Alex Vezza

To be the biggest oak tree in the forest you need be watered everyday. Don't expect one day of heavy rain to be the last water you need.

Some people acting like they understand the oil markets just because they watched Landman.

@nedsore @ministerofcultr I’ll take the path at 9am and 9pm and I’ll see here there.

@ministerofcultr Holy shit so you know him

Fare evasion is down nearly 100% at my local nj transit subway stop bc they hired this 6’5 350lb autistic dude to stand there in a hi-vis vest and just loom. He never says anything and he’s there every time I take the train

Thought on payroll tax - some companies can't move, some can. Retail isn't going anywhere, they need us. High frequency trading isn't either imo. What is at risk are other white collar, back-office jobs in tech and finance. These are increasingly going to red states to begin with

Competence should be bipartisan and can be again

What will be the impact of property taxes rising on rent? Ironically, not a lot short term from big landlords, you charge the market rate. It will mean bigger increases from small landlords, and in time, further increase rent by stopping new projects the math no longer works for

Took a hard pass on the Grammys because I’m not interested in watching the stars vomit their political opinions, but the Internet allows me to pick and choose highlights, so I picked and chose this Ozzy tribute.

Mark Zuckerberg donated $100 million to Newark public schools. It was one of the largest philanthropic gifts to a school district in history. Of that $100 million, roughly $31 million, about 31%, had to go to the teachers union as essentially a payment to allow measures that would track teacher performance. Thirty-one percent of a gift meant for children went to the union as the price of being allowed to measure whether teachers were effective. That's not a bug in the system. That's the system working exactly as it's designed to work. Protecting itself from accountability is the primary function.

It's troubling our new mayor doesn't understand our finances... Household incomes in Jersey City are rising. As household incomes rise, the state cuts aid to our public schools. The aid cuts force the schools to raise property taxes. The "luxury" towers help balance the budget.

Just realized majority of the west thinks Iranian people are Muslim…this explains a lot. I think BBC etc have been so reluctant to report on this because it breaks the “identity” narrative. The Marxist framing is that people are reduced to a singular identity. Iranian=muslim=minority=oppressed. And that stands against Israel=white=jews. Except Iran is majority non-Muslim (according to every poll not run by Iran’s brutal government.) And the indigenous peoples are burning mosques in objection to their colonization and oppression. And Israel has a sizable Muslim and Arab citizenry, not to mention sizable populations of black and brown Jews. Iran’s revolution completely breaks their worldview.

Who Will Build NYC if Builders Are the Enemy? As a New Yorker Jew, I'm surrounded by people who have been in real estate their entire lives. I am not trying to feed a stereotype, but that's my reality. They aren't activists or online commentators. They are people who bought their first buildings with all their savings, carried debt through rate hikes, fixed things themselves when there was no money to hire, and stayed in New York through high crime, recessions, 2008, COVID, rising taxes, insurance increases, and an ever-expanding book of laws and codes. None of them were promised fairness before they started, and none of them were protected from risk. They succeeded very slowly, and painfully, but with responsibly. That experience is exactly what is missing from the worldview of Zohran Mamdani, and it shows in every part of his housing agenda. Mamdani has never built anything. He never signed a personal guarantee, never met payroll, never carried a mortgage through a rough month, never had to choose between fixing a boiler now or hoping it survives another winter because there is no cash. He has only operated in a political world where consequences are abstract and other people absorb the risk. When you have never operated in the real economy, it becomes easy to believe that shortcuts are solutions. It is also why his message resonates with a certain type of voter. The people demanding “housing reforms” are not bad people. They are frustrated renters who feel like the system is rigged against them. I understand the frustration. But frustration doesn't change math. Housing is hard. Ownership is a very slow process. Building anything meaningful in this city takes years of stress, and debt. The people calling for "landlord policies" often want the outcome without the grind, the stability without the risk, and the reward without the years of sweating that every responsible adult who succeeded here had to endure. But it does not work like that. NYC is in housing crisis. Citywide vacancy sits around 1.4 percent, a level economists consider an emergency. Median rents keep rising anyway, with Manhattan near $4,800 and Brooklyn around $3,800, even under an already thick layer of regulation. The reason is obvious. Supply has not kept up. In a good year, New York adds roughly 30,000 units. The city needs hundreds of thousands more over the next decade just to stabilize prices. At the same time, construction costs here are among the highest in the country, financing is extremely difficult, and insurance is wildly expensive Mamdani’s proposals take that fragile situation and make it worse. When you cap upside while leaving downside unlimited, rational people stop participating. Developers do not argue on X. Lenders do not protest. They simply reallocate. Projects stop coming up. Renovations are postponed. New construction dies before a shovel hits the ground. The people I know in real estate are not angry. They are disengaging. Some are buying elsewhere. Some are sitting on cash. Some are done entirely. And when that happens, tenants do not win. Buildings deteriorate, supply tightens further, and rents rise anyway. What Mamdani offers is emotional satisfaction, not solutions. He tells voters that prices are high because someone else is greedy, not because the city has spent decades making housing harder and almost impossible to build. He frames landlords as villains instead of participants in an ecosystem that only works when incentives align. That framing feels good, but it does not produce housing. It produces resentment, fear, and withdrawal. Everyone I know who made it in this city did it the same way. Slowly, without shortcuts. Policies written by people who never did that do not create fairness or affordability. They create shortages. NYC doesn't have a landlord problem. It has a confidence problem. And a city that teaches people to hate the builders while demanding more building is a city sabotaging its own future.

In the middle of Ken Burns’ “Baseball,” George Will explains American democracy in terms largely forgotten by partisans and journalists today. Please watch and spread around!

A major reason that things have gotten so crazy for the center-left is that because they were able to enforce consensus so easily socially they stopped feeling the need to justify policy empirically. Appreciating empiric reality is a major break that keeps things from going off the rails and allows you to back away from bad ideas. In lieu of asking, ‘does this work?’ libs ask, ‘do you want to be a good person and support this?’ - this switch had no limiting principle and by socially incentivizing dishonesty and ignorance it has fatally impaired basic technocratic sense making.

Remember when Jane Jacobs wrote that downzoning is good insofar as it stops "cataclysmic money" from changing the mixed-income character of the West Village

Yes! Pasta brand matters. De Cecco (Imported from Italy) contains 100% semolina flour, is extruded through bronze dies, and is dried at a lower temperature compared to US-made pastas (Ronzoni/Barilla) which use hotter drying, Teflon dies that produce an excessively smooth noodle surface, and a durum/semolina blend. Because of these differences, the American noodles don't stand up to boiling as well -- they absorb more water and lose more starch. That means less flavor and a mushier texture.

Leftist mayors fail when they are bogged down in intractable culture wars (LGBT+) and ideology-inspired quagmires (defunding police) instead of focusing on popular policies like improving transit, housing, etc. Let's hope Zohran sticks to those.

It's the exact same picture. And a whole bunch of you should fucking know better.

The silence is deafening. Civilian men, women, and children are being slaughtered in Sudan. Estimates of over 150,000 killed & 14 million displaced since April 2023. Considered the world’s largest humanitarian crisis. No mass protests. No daily political statements/demands. No college campus encampments.

The White Stripes are from Detroit. Iranian teens want to rock out and drink beer, not cry to Shajarian and sip tea. Total American cultural victory/1KYAE.

This is encouraging to hear, but there's still a huge chance Zohran gets bullied by the groups and his housing policy is "More housing but only if [LIST OF SEVEN HUNDRED PROGRESSIVE REQUIREMENTS]", and nothing ends up being built.

@StevenFulop Well done. Hopefully the next mayor will continue to dream big for our city. I’m curious, what’s the plan for the light rail? I know it’s just a right of way but would it been a new line?

A major milestone for our administration and a big accomplishment working with the Embankment Coalition. What a journey - After nearly 30 years of litigation we have reached a resolution. This will not only preserve a right of way that will preserve the way for light rail but it will add open space to Jersey City as a world class park. A special thank you to Annisia Cialone our director of HEDC and Brittany Murray our Corp Counsel for their leadership and balance here - this would never have happened without them After 27 years of community effort, litigation, and negotiation, Jersey City is finalizing an agreement to preserve the Sixth Street Embankment as a public greenway and historic landmark. Key Outcomes: 1.Historic Preservation & Ownership •Jersey City will gain ownership of several parcels (Blocks 2–6 of the Harsimus Branch Embankment and adjoining land from Manila Ave. to Newark Ave.). •These areas will be permanently protected as public open space, ensuring the corridor remains intact for recreation, trails, and potential light rail or pedestrian connections. •The city will take responsibility for the long-term preservation and maintenance of the embankment as part of the East Coast Greenway network. 2.Development Component •In exchange, development will be allowed on Block 1, which will include 604 residential units (30 of which will be affordable housing). 3.Public Infrastructure and Access •A 30-foot-wide public right-of-way will connect Marin Blvd. to Manila Ave. •A 15-foot-wide grand staircase with a bike chute and a public elevator will provide access to the trail. •Two public restrooms will be built and maintained in perpetuity by the developer. •The right-of-way will be engineered for future light-rail and pedestrian bridge connections, linking the embankment westward as a unified greenway. 4.Significance •The ordinances represent a major compromise and civic milestone, ending decades of disputes. •The final City Council vote is scheduled for November 12, marking a historic step in realizing a continuous public corridor connecting Jersey City’s neighborhoods and parks.