Mark Haile

🚨Early version of my JMP! 🚨 To what extent is the contact between corporate lobbyists and federal government officials publicly disclosed? In other words, how big is the market for "shadow lobbying"? The Lobbying Disclosure Act mandates quarterly disclosure of lobbying "contacts" subject to many caveats. Watchdogs have long complained about lacunae in the LDA, but there is little evidence of the size of shadow lobbying market. In my JMP, I use 4.5 trillion pings from 179 million smartphones spatially merged to building shapefiles and observe movement between lobbyists' offices, corporate headquarter buildings, and the federal government in Washington DC. See below: movement of lobbyists from corporate HQs to federal government buildings:

The price of an airline ticket is constantly changing. Who benefits? Leisure consumers do, at the expense of business consumers. Along the way, let's learn about how airlines actually set their prices! 1/

Prompted by @MaryPeltola noting she was first person ever to represent Alaska who was born there, I used Claude to run the entire history of the House. Turns out 58% of Members/delegates were born in state they represent. State rankings and time series data of interest too: blog.mattglassman.net/how-many-house…

@TheRoyalSerf Mad to reckon that Irish English, American English and Indian English all diverged from British English in the 1600’s. They are three branches of equal length

In Old English, a female cat was called a “catte.”

Countries with the most Portuguese Speakers 🇵🇹🗣 1. 🇧🇷 Brazil: 203,000,000 2. 🇦🇴 Angola: 16,655,129 3. 🇵🇹 Portugal: 10,022,070 4. 🇲🇿 Mozambique: 5,260,000 5. 🇺🇸 United States: 1,154,577 6. 🇫🇷 France: 1,089,497 7. 🇨🇭 Switzerland: 297,097 8. 🇪🇸 Spain: 251,497 9. 🇬🇧 United Kingdom: 236,185 10. 🇨🇦 Canada: 221,540 11. 🇩🇪 Germany: 166,000 12. 🇸🇹 São Tomé and Príncipe: 153,120 Note: Data is from different years but fairly recent. Source: Wikipedia

@bielpmw @Georgealbuquerq

@Georgealbuquerq Se é australiana pq os atores não parecem australianos?

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NASA Just Dropped the Sharpest True-Color Image of the Moon Ever Captured! Forget the dull grey rock you’ve seen in every textbook and photo. NASA has released a stunning new true-color mosaic of the Moon that reveals its real face — a vibrant, mineral-rich world painted in rusty browns, deep blues, pale golds, and subtle reds.This isn’t an artistic rendering. It’s the highest-resolution, most accurate color view of the lunar surface ever made publicly available.What the colors actually mean:Bluish patches = Titanium-rich mare basalts (some of the most valuable resources on the Moon) Reddish-orange and brown tones = Iron-rich soils and ancient feldspar highlands Pale golds and whites = Pure anorthosite crust from the Moon’s early magma ocean Every shade is a 4.5-billion-year-old chemical fingerprint telling the story of volcanic eruptions, massive impacts, and the Moon’s fiery birth.Key Highlights: Highest-resolution true-color image of the entire Moon to date Reveals mineral composition visible to the naked eye (if you were standing on the surface) Combines decades of orbital data into one breathtaking global portrait Proves the Moon is far more geologically diverse and colorful than we’ve been taught We’ve been staring at the wrong version of our nearest neighbor for centuries. The real Moon isn’t monochrome — it’s a swirling canvas of cosmic chemistry, just three days away by spacecraft.The era of serious lunar exploration just got a lot more beautiful.

California is pushing for a new Amtrak service to start in 2028, it'll run between Oakland and San Luis Obpiso starting as a pilot service for 4 months.

Where are they going to get the water for a data center in COACHELLA?

I learned something new this Memorial Day. Please share. ❤️🇺🇸❤️

Every year, I share this video of French caretakers who take sand from Omaha Beach in Normandy, and scrub them into the letters to give them the gold coloring. They do this for all 9,386 US soldiers who died. France also gave us this land as American soil. #MemorialDayWeekend

BREAKING: Adam Hoffman has been released from jail for "good behavior." Hoffman is the 49-year-old Waco, TX attorney who faced life without parole for repeatedly raping a young boy, until Texas AG Ken Paxton offered him 1 day in jail and no need to register as a sex offender. A judge increased his sentence to a whopping 60 days. He got out in 30 days. This is MAGA's vision for the USA. Full story: letsaddresstexas.substack.com/p/ken-paxtons-…

Just to focus on the Colorado River basin: for years allocation requests far exceed what the river can provide; it's barely a trickle by the time it hits the Gulf of California. But a data center proposed for Arizona is set to suck a lot of water... ...that just ain't there.

A Gallup poll released this month found that 70% of Americans oppose AI data centers in their local area, with 48% strongly opposed, and that opposition cuts across party lines. @JeffereyJaxen's latest editorial makes the case that what looks like scattered local resistance is becoming something much larger, and that it rhymes closely with how the MAHA movement began. The current flashpoint is Utah's Stratus Project in Box Elder County, a hyperscale data center complex backed by Kevin O'Leary spanning more than 40,000 acres, twice the size of Manhattan. At full capacity it would consume up to nine gigawatts of power, equivalent to the entire state's current consumption, and between two and sixteen billion gallons of water annually for cooling. It was approved by a three-to-zero vote of county commissioners. No referendum was held. That approval process is not an outlier. Data center developers are increasingly targeting unincorporated rural areas specifically to avoid urban bans and stricter permitting. In Lake Tahoe, nearly 50,000 residents have had power lines redirected by utilities prioritizing hyperscalers, forcing locals to find alternative energy sources. Across the country, energy bills are spiking for communities while grid capacity, usable land, and in some cases property through eminent domain are being consumed by an infrastructure boom that a $10 billion facility might staff with as few as 300 people. Wisconsin has become the first state with an anti-data center referendum. In Iowa, hundreds packed county board meetings over a proposed moratorium. In New Jersey, more than 60 environmental, labor, and community groups called for a pause on all AI projects. The editorial notes that polling once dismissed vaccine skepticism as fringe until it went mainstream. Strategists are now warning that data center opposition is tracking the same trajectory ahead of the 2026 midterms. Full editorial linked below 👇 bit.ly/Data-Center-Re…

They can't tear down the Statue of Liberty (no, Pete Hegseth, that is not a challenge) but we should be keeping an eye on the plaque with "The New Colussus" as plaques have been disappearing from national historic sites across the country (especially as it welcomes immigrants).

Online auction benefits Central Coast Veterans Memorial Museum ksby.com/san-luis-obisp…

The Code of Support Foundation, an organization that connects veterans and caregivers to resources they need, says that despite hearing “Happy Memorial Day” countless times each year, the day itself is “not a happy day,” especially for families and individuals who lost loved ones in combat. ktla.com/news/heres-why…

This should not be allowed. 😡