Mark Hogan

Couple societal takeaways from Lake Como that stuck out: 1) No one wore smart watches except Americans. European tourists and locals wore either no watch at all or analog. 2) Tons of kids, no tablets. I didn’t see one tablet the entire trip until I got to the airport. No kids on phones. 3) Kids were at dinner with parents and were engaged. And parents engaged with kids. Sometimes kids played cards or colored, but more often they were just present. Saw a phone come out ONE time for a toddler. 4) I barely saw any packaged food like chips or cookies. This may be unique to a vacation destinations like Como, but I didn’t see any kids or families with packaged food. Tons of fruit. Even as we walked through town, saw nothing…not even for sale. 5) Kids at dinner ate what their parents ate - meat, vegetables, bread. No whining, no bending over backwards to find things a kid will eat. 6) Mentioned this to my wife the final day - we didn’t see one child cry or have a tantrum. Kids ranged from 3-8 all over this place, and I didn’t see one meltdown. I realize this is anecdotal, but it really stuck out. I’ll acknowledge this was a beautiful hotel in a high end area, so the standards of these folks may be different than your average person. That said, the parenting style, connections with kids, and food really stuck out. I’m around wealthy folks in America and it’s wildly different. And the watches. I can confidently say I didn’t see one Apple Watch or Garmin the entire time I was in Italy. It is obvious the (over) optimization culture is uniquely American. (I had time to write this post because our flight was cancelled, of course)

MPOs are required by federal transportation law to create high-quality population projections for the urban regions they serve. I had GPT-5.6-Sol pull the data for each of the 50 largest US MSAs, normalize it to MSA boundaries, and create a visualization of projected changes in ranking and total population by 2050. Chicago and Dallas switch places. Dallas, Houston and Chicago all pass 10 million for the first time. Austin jumps 8 spots to 17th, with 4.3 million residents (up from 2.5 today). Surprisingly, Tampa loses 4 and San Diego 6. Baltimore drops 6, St Louis 7. Pittsburgh is the largest to lose population, and drops 8 spots to 36th. At the bottom of the list, Boise climbs 26th spots to 1.4 million residents and passes Memphis. Kansas City, despite solid absolute growth, drops a couple spots to 33rd. What surprises you?

NYC is so incredibly affordable compared to sf. I would save so much money if I moved here. You ny country bumpkins are playing on easy mode

Wife doesnt want to see hallways, Husband wants kitchen & living rooms to have windows all around to take in the view, Husband wants Type V so no engineering required. Here's what Ive got so far:

Lennar is now in La Pine Oregon, located just 30 min south of Bend and are getting chopped up just like the late entrants to our push out communities did in the GFC. This is one of 2 they cut prices on today, now down $45k or 12% and offering closing costs/rate buy downs to boot.

It's kind of striking how, apart from Iran, most of the Trump-related stories this summer have been boring and dumb (reflection pool, White House Correspondents' Dinner) or kind of funny (FIFA), maybe we're moving on from him being the central figure in American politics.