James

Massachusetts migrants who were transitioned out of hotel shelters last summer were offered the HomeBase program, which provides up to two years of rent, security deposits and furniture. The program spent over 100 MILLION DOLLARS in 2025, up from just 12 million in 2022, the year migrants began to arrive in the state.

The Celtics regular season was never about Jaylen “carrying” anything, it was context. Half the league is tanking, the East was weak and injured, while the Celtics were healthy. Mazzulla is a regular season wizard, and you got real development from Queta, Walsh, Garza, Scheierman, plus White having the best defensive season of his career. Jaylen was just Jaylen. From 2022–25 when Tatum sat, he averaged 28/7/5 on 57% TS, literally the same numbers he just put up this year without Tatum (except on much higher usg%) and he was still a net negative, so there was never any “carrying.” They were 8–1 without him this year and 44–9 without him since ’23, which tells you everything about impact vs usage. The off-ball defense has been bad, the impact has always lagged the role, and none of this should’ve surprised anyone, the team exceeded expectations, not him. Then in the playoffs, when it matters, it all showed: negative AST/TOV, -23.4 net rating, 39% TS without Tatum, lower PPP than Tatum and even Pritchard despite leading in usage and FGA. And the worst part is the mindset, no accountability, no willingness to scale back. You’re talking about a second option about to make $60 mil+ who won’t take a back seat. That should terrify you. If you’d rather keep Jaylen over trading for a bigger fish like Giannis, you’re not a real fan, you don’t want to win another ring. Jaylen was great in our 2024 run, helped us win a championship and I will always thank him for that. This ship has ran its course, 1 championship in 10 years, if you still can’t admit that then you’re too far gone.

There's a clay tablet with the founding charter of a 12-partner company on it. Twelve merchants pooled 33 pounds of gold to start the firm. The contract has the partner names, the starting capital, the profit split, and the penalty for cashing out early. The tablet is nearly 4,000 years old. It was found at a site called Kanesh, in central Turkey. Archaeologists have dug up 23,500 of these clay records there, most of them business documents: receipts, loan contracts, shipping orders, lawsuits. The houses they were stored in eventually burned. The fire baked the clay solid and preserved every record. The merchants came from Assur, in modern-day Iraq. They loaded donkeys with tin and cloth and walked them 1,000 kilometers across mountain passes to Kanesh, roughly the distance from New York to Atlanta. Each donkey carried about 180 pounds and the trip took two to three months. They came home with silver and gold. The company ran for twelve years under a merchant named Amur Ishtar. A third of the profits went back to the investors. Pull your share out early and the firm gave you four kilos of silver per kilo of gold, half the normal rate. Locked-up money was meant to stay locked up. That one company was just a tiny piece. The tablets show a complete economy with partners suing each other in commercial court, husbands writing home about prices, and wives writing back complaining the husband had been gone too long. A woman named Ahatum quietly lent silver to four different men over nine years. People bought up other people's loan documents and used them as collateral for new loans, the same thing Wall Street does today with mortgage-backed securities. One merchant got caught smuggling tin in his underwear to dodge a 10% import tax. In 2019, four economists from Harvard, Sciences Po, Chicago, and Virginia ran the tablet numbers through a gravity model, the math economists use today to predict how much two countries will trade based on size and distance. The Bronze Age numbers matched modern trade numbers almost exactly. Trade fell off with distance at nearly the same rate it does between countries today. The paper ran in the Quarterly Journal of Economics. There was no economic theory yet. The idea didn't even have a name. The word "capitalism" wouldn't be coined for another 3,800 years, and Adam Smith was 3,700 years away from writing a sentence about markets. Just a guy named Pushu-ken writing a clay tablet to his business partner about a shipment of cloth, and a woman in Assur recording who owed her how much silver. Capitalism was already there, doing its full job, almost four thousand years before anyone wrote down a theory of how it worked.

@NIKNBAYT Three and D wing. Rim protecting big that has wingspan to defend best Cs in the league.

What position or player archetype (scorer, shooter, facilitator etc) do you think the Celtics need for next year?

@HisStankness No.

Ladies & gentlemen, y’all doing this trade? It’s a no-brainer for me.

@BestOfCeltics0 @FCHWPO First clip he commits about 3 fouls and doesn’t get called. Second clip Embiid was completely gassed and anyone could have played on him. Brown taking Embiid left Queta defending the high PnR and he got roasted for the game clinchers. The help side block on Embiid was nice.

Jaylen Brown’s defense was incredible in the second half. especially the 4th quarter, where he took the Embiid assignment.

@StoolGreenie If you’re trading White and not Brown you’re not serious about winning.

If the goal is to be opportunistic while addressing these needs... Denver needs to cut money. This takes $12M off their books. Gives Jokic the ultimate winner in Derrick White (hometown team) and one of the best shooters walking this planet who will thrive off Jokic's gravity Celts get shot creation at the guard position/late game option to play off Jays and 3-4 years younger at the position. Young stretch big prospect for the frontcourt Add whatever picks. I hate that I am on the trade machine and not preparing for a 2nd Round series, but such is life

@DemGovs @maura_healey Congrats on everyone that owns a home, your value just went up by $25,000! Sorry for everyone buying homes, the cost just went up by $25,000! Someone please teach our politicians Econ 101.

HUGE: Governor @Maura_Healey is providing $25,000 in assistance for more first-time homebuyers in Massachusetts!

@realBurhanAzeem Quick take on zoning reform and affordable housing?

40,000 people left Massachusetts last year. Ask why and the answers easily. Housing costs. Childcare bills that's like a second mortgage. The longest commutes in the country. Massachusetts is a great place to live that few can afford. But it's fixable, that's why I'm running.

@arpitrage @asymmetricinfo Both!

Brightline’s financial troubles are all about the debt it incurred in building out its service. It’s viable in operations. Either we need more government subsidy for the initial infrastructure, or land value capture to make this model work

@MIK3MCDANIEL He is embedded in NBA culture conversations where he has nearly universal approval. That deflects him from criticism by outlets that want to curry favor with the league, which is pretty much all of the major media. All of the criticism comes from small unaffiliated outlets.

i’m just confused how Jaylen Brown has such good PR with the casuals and media, he got put in MVP conversations with SGA and gets propped over Tatum when he’s never been better than him for a single second of their careers

@atlanticesque Funny that fridge is in all of them when that is the one thing that is easiest to replace with a mini version. If it was an option I’d go bathroom, oven, w/d. Then buy a mini fridge and you’re good.

YOU 🫵 must pick one of four studio apartments to live in with the following sets of amenities. (Each has a sink, and if no bathroom, six units share one on the floor) 1. Oven, Fridge, Bathroom 2. Fridge, Bathroom, W/D 3. Oven, Fridge, Dishwasher 4. Fridge, Dishwasher, Bathroom

@JenniferNassour These people are all incompetent. None of them could get a job that required any level of operational execution in the private sector. It’s one long performative grift of virtue signaling.

Boston loses federal funding because projects keep getting delayed, and now even the City Council is over it. Mayor Wu can stall projects all day, just not the consequences. bostonherald.com/2026/04/22/bos…

@OCause3 @BarryOnHere They get objectively worse shots and he consistently misses defensive rotations.

@BarryOnHere Watch the games nerd, this team ain’t shit without him

Whatever you do, do NOT look up Jaylen Brown's career On/Off splits, especially in the playoffs. They are....well....they're literally the worst I've ever seen for a star player.

@FortPointer Why are construction costs so expensive?

@themightyjim You must not live here. There are no cranes in Seaport, mostly due to interest rates and construction costs. Secondly, the issue of development has nothing to do with expectations of the public realm.

Not surprised to see demand for $100/court pickleball in Seaport on a lot already permitted for a future tower. Few ask what the future looks like for the public realm, or what’s left of it that won’t be commercialized to maximize investor profits.

@FortPointer Awesome! I don’t think Seaport is the problem. And I don’t think a pickleball court matters. Our problems are zoning, tax rates, and crumbling public infrastructure. I think you’re fighting the wrong battles. The damage is being done by our elected officials.

@themightyjim Most housing experts I talk to don’t include $23 million luxury units at the St Regis in their calculus. Luxury housing is a special class. I’ve advocated for, and fought for, 12-15,000 housing units in Seaport since 1997. I’m well aware of the impact of new units of all types.

@FortPointer Where are the other places of rapid development happening in Boston? How is the current administration solving the problem?

@themightyjim I have higher aspirations for land once was seen as the having the greatest potential on the Eastern Seaboard. And we haven’t even begun to discuss the substantial public bailouts now needed to mitigate knowable impacts of climate change. The district is an embarrassment.

@FortPointer Any housing built lowers the cost of living for everyone. It’s simple economics. Appreciate the engagement but I don’t think we have much to talk about.

@themightyjim As for your claim about Seaport housing, the only housing in Seaport under construction or built in the last 5 years (since the luxury St Regis) is a single luxury condo on Fan Pier Parcel H. I’m not using the word “luxury” lightly. So your claim is false.

@FortPointer Yeah agree to disagree. It’s literally the only place rapidly building housing in Boston, raising the tax base, and lowering housing prices for people. I wish the rest of Boston was growing this fast. The lack of construction in the city is a terrible sign.

@themightyjim The issue is the 10-year incremental marginalization of the Seaport public realm, coupled with the use of vacant lots for outdoor activation that are already permitted for towers, lots that won’t exist in the future. What matters to me is the garbage public realm that’s left.

@FortPointer I’m responding to your post. I thought you would be willing to answer my question and I might learn something. You seem to think that asking a question is an attack and have chosen to be hostile. I continue to be confused.

@themightyjim Why ask about the one lot again, in a vacuum, if I just stated there’s a larger context regarding the public realm across 23 acres? And if you have no clue what I’m talking about, but others know exactly what I’m talking about, who needs to put the time in?