Mark Hogan

I was in a 2 hour briefing today on the Iran War. All the briefings are closed, because Trump can't defend this war in public.

I obviously can't disclose classified info, but you deserve to know how incoherent and incomplete these war plans are.

1/ Here's what I can share:

I think the spray works on any pruners but I haven't tried it!

The price has gone down over the last few years on the Japanese ones. I wonder why considering tariffs and inflation?

Counterpoint: have one pair of old Friskars that you use for very sappy, nasty plants (looking at you Echium) when you just need to cut them back but you're too strapped to properly clean or sharpen the good pruners.

"LLMs simply don't make mistakes like the ones you see here in this passage from Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy" is jokerizing

Yeah makes sense! That's why they have a good reputation

The Felco ones are excellent too. My lefty daughter seems to be able to use my Okatsune ones (and people online seem to think they work well for lefties because of the design since they don't have as much of an offset as the Felcos)

Yeah there is a place for both!

You still need good hand pruners. If you are deadheading or pruning delicate plants you can't use powered ones.

Before you buy a crappy pair of Friskars pruners at Home Depot please consider buying these Okatsune ones that are made in Japan and will last you for life if you treat them well. This is my most strongly held opinion (you don't have to buy them from Amazon) www.amazon.com/Okatsune-Byp...

I think a lot of people don't plan on staying in a house long enough to worry about things like replacing the roof. In other parts or the country that are less competitive people obsess over inspection reports for that reason.

I don't think an older condo is a great investment for most people given what I have seen professionally esp given where payments are relative to rent right now

Idk it's pretty obvious when you have an inspection done what the maintenance needs on a single family home are.

I think the biggest problem with condo HOAs is that they have usually not been high enough and condo buildings end up with tons of deferred maintenance to the point where the special assessments can put people underwater

Pools, security, landscaping, trash, other common area maintenance

A lot of those HOAs in sunbelt states are charged to people in single family neighborhoods so people are paying both

The next SOTU he's gonna buy one of those big carny scales and guess people's weight instead of giving a speech

Counterpoint: America should have 800 states.

There are so many cultivars from NY State and I suspect Cornell had something to do with this?

Someone sat on it

Really crazy proportions on that one

Too many cities are in this dire economic situation. And there are still politicians who want to put their city in the same place thru lazy, destructive, & short-sighted austerity budgets.

A big part of it is that too many cities don’t know the difference between costs & investments/value creators.

Omg we have those at the DeYoung museum in SF and it thought they were the only ones

this is actually a really good presentation of the points in favor of single-stair. yes they literally quote a random fire marshal in exurban minneapolis, but they pretty much nail all the pros in a way that I think effectively communicates to laypeople.

I don't think AI is going to automate your email despite all the advertising to the contrary

Knives Out for the ICE Queen Senate Republicans might be ready to dump the DHS secretary.

"The reforms they’re seeking—badges and body cameras, that they lose their masks, that they be investigated for misconduct—are utterly reasonable...Americans don’t like what DHS has been up to. Democrats should aim a lot higher than just getting a scalp from Noem." open.substack.com/pub/thebulwa...

Hezbollah just restarted the fight that Israel was waiting to finish | CNN In the pre-dawn hours of Monday morning, Hezbollah opened a new front in the US-Israeli war against Iran when it launched “missiles and a swarm of drones” at a military base in northern Israel.

It feels like this was the plan all along

www.cnn.com/2026/03/02/m...

So this study is based on the Lived-Experience-of-Firefighters and not quantitative research or comparisons to peer nations? This does not seem to be an evidence-based approach to public policy. Very disappointing.

Why are we agreeing with Matt Walsh what is happening