Jonathan Smith

@ModeledBehavior @Noahpinion @sdamico Great answer for shareholders. Follow up question for real humans: why didn’t Ford spend the last 15 years building or acquiring world class battery technology?

Ford CEO on the electric tech stack cc @Noahpinion @sdamico caranddriver.com/features/a7039…

I’m not in favor of a culture war but if MAGA is going to make me pick a side I’m more than happy to choose the side with football and reject the one with Kid Rock.

@TVietor08 @CahnEmily None of these guys got murdered. nytimes.com/2021/01/09/us/…

These same guys treated Kyle Rittenhouse like a hero

@AlecStapp This is spot on.

Consultants are essential for standing up large government programs. At one point, the CHIPS Program Office had over 100 consultants badged and working alongside federal staff. They're also one of the easiest ways to waste money and create the illusion of progress. The difference comes down to how you use them. Four key factors for getting it right: 1. Specialized work (financial modeling, industry expertise, legal counsel) is a great fit for outsourcing. 2. General work like program management and strategic planning is not. Consultants lack the context to keep up with a fast-moving program. 3. Embedding consultants in the office, treating them like staff, dramatically increases their effectiveness. Deliverables lobbed over the fence rarely work. 4. Firms with less government contracting experience often outperform the usual suspects. Teams that are "frequent flyers" absorb the worst intuitions about how government works and move slower. New at FACTORY SETTINGS, Sara Meyers on how to use consultants as a tool, not a crutch. factorysettings.org/p/consultants-…

Donald Trump publicly pressuring Machado to give him her Nobel Peace Prize is amazingly similar to Putin stealing a Super Bowl ring from Robert Kraft. He really is copying the authoritarian playbook! cbssports.com/nfl/news/heres…

@Acyn Does Lindsey Graham realize how discovery works?

Graham: I'm going to sue Biden's DOJ and jack Smith, I'm going to sue Verizon, it's going to be a hell of a lot more than $500,000.

@Noahpinion Not logical but understandable. Water is a natural resource. Many people remember when our lakes and rivers were deeply polluted. There’s an emotional resonance that doesn’t exist in the same for energy, which is ultimately a resource generated to be consumed.

The fact that leftists obsess over AI's minuscule water use when it's actually electricity use that's the problem tells you just how epistemically closed off they are.

I’m starting to think MSU’s football team isn’t very good.

Same for you, Common Cause.

I don’t know who the Progressive Turnout Project is but getting spammed with clickbait like this does not make me more likely to support progressive candidates.

Big Ten expansion is ruining Big Ten football.

@NathanCHubbard Wait till you see how good they are at parental controls.

I love Apple so much, and I don’t really wanna hear about a new product until they can show me that they can stop stuff like this, which has been pervasive in my inbox for the past 24 hours. The tech world is telling us they are getting smarter while allowing pervasive stupidity.

Chuck Schumer's top recruit for the Maine Senate race is 78 years old. Have these people learned nothing? punchbowl.news/article/campai…

"The fact is that almost nobody can control themselves around the glowing little demon. That’s fine — it doesn’t make you a bad person for failing to do so. But it does make us a bad society for allowing it to happen." open.substack.com/pub/theargumen…

@besttrousers Totally agree with this. It’s really made me think about how I can be a better communicator when assigning tasks or assignments to humans.

I think one of the interesting things is getting feedback from asking lots of questions in different ways. Normally if I am making a request for someone to do a task it's more of a one-shot deal.

@Crime_Penguin The point of cities is that humans are more productive in groups than by themselves. More productivity means more money per person. People are what unlock “high-level econ activity.” If the most productive people like bike lanes you’d be stupid not to build them.

World-class cities are built on heavy industry, serious infrastructure and high-level econ activity, not bike lines and other cutesy trendy bullshit accounts like yours propagate. You live in Austin, a world-class wedding destination for insufferable millennials, not a real city!

Michigan State was able to lure away the President of UNC in part because of a MAGA crackdown on academic freedom. Santa Ono is leaving Univ of Mich to go to a place that was so conservative and political that a GOP Senator quit. nytimes.com/2025/05/07/opi…

“We are now seeing a generation of 70-year-olds who called for the departure of an 81-year-old fail to understand how anyone under 60 gets information about the world.” nytimes.com/2025/04/28/opi… via @NYTOpinion

How hard would it be for Apple to put some kind of mechanism in the lid to the AirPods case so that it doesn’t immediately open and eject your AirPods every time you drop the case?

Why does the NCAA Championship Game start at 9 pm?