exactly is the plan? What industry suddenly appears? What government? What economy?

The answer seems pretty obvious to me. Palestine would become an extremist Islamist state almost immediately. The violence wouldn’t stop. It would just find new targets.

Hezbollah would stop being an ally and start being a rival. Jordan would be next. Egypt would be next. Revolutionary movements don’t retire if they win, they look for another revolution.

People always ask why Egypt and Jordan don’t simply open their borders. They’ve already learned this lesson. Both have dealt with Palestinian militants destabilizing their own countries. They don’t want to do it again.

Then there’s the issue of how Palestinians don’t literally starve.

For decades Palestinians have survived on extraordinary levels of international aid. Does anyone seriously believe that continues after the destruction of Israel? I don’t. Western countries aren’t going to enthusiastically bankroll the state that just carried out one of the largest massacres in modern history. And Arab governments would have no political incentive to feed the people killing them (something Israel does.)

So what would the Palestinians be left with?

An impoverished Islamist state. Competing militias. Something much closer to Yemen than Singapore. Famine. Civil war. Religious extremism. The sane Palestinians trapped in the middle.

And for them, emigration would become impossible. Right now many countries accept Palestinian refugees because the story is they’re fleeing Israel. If Israel no longer exists because it was Holocausted, I have a hard time believing those same countries are going to welcome any refugees.

The uncomfortable truth is the current stalemate is almost certainly better for Palestinians than “victory.”

If you actually care about the future of the Palestinian people instead of chanting slogans, the only path that makes any sense is generations of deradicalization, building functioning institutions, developing a real economy, and eventually creating a state that defines itself by what it builds instead of what it wants to destroy.

[Damned Architect @darianfernando]

Pretty much dead on from LG

[nxthompson @nxthompson]

This is an amazing quote from Lindsey Graham about when he realized how politics works. https://t.co/sh04ahQOFq

[Gabe Einhorn @EinhornGabe]

Everyone blames landlords when a rent-stabilized building falls apart. Nobody talks about what happened in 2019.

New York passed the HSTPA, which eliminated vacancy decontrol. Before that law, when a stabilized apartment's rent crossed roughly $2,800/month and the tenant moved out, the landlord could bring it to market rate. That was the light at the end of the tunnel. The one mechanism that let owners reinvest.

Now that unit is stabilized forever. The rent stays capped no matter what. The Rent Guidelines Board approves increases of 2-3% per year on one-year leases. Meanwhile insurance premiums on some of these buildings doubled in three years.

So you've got owners collecting $1,400/month on apartments that cost $1,600/month to maintain. And we're surprised the hallway lights are out.

The law was supposed to protect tenants. It's destroying the buildings they live in.

[Hon. Vickie Paladino @VickieforNYC]

@cranbypaws_ "Culture is when everything is ugly and dirty"

The really funny thing is these same transplants and DSA goblins that fetishize urban decay wouldn't survive ten minutes in the New York of the 70s/80s that I actually grew up in -- and know better than to want to recreate it.

[Damned Architect @darianfernando]

@bobbyfijan I can’t wait! 😃

[Swann Marcus @SwannMarcus89]

Let me give you major issues that hurt the Democrats

1. Anti-law enforcement progressive attitudes. This is incredibly toxic among men and the working class. The Democrats have lost multiple swing state elections entirely because they said stupid shit about cops in 2020. They might wind up losing Michigan over the same issue this year because El-Sayed gets extremely crotchety when questioned about his comments on this issue and doesn't seem capable of answering questions on law enforcement in a satisfactory manner. Not only are men generally pretty supportive of law and order (not to sound too chauvinistic, but I think this is partly due to men actually having a better understanding of the omnipresent risk of male violence than women have, since we see the threat from the inside), but a lot of men are - get this - employed in law enforcement, meaning in addition to progressives having bad crime policy, they are actively threatening high-paying male jobs. Which segues nicely into issue number 2.

2. Anti-productivity ideology, which actively costs men employment. The left-wing of the Democratic Party in particular is entirely about redistribution and is actively opposed to work. A strong majority of men and non-college voters don't like lazy douchebags who treat working an office job like hell on Earth. On top of that, the Democratic anti-productivity beliefs (they're much more NIMBY, much more anti-mining, much more anti-productivity of every sort) specifically costs men and the working class jobs. Why should a construction worker ever vote Democratic when the Democrats oppose letting anyone build anything anywhere? Why should someone who works in energy vote Democratic when the Democrats are increasingly opposed to all forms of energy production, since they're anti-oil and anti-nuclear and are also opposed to the mines we need to build solar panels and wind turbines?

As they've moved left, the Democrats have become increasingly hostile (often for no discernible reason) to specifically non-college male forms of employment and then they're shocked that specific demographic hates them

3. Inflation/unaffordability. Stemming from the above, the more progressive an area is the less a working person who doesn't have a trust fund can afford to live there. Even if a poor person voted Democratic at one time, I absolutely believe the Democrats lose voters because when someone moves from California to a far more affordable red state they suddenly look around and think "holy shit, why did the place I left suck so hard?" I honestly think this is part of why when people leave blue for red states, they generally don't make the red state more liberal. Tennessee's boomed for 20 years and has just gotten more conservative. If you move to suburban Nashville from the West Coast why would you ever choose to vote for the stagnation and unaffordability of the place you left?

All of these issues have gotten worse as the Democrats have moved left and that's why they have hemorrhaged working class and male support. It has nothing to do with Democrats not giving off manly vibes or being insufficiently hostile to trans people, you out-of-touch partisan dorks

[Dylan O'Sullivan @DylanoA4]

I'd put this single paragraph from G. K. Chesterton up against any self-help book out there

[Gabe Einhorn @EinhornGabe]

New York City is the only major city in America that taxes businesses on their rent.

It's called the Commercial Rent Tax. If you lease commercial space south of 96th Street in Manhattan and pay more than $250,000 a year in rent, you owe the city 3.9% on top of it.

That means a restaurant paying $30,000/month in rent is also writing the city a check for $14,000+ a year just for the privilege of being a tenant.

People wonder why their favorite shops keep closing. Meanwhile the city collects over $900 million a year from this one tax alone.

Every politician talks about saving small business, but none of them will touch the tax that's bleeding them dry.

[Damned Architect @darianfernando]

@ViralNewsNYC He’s doing it because he needs money for his other initiatives and realizes that he can’t raise taxes, not because he gives a damn about fighting fraud….but I’ll be happy for him doing this, regardless of the motive!

[Damned Architect @darianfernando]

Banger of a tweet over here; I went to Brooklyn Friends School and it was over 40% black in the upper school, all smart AF like everyone else(some on half or full scholarships, some paying in full). Nearly all got into a good university too 😃

[Corey Walker 🇺🇸 @CoreyWriting]

Everyone knows the really smart black kids in NYC are funneled into programs like Prep for Prep, Oliver Scholars, and similar initiatives. They are then gifted a full scholarship to attend Horace Mann, Dalton, Trinity, Exeter, Andover, Lawrenceville, Deerfield, etc.

The smart black and Asian kids in NYC just take very different academic paths. I don't think this is much of an issue at all.

[Damned Architect @darianfernando]

Correct and well stated

[constans @constans]

The richest people in a poor country stay because they are the ones benefiting the most from the existing system

The people who leave are the ones who see their futures stunted because of low wages, nepotistic and corrupt systems, poor legal protections for property, and so on.

[Snigdha Sur @snigdhasur]

I graduated valedictorian of Stuyvesant. This take is so utterly wrong.

Data shows the hollowing out of K-5 gifted & talented programs has significant downstream effects — including, I bet, on slashing enrollment of Black and Hispanic kids at SHSAT schools