Jerusalem Demsas

Look at the difference between NorCal and SoCal.

In the Bay, out of the 11 Senators repping urban areas, 8 voted yes.

In LA County, out of 13 Senators only 4 voted yes.

The LA delegation is killing housing bills.

Why Nothing Works event with Marc Dunkelman and Jerusalem Demsas at 370 Jay Street Join us at NYU Marron

Last chance to reserve a spot to hear Marc Dunkelman and Jerusalem Demsas in conversation at NYU Marron (370 Jay Street) at 4pm on 6/4. We will have tea, cookies, coffee, and books. Only 3 of 4 will be free.

docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

I enjoyed this discussion today. I learned a lot from my fellow panelists (even those I disagreed with). And as moderator, @jerusalem.bsky.social wasn’t afraid to challenge us with tough questions. I find that approach super generative.

Trump administration deports gay makeup artist to prison in El Salvador A gay man with no known criminal record sought asylum in the U.S. He's since become one of 238 Venezuelan migrants deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador by the Trump administration.

60 Minutes could find no criminal records for 75% of the Venezuelans the U.S. sent to a notorious mega-prison in El Salvador. https://cbsn.ws/4clubLP

not at all — my point is that anyone pointing to “someone shitty is on your team” to make an argument should damn well make sure they’re not in the most fragile of glass houses. Hanania obviously sucks and I’ve called him a moron on more than one occasion publicly.

An onion headline. The image shows Trump sitting with arms folded and eyes closed, seeming serene at his Oval Office desk. Meanwhile the headline reads "Trump calmly reminds nation that desire the root of all suffering".

Important to stand up for the idea of liberal democracy over ethnostates now more than ever - no exceptions.

If you want public transportation to create jobs, just build more and better public transportation and it will encourage more job agglomeration in your metro area. This, and not workfare in capital construction in operations, creates jobs.

Politicians Think Voters Are Dumb. Are They Right? A striking new study reveals that elected officials have a far more pessimistic view of voter behavior than do citizens themselves.

Really enjoyed this conversation with @jerusalem.bsky.social about our new paper on politicians' theories of voting behaviour. Such a thrill to be a guest on one of my favourite podcasts! www.theatlantic.com/podcasts/arc...

it’s a movie poster that says “FAULT LINES, A groundbreaking new documentary on the housing crisis, April 9 @ 6 PM, Miracle Theater, Washington DC.”

*APRIL 9* join @ggwash.org for a screening of a new documentary about the housing crisis, followed by a panel moderated by yours truly. if you missed our book talk with @jerusalem.bsky.social last fall, you should turn up! RSVP here: lu.ma/qxws9mad

oh my god 💀

It finally happened: one of my infusion center nurses changed her mind on congestion pricing. Her family said she must be happy about the Trump admin trying to kill it, but she said actually, she may have changed her mind, since it now only takes 25 mins to get to work compared to an hour previously

A great lede for what continues to be one of the best essays written about municipal government by Jerusalem Demsas.
www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

This remains one of my all time favorite stories to have investigated haha

Dozens of clinical trials in South Asia, Africa and Latin America have been suspended. Thousands of people enrolled in the studies have drugs, vaccines and medical devices in their bodies but no longer have access to continuing treatment or to the researchers who were supervising their care.

Medical supplies, including drugs to stop hemorrhages in pregnant women and rehydration salts that treat life-threatening diarrhea in toddlers, cannot reach villages in Zambia because the trucking companies transporting them were paid through a suspended supply project of the United States Agency for International Development, U.S.A.I.D.

In Uganda, the National Malaria Control Program has suspended spraying insecticide into village homes and ceased shipments of bed nets for distribution to pregnant women and young children, said Dr. Jimmy Opigo, the program’s director.

Monstrous

www.nytimes.com/2025/02/01/h...

Why States Took a Gamble on Sports Betting States bet on sports gambling, but their residents could be paying the price.

Such a delight getting to discuss with @jerusalem.bsky.social of @theatlantic.com whether legalizing sports betting is more than just "good on paper" -- which is basically the essence of my upcoming book.

www.theatlantic.com/podcasts/arc...

Susan Wood, FDA official who resigned over Plan B ruling, dies at 66 A champion of women’s health, she stepped down to protest the agency’s decision to delay expanding access to emergency contraception.

My friend's mom died last week. She was an extraordinary woman. You should read about her life. www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2...

a thought i have at the moment is that this effort to terrorize bureaucrats may end up being a gigantic self-inflicted wound that really hobbles the administration

Critical insight from @robinsonmeyer.bsky.social: you can't have a revival of critical mineral extraction and processing without a clean energy industry to buy your product. Yet day-one EOs are fixated on tearing down EV demand, solar/wind, factories funded by IIJA/IRA.

heatmap.news/politics/tru...

reading books that keep getting upset about modernity breaking up communities. but 'community' being presented as an unalloyed good is always a red flag to me. many communities are bad! community can mean family, love, friendship but it can also mean insularity, clannishness, spite, shaming.

The best thing that Joe Biden did The administration’s biggest achievement is something that almost no one has heard about.

in President Biden's final hours, read @dylanmatt.bsky.social
on one of the best things he did that got little notice

www.vox.com/future-perfe...

Screenshot reading: "Demsas: So do you think a good heuristic is if AI is being applied to a job where there's a right way to do things that we kind of basically know how to do, or there's very little sort of experimentation or imagination or creativity necessary to do that job, that you will see the lower-skilled, the less-experienced people gain the most? And then when it's the opposite, when a lot of creativity is needed, high-skilled people are going to get the most out of AI? Toner-Rodgers: Yeah, I think that sounds true to me. And I think maybe one way I'd put it is it's something about the variation and the quality of the AI's output that's very important. So even in materials science, I'm not sure that, say, in three years or something, the AI could just be incredibly good and, like, 90 percent of its suggestions are awesome, and you're not going to see this effect where this judgment step is very important."

*Really* fascinating @jerusalem.bsky.social Q&A about productivity and AI

previous work (in call centers) found AI boosted productivity for lower-performers, but not for higher ones

In materials science? It's the opposite

www.theatlantic.com/podcasts/arc...

Unpaywalled: archive.is/43lu9

From the brilliant @jerusalem.bsky.social on why we can’t build green energy projects (excerpt from “On the Housing Crisis”). On point. Modern environmentalism was built to stop projects, not advocate for them - a large reason why housing, transit, green energy is so difficult.

YouTube video by The Atlantic The Political Psychology of NIMBYism

Incredibly interesting conversation on political psychology of housing from Jerusalem Demsas
music.youtube.com/watch?v=D_Q-...

inside you there are two wolves

The Myth of Female Unelectability Today’s voters do not systematically discriminate against female candidates.

Here's a gift link! I think the scholars I cite are extraordinarily careful and thoughtful and most of them were surprised by their own findings. Links to their research also in the piece. www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...

The article explicitly states this btw

The Myth of Female Unelectability Today’s voters do not systematically discriminate against female candidates.

It is true that misogynistic attacks are effective. But so are *other* kinds of attacks. The social science question is when you look at elections writ-large how do female candidates fare? And there is not evidence (today) of systematic discrimination. www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...

I think it would be good to look at the whole transcript! My guest explicitly argues in favor of vaccine mandates and says Polis went too far.