Jess

My entire life reduced to a 3-second clip.

Thinking about this Bono quote again

Inclusionary zoning is a tax on new housing construction that kills new development and makes overall housing affordability worse. It is bad policy and we should abolish it entirely, everywhere.

I've looked into this more and this story is entirely 100% fake. A lot of people are as usual misrepresenting what happened here and not bothering to look at the details at all. First, as I argue in my water post, there seems to be no physical way for Amazon to be responsible for even 1% of the increase in nitrates in groundwater that are contributing to cancer. I'll post that as screenshots in the following comment and link it. What happened here is big ag let a ton of nitrates leak into water to the point that they're polluting local groundwater and increasing the rate of cancer. Amazon's role here is they operate a data center in the area that evaporates a small fraction of the water and leave the nitrates behind, so they very slightly increase the concentration, but it seems impossible for that increase to be anywhere near even a few acres of a normal farm in the area. But Amazon agreeing to pay this must mean they're guilty right? Not at all, the actual court case makes it look like the opposite is true. In the settlement documents, Amazon states explicitly that it is entering the agreement "solely to avoid the burdens and expense of litigation," and denies "each and every one of the allegations of wrongful conduct. Amazon's public statement says their data centers "don't add nitrates to that water, and the water we return represents a very small fraction of the region's overall system." If you do the math, it seems impossible not to agree with Amazon's statement here. Amazon is one of 17 defendants in this case. The others include the large farms and food processing companies (the groups that actually added the nitrates in the first place), and the wastewater facility that's been failing to deal with leakage into the groundwater. They've been building up the nitrate concentration in the water since the early 90s, way before the data center was opened in 2011. Amazon was the first to settle because its marginal contribution to the problem is the easiest to pay off and move on from! The agricultural defendants are still litigating because their part in this is way larger. But as usual people are entirely misreading this and now think that 1) A data center poisoned people and gave them cancer, and 2) It's so clear this happened that Amazon won't even fight it in court. The info environment around this topic is completely off the wall insane.

Today, The Intercept reported that the federal government is ordering Reddit to appear before a grand jury in connection with the anonymous speech of a user who criticized the Trump administration's deportation efforts. Immigration and Customs Enforcement tried to identify a user based in the Pacific Northwest without success. They approached Reddit, demanding identifying information on the user and refusing to specify the posts that caught ICE’s attention. Reddit has not identified the user. Reddit’s own attorneys reviewed the user’s posts for any speech not protected by the First Amendment, and found none. Government critics are not suspects and free speech is not a crime. The First Amendment protects our right to criticize the government anonymously — an American tradition that dates back to the founding. So far, the government hasn’t been able to point to a single Reddit post that’s not protected by the First Amendment. Not one. By putting the administration’s feelings above the First Amendment, government agents are sending a deliberate message to each of us: Don’t criticize us — or else. How we respond to this chilling moment matters. Today, lawmakers from both parties are busy promoting age-verification laws that would force each of us to reveal our identity before we speak online. If lawmakers had their way, the Reddit user would already be standing in court just for expressing his or her beliefs. Who knows how many of us would be hauled up next?

@EricBoehm87 Not to mention super tacky. The obsession with gold leaf: Long Island try-hard aesthetic.

It would be really weird to build something so European-coded to celebrate America

I think it goes unrecognized just how valuable the lack of strong +detailed regulation was for building the economy that propelled US to the top of the world. Micromanagement is death. Innovation requires freedom.

It’s kind of wild that a Supreme Court case upholding the rights of Asian American students not to be discriminated against in university admissions is coded as “anti civil rights” without question or exploration of the underlying premise.

NEWS: Waymo and Waze have announced a partnership to help cities detect and repair potholes faster by providing data from their autonomous fleet. The pilot will launch in these cities first: • San Francisco Bay Area • Los Angeles • Phoenix • Austin • Atlanta "The pilot program uses Waymo’s perception and physical feedback systems to detect and provide up-to-date information on potholes where Waymo operates. The data will be available to cities and state Departments of Transportation through the free-to-use Waze for Cities platform alongside user-reported pothole information, giving officials an additional view of surface street and highway conditions that enables them to more efficiently and effectively fill potholes. The data will also be visible to Waze users in the cities where Waymo operates, keeping road users safe by alerting them as they approach a pothole. Like other on-road features reportable in the Waze app, users will be able to verify the Waymo-identified potholes, increasing the data’s accuracy. Waymo has already identified approximately 500 potholes. Over time, we’ll expand this partnership to more cities we serve, including those with winter weather and harsh freeze-thaw cycles that exacerbate the pothole problem."

Microplastics May Be Overcounted — Here’s Why acsh.org/news/2026/04/0… CC @ilike_mike @CA_Waterkeepers @CaWaterBoards @RonaldBailey

@brad_polumbo Lost to [checks notes] *Donald actual Trump* And still imagines she’s a viable candidate ???!? The duopoly has been engaged in a race to the bottom for presidential candidates. Enough already.

good grief

In late '19, we made the decision to experiment with running a few of the 4/4 units we own as co-living (rather than conventional rentals). An apparently young, single person applied for a room. We vetted and approved him and signed a lease. He proceeded to move his girlfriend and their baby into the room, causing all the other tenants of that unit to break their leases and leave. Understandably, no new tenants would move into that unit, meaning we were only collecting 25% of the rent. Then Covid hit, the city blocked evictions and he immediately stopped paying. They stayed for like 6 months. I think we finally ended up *paying them* something like $10-15k to just leave. (And, of course, never got a dime of the unpaid rent back from the city's farcical rent relief program.) So, yeah, that's our experience running co-living under modern landlord-tenant law and we'll never do it again.

So-called “inclusionary zoning” should be understood as a way for left leaning urban politicians to pose as friends of the poor while indulging their homeowner NIMBY constituents’ desire to block new homes and keep rents and home prices high. It’s an anti-affordability policy.

Back when I was a teacher, there were a few specific other teachers who really drove home that if you don't have anyone listening to you, you're a high threat of trying to find the nearest captive audience and just going off about your whole life. My students all knew the very specific personal life details of a few of a colleagues because they'd spend a quarter of the time talking about themselves.

@davidsenra @tobi Every time I listen to Bernie Sanders, I think of the pie. He is worried about slicing the pie and distributing the crumbs to everyone. I always ask, why not just bake 10 more pies? Abundance means not having to slice the pie, but instead, share or give away what you can’t eat.

I'm thinking about the hysteria about Mythos. "[It] is like a gun, and this is like handing a gun to a 12-year-old." (L.A. Times) "It's like randomly mailing automatic rifles to 5,000 addresses. I hope some crazy teen doesn't get a hold of one." (Oakland Tribune). "...even prompted one leading security expert to warn that 'we could lose control of society.'" (L.A Times Magazine). But wait. Those quotes are from 1995, about the pending release of the ominously named SATAN - "Security Administrator Tool for Analyzing Networks". Which, of course, didn't do anything of those things. Learn from history.

Hey folks, plant data is super useful! Anyone know anyone who can pitch in? Pass it on!

New York promised to equip all 3D printers with tech that stops them from creating parts. @GovKathyHochul announced she wants to establish “minimum safety standards” for 3D printers, but Reason’s @keplingerali shares why that won't work.

The fact that he wrote the ticker is insane

“A Moratorium on the Masters Tournament”? In light of the fact that golf courses use vastly more water than data centers, I asked ChatGPT to whip up a “Petition for Government Action on Water Equity and Resource Use” that anti-data center advocates can circulate to ban golf tournaments and new courses first to see if they’re really serious about their water concerns. 😂

@Pontifex The percentage of people living in extreme poverty is lower today than ever before. It's dramatically lower even than in 1990. Before we go implementing violent expropriation, let's please agree on the facts, and try to understand how this incredible transformation occurred.