Joseph Morris

Enterprise Community Partners, a national nonprofit that funds, consults and advocates for affordable housing, took publicly available but hard-to-parse applicant lists from seven subsidy programs administered by various wings of California’s state government going back three years. With a combination of number crunching and a little inference, the report estimates that clearing the current backlog would require an extra $4.1 billion, split between state administered grants, low-cost loans and tax write-offs.

Instead of 4 days of illegally bombing Iran, killing civilians for no purpose, we could have spent that money to, say, clear California's approved-but-unfunded affordable housing backlog, 39,880 units in 461 projects
calmatters.org/housing/2026...

Merz rebukes US for temporarily lifting sanctions on Russian oil German chancellor says decision is wrong and that pressure on Putin over Ukraine war should be increased

Trump aiding a fascist state in a war against a democracy, because of the foreseeable outcome of an illegal war of choice he did not plan for. I would occasionally say that Trump was still not as bad as W Bush (because war) but I don't think that's true anymore.
www.theguardian.com/world/2026/m...

Solar is of course the choice now, but France building nuclear power capacity in the '70s and '80s looking especially wise this week

National Popular Vote Interstate Compact - Wikipedia

Your state is not part of the NPVIC, maybe call your state legislators en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationa...

I was just listening to David Runciman's episode on Susan Sontag, where he makes the point that we analyze the "why" of things but rarely that "how". It's worth stopping to think that we wouldn't be in a stupid war with people with shoes too big if the electoral college was not.

There's a technical term for this negative self-definition - "schismogenesis" - and while it's pervasive and unavoidable in human societies (and always has been, you can even see it in prehistoric archaeology) we can move past the default mode of identity formation to something better

In years to come, Dayton newspapers would proudly celebrate the hometown Wright brothers as national heroes, but the local reporters somehow missed one of the most important stories in history as it was happening a few miles from their doorstep. J. M. Cox,[c] who published the Dayton Daily News at that time, expressed the attitude of newspapermen – and the public – in those days when he admitted years later: "Frankly, none of us believed it."[106] The Dayton Daily News reported the October 5, 1905, flight on page 9, with agriculture and business news.[108] A few newspapers published articles about the long flights, but no reporters or photographers had been there. The lack of splashy eyewitness press coverage was a major reason for disbelief in Washington, D.C., and Europe, and in journals like Scientific American, whose editors doubted the "alleged experiments" and asked how U.S. newspapers, "alert as they are, allowed these sensational performances to escape their notice."

Generally on the subject of predictability, I was just thinking about the wright brothers yesterday, who nobody thought flight was imminent at that point. The future: glass, darkly. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_...

In years to come, Dayton newspapers would proudly celebrate the hometown Wright brothers as national heroes, but the local reporters somehow missed one of the most important stories in history as it was happening a few miles from their doorstep. J. M. Cox,[c] who published the Dayton Daily News at that time, expressed the attitude of newspapermen – and the public – in those days when he admitted years later: "Frankly, none of us believed it."[106] The Dayton Daily News reported the October 5, 1905, flight on page 9, with agriculture and business news.[108] A few newspapers published articles about the long flights, but no reporters or photographers had been there. The lack of splashy eyewitness press coverage was a major reason for disbelief in Washington, D.C., and Europe, and in journals like Scientific American, whose editors doubted the "alleged experiments" and asked how U.S. newspapers, "alert as they are, allowed these sensational performances to escape their notice."

Generally on the subject of predictability, I was just thinking about the wright brothers yesterday, who nobody thought flight was imminent at that point. The future: glass, darkly. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_...

Read the Wikipedia article on Karp a few weeks ago, the fact that he is an expert with handguns but can't drive a car seems increasingly relevant

Wishing that strategic air warfare planners would read more Immanuel Kant, Jesus, or whoever their favorite golden rule author is

This is the morally correct thing to do out of empathy for others. But it's also the strategically correct thing to do: creating a norm that bombing civilians and cities is permissible is eventually going to have blowback.

Periodic reminder we can do even better than CHMR, bombing outside of a land combat zone was almost made illegal at the same time as chemical weapons in the 1920s bsky.app/profile/morr...

Pete Hegseth kills children

(CHMR was a civilian casualty reduction program, seems can chance that it's existence would have prevented the bombing of the girls school)

Congressdude who has apparently never visited a city. Pluralism is what I do everyday when I drop my kids off at school and go get groceries in Oakland

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_...

Doing a double tap strike on an elementary school is top tier evil
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_...

Yes We Can . . . do brutalism

This is kinda how I felt about Moyn on human rights as well (Not Enough specifically), the thesis that rules are worthless and raw power is the only currency. Seems to me that often rules (and hypocrisy about them) are one tool to redistribute power.

Getting caught up on the fact that Taylor Swift, Bon Iver, and the National are friends and make songs together

The Pentagon won't say why its targeting manual was released online A full instruction manual from the Pentagon appeared online.

In November 2016, after the election, someone in Obama's pentagon leaked the (unclassified, for official use only) air strike targeting manual the US used with Five Eyes to show requirements for airstrikes within the laws of war. It's a time capsule of doctrinal norms. www.popsci.com/pentagon-tar...

The last photo of third-grader Mikaeil Mirdoraghi, waving to his mom before he left for school. He was killed shortly after in the U.S./Israeli strike on a primary school in Minab.

Sad dad band lyricist, ISO sad dad band

INBOX: data from the U.S. Department of State Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migrations show that in the most recent three months, every single one of the 1,651 refugees accepted into the United States were of (white) South African origin.

www.rpc.state.gov/documents/Re...

Caveat that I have never used it before, but searching for Earthjustice's EIN (first non-profit that came to mind, no association) and then punching it in I can bring up their form 990s

Pilot VBall BG 05

knowyourmeme.com/memes/gen-z-...

Have you ever read Sven Lindqvist's A History of Bombing? It's an oddly (but perhaps ingeniously) organized book, and more polemic and a social history rather than a pure military history, but it is the best anti-civilian-bombing arguments I've read

The Trump administration hates innovation

Canal Street

Ghosty snares primarily inspired by Canal Street by New York United, one of my recent favorites open.spotify.com/track/2ywJAb...