Jake Anbinder

Every city is now like “Welcome! Let us acquaint you with our regional healthcare duopoly.”

This sounds like a landmark case you would learn in first-year torts

based and Steedpilled

MS Word sucks in its own way but conceptually it is a word processor. Google Docs seems designed to discourage its users from writing.

The Anti-Abundance Critique on Housing Is Dead Wrong Antitrust critics say that homebuilding monopolies are the real culprit of America’s housing woes. I looked into some of their claims. They don’t hold up.

I am not an abundance debater, but I like a nice takedown. In this one, abundance guy Derek Thompson does the unprecedented by picking up the phone, calling the academics that leftists cite, and asking them if their work is being misrepresented.

www.derekthompson.org/p/the-anti-a...

Lessons from the forgotten history of Democratic abundance Moderates and leftists misunderstand the 1990s. That is stopping them from seeing their joint path forward.

This from @henrymjtonks.bsky.social is v good. "Abundance need not be an instrument of Democratic factional competition. Instead, it has the potential to unite the liberal-left together around a vision for how to implement grand Democratic ambitions." hypertext.niskanencenter.org/p/lessons-fr...

The thing is, it’s hard to grasp that a politician might be religious if your religion is politics

my favorite movie

RIP Tom Lehrer. He was said to have called Little Boxes "the most sanctimonious song ever written," making him by definition the ur-YIMBY.

We literally elected Goldfinger

I think a historian would be scared to publish anything with this few citations

Maybe I'm not party to these disputes in history but it seems weird that in this particular field it's considered normal to just constantly churn out lightly researched op-eds where you snipe at people you don't like

IMO the reasons Bernie is not a Democrat are idiosyncratic to '70s Vermont politics and not particularly instructive for anyone else

I am thinking more about the quality of housing. But also Park Slope has desirable amenities beyond the school district.

Hear that, urban transport nerds? Take it from Politico!

Next livestream of Look Both Ways with David and Wes is this Thursday at 6p ET. Audio recording to follow via podcast platforms (episode 1 is available now).

Livestream link: www.youtube.com/live/ZZ633Gc...

that took a turn

I don’t know

If you’re childless I think this is true. It’s hard to think of a place though where your cost to maintain the same quality of life scales more dramatically with each kid than NYC.

We love too see it

The problem is our landlords are not small-batch artisanal

me, an idiot: “there are too few homes”

you, wise: “no, a fifth of the homes are owned by companies that are too big”

Honest to goodness trying to figure out what “corporate power” is supposed to mean in this context

Also a v good book

Highly recommend Margaret O'Mara's first book, Cities of Knowledge, for a history of how elite universities became so dependent on federal largesse

Wow I can’t believe someone got a photo of the meeting between Blanche and Maxwell

The people who say academics are always the latest with everything have never tried to have furniture delivered

not only have multiple home maintenance people ghosted me here, I’m locked in a protracted struggle with my lawnmowing guy to invoice me for services he has already rendered.

I think it's everywhere

When this happened one of my letter-writers said "reply with a copy of your acceptance letter to Harvard"

Frankly Columbia's had this coming ever since they not only rejected me from their PhD program but had the gall to suggest in their rejection letter that I do their pay-for history masters