Michael J. Coren

New digs over here: @climatecoachwapo" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">threads.net/@climatecoachw…

The hot new job in Britain right now? Chimney sweep. The "sweeps association" tripled its membership in 15 years. Demand for wood stoves is spiking thanks to rising gas prices and growing appreciation of the fragility of power grids in times of crisis.

Glad to see this go viral — especially among conservatives. This fight isn't left vs. right. It's voters vs. lobbyists. A lot of people are asking how this got into the farm bill. The answer: House Ag Chair Glenn Thompson put it in. Small farmers in his own district — who don't use crates — urged him not to. He said he didn't care: the National Pork Producers Council wanted it. Principled conservatives like Reps. Anna Paulina Luna, David Valadao, Nancy Mace, Brian Fitzpatrick, and Thomas Massie have strongly opposed this provision. But too many Congressional Republicans have fallen in line with the industrial pork lobby. The farm bill still has to pass the full House, then the Senate, where it needs 60 votes. It'll be a close vote, so every vote will matter. Call 202-224-3121, select your reps and senators, and tell them: oppose the farm bill if the Save Our Bacon Act stays in. We can stop this.

SCOOP: Last year we reported extensively on Elon Musk’s desire to break into the data pipes of government to bypass the federal bureaucracy. That approach had major consequences — one of which we reveal today: A DOGE bro allegedly made off with volumes upon volumes of highly sensitive Social Security data - the agency’s “crown jewels” - which he downloaded on a thumb drive and brought over to his new job. Me, @MerylKornfield @FedGirlWaPo report on this unprecedented breach: washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/…

This is one of my last articles for The Washington Post. The incredible photography is by @vanhoutenphoto, who was also laid off. No full-time staff who were in Kyiv on Feb. 24, 2022 for The Post are still with the paper. washingtonpost.com/world/2026/02/…

Great interview: theatlantic.com/technology/202…

"One very basic thing that would help the math community... [is] a good indication of how confident it is in this answer," said Terence Tao, a professor at UCLA, widely considered to be the world’s greatest living mathematician. "We would appreciate more honest AIs."

Amid the housing crunch, more Americans are considering building accessory dwelling units. @MJ_Coren has a guide on whether this move is right for you washingtonpost.com/climate-enviro…

With the Olympics done, my time at The Post is also done. It’s been an amazing five-plus years. The people I worked with weren’t just supremely talented, they were also great humans. This was truly a dream job and I’m eternally grateful I got this opportunity.

The New York Times made news the loss leader for a $2 billion digital revenue machine, and this chart is the receipt. News-only subscribers dropped 65% since June 2022. Bundle subscribers grew 227%. That looks like a news collapse. But the NYT deliberately killed its standalone news product. They stopped marketing it. They made it nearly impossible to buy a news-only subscription on their website. They priced the full bundle (News + Games + Cooking + Athletic + Wirecutter) at $2/month introductory, cheaper than a standalone Games subscription. News-only ARPU is $13.33. Bundle ARPU is $12.92. Single non-news product ARPU is $3.36. Those 4.3 million single-product subscribers paying $3.36/month? They’re not the business. They’re the funnel. The NYT CEO said it explicitly on the earnings call: single products are “funnels to get people to subscribe” to the bundle. Games now accounts for over 50% of time spent inside the NYT app. Wordle, Connections, and the Mini pull 10+ million weekly players who never intended to read a news article. But half of all NYT subscribers now pay for the bundle, and bundle subscribers retain longer, engage more, and accept price increases. The bundle just went from $25 to $30/month. The result: digital revenue crossed $2 billion for the first time in 2025. Free cash flow hit $550 million. Adjusted operating margins reached 24% in Q4. Berkshire Hathaway just took a billion-dollar position. While the Washington Post cut 300 journalists last week, the Times added 1.4 million subscribers. This chart shows a news company that built an attention ecosystem where Wordle gets you in the door, Cooking keeps you at breakfast, The Athletic owns your commute, and by the time you think about canceling, you’d lose four products instead of one. The NYT figured out that the way to fund journalism in 2026 is to make sure you can’t quit the crossword.

More here: electrek.co/2026/02/22/wor…

The US Air Force is now able to deploy 5MW portable nuclear power stations. That's enough for roughly 5,000 homes,

@johnloeber bbb zhou i'm

Silicon Valley’s energy appetite is so insatiable that it is now trying to build a colossal shadow power grid for itself nationwide. But will it work? Said @JigarShahDC : “This whole thing feels like a fairy tale concocted on the back of a napkin.” washingtonpost.com/business/2026/…

People who never write can never develop the same ability to think critically about the world. Not many free lunches in life. Letting an LLM edit your work? Have at it.

@tod For an editor, this would land like a good college freshman essay based on a quick read. Who knows, maybe a NYTimes bestseller (and impressive for an LLM) but not what's at the top the charts: fluid, insightful prose, original insights, new information not a Google search away.

Personal news — this is my last week at The Washington Post. My next destination is settled, and I’ll share more soon. Until then, subscribe to the newsletter for the right amount of Bogage in your life. And please keep supporting The Post. jacobbogage.beehiiv.com/p/personal-new…

A leader in a small Republican town described Georgia to me recently as the “West Virginia of data centers”— with big, out of state companies getting huge tax breaks, using all the natural resources and utilities they want, and leaving whatever is leftover when they’re done.

Many public radio -- including myself -- have spent years listening to David Greene. Now he's suing Google, claiming that the company stole its voice to make its AI podcast tool sound better. By @WillOremus washingtonpost.com/technology/202…

2022: It's so over in the Bay Area. Miami is the future. 2026: