Mark Abraham

Graph showing total housing added over six years with the top ten municipalities in CT adding 39% of the total housing added in the state

Graph showing the drop over time of total listings in CT per 10k household from above national average to less than half of national average

Remarkable data insights from @datahaven.bsky.social and @markabraham.bsky.social

Putting picture to our housing crisis. It is a supply and inventory problem and current solutions aren't cutting it

ctdatahaven.org/report/new-c...

Opinion | It’s Time for America to Admit That It Has a Marijuana Problem

Could higher taxes on alcohol and cannabis help deter excessive use? “In 1995, marijuana seized by the Drug Enforcement Administration was around 4% THC, the primary psychoactive compound in pot. Today, you can buy marijuana products with THC levels of 90% or more”
www.nytimes.com/2026/02/09/o...

Page 1 of a child’s handwritten letter, written in Spanish in a cursive script. Translation: “Hello I am Ender and I am 12 years old, I have been at this center  for 2 months. I arrived here for an immigration appointment and I don’t think they should grab immigrants who are innocent, like instead of grabbing criminals because I mean they prefer to lock up children than look for people who really shouldn’t be in the U.S. They told me I could only be here 21 days but I have already spent more than 60 days waking up eating the same repetitive meals, going outside and that the majority of guards never pay attention to people, eating dinner  always the same as the day before, seeing people cry every day for the same reasons, trying to sleep in that horrible uncomfortable bed, going to the doctor and that the only thing they tell you is to drink more water and the worst thing is that it seems like the water is what makes people sick here…”

Page 2 of a child’s handwritten letter, written in Spanish in a cursive script. Translation: “…going to wait for the bad answers from the judges, hearing the bad news from people who no longer have hope, having to share a room with minimum 3 families, and all that so they send us back to our countries.” Below the text is a drawing in pen of three women, titled “My family” and labeled with “Mama,” “Sister,” and “me” in Spanish.

5/ “I have already spent more than 60 days waking up eating the same repetitive meals…going to the doctor and that the only thing they tell you is to drink more water and the worst thing is that it seems like the water is what makes people sick here…”

From 12-year-old Ender, detained 60+ days

"The Trump tariffs amount to an average tax increase per US household of $1,000 in 2025 and $1,300 in 2026....

"The Trump tariffs are the largest US tax increase as a percent of GDP (0.54 percent for 2026) since 1993."
@taxfoundation.bsky.social
taxfoundation.org/research/all...

Report cover

New on the DataHaven website: Our report about a brand-new U.S. Census Bureau dataset that allows us to map where 40,000 homes have been added within the state of #Connecticut since 2020 -- at both the town and neighborhood level. ctdatahaven.org/report/new-c... #nnip

In New Haven, a bus driver ran over someone’s foot after they disembarked. It’s tough with the amount of space between the bus and the snowbank and the potential for people (or the bus even) to slip.

I’ve noticed that too this past couple weeks after the big snow. But I wondered if it was because the door was broken, or if it was because the driver has turned it off to prevent snow/ice related injuries as passengers disembark onto snow banks from there.

New report on the DataHaven website #Connecticut #nutmegsky #mentalhealth

A tremendous loss for the Post. Bezos, Lewis, and WaPo leadership is trying to gut any accountability work from the paper performed by journalists like Nitasha.

Ah, starting up the narrative again. They know they’re gonna lose if the elections are fair

“Promised boom from tariffs hasn’t occurred”

Translation: U.S. families are paying $2,000 to $8,000 more per year for a policy that failed, while the wealthy got trillions in tax cuts.

And: tariffs as extortion; 3X funding boost for an enforcement force operating far beyond constitutional norms.

Excellent piece describing this administration's hunger for a one-stop shop with all of our personal data. DOGE, guided by Elon Musk, supercharged this effort by eliminating the traditional boundaries between data held and managed by separate government agencies.

Horrifying and unnerving. DHS sent an administrative subpoena to Google for this retiree's records and even sent armed agents out to his house for the "offense" of writing the following completely anodyne email to a federal prosecutor using an email address he found via Google.

Not good

Foreign countries are bribing our president to sell out the American people.
 
Trump family businesses made $187 MILLION from this deal, and just months later he gave the UAE some of our most top-secret AI tech.
 
They are selling our national security to the highest bidder.

Agree, every ranking is a little different based on what measures are used. There was another data-focused one published recently, along the lines of what you mention with more economic mobility measures incorporated, that had Berkeley and Yale as the top two.

Graphic

Raj Chetty came out with a new data-driven ranking of the world’s best universities, with Oxford and Yale at the top time.com/7358185/top-... #econsky

Tax policy could help families immediately by reducing fares and/or through renter tax credits, etc. A 40-yr subway plan (with new housing it sparks during buildout) doesn’t increase affordability anytime soon, but eventually does. I hope NYC can do both, and fix the existing system that’s crumbling

Screenshot from report

Neighborhood revitalization and child outcomes
opportunityinsights.org/wp-content/u...

In 2021 I was telling people in my field of art history to stop legitimizing the use of image recognition, to stop applying for grants to use AI in identifying the subjects of portraiture bc this was what such work was being used to further. All this was obvious. theconversation.com/how-ai-is-hi...

Abusers using AI and digital tech to attack and control women, charity warns Exclusive: Smartwatches, Oura rings, smart home devices and Fitbits being weaponised, says Refuge

"Domestic abusers are increasingly using AI, smartwatches and other technology to attack and control their victims, a domestic abuse charity says." Record numbers of women who were abused and controlled through technology were referred to Refuge’s specialist services.

From @themarshallproject.org

Yale study: U.S. could save $184 billion by aligning drug prices with peer nations Researchers at the Yale School of Public Health estimate that the United States could reduce its annual spending on outpatient prescription drugs by $184

“The US could reduce annual spending on outpatient prescription drugs by $184B (51% decrease) if domestic prices were aligned with those in other high-income nations. More than 70% of widely used medications are priced >4X higher in the US than in comparable countries” ysph.yale.edu/news-article...

"I was only following orders" wasn't an acceptable excuse at the Nuremberg trials & won't work now.

#AccountabilityIsComing

I don't even know where to start with the illegal...The Executive does not have the constitutional power to raise revenue. The Executive does not have the constitutional power to make decisions about expenditures. The Executive does not have the power to privatize the functions of the US Treasury...

Cover of news article

New study published today: “Almost half of the monthly-updated CDC databases had unexplained pauses in 2025, mostly affecting vaccination data... Despite remaining publicly accessible, 38 CDC databases updated at least monthly were no longer current without notice” #publichealth

YouTube video by Bruce Springsteen Bruce Springsteen - Streets Of Minneapolis (Official Audio)

I wrote this song on Saturday, recorded it yesterday and released it to you today in response to the state terror being visited on the city of Minneapolis. It’s dedicated to the people of Minneapolis, our innocent immigrant neighbors and in memory of Alex Pretti and Renee Good.

Stay free

Trump’s fundraisers are now using the threat of dispatching ICE against citizens as an email engagement tactic.

Kyiv metro area. Just in case you've forgotten what's still happening, every day.

A lot of it in SC, one of the red states here