A Ginger Guy

Some random dude.

[Alex Z @AZinCLE]

The real problem is that most of the things that prevent private housing from being built at reasonable costs also prevent public housing from being built at reasonable costs.

[Daniel @growing_daniel]

People act like super convenient crack cocaine gambling on every smart phone is the status quo or something inevitable and it’s not. Like we can literally keep the laws we’ve had forever and ban this ultra potent society cancer

[Matt Darling 🌐🏗️ @besttrousers]

It did this while also making no impact in government spending.

I think there's a good case for DOGE as the least effective initiative in US history.

[Derek Thompson @DKThomp]

There are some center-to-right wing accounts I follow that are more offended by the possibility that some public health sources are over-estimating the death count from Musk carelessly destroying US global health programs than by the core fact that Musk really did carelessly destroy US global health (and bragged about it relentlessly) in a way that clearly killed people.

These people know who they are, and they're wrong.

[Eleanor Mueller @Eleanor_Mueller]

To be clear: Trump has no leverage here. If he doesn’t sign the housing bill within 10 days, it becomes law automatically. If, before then, he vetoes, Congress has the votes to override.

[Oz Katerji @OzKaterji]

I also think it was obvious, basically everyone with sense said that Iran could win the war simply by outlasting US resolve, and they did precisely that. Trump basically thought the Iranians would fold like the Venezuelans did after Maduro, he was wrong.
https://t.co/aogPDxxTx9

[Paul Tassi @PaulTassi]

The End Of ‘Destiny 2’: All Expansions Canceled, Maintenance Mode Incoming via @forbes https://t.co/DW7FISe8h2

[Martin-Baker @MB_EjectEject]

Yesterday, two Boeing E/A-18G Growlers collided mid-air during an airshow demonstration at Mountain Home AFB, Idaho.

All four pilots successfully ejected using the Martin-Baker US14A (NACES) Ejection Seat.

#EngineeringForLife

[RoundSimbacca @RSimbacca]

Pilot training (aka 'Top Gun'-style programs) plus ground crew training did more to improve US aviator effectiveness than adding guns ever did.

USN didn't put guns on their fighters yet they did better than the USAF did *with* guns.

[Derek Thompson @DKThomp]

I'm glad that the author of "Rent Control Is Fine, Actually" calls themself Unlearning Economics, bc it's good to just state things clearly, such as the open animosity that many left economic populists have for the field of economics and economists themselves.

Economists aren't gods, and economics isn't a divine truth, but economists are good--better than most--at something critical for making public policy: They're good at identifying tradeoffs. "Rents are too high, so freeze them" is compelling politics. But in the absence of other pro-supply policies, if you make it illegal to increase rents, landlords will stop upgrading units and convert them to condos, which reduces the supply of units for rent, reduces mobility, and drives up rents for everybody else.

The left econ populists have some clear, and clearly stated, policy ideas:

- Rents are too high, so freeze them.
- Electricity is expensive, so stop rate increases.
- Homes are too expensive, so ban institutional investors.
- Power prices are rising, so ban data center construction.

... All these policies feel like solutions because they're brisk, they name enemies, and they take on the most visible source of frustration. But they are much better as villain-naming exercises than they are as a complete public policy. On their own, each creates other problems: less housing built, less clean electricity built, abdicating energy policy by encouraging AI firms to build data centers abroad in unsavory countries with more emissions, etc.

I can't think of a single economic populist idea that wouldn't be helped with a little dose of economics, which is why it's troubling when I see the left participating in, and even celebrating, the great unlearning of economics.

[name but also a little joke @bearsaremean]

I know it's a cliche bit but trump is so impossiblly fucking stupid and inept that he ran on tariffs bankrolling everything, even replacing the IRS with the ERS (external), and the left was like "That's not a thing", and maga screamed "its a thing if trump says so", and then the extreme right wing Supreme Court said "none of this is a thing, pay it back".

THIS WAS THE CORE OF HIS CAMPAIGN, FOR AN ENTIRE FUCKING YEAR IT WAS TARRIF TARIFF TARRIF, "HERE ARE THE NEW TARRIFS", "TARRIF THESE PENGUINS", "TRAFFIS WILL FORCE NEW TRADE DEALS", "FOREIGN COUNTRIES WILL BANKROLL THE GOVERNMENT", NONE OF IT HAPPENED, NO NEW TRADE DEALS WERE MADE, THE PENGUINS NEVER BROKE, AND NOW WE HAVE TO PAY BACK WHAT WE TOOK WHICH WILL WASTE ANOTHER BILLION IN ADMINISTRATION...

and the media barely makes any mention of it.

It was all complete fucking fantasy.

But for trump its just another day.

If any Democrat ever did anything within a billion miles of this...

[Michael Weiss @michaeldweiss]

Treat allies like shit or threaten war with them and then get mad when they stop wanting to buy American. Crybully diplomacy leads to exactly where it ought to.

[Phil Magness @PhilWMagness]

Except Orban's lieutenants were spreading deranged conspiracy theories to delegitimize the results until a few hours before the polls closed. They claimed rampant voter fraud on election day, Ukrainian money laundering schemes and bombing attacks on pipelines to Hungary in Serbia to disrupt the election, and even a "plot" by Tisza to use its election watch party as a ruse to march on Orban's personal office.

These weren't just random Orbanist accounts. They were from his cabinet officials, his political directors, and of course the imported Postliberal activists from the US and UK that he kept on his government's payroll.

Orban was unambiguously laying the groundwork to challenge the results of any *close* election. They could not do so ONLY because the election ended up being a landslide against him.

[James Rosen-Birch ⚖️🕊️ @provisionalidea]

I do not understand the performative bullshit that passes for progressivism in the United States these days.

Ridesharing was never *supposed* to be a full-time job. It was never good, stable employment. It was called ‘gig work’ because it was supposed to be intermittent, supplemental income. It didn’t provide basic protections and benefits, was sometimes illegal, yet somehow managed to become load-bearing for many after years of recession and austerity from which the country never really recovered. Workers have agitated for better conditions but not much has come of it. That Uber and Lyft are now being magically portrayed by progressive organizations as purveyors of Good Jobs For Honest Americans as opposed to venture-backed symptoms of growing inequality and economic precarity for which the solution is stable, fulfilling employment is downright absurd.

So no, self-driving cars are not the problem. The fact that so many people (between 1-2 million Americans) have become reliant on ridesharing as their principal source of income, often with few (if any) alternatives, is. The robot cars wouldn’t matter if other, better opportunities existed.

[Jeremiah Johnson 🌐 @JeremiahDJohns]

There's something missing from the Hasan Piker discourse. Hasan's fans and critics often overlook the most troubling fact about him.

The core problem with Hasan Piker is that, on a fundamental level, he doesn't believe in liberal democracy.

https://t.co/EYkGJqkI09

[Conor Rogers @conorjrogers]

Strongly suggest not going with “the Oklahoma City Bombers”

[Brian Potter @_brianpotter]

This is how California became anti-growth in the 60s/70s btw. Citizens just started relentlessly punishing local elected officials that didn't strangle development.

[Julia Ioffe @juliaioffe]

Trump's war on Iran has reminded me of Putin's war on Ukraine in so many ways, not least of which is this one: a cadre of advisors being too scared to tell the President what they really think, only to be horrified when he unleashes what they should've stopped him from doing.

[John Schindler @20committee]

Wait....Trump blatantly lied to everyone, just making up a bunch of bullshit? Incredible. He's never done that before. I can't believe this!