Joe Winter

Soft Metallica

For Shaun: “Why do you believe any of this can happen if the first small segment can’t? Won’t this all just get mired in politics and NIMBYist lobbying by the Atlanta developer-class like the Eastside Trail rail project did? Won’t the next mayor just follow the tradition of scuttling it right before construction starts? For the record, I live in a *SW Beltline neighborhood* and I think the streetcar extension up the Eastside Trail to Ponce City Market should be under construction right now, because it already has the density to support proof of concept, and the project is nearly shovel-ready. Also, the reason there are so many people on this meeting is because most Atlantans want Beltline rail. We voted for it and we’re paying for it. Thanks.”

A new question about political interference has surpassed the previous question about political interference as the most upvoted question in the meeting

"abundance politics and economic-populist movements need each other to accomplish their common goal of a fairer society that gives regular working people the security and ample opportunity we all deserve."

The Case for Civic Abundance  | Washington Monthly Rebuilding state capacity requires a renaissance of civic participation that abundance advocates too often view as an obstacle.

The Case for Civic Abundance  washingtonmonthly.com/2025/08/11/t...

Jonathan Greenblatt did a lot to get Trump elected in 2024, by pressing America closely to Benjamin Netanyahu and Netanyahu‘s far-right government.

The reason NYT has a high-profile interview with Greenblatt is that Americans are finally realizing what Netanyahu and Greenblatt have done.

It's like somewhere there's a left-of-center general stance that's to the left and preferable to the mainstream left-of-center stance, but still not too far to the left. And I think a lot more people would be there if only there was a good name for it.

Multiple times this year I’ve had coffee with fellow immigrants who grew up in corrupt third world countries and the shared sentiment has been that Americans don’t understand how bad things are going to get.

Yes, very much. People’s politics are a product of their social environment and interactions. By making it cheaper to live in liberal spaces we can expose more people to liberal social environments.

Not to mention how saying that wouldn't be a good look.

As someone who thinks LLMs are both clearly very useful and extremely technically impressive, while also overall bad for society in ways that have little to do with war use, I feel very alienated by both the breathless idiot hype men and people screaming that it is draining lakes but is also fake

How many rust belt cities successfully halted if not reversed their declines because of their universities and academic institutions? Pittsburgh is the poster child, but Baltimore owes a lot to this too. This is going to be a completely man-made disaster for them.

Religious organizations are already the only 501(c)(3) charities that are not required to file a 990 and publicly report their financials and donors. But these are men of God, so I'm sure the unconstrained influence and total lack of accountability won't be a problem, right?

Might be harder to figure out which redactions aren't about Trump.

With less traffic to the site, the issue of scale becomes a little less daunting.

Will Georgia follow Texas in a mid-decade redistricting? I don't think Kemp would try it. But more than one of those vying to be his successor very likely would at the first opportunity, if any of them get elected.

To be fair, I don't think he's interested in refuting that claim. 🤷

“On June 15, 1992, [Dan] Quayle altered 12-year-old student William Figueroa's correct spelling of "potato" to "potatoe" at the Muñoz Rivera Elementary School spelling bee in Trenton, New Jersey. He was the subject of widespread ridicule for his error.” — @wikipedia.org

If you work in/adjacent to Democratic politics, or even if you are an occasional Democratic donor, this new @adambonica.bsky.social piece is the most important thing you can read today.

The Democratic Party cannot build power if it allows scam pacs to thrive

open.substack.com/pub/data4dem...

I don't know, maybe folks can do a little better than appeal to nostalgia?

You know what I really hate about the highest-visibility answers to public media defunding? Mr. Rogers and Sesame Street are old programs. I show my kid programming on PBS kids, and none of it is that. Public media has great programming today, too. Their shows are aligned with educational standards.

‘Self-termination is most likely’: the history and future of societal collapse An epic analysis of 5,000 years of civilisation argues that a global collapse is coming unless inequality is vanquished

Harsh but fair. It also lines up with what I've learned studying the dynamics of collapse over the years.

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

It's hard for me to tell what exactly is the point of this LTE in today's AJC. The candidate who won the most recent presidential election ran on an endless list of grievances, most of which were based on falsehoods.
epaper.ajc.com/popovers/dyn...

Many times they don't deserve to be bullied at all.

These people seem to have no fear of ever having to face a jury to prosecute a case, and that's scary.

I want the Democratic Party to do the good things with the same ferocity that the Republicans do the bad things. That's all we ask.

Trump: "The elitists are saying I should stay away from the beach. What do you think?"

Advisor: "My people on the inside tell me the waves are just a foot high."

“Little Nazi diaper baby” is a great phrase that we should employ liberally towards figures on the right, Trump and Vance especially

Would the current President ever do something about this? Get at least two agencies investigating? Probably not. Biden would have, but maybe 3 or 4 years after the fact. Whose administration would make it happen, if elected?

"What’s happening to Atlanta suggests that red cities have their own problems, that hostility to multi-family housing and disdain for public transit can also create an affordability crisis."

A-yup.

I hope the next CEO will be open to re-examining every decision that guy made and rebuild those relationships with the locals.