As I said in the beginning of this talk with economist Paul Krugman, I find it frustrating that so much of modern economic discussion is so hard to follow. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, everyone assumed that economics and politics went hand-in-hand, and politicians, newspaper editors, and everyday people had ongoing discussions about how different policies would affect people’s lives and the health of the economy.
From my observation, that process seemed to change pretty dramatically after World War II, when politicians often described their economic policies as doing something very different than what they actually did, or tucked economic policies like tax cuts into other measures, making the logic behind different acts unclear. It seemed to become harder and harder for everyday people to figure out the relationship between politics and the economy.
Talking with Paul gives us the opportunity to untangle some of the big-picture changes behind the slew of policy news.
Here’s our first conversation. Looking forward to more.
Today, administration officials gave a classified briefing to the Senate Armed Services Committee about the war in Iran. Democrats who spoke to the press afterward appeared to be furious.
Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) told reporters he was coming out of the briefing “as dissatisfied and angry, frankly, as I have from any past briefing in my 15 years in the Senate. I am left with more questions than answers, especially about the cost of the war. My questions have been unanswered. And I will demand answers because the American people deserve to know.”
“I am most concerned about the threat to American lives, of potentially deploying our sons and daughters on the ground in Iran. We seem to be on a path toward deploying American troops on the ground in Iran…and there is also, as disturbingly as anything else, the specter of active Russian aid to Iran, putting in danger American lives. Literally, Russia seems to be aiding our enemy, actively and intensively, with intelligence and perhaps with other means, and China, also, may be assisting Iran.”
“So, the American people deserve to know much more than this administration has told them about the cost of the war, the danger to our sons and daughters in uniform, and the potential for further escalation and widening of this war, a war of choice made by this president, not chosen by the American people, with potentially huge consequences to American lives.”
Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) noted on social media that the administration appears to have no goals for the war except continued bombing, and no plan for reopening the Strait of Hormuz.
Senator Jacky Rosen (D-NV) was obviously frustrated that the administration is giving out information only under the cloak of classified briefings, making it hard for elected officials to communicate with their constituents about the war. “[W]e’ve been calling over and over again for them to come out of the classified briefings, to allow us to have these conversations, as much as we can, in an open setting, not just with the press, but with the American people, and with our constituents. With our men and women who serve in the military with their families, who are waiting home for them.”
While it is “solely the responsibility of the United States Congress to declare war,” she said, she called attention to Trump’s frequent use of the word “war” to suggest Republicans are hiding his seizing of that power by claiming Trump’s attacks on Iran do not fall under that constitutional provision. “Make no mistake,” she said, “this is Trump’s war. He says it every day…. And he wants to go any further, he needs to come out and have this discussion with Congress and the American people.
“[W]hat I heard is not just concerning,” Rosen said, “it is disturbing, and I’m not sure what the endgame is or what their plans are.” She said Trump “has not shown, to this Congress, to me, or, I believe, to us in our classified briefing…any plans for what he wants to do for the day after.” She warned that Trump could not simply stop the war and have everything go back to the way it was on February 27. The Middle East has sustained too much damage. “You see the bombs, you see the destruction. It’s not going to stop just because he wishes it to be so.”
A key reason the Framers of the Constitution put the power to declare war in the hands of Congress, rather than the executive, was that they were all too familiar with the history of European kings who had launched wars of choice that had reduced their subjects to poverty under crushing war taxes. They feared that the same thing could happen in their new country: that supporting an army would cost tax dollars, impoverishing the citizens of the new nation.
If the debate over war went to Congress, voters could hear the reasoning for the war hashed out and decide for themselves if the cost in lives and treasure was worth it to them. And, after they voted for a war, members of Congress would have to answer to their constituents for the money they spent and the lives lost.
That argument is potent again almost 250 years later. Democrats are calling out that Trump is spending $1 billion a day in his attacks on Iran but that he slashed through government programs that help Americans, claiming the need to address the country’s ballooning national debt. Just yesterday, Berkeley Lovelace Jr. of NBC News reported that Dr. Mehmet Oz, the administration official overseeing the Affordable Care Act, says that many of those enrolled in healthcare under the law should not be there. About 23 million people signed up for ACA coverage this year, down by more than 1.2 million from last year. Oz anticipates cutting another 4 million off the rolls as he targets “waste, fraud, and abuse.”
And yet, as Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling of The New Republic noted last night, according to a report from government watchdog Open the Books, the Pentagon under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth blew through $93.4 billion in September 2025 alone, with more than $50 billion going out in the last five days of the month alone.
To spend the entirety of the defense budget, rather than lose it, Pentagon officials bought “a $98,329 Steinway & Sons grand piano for the Air Force chief of staff’s home, $5.3 million for Apple devices such as the new iPad, and an astronomical amount of shellfish, including $2 million for Alaskan king crab and $6.9 million worth of lobster tail. (Lobster tail is apparently a favorite of Hegseth’s Pentagon—the department spent more than $7.4 million total on the luxury item in March, May, June, and October.) In other pricey food purchases, the government decided to drop $15.1 million for ribeye steak (again, just in September), $124,000 for ice cream machines, and $139,224 on 272 orders of doughnuts.”
In October, Houghtaling noted, the administration said it could not fund the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as food stamps, because the government had shut down. Millions of Americans lost food benefits.
Representative Melanie Stansbury (D-NM) reposted Houghtaling’s article and commented: “You better believe we’ll be investigating.”
Democratic Texas state representative James Talarico, who is running for the U.S. Senate, expressed his concerns about the Iran war on CBS Mornings yesterday. “As a millennial, I saw how military disasters like the Iraq War robbed this nation of young lives, of billions of dollars of our moral standing in the world, and I worry that our current leaders are repeating those same mistakes,” he said.
“I was in Sand Branch, Texas, which is a community south of Dallas that doesn’t have running water. It doesn’t have basic sewer infrastructure,” he continued. “So every dollar we spend bombing people in the Middle East is a dollar we’re not spending in Sand Branch, Texas, or in our communities here at home.”
“We’re always told that we don’t have enough money for schools, or for health care, or for our veterans. But there’s always enough money to bomb people on the other side of the world. And so we can support the democracy movement in Iran. We can prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, all without bombing innocent schoolchildren, or sending our American troops off to die on the other side of the world.”
Talarico was channeling a Texas-born Republican from the post–World War II years: President Dwight D. Eisenhower. In early March 1953, soon after he took office, Soviet leader Josef Stalin died, and Eisenhower jumped at the chance to reset the militarization of the Cold War.
All people hunger for “peace and fellowship and justice,” he said in a speech to newspaper editors, and he deplored the growing arms race with the USSR. Even if the two superpowers managed to avoid an atomic war, pouring wealth and energy into armaments would limit their ability to raise up the rest of the world.
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.” The sweat of workers, the genius of scientists, and the hopes of children would be better spent on schools, hospitals, roads, and homes than on armaments. World peace could be achieved, Eisenhower said, “not by weapons of war but by wheat and by cotton, by milk and by wool, by meat and by timber and by rice.”
Extremist Republicans sneered at what they called Eisenhower’s “stomach theory” of diplomacy, but Eisenhower’s approach to the world was forged by his horror at what he saw at Ohrdruf, the Nazi concentration camp that funneled prisoners to Buchenwald, when he commanded the Allies in World War II. “I never dreamed that such cruelty, bestiality, and savagery could really exist in this world!” he wrote. He was determined to do all he could to guarantee that such atrocities never happened again.
Eisenhower recognized that economically dispossessed people were natural targets for political and religious extremists. They could easily be manipulated by a strong leader to back a cause—any cause—that promised to resurrect a world in which they had enjoyed prosperity and cultural significance.
Such extremism had been dangerous enough in the hands of the Nazis, but 1945 gave quite specific shape to Eisenhower’s fears. The atomic bomb, unleashed by the United States over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in summer 1945, changed the meaning of human conflict. If a charismatic political or religious extremist roused a dispossessed population behind another war, and if that leader got his hands on a nuclear weapon, he could destroy the world.
Promoting economic prosperity and better standards of living at home and around the world was not just about peace or justice, Eisenhower thought; it was about saving humankind.
Up betimes, and to my office, walked a little in the garden with Sir W. Batten, talking about the difference between his Lady and my wife yesterday, and I doubt my wife is to blame. About noon had news by Mr. Wood that Butler, our chief witness against Field, was sent by him to New England contrary to our desire, which made me mad almost; and so Sir J. Minnes, Sir W. Pen, and I dined together at Trinity House, and thither sent for him to us and told him our minds, which he seemed not to value much, but went away. I wrote and sent an express to Walthamstow to Sir W. Pen, who is gone thither this morning, to tell him of it. However, in the afternoon Wood sends us word that he has appointed another to go, who shall overtake the ship in the Downes. So I was late at the office, among other things writing to the Downes, to the Commander-in-Chief, and putting things into the surest course I could to help the business. So home and to bed.
Back when I was a kid, growing up in Mahopac, N.Y., the Mets had a pitcher named Dwight Gooden.
At his absolute best, Gooden was a phenomenon. His fastball hit the high 90s, he had an unhittable curve and his mound savvy was unmatched. In 1985, he won the Cy Young Award after going 24-4 with a 1.53 ERA. The dude was awesome enough to have a mural of his visage plastered alongside a Manhattan building.
Time, however, is undefeated—and as the years passed and Gooden struggled with aging (and, admittedly, addiction), his stuff turned a wee-bit flat. That 98-mph fastball began coming in at 91, 92. His curveball straightened out. I remember, in 1998, interviewing Gooden when he was in spring training with the Cleveland Indians, asking whether he could still recapture the lost magic of yesteryear.
However, the man also happens to be 73, and while he remains a fairly eloquent and convincing speaker, there are more pauses than yesteryear; more semi-awkward gaps in time that lead an interviewer (in this case, moi) to wonder whether he’s a dude merely measuring his thoughts, or a dude closer to 2024 Joe Biden than 2005 Antonio Villaraigosa.
I don’t have the answer to this one. But I did find him charming, interesting and a person fairly convinced he can turn back the clock and (despite less-than-amazing polling numbers) slay another dragon or two.
Here’s our talk …
ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA: “I’m sorry. I’m what? Let’s see. Two minutes late. I apologize.”
JEFF PEARLMAN: “That is not bad. That’s pretty good.”
ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA: “I had to approve a social post.”
JEFF PEARLMAN: “I’m Jeff. How are you?”
ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA: “Hi, Jeff. Oh, you’re a Boston Red Sox fan.”
JEFF PEARLMAN:“I’m a New Yorker. I’m just wearing the hat. My mom bought it for me. What can I tell you? Are you a big baseball guy?”
ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA: “I don’t know if I’m big baseball guy, but I’m definitely a Dodger fan. I have been since I was a kid.”
JEFF PERARLMAN:“Just so you know, this is random. I’m a longtime sports writer. I spent my whole career as a sports writer, and I live in Orange County and I started a website covering Orange County politics, and it’s grown and grown and grown and grown because with the decline of the Register and the Times really not covering Orange County, I just saw this big gulp of nothingness, so I decided to sort of do it. And hence, why you have the displeasure of speaking with me …”
ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA: “There’s no displeasure.”
JEFF PEARLMAN:“So I’ve been writing extensively for the past year and a half about Orange County politics, and I’ve been diving into these races. And I’m actually being sincere when I say this. I honestly don’t understand why people want to hold public office, because it’s a grind. You get stuff tossed to you left and right. You’re always asking for money. You have to ask for more money. You’re looking at polls. And it seems more unpleasant now than it’s ever been before with social media threats, with this public awareness of who you are at all times. I don’t really understand ... I swear to God, I don’t fully understand why someone would want to do this job, even a high-level job like governor in the hellscape we occupy that is 2026. So I ask you, why not lie on a beach and drink a pina colada?”
ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA: “First of all, I understand why you feel that way. I think our politics are getting more coarse. I think there’s a lack of civility in our discourse that causes me concern, and we’re probably more polarized than we have been at any time since the Civil War. But to answer your question, look, I grew up in a time of hope and optimism in America when people took to the streets to fight for voting rights and civil liberties. I believe that public service is an honor. And while this state has given me more than I could have ever imagined, a state of enormous possibilities, a state with its own dream, it’s also a state with big challenges, and that’s why I’m decided to come back. I think we need a proven problem solver, someone who doesn’t just talk a great game, but someone who’s focused on results.
JEFF PEARLMAN:“Do you think the lack of civility is a permanent problem? Do you think we’re just … Even with cell phones, even with social media, you think there is a way out of this quagmire of cruelty?”
ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA: “On my wall, I say EVERYONE’S A LEADER. LEAD BY EXAMPLE. One, two—GET SHIT DONE. Three, INTEGRITY MATTERS. DON’T LIE. Four, EVERYONE DESERVES RESPECT. Five, PREPARATION. HARD, SMART WORK EQUALS SUCCESS. I believe that you lead by example. I believe that it’s important for us to advocate for what we believe in, but to do it in a way that respects other viewpoints and I’ve got a record doing that. When I was speaker of the California State Assembly, I balanced two budgets with a surplus, with a Republican governor and a Democratic governor when we only had 42 and 48 votes, not the super majority we have today. When I was mayor, I left LA on a sound financial footing. I was pro-worker, but I was also pro-business and I was everybody’s mayor. And I think right now, more than ever, we need uniters. We need uniters.”
JEFF PEARLMAN: “It feels like from this vantage point, and I am a New Yorker …”
ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA: “I won’t hold that against you, by the way.”
JEFF PEARLMAN: “I appreciate that. And I’m wearing the Red Sox hat. But … the poison of Donald Trump and this idea of just demonize your enemy, demonize your enemy. They’re the enemy. They’re not just someone you disagree with, they’re the enemy … that a lot of people in politics have really bought into that. And other people have said, “No, we can be friendly with each other. We can work across the aisle.” And then you have people just saying, “Nope, nope, nope, you’re the enemy, you’re the enemy, you’re the enemy.” Is there an actual way ... I’m being serious. People who are trained to hate you, is there an actual way to work with people like that?”
ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA: “Well, first of all, let me just say that I believe and believe strongly that we need to work across the aisle to take on the challenges we face. But I also believe and believe strongly, and maybe because I grew up in a tough neighborhood, when somebody hits you in the mouth, threatens your civil rights and civil liberties, targets your state … we need to fight back. I’m not a Pollyanna, but I I do believe that, as Mrs. Obama said, when they fight low, we go high. But [we have to] fight for what we believe in.”
JEFF PEARLMAN: “I have some issues that different people who follow me wanted me to ask you specifically about, so I’m going to ask. What is our solution—if there is a solution—to the high-speed rail and the kind of fiasco of it all?”
ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA: “Well, first of all, it has been a fiasco. I think that we can all acknowledge that. Secondly, the idea of high-speed rail is a 21st century idea that California has to get behind. What I’ve said is when I became mayor, I said, ‘We’d build a subway to the sea,’ if you remember. I said, ‘We’ll make LA a city focused on public transit and reimagine how we live.’ At the time, the federal government had taken money away from ... You couldn’t build a subway with federal funds because they had opined that you couldn’t build a subway in areas with methane pockets. I brought experts from around the world and convinced the author of that amendment that we could, and I think we need to bring in engineers and experts from around the world to look at what we need to do to put high-speed well back on track.”
JEFF PEARLMAN:“You feel like it’s still worth pursuing? You do not think it’s worth just ditching and saying, ‘Man’ …”
ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA: “It’s still worth pursuing. And again, I have a record. People call me the transportation mayor, and I’ve got a record of building and bringing in the best and the brightest. So I think we need to bring in the best and the brightest to put high-speed rail back on track. And in all likelihood, do that with the private sector. Bring in the private sector the way high-speed rail was built around the world.”
JEFF PEARLMAN: “It’s interesting. I live here in Orange County, and Orange County is ... homelessness is a major, major issue, as obviously it was in LA when you were mayor, and you earned very strong reviews for the way you handled homelessness and worked on building housing. In Orange County, it feels like where I’m based, everyone is turned off by homelessness, but nobody wants housing for homelessness built near them.”
ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA: “Very good …”
JEFF PEARLMAN: “I really mean it. It’s Orange County. It actually sickens me how many people are horrified by homelessness, not because they feel bad for the person who is without home, but because they don’t want them near their Starbucks …”
ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA: “So let me just say this. What I’ve said is when I’m governor, we will not criminalize the homeless. We will be compassionate, but we won’t allow for chaos. Selling drugs in front of cops is chaos. I believe that if you’re offered housing and services, you don’t have a right to be homeless. Now, different than other candidates, I don’t believe you should be incarcerated, but I believe we can move you out if you refuse housing and the services that are provided. I also believe some love to talk about how Ronald Reagan got rid of the mental hospitals. I think you’ve heard that. And what I say is that’s true, but for the last 20 years, 28 years, we’ve been in office and I believe the next governor’s going to have to take advantage of the care courts and build locked facilities where people who are a threat to themselves and others and refuse to take their meds, are provided the services, the therapy that they need to get healthy again.”
JEFF PEARLMAN:“Is it hard to convince people that their money should go for homeless services? People [say], ‘Oh, it’s already so expensive living in California. Oh, this, oh that.’ Well, we’re going to take some of your tax money and we’re going to help the homeless. It feels like a lot of people just don’t have the constitution for that regard …”
ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA: “Well, let me share with you. According to the legislative analyst office, the LAO, we spent $24 billion from the state that did an audit and during that time, homelessness went up. So what I’ve said is that audit showed there were only two programs that work. One that helps people with rent, prevents them from going homeless in the first place, and another program that I believe was called Home Safe. And so what I’ve said is we can’t throw money at things that don’t work, but we do have to make investment. Here’s another example. The average homeless unit costs $850,000 a unit. There are working families that can’t afford that. And so what I’ve said is, um, that’s not sustainable. We need tiny homes with services, cost about $100,000 to $130,000 a unit, but I think in Santa Monica, the average price or the price was $1.2 million. And that’s just not sustainable.”
JEFF PEARLMAN:“When I hear to politicians or people running for office talk about this, they almost make it sound like, ‘look, it’s easy if we have this and that and that.’ It seems like an insanely difficult problem. Just what do we do about this and how do we handle it?”
ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA: “Jeff, you hit it right on the head, the nail on the head. It is not easy. You mentioned it. I had homelessness. I also built more homeless housing in eight years in the middle of a recession than the two administrations the 12 years before me. Actually, I built three times more homeless housing than the two administrations before me. It won’t be easy. It will require state and local funds, but no problem. My experience is that there are no problems that don’t have a solution.
“Virtually every problem has a solution, maybe is a better way [to say it]. It’s my experience that virtually every problem has a solution. And I don’t know if you know or your viewers do. When I became mayor, LA was the most violent big city in America. When I left, along with New York, it was the safest … the 48 percent drop in violent crime. One out of three schools were failing, and the San Fernando Valley was talking about seceding from LA Unified. When I left, we had a 60 percent increase in the graduation rate. In the middle of a recession, I put 270 ... Well, nearly 300,000 people in living wage jobs. As I understand it, about 25 percent of all the cranes in the United States were in LA. LA went from 20,000 people downtown to 60,000 people. The No. 1 American city in reducing greenhouse gas is number five in the world.
“I was focused on my job. We had metrics and dashboards on virtually every campaign promise I made, and we didn’t solve homelessness. We didn’t eliminate crime. We didn’t get to 100 percent graduation rate, but we did more in eight years on those issues than anybody before me or since. So what I can tell you, that’s why I believe that we need a proven problem solver, someone that doesn’t just talk a great game, but has a record of results.”
JEFF PEARLMAN: “Do you think living in California means just accepting that part of living in this state—this great state—is you will pay more for gas and it just is what it is and we have higher prices?”
ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA: “No. I believe that the next governor’s going to have to take on the issue of affordability. That means address the high cost of gas, the highest in the country, the high cost of utilities, the second highest in the country that have gone up 60 percent, the second highest home prices, which average about $900,000 a unit. I think we could do better than that. And I’ve got a plan, a plan that focuses on reducing our gas prices by employing on all of the above energy policy that understands we produce the cleanest fuel in the United States of America and indeed the world. We need to wean ourselves from foreign oil. We just saw with this conflict that’s war in Iran, what’s going to happen to gas prices and particularly gas prices in California. We need to produce our own oil and gas. And we made it impossible for refineries to exist. And when people say ‘You’re defending refineries,’ I said, ‘No, I’m defending people that drive a Ram pickup, Jeff.
“And so on utilities, let’s build a grid. Our utility rates are so high because we haven’t built a grid. We built 167,000 charging stations in 10 years. We need two million more in the next 10. And if we build them when I’m governor, and we will, we don’t have the grid, so we have to build a grid. And then finally, with home prices, make it impossible to build. We need market rate, workforce, affordable, and homeless housing. We need to cut red tape. We need to address a broken California Environmental Quality Act that allows you to sue from Arizona for a project in Fullerton. So we need to do a lot, and I have a plan to do that.”
JEFF PEARLMAN:“Wait, since you said ‘shit’ earlier in this interview, I’m going to use a curse of my own. Do you feel like climate change-wise, we’re just fucked as a species?”
ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA: “No.”
JEFF PEARLMAN:“You really don’t?”
ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA: “I think we can do a lot to reduce our carbon footprint, but I think we can’t do it on the backs of working families because they will push back and they already are.”
JEFF PEARLMAN:“When you saw that we went to war with Iran, were you surprised, bemused, depressed, none of the above, all of the above?”
ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA: “I wasn’t surprised. I’m outraged because we invaded with Iran with no plan, no support from the Congress, and without an end game, and I believe it ultimately will hurt our economy. We’re already seeing it raising gas prices and inflation and the cost of living.”
JEFF PEARLMAN: “Wait, I have a question I desperately want to ask you. You are the perfect person to ask this. It just entered my head. This is my question I want to understand, and you’re the guy. Okay. You have all these people in Congress, all these people in the Senate, governors too. They’ve all been in elected politics for years. Presumably, they’ve had leadership positions for years. Why are all these people so terrified of Trump? You would think people who have been in leadership positions for years wouldn’t cower in the face of someone else. I don’t understand why everyone is so terrified of him. I don’t get it …”
ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA: “I don’t know if they’re terrified of Trump as much as terrified of the erosion of our civil liberties and civil rights, erosion of the institutions that have made America a beacon of life and hope to the world. I do believe that Donald Trump is a threat to our democracy, but understand that you can’t just focus on Donald Trump. There are problems we created in this state, and we’ve got to focus on those problems.
“And as I said, the biggest challenge is the challenge of affordability. But look, people want us ... I tell people I’m running on a platform of common sense, competence, and of course, correction. I think people are looking for us to focus on the basics again. They want safe neighborhoods, good schools, healthcare that works for their families. They want us to focus on an economy that’s not working for enough people and push back against Trump, particularly on these ICE raids and where he targets California, but [we can’t be] obsessed on him and take our eye off the ball.”
JEFF PEARLMAN: “I think we’re all obsessed with him, unfortunately. Let me ask you a final question. Obviously, the other day, Rusty Hicks wrote a letter to every candidate saying, everyone needs to assess where they are in the race, et cetera, et cetera. There is a worry among people who are politically involved in the party that all you guys are going to cancel each other out and we’re going to wind up with two Republicans. I don’t know. How big of a concern is that and how big of a consideration should that be for people running?”
ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA: “The fact of the matter is, the Republicans are all decided. There are about 25 percent Republicans in this state and with independents that vote Republican, about maybe close to 35, 32. The two Republican candidates have 16 and 16. There are no undecideds among Republicans. They’re with one of the two Republicans. There are 35 percent undecided. They’re almost exclusively Democrat. Many of them live, frankly, in Southern California. So what I say to people, at the end of the day, it’s too early to count anyone out. In 1998, in April, Gray Davis was at 11. Jane Harman was at 18, and Al Checchi was at 19. Gray won that race. Only eight points between them. It’s only seven points between me and the top candidate. It’s wide open. It’s early.”
JEFF PEARLMAN:“Let me ask you a final, final question.”
ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA: “Yes, sir.”
JEFF PEARLMAN: “I moved here 11 years ago from New York. I live in Orange County. How come you guys in LA consider Orange County to be like 7,000 miles away. We’re only an hour down the 405. All I ever hear about is Orange County. It’s too far. Orange County, I can’t go down there. It’s too far. The traffic, blah, blah, blah. What the heck?”
ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA: “I think we live in a bubble here in LA, frankly. I’ve been going to Orange County and that’s why I wanted to interview with you. I’ve been going a lot. I was just there with the Orange County Latino Business Association. I’ve been there probably once every two weeks, but I’m going up and down the state and I’m going to continue to visit because it’s in the same media market. And while there are differences for sure, also a lot of similarities.”
JEFF PEARLMAN: “It’s much more purple. Much more purple than it used to be.”
ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA: “Much more purple than it used to be for sure. The orange curtain no longer is.”
JEFF PEARLMAN: “Actually, if you were running 30 years ago, this election, you probably wouldn’t even think about Orange County, correct? Different landscape altogether.”
ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA: “Yeah, there’s a different landscape altogether from 30 years ago, for sure.”
JEFF PEARLMAN: “That’s interesting. Well, listen, thank you so much for doing this.”
ANTONIO VILLARAIGOSA: “No, Jeff, thank you. Appreciate it.”
According to the disclosure, the former DOGE software engineer, who worked at the Social Security Administration last year before starting a job at a government contractor in October, allegedly told several co-workers that he possessed two tightly restricted databases of U.S. citizens’ information, and had at least one on a thumb drive. The databases, called “Numident” and the “Master Death File,” include records for more than 500 million living and dead Americans, including Social Security numbers, places and dates of birth, citizenship, race and ethnicity, and parents’ names…
According to the complaint, he allegedly told the whistleblower that he needed help transferring data from a thumb drive “to his personal computer so that he could ‘sanitize’ the data before using it at [the company.]” The engineer told colleagues that once he had removed personal details from the data, he wanted to upload it into the company’s systems. He told another colleague, who refused to help him upload the data because of legal concerns, that he expected to receive a presidential pardon if his actions were deemed to be illegal, according to the complaint…
Borges said he feared that the government will never be able to determine what happened to the data after it was no longer in the sole possession of the agency.
“This is absolutely the worst-case scenario,” Borges told The Post. “There could be one or a million copies of it, and we will never know now.”
If you’ve ever had any kind of federal data security/protection training, this, in a sense, is not the worst case scenario presented in the training because no one would believe that someone would do something this stupid. This is the kind of thing that should get you thrown under the jail.
For those who do not know what the term insider threat means in government parlance:
A phrase often used is insider threat: someone who has access to the federal government’s information because they’re an employee (e.g., here’s the FBI’s introduction to insider threats). Looking across various federal agencies*, here’s a list of the features of the people who might be an insider threat that I compiled (I tried to stay true to their language):
Vulnerability to blackmail, greedy, or has a large financial need.
Destructive, compulsive, or passive-aggressive behavior; may also have narcissistic tendencies.
Difficulty with criticism (personal or job-related).
Minimizes mistakes, blames others and fails to take responsibility for them.
Lacks empathy and loyalty, is ‘ethically flexible.’
Has a sense of entitlement.
History of frustration or disappointment, believes they haven’t received their due.
Contempt for the United States government and/or the current administration.
Admittedly, Trump is the ultimate insider threat, but everyone Musk hired under the auspices of DOGE should be considered an insider threat. Not a potential insider threat, but an active one.
Friday the 13th! Now for something really scary. A horrible, and likely inaccurate, new Interstate Bridge Replacement cost estimate is emerging. Instead of buckets of blood, it’s billions in boondoggles.
In December, City Observatory broke the news that the estimated cost of the Interstate Bridge Project had increased from a maximum of $7.5 billion to $17.7 billion. Since then IBR officials have been in denial, claiming that the estimate is merely a draft. They repeatedly delayed and dissembled about the exploding cost of the project, but Friday, they’re going to finally–they say–present some new numbers. The entire process of estimating project costs shows how bankrupt, unaffordable and unaccountable the entire process has become. Regardless of the exact numbers offered Friday–which will be vastly higher than the $5-$7.5 billion estimate they’ve been publicly presenting until now–no one should trust that they accurately represent how much this project will ultimately cost. Here’s why.
IBR Cost Estimates: Delayed, manipulated hidden, and lied.
This latest delay is yet another example of the continuing manipulation of the process by IBR. They’ve purposely waited until after both the Oregon and Washington Legislatures adjourn their 2026 sessions. This, in spite of the fact that their own cost estimate documentation shows that the entire purpose of the estimates was to be able to present them to both the 2026 Legislatures. Given that Oregon adjourned on March 6, and Washington must adjourn by March 12, it’s little surprise that the IBR scheduled meeting to discuss the new estimate on Friday, March 13. The delay of the cost estimate, once again makes a cruel joke of the claim that ODOT and WSDOT are somehow being held accountable for their actions.
Delayed: IBR staff have publicly admitted for more than two years, since January, 2024, that the old estimate was too low and needed to be increased. They’ve repeatedly missed their own deadlines for releasing a new estimate, and offered repeated and false excuses for the failure.
Manipulated: They’ve intentionally manipulated the release of this estimate to keep legislators in the dark. Though they substantially finished their estimate in August, 2025–at a workshop attended by more than 100 staff and consultants–they withheld the estimate from the Legislature in September 2025. They broke their promise to release the estimate to the same legislative oversight committee in December 2025.
IBR’s official work plan said the estimate were being prepared specifically to be ready in time to provide to the 2026 Oregon and Washington Legislative sessions, and were to be complete by October 2025.
When City Observatory obtained the concealed estimate–which ranges from $12.3 to $17.7 billion, up from a range of $5 to $7.5 billion, IBR claimed it was not final, even though all the work had been done by October.
Hidden: They intentionally hid the estimate from public view: Project Director Greg Johnson warned project staff not to discuss the estimate with the public or media in August, 2025. He clearly knew that this was very bad news and didn’t want it to get out. (Johnson announced his resignation in October, 2025).
–Don’t share anything with outsiders, whether “preliminary, estimated or final,”
–this is to protect our integrity and maintain trust with our partners.
Lied: IBR has repeatedly lied about the estimate, claiming that in December 2025, they couldn’t release the estimate because they didn’t have the Coast Guard’s decision, when in September they testified to the same committee that the Coast Guard’s decision made no difference to the timing of the cost estimate.
Offered phony excuses. As we’ve documented, IBR’s claims about the reasons for higher costs are misleading or simply false. They’ve claimed the report was just a draft, that the number wasn’t “final” in spite of the fact that was completed on schedule, involved very detailed estimates of 29 different construction packages, was vetted in an August workshop with more than 100 staff, and was provided to federal agencies. They’ve also blamed inflation–even though cost increases wildly exceed the project’s own estimates of increased inflation since 2022. The only ones who weren’t in on the estimates, were legislators and the public–who will have to pay for the project.
IBR’s own internal documents show the estimate was being prepared specifically for the 2026 legislative sessions and called for the estimate to be complete in October 2025.
IBR’s internal documents show that the CEVP cost estimate workshop was held on the week August 18-23, and that a number of issues were identified, and that they were to be resolved and incorporated in a final estimate to be submitted to ODOT, WSDDOT, FHWA and FTA by October 31, 2025. (The document is entitled “Programmatic Estimate Update – Work Plan” and is “Programmatic Estimate Update – CEVP Model Sep 5.docx.”)
According to the “Work Plan–CEVP” provided IBR, the objective of the plan was to complete the CEVP process and create an entirely new estimate in advance of the 2026 Legislative session, with a target date of October 2025.
Document: IBR_Program_Workplan_2025_CEVP.docx (undated), Created June 5, 2025.
A false claim about the Coast Guard and the delay
In December and January, IBR officials have been claiming that they don’t have, and can’t release an accurate estimate IBR of project costs because they had to wait to know the outcome of a request from the Coast Guard to modify its Preliminary Navigation Clearance Determination. IBR interim project director Carly Francis said:
. . . the Coast Guard decision . . . was really critical to finalizing information. So that helps us confirm the timeframe for the record of decision and also firms up information that’s necessary to complete that accurate and comprehensive cost estimate.
IBR officials testified that the Coast Guard decision had no bearing on their ability to make a timely, valid estimate. The claims that this January 16, 2026 Coast Guard decision in any way affected the estimates, or the timetable for their preparation was flatly denied by IBR officials in their September 15, 2025 testimony to the Joint Oregon and Washington legislative oversight committee on the bridge project. In that hearing, Frank Green, Associate Director of the IBR project, testified that they were planning to release a new cost estimate prior to the Coast Guard issuing a new navigation determination:
We are looking to do an updated cost estimate, as Greg had mentioned earlier, for both a fixed span bridge and a movable span bridge, recognizing that the program wanted to update our estimate and update our financial plan, prior to when we’ll have that kind of bridge decision determined. Currently we’re working with the Coast Guard and working with both headquarters. Submittal of that Navigation Impact Report will likely lead to a revised preliminary clearance navigation determination early next year, but we recognize we have enough information on the fixed span and conceptual understanding of what the movable bridge would be so that we can update and do an estimate now, rather than waiting for that PNCD, and having that that cost estimate take a little bit longer.
Video Recording of September 15, 2025 Oregon Washington Committee Meeting at approximately 59:30. (emphasis added)
As KGW TV, noted in its report on the December 15, 2025 meeting, Green’s earlier testimony made it clear that there was no need to delay the release of an estimate because of the timing of the Coast Guard decision.
But Green also indicated at the time [September 15] that preparing two estimates wouldn’t be a problem, and that the team was planning to do so before it received a decision from the Coast Guard.
As Oregon Transportation Commissioner Jeff Baker pointed out at the January 22, 2026 Oregon Transportation Commission meeting, the fact the IBR had prepared separate estimates for both the fixed and moveable span options meant that there was no need to wait on the Coast Guard decision:
On August 15, there were two documents were created, one that was for each option, one that was the fixed span, one that was the movable span. So it’s not like we were waiting on that decision to create the information. It was all there.
As Bike Portland reported, Baker challenged IBR staff to explain why they couldn’t release a new estimate in December, as they had promised:
In one exchange with Mabey, Baker asked him point-blank: Why was the new cost estimate, which he’d promised would come out in December, moved out to March?
Mabey said they couldn’t provide a new cost estimate until the Coast Guard revealed their decision on bridge type. “It made sense to make sure we’re aligning an estimate with that key knowledge in hand,” he said.
In short, IBR officials are using the Coast Guard decision as a phony excuse not to release a new cost estimate.
Project Director: Keep all cost estimates secret!
In August, 2025, Project Director Greg Johnson formally instructed his key managers, and by implication, their staff and consultants, not to reveal cost estimate information to anyone. Here is the text of an email City Observatory obtained via public records request.
The Consequences: A costly forever project
This much is clear: The IBR is really planned as a “forever“project: As City Observatory documented, consultants have already racked up close to half a billion dollars in bills so far (between the original Columbia River Crossing and this revival, which began in 2019). The project has already dragged on for twenty years, and the new schedule shows they plan for it to keep going for another two decades–with billings continuing for consultants over that entire time. The internal cost estimate shows staff and consulting costs rising more than 400 percent and adding $1.2 billion to the project price tag, and extending until 2045.
It’s important to keep in mind that the risk is plainly on the high side when it comes to both project cost and project schedule. Looking back, IBR has repeatedly blown through its own estimated maximum price within a few years of releasing an estimate. The project was estimated at $4.8 billion in 2020, up to $7.5 billion in 2022, and now $as much as $17.7 billion. Plus the $17.7 billion figure assumes they don’t encounter additional delays, which seem almost certain, given the fact that they have identified only about a third of the money needed to actually pay for the project (assuming the current schedule).
Mark Pilgrim’s reappearance on Daring Fireball this week prompted me to revisit this essay I wrote 20 years ago. Holds up pretty well, I think.
This bit, in particular, seems particular apt w/r/t Tahoe:
I’m deeply suspicious of Mac users who claim to be perfectly happy
with Mac OS X. Real Mac users, to me, are people with much higher
standards, impossibly high standards, and who use Macs not because
they’re great, but because they suck less than everything else.
Just over a decade ago, reviewing the then-new iPhones 6S, I could tell which way the silicon wind was blowing. Year-over-year, the A9 CPU in the iPhone 6S was 1.6× faster than the A8 in the iPhone 6. Impressive. But what really struck me was comparing the 6S’s GeekBench scores to MacBooks. The A9, in 2015, benchmarked comparably to a two-year-old MacBook Air from 2013. More impressively, it outperformed the then-new no-adjective 12-inch MacBook in single-core performance (by a factor of roughly 1.1×) and was only 3 percent slower in multi-core. That was a comparison to the base $1,300 model MacBook with a 1.1 GHz dual-core Intel Core M processor, not the $1,600 model with a 1.2 GHz Core M. But, still — the iPhone 6S outperformed a brand-new $1,300 MacBook, and drew even with a $1,600 model. I called that “astounding”. The writing was clearly on the wall: the future of the Mac seemed destined to move from Intel’s x86 chips to Apple’s own ARM-based chips.
Here we are today, over five years after the debut of Apple’s M-series chips, and we now have the MacBook Neo: a $600 laptop that uses the A18 Pro, literally the same SoC as 2024’s iPhone 16 Pro models. It was clear right from the start of the Apple Silicon transition that Apple’s M-series chips were vastly superior to x86 — better performance-per-watt, better performance period, the innovative (and still unmatched, five years later) unified memory architecture — but the MacBook Neo proves that Apple’s A-series chips are powerful enough for an excellent consumer MacBook.
I think the truth is that Apple’s A-series chips have been capable of credibly powering Macs for a long time. The Apple Silicon developer transition kits, from the summer of 2020, were Mac Mini enclosures running A12Z chips that were originally designed for iPad Pros.1 But I think Apple could have started using A-series chips in Macs even before that. It would have been credible, but with compromises. By waiting until now, the advantages are simply overwhelming. You cannot buy an x86 PC laptop in the $600–700 price range that competes with the MacBook Neo on any metric — performance, display quality, audio quality, or build quality. And certainly not software quality.
The original iPhone in 2007 was the most amazing device I’ve ever used. It may well wind up being the most amazing device I ever will use. It was ahead of its time in so many ways. But a desktop-class computer, performance-wise, it was not. Two decades is a long time in the computer industry, and nothing proves that more than Apple’s “phone chips” overtaking Intel’s x86 platform in every measurable metric — they’re faster, cooler, smaller, and perhaps even cost less. And they certainly don’t cost more.
I’ve been testing a citrus-colored $700 MacBook Neo2 — the model with Touch ID and 512 GB storage — since last week. I set it up new, rather than restoring my primary MacOS work setup from an existing Mac, and have used as much built-in software, with as many default settings, as I could bear. I’ve only added third-party software, or changed settings, as I’ve needed to. And I’ve been using it for as much of my work as possible. I expected this to go well, but in fact, the experience has vastly exceeded my expectations. Christ almighty I don’t even have as many complaints about running MacOS 26 Tahoe (which the Neo requires) as I thought I would.
It’s never been a good idea to evaluate the performance of Apple’s computers by tech specs alone. That’s exemplified by the experience of using a Neo. 8 GB of RAM is not a lot. And I love me my RAM — my personal workstation remains a 2021 M1 Max MacBook Pro with 64 GB RAM (the most available at the time). But just using the Neo, without any consideration that it’s memory limited, I haven’t noticed a single hitch. I’m not quitting apps I otherwise wouldn’t quit, or closing Safari tabs I wouldn’t otherwise close. I’m just working — with an even dozen apps open as I type this sentence — and everything feels snappy.
Now, could I run up a few hundred open Safari tabs on this machine, like I do on my MacBook Pro, without feeling the effects? No, probably not. But that’s abnormal. In typical productivity use, the Neo isn’t merely fine — it’s good.
The display is bright and crisp. At 500 maximum nits, the specs say it’s as bright as a MacBook Air. In practice, that feels true. (500 nits also matches the maximum SDR brightness of my personal M1 MacBook Pro.) Sound from the side-firing speakers is very good — loud and clear. I’d say the sound seems too good to be true for a $600 laptop. Battery life is long (and I’ve done almost all my testing while the Neo is unplugged from power). The keyboard feels exactly the same as what I’m used to, except that because the key caps are brand new, it feels even better than the keyboard on my own now-four-years-old MacBook Pro, the most-used key caps on which are now a little slick.
And the trackpad. Let me sing the praises of the MacBook Neo’s trackpad. The Neo’s trackpad exemplifies the Neo as a whole. Rather than sell old components at a lower price — as Apple had been doing, allowing third-party resellers like Walmart to sell the 8 GB M1 MacBook Air from 2020 at sub-$700 prices starting two years ago — the Neo is designed from the ground up to be a low-cost MacBook.
A decade ago, Apple began switching from trackpads with mechanical clicking mechanisms to Magic Trackpads, where clicks are simulated via haptic feedback (in Apple’s parlance, the Taptic Engine). And, with Magic Trackpads, you can use Force Touch — a hard press — to perform special actions. By default, if “Force Touch and haptic feedback” is enabled on a Mac with a Magic Trackpad, a hard Force Touch press will perform a Look Up — e.g., do it on a word in Safari and you’ll get a popover with the Dictionary app’s definition for that word. It’s a shortcut to the “Look Up in Dictionary” command in the contextual menu, which is also available via the keyboard shortcut Control-Command-D to look up whatever text is currently selected, or that the mouse pointer is currently hovering over — standard features that work in all proper Mac apps.
The Neo’s trackpad is mechanical. It actually clicks, even when the machine is powered off.3 Obviously this is a cost-saving measure. But the Neo’s trackpad doesn’t feel cheap in any way. You can click it anywhere you want — top, bottom, middle, corner — and the click feels right. Multi-finger gestures (most commonly, two-finger swipes for scrolling) — just work. Does it feel as nice as a Magic Trackpad? No, probably not. But I keep forgetting there’s anything at all different or special about this trackpad. It just feels normal. That’s unbelievable. The “Force Touch and haptic feedback” option is missing in the Trackpad panel in System Settings, so you might miss that feature if you’re used to it. But for anyone who isn’t used to that Magic Trackpad feature — which includes anyone who’s never used a MacBook before (perhaps the primary audience for the Neo), along with most casual longtime Mac users (which is probably the secondary audience) — it’s hard to say there’s anything they’d even notice that’s different about this trackpad than the one in the MacBook Air, other than the fact that it’s a little bit smaller. But it’s only smaller in a way that feels proportional to the Neo’s slightly smaller footprint compared to the Air. It’s a cheaper trackpad that doesn’t feel at all cheap. Bravo!
So What’s the Catch?
You can use this Compare page at Apple’s website (archived, for posterity, as a PDF here) to see the full list of what’s missing or different on the Neo, compared to the current M5 MacBook Air (which now starts at $1,100) and the 5-year-old M1 MacBook Air (so old it still sports the Intel-era wedge shape) that Walmart had been selling for $600–650. Things I’ve noticed, that bothered me, personally:
The Neo lacks an ambient light sensor. It still offers an option in System Settings → Display to “Automatically adjust brightness”, which setting is on by default, but I have no idea how it works without an ambient light sensor. However it works, it doesn’t work well. As the lighting conditions in my house have changed — from day to night, overcast to sunny — I’ve found myself adjusting the display brightness manually. I only realized when I started adjusting the brightness on the Neo manually that I more or less haven’t adjusted the brightness manually on a MacBook in years. Maybe a decade. I’m not saying I never adjust the brightness on a MacBook Air or Pro, but I do it so seldomly that I had no muscle memory at all for which F-keys control brightness. After a few days using the Neo, I know exactly where they are: F1 and F2.
And, uh, that’s it. That’s the one catch that’s annoyed me over the six days I’ve been using the Neo as my primary computer for work and for reading. Once or twice a day I need to manually bump the display brightness up or down.
That’s a crazily short list. One item, and it’s only a mild annoyance.
There are other things missing that I’ve noticed, but that I haven’t minded. The Neo doesn’t have a hardware indicator light for the camera. The indication for “camera in use” is only in the menu bar. There’s a privacy/security implication for this omission. According to Apple, the hardware indicator light for camera-in-use on MacBooks, iPhones, and iPads cannot be circumvented by software. If the camera is on, that light comes on, and no software can disable it. Because the Neo’s only camera-in-use indicator is in the menu bar, that seems obviously possible to circumvent via software. Not a big deal, but worth being aware of.
The Neo’s webcam doesn’t offer Center Stage or Desk View. But personally, I never take advantage of Center Stage or Desk View, so I don’t miss their absence. Your mileage may vary. But the camera is 1080p and to my eyes looks pretty good. And I’d say it looks damn good for a $600 laptop.
The Neo has no notch. Instead, it has a larger black bezel surrounding the entire display than do the MacBook Airs and Pros. I consider this an advantage for the Neo, not a disadvantage. The MacBook notch has not grown on me, and the Neo’s display bezel doesn’t bother me at all.
And there’s the whole thing with the second USB-C port only supporting USB 2 speeds. That stinks. But if Apple could sell a one-port MacBook a decade ago, they can sell one with a shitty second port today. I’ll bet this is one of the things that will be improved in the second generation Neo, but it’s not something that would keep me from recommending this one — or even buying one myself — today. If you know you need multiple higher-speed USB ports (or Thunderbolt), you need a MacBook Air or Pro.
The Neo ships with a measly 20-watt charger in the box — the same rinky-dink charger that comes with iPad Airs. I wish it were 30 watts (which is what came with the M1 MacBook Air), but maybe we’re lucky it comes with a charger at all. The Neo charges faster if you plug it into a more powerful power adapter, in either USB-C port.4 The USB-C cable in the box is white, not color-matched to the Neo, and it’s only 1.5 meters long. MacBook Airs and Pros ship with 2-meter MagSafe cables. Again, though: $600!
The Weighty Issue on My Mind
The Neo is not a svelte ultralight. It weights 2.7 pounds (1.23 kg) — exactly the same as the 13-inch M5 MacBook Air. The Neo, with a 13.0-inch display, has a smaller footprint than the 13.6-inch Air, but the Air is thinner. I don’t know if this is a catch though. It’s just the normal weight for a smaller-display Mac laptop. The decade-ago MacBook “One”, on the other hand, was a design statement. It weighed just a hair over 2 pounds (0.92 kg), and tapered from 1.35 cm to just 0.35 cm in thickness. The Neo is 1.27 cm thick, and the M5 Air is 1.13 cm. In fact, the extraordinary thinness of the 2015 MacBook might have necessitated the invention of the haptics-only Magic Trackpad. The Magic Trackpad first appeared on that MacBook and the early 2015 MacBook Pros — it was nice-to-have for the MacBook Pros, but might have been the only trackpad that would fit in the front of the MacBook One’s tapered case.
If I had my druthers, Apple would make a new svelte ultralight MacBook. Not instead of the Neo, but in addition to the Neo. Apple’s inconsistent use of the name “Air” makes this complicated, but the MacBook Neo is obviously akin to the iPhone 17e; the MacBook Air is akin to the iPhone 17 (the default model for most people); the MacBook Pros are akin to the iPhone 17 Pros. I wish Apple would make a MacBook that’s akin to the iPhone Air — crazy thin and surprisingly performant.
The biggest shortcoming of the decade-ago MacBook “One”, aside from the baffling decision to include just one USB-C port that was also its only means of charging, was the shitty performance of Intel’s Core M chips. Those chips were small enough and low-power enough to fit in the MacBook’s thin and fan-less enclosure, but they were slow as balls. It was a huge compromise for a laptop that carried a somewhat premium price. Today, performance, performance-per-watt, and physical chip size are all solved problems with Apple Silicon. I’d consider paying double the price of the Neo for a MacBook with similar specs (but more RAM and better I/O) that weighed 2.0 pounds or less. I’d buy such a MacBook not to replace my 14-inch MacBook Pro, but to replace my 2018 11-inch iPad Pro as my “carry around the house” secondary computer.5
As it stands, I might buy a Neo for that same purpose, 2.7-pound weight be damned. iPad Pros, encased in Magic Keyboards, are expensive and heavy. So are iPad Airs. My 2018 iPad Pro, in its Magic Keyboard case, weighs 2.36 pounds (1.07 kg). That’s the 11-inch model, with a cramped less-than-standard-size keyboard. I’m much happier with this MacBook Neo than I am doing anything on that iPad. Yes, my iPad is old at this point. But replacing it with a new iPad Pro would require a new Magic Keyboard too. For an iPad Pro + Magic Keyboard, that combination starts at $1,300 for 11-inch, $1,650 for 13-inch. If I switched to iPad Air, the cost would be $870 for 11-inch, $1,120 for 13-inch. The 13-inch iPads, when attached to Magic Keyboards, weigh slightly more than a 2.7-pound 13-inch MacBook Neo. The 11-inch iPads, with keyboards, weigh about 2.3 pounds. Why bother when I find MacOS way more enjoyable and productive? My three-device lifestyle for the last decade has been a MacBook Pro (anchored to a Studio Display at my desk at home, and in my briefcase when travelling); my iPhone; and an iPad Pro with a Magic Keyboard for use around the rest of the house. This last week testing the MacBook Neo, I haven’t touched my iPad once, and I haven’t once wished this Neo were an iPad. And there were many times when I was very happy that it was a Mac.
And I can buy one, just like this one, for $700. That’s $170 less than an 11-inch iPad Air and Magic Keyboard. And the Neo comes with a full-size keyboard and runs MacOS, not a version of iOS with a limited imitation of MacOS’s windowing UI. I am in no way arguing that the MacBook Neo is an iPad killer, but it’s a splendid iPad alternative for people like me, who don’t draw with a Pencil, do type with a keyboard, and just want a small, simple, highly portable and highly capable computer to use around the house. The MacBook Neo is going to be a great first Macintosh for a lot of people switching from PCs. But it’s also going to be a great secondary Mac for a lot of longtime Mac users with expensive desktop setups for their main workstations — like me.
The Neo crystallizes the post-Jony Ive Apple. The MacBook “One” was a design statement, and a much-beloved semi-premium product for a relatively small audience. The Neo is a mass-market device that was conceived of, designed, and engineered to expand the Mac user base to a larger audience. It’s a design statement too, but of a different sort — emphasizing practicality above all else. It’s just a goddamn lovely tool, and fun too.
I’ll just say it: I think I’m done with iPads. Why bother when Apple is now making a crackerjack Mac laptop that starts at just $600? May the MacBook Neo live so long that its name becomes inapt.
When I wrote last week that the MacBook Neo is the first product from Apple with an A-series chip sporting more than one USB port — addressing complaints that the Neo’s second USB-C port only supports USB 2.0 speeds — a few readers pointed to the Apple Silicon developer transition kits. Those machines had two USB-C 3.1 ports, two USB-A 3.0 ports, and an HDMI port. But Apple didn’t sell those as a product — developers borrowed them from Apple, and Apple wanted them back soon after the first actual Apple Silicon Macs shipped. If Apple had sold them, they would have cost more than $600. Those extra I/O ports involved significant engineering outside the A12Z SoC. ↩︎
The Neo’s citrus is a beguiling colorway. Everyone I’ve shown it to likes it. But is it a green-ish yellow, or a yellow-ish green? In daylight, it looks more like a green-ish yellow. But at nighttime, it looks more like a yellow-ish green. By default, the MacOS accent color in System Settings → Appearance defaults to a color that matches the Neo’s hardware — a fun trick Apple has been using for decades. For citrus, that special accent color looks more green than yellow to me. ↩︎︎
The haptic “clicks” with a Magic Trackpad are so convincingly real that it feels really weird when you try to click the trackpad on a powered-off MacBook Air or Pro, or a standalone Magic Trackpad that’s turned off, and ... nothing happens. Not even the slightest hint of a click. Just totally inert. It’s gross, like poking a dead pet. ↩︎︎
My favorite power adapter is this $55 two-port 65-watt “slim” charger from Nomad. It’s small, lightweight, and the lay-flat design helps it stay connected to loose wall outlets in hotels and public spaces like airports and coffee shops. Nomad also sells a smaller 40-watt model with only one port, and a larger 100-watt model. But to me the 65-watt model hits the sweet spot. The link above goes to Nomad’s website; here’s a make-me-rich affiliate link to it at Amazon. ↩︎︎
One advantage to the 2.7-pound Neo compared to the decade-ago 2.0-pound MacBook “One” — you can lift the lid on the Neo with one hand and it just opens. With the old MacBook, the base was so light that the whole thing tended to lift when you just wanted to open the display. ↩︎︎
I left the film perplexed, but after some thought I have an interpretation.
The film is a recognition that for most of the West, the story is about the individual, their actions, their decisions. However – for many in the non-Western world – the story is about things outside of their agency. The characters discover this in their journey, and the lack of character development is intentional – this is not about them, it is about the context of their life, where much is simply out of their control. The minefield is a pinnacle of this; who lives, who dies – totally random. Heck, even ending up in the minefield was random.
The ending scene is alluding to this – showing the cast amongst migrants, alluding to their recognition that they too have entered the stochastic nature of life. This probably leads to some frustration among Western viewers; they are looking for the individual story. Instead, this is a film about context, and those things out of our control.
As you like to say, context is that which is scarce.
Interested in your thoughts.
I would add two points. First, I think the film is suggesting that humanity as a whole is making the same mistakes these characters are. Pointless quests (the daughter is not really missing), recklessness, plans devoid of meaning, and excess attachment to various drugs. WWIII is going on in the background, on the radio, and in this film the group ends up with the African goat herders, not doing better than they are and also difficult to distinguish from them at first.
Second, many points in the plot parallel episodes from the Bible and the Quran, except the characters do not experience them with meaning. Abraham offers to sacrifice his son for God, but here the father loses his son for no reason whatsoever. There are hallucinations in the desert, forty days and forty nights of wandering, Job-like episodes, and more. Instead of suicide bombers, we have people who blow up randomly for no good reason at all.
The head of NOAA’s satellite division, on administrative leave for more than half a year, warned that workforce reductions and cuts to science programs have “lobotomized” the federal government.
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Telesat has gained access to more land across Canada to set up landing stations ahead of plans to deploy pathfinders for its Lightspeed broadband constellation in December.
Shanghai-based laser communications startup BlueStar Optical Domain has raised funding in the region of $70 million, highlighting growing demand from China’s emerging satellite internet constellations.
The Starlab commercial space station has fully booked its commercial payload space as the joint venture developing it awaits the next phase of a NASA program.
Recent engineering setbacks, specifically regarding helium system issues associated with the improper flow of helium into the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket’s upper stage, and persistent hydrogen leaks, have forced NASA to delay the crewed Artemis 2 mission to no earlier than April. While frustrating for the public, these delays are a necessary byproduct of […]
NASA has disqualified one of the two proposals for a large astrophysics mission, a decision the project’s leader blames on upheaval within the agency last year.
When I joined Imprint a little less than a year ago, our deploys were manual, requiring close human attention to complete.
Our database migrations were run manually, too.
Developing good software is very possible in those circumstances, but it takes a remarkable attention to detail to do it.
It was also possible to develop good software using Subversion and developing by ssh’ing into a remote server to edit PHP files,
but the goal is making things easy rather than possible.
Ten months later, the vast majority of our changes, including database migrations, continuously deploy to production without human involvement
after the initial pull request is reviewed and merged. Reading aloud the relevant pages from the mandated gospel of continuous deployment,
deploying changes this way doesn’t make them less reliable, but more so. Each step of validation a human might do, is now consistently
done on every deploy, including many steps that are just onerous enough to drop off the standard operating steps like meticulously checking the
post-launch health on a production canary every minute for half an hour after each deploy.
This migration has reminded me a lot of the Uber service migration, which prompted me to write
Migrations: the only scalable solution for technical debt back in 2018, and in particular
how different this sort of migration feels in the age of coding agents.
The more I’ve thought about how these two migrations compared, the more it’s
solidified my thinking a bit about how this technology is going to impact software development over the next few years.
Migrations as metaphor
Although I really want to talk about how coding agents are changing software development,
I want to start by expanding a bit on this recent migration at Imprint and how it compared with the migration at Uber.
The Uber migration was:
Spinning up a new self-service service provisioning platform, along the lines of a very minimal Heroku,
including the actual scheduling algorithm across clusters, etc.
A lot of the edges were rough, including for example I do not remember how we performed service database migrations,
but I suspect we simply left that as an exercise for the user. Part of the challenge was that this was a heterogenous
environment with Python, NodeJS, Go, and a long-tail of random things (R, Elixir, etc).
(For historical context, Kubernetes was sufficiently early that it effectively didn’t exist in 2014 when we did this work.)
Migrated services iteratively, driven almost entirely by the platform team, without much product engineering support.
(Everyone was too busy to help, and our timeline was driven by an upcoming datacenter migration.)
A team of ~3 engineers focused on this migrated hundreds of services, although it included Xiaojian Huang
who remains a likely contender for the most productive engineer I have worked with in my career,
so maybe it’s unfair to call it a ~3 engineer team.
Shedding a quiet tear for our colleagues on the core product engineering team responsible for deprecating the Python monolith,
and migrating it over as a single, heavy service.
This took us less than six months start to finish, but
I don’t think I stopped working at any point in those six months.
The Imprint migration felt fairly differently:
We were building on substantially more powerful infrastructure, with Kubernetes, ArgoCD, etc.
Our problem statement was composing our software and workflows with these platforms, rather than
building the platforms from scratch.
We migrated all our services and databases to a continuous deployment setup, with the majority of the work
occurring over 3 months. Once again, the significant majority of it was done by a team of ~3 engineers.
In 2014, we spent the vast majority of our time implementing decisions: how the scheduler worked, how the UX for provisioning services worked, etc.
In 2026, we spent almost our entire time designing our approach, reviewing coding agent pull requests,
and revising our approach when designs and reality didn’t come together as cleanly as we hoped.
The frenzied sprint was replaced by substantially more time on designing our approach.
All the fundamental challenges of migrations remained true,
but in 2026 we got to solely work on solving those challenges, rather
than on the essential but mundane minutiae of implementing those decisions.
(Ok, I’ll be honest, we also had to keep iterating on our approach to using
coding agents to get longer working cycles out of them without human involvement,
but we’re telling a story here, let’s not get distracted.)
Productivity today is is most constrained on judgment
What this migration highlighted for me, is that coding agents have already
generally solved the problem of time for our team. We have, effectively,
an unlimited amount of time, at a very affordable price, to complete our work.
They have also made substantial progress on the problem of attention.
After I go beyond five or so concurrent projects, I tend to lose track of
the necessary work to shepherd those projects to completion, but increasingly
I believe that this, as the LLM community would charmingly frame it, is a skill
issue in how I am composing the tools. I’m fairly confident that I will evolve
my approach to these problems such that the bottleneck on my attention is less
important. I don’t think this will go to zero, a reality of working on teams
is that the work has to be coordinated, but it will go down.
The next constraint, which I think is the biggest issue today when it comes to building
genuinely important software, is judgment.
With unlimited time, and with attention increasingly constrained on my personal
workflow rather than an inherent limit, I can do anything. But how do I do it in a way
that is maintainable, secure, and reliable? How do I do it in a way where it keeps running
after a key engineer leaves the company?
I developed the idea of datapacks in What is the competitive advantage of authors in the age of LLMs?,
and this still rings true to me as the core mechanism for scaling judgment in how we approach software:
we can supplement judgment by introducing expert context for the task at hand.
Today this is defacto happening within the coding agent development layer, in the wider community
developing shared agent skills, and internally within companies developing their own skills.
My guess is that the industry will develop an ecosystem for high-quality skills, e.g. detailed
and maintained skills for security engineering, product engineering, and so on.
You can easily imagine O’Reilly, or another technology publisher, developing a package manager for
blessed skills, which is the first stop for injecting judgment into tasks.
(This is the idea I experimented with in creating LLM-optimized edition of my latest book,
but it’s really the distribution platform that’s going to be most valuable here.)
Once we solve judgment, and I do imagine that we will using a variety of open-source and commercially managed
skill package managers that are tightly integrated with coding agents, then the last constraint ahead of us is
creativity. This is a problem far enough ahead that I’m not too worried about it, but I feel like it’s
a classic entrepreneurship problem that will be amenable to the same solutions as it is today.
I’ll admit I’m ignoring financial constraints here, but relative to how much companies are spending
on software engineering budgets today, this isn’t a particularly interesting constraint today.
Maybe the financial constraints will get more interesting over time as engineering conceivably
gets cheaper, but as we think about injecting judgment, things will get more expensive as well,
so the outcomes remain to be seen.
AI-generated actress Tilly Norwood dropped a video today—just in time for the Academy Awards. And it’s cringe on steroids.
That’s not just my opinion. It’s everybody’s opinion. I haven’t seen this kind of reaction since Frank Ocean sang about Forrest Gump at Coachella. I want to be fair. But this video deserves the total hosing it’s getting online.
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The lyrics are shamefully self-serving—a sort of Internationale for venture capitalists, extolling the great future of AI. The music sounds as if it were AI generated, and of course it probably was. The video not only looks fake, but creepy too—Tilly has a seasick smile and her nausea is palpably felt by the viewer.
Maybe she’s already figured out that she’s on a sinking ship. Or, rather, a sinking pink flamingo dropping through the clouds.
There is some entertainment here. But you can only find it in the comments:
“This song makes Rebecca Black's “Friday” look like a masterpiece.”
“This was the first dance song at my wedding. Everyone cried.”
“At least Skynet was honest about trying to erase humanity.”
"Chou specializes in communication between patients and their healthcare providers, and social media's role in public health. She joined the federal government in 2007 as a fellow and became a civil servant in 2010.
She left her National Cancer Institute job in January, she said, because the "work is no longer based on facts or truth."
...
"Romberg is a scientist who specializes in preventing the use of and addiction to tobacco, electronic cigarettes, and cannabis. The harms that stem from substance use or addiction don't affect all Americans equally, she said.
Romberg left her "dream job" at the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) in December, she said, because Trump policies had compromised the research she helped oversee. Among other things, Romberg said, grants were terminated under an initiative she led to reduce health disparities among racial and ethnic minorities related to substance use.
...
"The loss of staff means the NIH has "lost so much of that institutional knowledge and leadership, which is not something that is easy or can be learned overnight,"
There’s plenty of boastful propaganda from and for this Trump administration when things look like a military rout against Venezuela’s Nicolás Madura, drug cartels or now in Iran.
It’s less clear that anyone on Team Trump is willing to stand tall when the news is not so clear. Accountability for a war in Iran is no more at hand than it is for the excesses of ICE tactics or tariff effects on prices or the impact of Epstein files mishandling on victims of sexual abuse.
On Monday, Donald Trump told a CBS reporter, “I think the war is very complete, pretty much. They have no navy, no communications, they’ve got no air force.” He added that the U.S. is “very far” ahead of his initial 4-5 week estimate on its “little excursion.” War/Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has said basically the opposite, that there would be plenty more war.
We can’t even figure out whether we have won.
Yet with each passing day in this undeclared war in Iran it seems clearer that Iran, unlike Venezuela, is not going to stand by passively. The job of winning any victory in a war lacking goals with an enemy that refuses to roll over is going to be problematic to anyone but Trump.
The decision to choose Mojtaba Khamenei as a new leader is a sign of defiance. So, too, are the actions of a dispersed Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps even in diminished capacity to continue to lob missiles and to encourage retaliation despite air superiority for US and Israeli forces. Rather than any Washington acknowledgement that the going may be tougher than promised, what we get from our leadership are more dismissive words about lethal domination.
Emerging information that increasingly suggests that it was a “precise” U.S. tomahawk missile that killed 175 schoolchildren draws attempts to shift eyes toward Iranian weapons rather than take responsibility for errant intelligence or aim. Still, Trump and Hegseth blame Iran for killing its own children.
Even the central target in the war — stopping Iran “imminent” nuclear weapons capabilities — is crumbling under review by experts never included in any of the abandoned “negotiations” abruptly ended to send in the jet fighters and missiles. The White House remains silent on the degree to which there was no immediate threat.
There seems no U.S. ownership for any sudden rise in retaliatory attacks on civilian targets in Israel and Gulf nations, on global shipping, on various military bases and embassies, or arising from would-be sympathizers by lone actors seemingly motivated by the violence in Iran.
A bar killing of two in Texas by a suspected Iranian sympathizer and an attack on New York’s Gracie Mansion, the mayor’s home under investigation as an Islamic State incident pass without acknowledgement that the war in Iran is causing ripples globally.
No Need to Own Mistakes
In this egoistic, personality-launched war by Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu there is no heed for possible miscalculation and no acceptance for blame.
We are becoming accustomed to the daily repetition that Trump is bravely ending 47 years of bad behavior by Iran to justify preemptive killings and bombings by the U.S. Those decades of ayatollah rule provide the reason for war now, complete with threats of sending in ground troops to achieve nebulous goals that may include retrieval of nuclear stockpiles or control of oil fields.
There is little White House discussion about whether it was Netanyahu whose lobbying campaign for war at a time when Iran had suffered setbacks was the real reason for Trump to push the attack.
In these early days, there is no sign of renewed nuclear weapons development, no sign of uprising from within Iran, no outbreak of demand to take back the country from its dictators or sudden emergence of a more moderate majority.
Instead, there is continued belligerence of a large Iranian military in control acting like a disturbed beehive. If anything, we learned this week through leaks that the U.S. intelligence services were advising that the full-scale attack would not result in Trump’s desired results.
Just Declare Victory
Amid rising gas costs, rapidly inflating prices, and global worries, it seems impossible not to notice Trump’s dismissive attitude towards whatever doesn’t go exactly his way. There is no presidential capacity for complexity — or responsibility. It apparently took all White House hands on deck to get Trump to even acknowledge dead US servicemen at Dover.
This White House seems to mistake military successes for diplomatic persuasion to change Iran’s national outlook and priorities.
We have yet to hear Trump acknowledge that there is something very wrong about reports that Russia’s Vladimir Putin is sharing targeting information with Iran even as Trump continues to withhold weapons aid from Ukraine in its self-defense against Putin. We only hear that Ukraine needs to concede. Trump talked with Putin on Monday.
In a week of shifting explanations and goals, Trump has walked back from demanding an end to a theocratic state, from an anti-democratic government willing to shoot its own people for protests, from a state aligned with Russia and showing interest in China. Trump already has all but declared victory, telling the Brits that their late offer of help is no longer needed.
Trump already has indicated he is ready to move on to Cuba next.
If this is victory, what do we call a mess that requires global cleanup?
“FREEDOM OF THE PRESS IS NOT JUST IMPORTANT TO DEMOCRACY, IT IS DEMOCRACY.” – Walter Cronkite. CLICK HERE to donate in support of our free and independent voice.
The bill would streamline NEPA review for federally supported housing, primarily by expanding categorical exclusions. Federal environmental review does impose real costs and delays on housing construction, so reducing unnecessary review is a step in the right direction. The gains will probably be modest—most housing regulation occurs at the state and local level—but removing friction is good.
The bill would also deregulate manufactured housing by eliminating the permanent chassis requirement and creating a uniform national construction and safety standard. The United States once built far more factory-produced housing; in the early 1970s, by some accounts a majority of new homes were factory-built (mobile or modular). Long-run productivity growth in housing almost certainly requires greater use of factory construction. Land-use regulation remains the dominant constraint on supply, but enabling scalable manufacturing is still welcome.
Another interesting provision involves Community Development Block Grants (CDBG). The bill allows CDBG funds to be used for building new housing rather than being largely restricted to rehabilitation of existing housing. More federal spending is not automatically appealing, but the bill adds an unusual incentive mechanism.
The bill creates a tournament for CDBG allocations. Localities that exceed the median housing growth improvement rate among eligible CDBG recipients receive bonus funding. Those below the median face a 10 percent reduction. The key feature is that the penalties fund the bonuses, so the system reallocates money rather than expanding spending.
This is a clever design. It creates competition among localities and benchmarks them against peers rather than against a fixed national target. In effect, the program rewards relative improvement rather than absolute performance—a classic tournament structure. (See Modern Principles for an introduction to tournament theory!).
Ok, now for the popular but bonkers ideas. Section 901 (“Homes are for People, Not Corporations”) restricts the purchase of new single-family homes by large institutional investors. Elizabeth Warren is a sponsor of the bill but this section was driven almost entirely by President Trump. Trump passed an Executive Order, Stopping Wall Street from Competing With Main Street Home Buyers, that cuts off institutional home investors from FHA insurance, VA guarantees, USDA backing, Fannie/Freddie securitization and so forth. The bill goes further by imposing a seven-year mandatory divestiture rule, forcing institutional investors to convert rental homes to owner-occupied units after seven years.
No one objects to institutional investors owning apartment buildings. But when the same investors own single-family homes, it breaks people’s brains. Consider how strange the logic sounds if applied elsewhere:
…a growing share of apartments, often concentrated in certain communities, have been purchased by large Wall Street investors, crowding out families seeking to buy condominiums.
Apartments are fine, hotels are fine, but somehow a corporation owning a single family home is un-American. In fact, the US could do with more rental housing of all kinds! Why take the risk of owning when you can rent? Rental housing improves worker mobility. When foreclosures surged after 2008 and traditional buyers disappeared, institutional investors stepped in and absorbed distressed supply — helping stabilize markets. Who plays that role next time?
Institutional investors own only a tiny number of homes, so even if this were a good idea it wouldn’t be effective. But it’s not a good idea, it’s just rage bait driven by Warren/Trump anti-corporate rhetoric.
What does “Homes are for People, Not Corporations” even mean?–this is a slogan for the Idiocracy era. “Food is for People, Not Corporations,” so we should ban Perdue Farms and McDonald’s?
BBC News on GPS jamming in the conflict between the U.S., Israel and Iran: The interference currently affecting ships in and around the Strait of Hormuz is far from the first time that [maritime intelligence… More
The photo above is from the Battle of Khalkhin Gol in 1939. This “battle” lasted four months, and was actually just the main phase of an undeclared war between Imperial Japan and the Soviet Union that effectively began in 1935, four years before the official start of the Second World War. The USSR won the conflict through superior use of tanks, foreshadowing the eventual outcome of WW2 itself.
This example illustrates that although World War 2 officially began when Germany invaded Poland, conflicts that either foreshadowed the final conflagration or eventually merged with it began years earlier, in the mid-1930s. WW2 had foothills. I wrote about this back in 2024:
It’s possible that the world will avoid a world war in the first half of the 21st century. But if one does occur, I think future historians will see it as having had foothills as well. In the Syrian Civil War, the U.S. and Russia began to test their new hardware against each other, and their troops even clashed once. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was the big shift, as it inaugurated a new era of great-power territorial conquest, began to harden global alliance systems, and pushed Europe to remilitarize.
Now we have the Iran War. The U.S. and Israel started the war, attacking Iran and decapitating much of its leadership. The Iranians, somewhat oddly, responded by launching missile and drone attacks on practically every Arab nation in the Middle East, causing some of them to threaten to join the war on America and Israel’s side.
In the short term, this conflict seems likely to peter out in a few days to weeks without decisive results. Militarily speaking, the U.S. and Israel have generally had their way with Iran, assassinating the leadership at will, achieving air supremacy, and degrading missile and drone strike capability. But this seems unlikely to actually bring down the Iranian regime; protesters are generally not returning to the streets, still cowed after the regime massacred tens of thousands of them in January. Unlike in Syria, there’s no breakaway region or oppressed ethnic majority that can be armed from afar to bring down the regime; as long as Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and other security services remain unified and willing to shoot infinite protesters in order to hang on to power, and there’s no ground invasion, it’s not clear who could actually topple the Islamic Republic in the next few weeks.
In the long term, of course, it’s a different story; the regime doesn’t look strong or stable. But Trump seems unlikely to be in for the long term; instead, he seems likely to quit the war soon, as he usually retreats from most of his initially bold moves. Trump recently called the war “very complete”, and his advisers are reportedly urging him to find a way out of the conflict.
About half of registered voters — 53% — oppose U.S. military action against Iran, according to a new Quinnipiac Poll conducted over the weekend. Only 4 in 10 support it, and about 1 in 10 are uncertain. A new Ipsos poll also found more disapprove than approve of the strikes…That’s similar to the results of text message snap polls from The Washington Post and CNN, both conducted shortly after the joint U.S.-Israel attacks began, which also indicated that more Americans rejected the military action than embraced it…A recent Fox News poll found opinions more evenly divided: Half of registered voters approved of the U.S. military action, while half disapproved.
Wars usually create a “rally round the flag” effect early on, and support only fades later; this war was unpopular from day one. Most Republicans seem to have conveniently forgotten that Trump ran as the candidate of peace, isolationism, and non-intervention. But Independents, who form the bulk of the American electorate now, have no partisan commitments that force them to conveniently forget. And they are rightfully wary of yet another American involvement in a Middle Eastern war — especially one that America started without being attacked first.
But there’s an even bigger reason Trump is looking for the exits — oil. Oil prices have been jumping wildly up and down, as everyone tries to figure out whether Iran will manage to disrupt oil production from the Persian Gulf (possibly by closing the Strait of Hormuz, possibly by destroying Gulf oil infrastructure with drones). But the general trend is up:
Higher oil prices mean higher gasoline prices, and higher inflation in general — both things that tend to make Americans very mad, and which they are already mad at Trump about. Gas prices are now shooting up:
So this war seems highly unlikely to result in Iraq War 2.0 — a massive U.S. ground invasion of Iran. Instead, it’ll probably end up like a bigger version of the Twelve-Day War last year — Iran’s defenses will be laid prostrate before the might of foreign air power, but the regime will survive.
(Again, in the long term, things look very bad for the Iranian regime. The economy is dysfunctional and crumbling, and high oil prices will provide only a temporary palliative. The regime’s popular legitimacy is gone after the January massacres. The entire Gulf has now turned against Iran, and Lebanon’s government has turned against Hezbollah. With Syria now shifting into the Israel/Gulf camp and Hamas basically a spent force, Iran has only one effective proxy left — the Houthis in Yemen. This is not a recipe for long-term success.)
But anyway, this is all a bit of a side track from the point of this post, which is about World War 3. The Iran War will probably not be the start of WW3, but I think it does bring us closer to the brink, in several ways.
First, in the Western theater — Europe and the Middle East — the coalitional lines are becoming clearer. When Trump was elected, a lot of people thought that America had effectively “switched sides” — that Trump viewed Putin as an ally against global wokeness, and the Europeans and the Ukrainians as betrayers of Western Civilization. I myself entertained this notion — there really was (and still is) a lot of this sentiment on the American right, and ending the Transatlantic Alliance was consistent with classic American right-wing isolationism.
But the narrative that “America is a Russian ally now” has been looking a lot shakier in recent months. First, the U.S. toppled a Russian proxy in Venezuela, and seized a bunch of Russian “shadow fleet” oil tankers. Elon Musk then shut the Russians off from using Starlink, allowing the Ukrainians to seize the initiative in the war. Now, the U.S. is trying to topple a key Russian arms supplier — Iran is the source of the Shahed long-range strike drone, which Russia has been using to bombard Ukraine’s cities from afar.
Russia didn’t leap to Iran’s defense. It has its hands full with Ukraine, and with planning for a possible wider war against Europe, and the U.S. is too powerful for it to fight. But the Russians did lend a hand, helping Iran to target U.S. forces:
Russia is providing Iran with intelligence about the locations and movements of American troops, ships and aircraft, according to multiple people familiar with US intelligence reporting on the issue…Much of the intelligence Russia has shared with Iran has been imagery from Moscow’s sophisticated constellation of overhead satellites[.]
This is similar to what the U.S. does for Ukraine. Russian targeting intelligence may have helped Iran take out some U.S. missile defense radar installations — almost certainly Iran’s most significant success of the war.
Meanwhile, Ukraine has leapt to the defense of both the U.S. and the Gulf countries being targeted by Iran’s fleets of attack drones. Long years of playing defense against Russia’s Iranian-provided Shaheds have given Ukraine tons of expertise in shooting this sort of drone out of the sky; now, the U.S. badly needs that expertise. America had rejected Ukraine’s help on anti-drone technology before, but it turns out military necessity usually trumps ideological bias.
As for Europe, they’ve certainly had a lot of tensions with the Trump administration, but most of the European countries haven’t opposed America’s actions in Iran the way they opposed the Iraq War a generation ago. Britain and France made some disapproving noises at first, but eventually acquiesced; only Spain tried to stand up and oppose Trump.
So for now, the coalitions in the Western theater look clearer than they did before — America, Ukraine, Israel, and Europe on one side, Russia and Iran on the other side. Various factions in the U.S. and Europe may despise each other, or despise Israel, or despise Ukraine, but at the end of the day, Russia and Iran are the greater enemies.
In the Eastern theater, things are less certain. India traditionally tries to be friends with America, Russia, Israel, and Iran all at once — this requires it to be effectively neutral when it comes to conflicts like the Ukraine War and the Iran War. China is supposedly on Iran’s side, but it has mostly limited itself to criticism of America’s actions.
The big question, of course, is whether the Iran War makes a Chinese attack on Taiwan more likely. One school of thought says it’s more likely, because the war has forced America to consider shifting missile defense systems out of Asia. On the other hand, the almost unbelievable American/Israeli competence in terms of finding and killing Iran’s top leaders seems to have given Chinese military analysts pause — although China can outmatch the U.S. in terms of defense production, if America could assassinate Xi Jinping and the entire CCP Central Committee in the early days of a war over Taiwan, that could be an effective form of deterrence.
So in a way, what we’re looking at now feels a little like the situation in 1935 or 1937. The Western theater today is like the Pacific theater then — wars and invasions that feel localized, and which don’t involve the most capable players, but which destabilize the world and have the potential to merge into a wider global conflict. Meanwhile, the Eastern theater today is more like the European theater of WW2 — it has the most powerful economies and militaries, but the alliances are still uncertain. If and when China attacks Taiwan, that will probably be similar to Hitler invading Poland — an unambiguous signal that a wider war has begun. It might happen, or it might not.
Meanwhile, the Iran War feels like the lead-up to World War 3 in another way — it’s showcasing and developing the technologies that would be central to a wider war. The Ukraine War has demonstrated that drones — FPV drones at the front, and Shahed-style strike drones behind the lines — are the key weapon of modern warfare. Similarly, America and Israel’s decapitation strikes on Iran have shown the power of AI for modern precision warfare. Here’s the WSJ:
The U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran have unfolded at unprecedented speed and precision thanks to…a cutting-edge weapon never before deployed on this scale: artificial intelligence…AI tools are helping gather intelligence, pick targets, plan bombing missions and assess battle damage at speeds not previously possible…The use of AI in the campaign against Iran follows years of work by the Pentagon and lessons learned from other militaries. Ukraine—with U.S. help—increasingly relies on AI in its war against Russia. Israel has tapped AI in conflicts at least since the October 2023 Hamas attacks.
The U.S. military is using the most advanced AI it has ever used in warfare, with Anthropic’s Claude AI reported to be assessing intelligence, identifying targets, and simulating battle scenarios…The biggest role that AI now has in U.S. military operations in Iran, as well as Venezuela, is in decision-support systems, or AI-powered targeting systems, Feldstein said. AI can process reams of surveillance information, satellite imagery, and other intelligence, and provide insights for potential strikes. The AI systems offer speed, scale, and cost-efficiency, and “are a game-changer,” he said…[T]he use of chatbots such as Claude in decision-support systems is new…
China is prototyping AI capabilities that can pilot unmanned combat vehicles, detect and respond to cyberattacks, and identify and strike targets on land, at sea, and in space, researchers at Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology said.
This is a bit reminiscent of how aerial bombing was used at Guernica in the Spanish Civil War, or how the USSR used tanks to beat the Japanese at Khalkhin Gol. If we ever do see an all-out war between America, China, Russia, Japan, and Europe, AI is going to be incredibly central to performance on the battlefield. That’s why for all the bad blood between the Pentagon and Anthropic, the two organizations have a huge incentive to patch things over and learn to cooperate more closely. (Fortunately, Anthropic’s CEO, Dario Amodei, is extremely patriotic, which will probably help.)
Unfortunately, new military technologies won’t just define the wars of the future — they also help cause them. Why did the world fight two World Wars in the early 20th century? Ideologies and competing empires certainly played a role, but it’s also probably true that the rise of industrial technology disrupted the existing balance of power.
Artillery manufacturing, logistics, and railroads made Germany a great power capable of defeating France in the 1870s; that upset the continental balance of power and caused the proliferation of alliances that led to WW1. In the interwar period, air power made America, Germany, and Japan more powerful, while the rise of tanks empowered Germany and the USSR, all at the expense of Britain and France. The rapid progress of industrial weaponry made it unclear where power really lay in the world, which probably made the great powers of the day more willing to roll the dice and test their strength against each other.
Countries may be more cautious now than they were a century ago. Nuclear weapons still exist, and still provide some deterrent to great-power war — though there are a lot fewer of them now than there used to be, and AI and missile defense make it possible to stop more of them before they hit. Countries are richer now too, which makes a war even less appealing from an economic perspective than in 1914.
But still, the rise of AI and drones means that no one knows who’s really the most powerful country in the world — the U.S. or China. And regional balances of power — Russia versus Europe and Ukraine, Iran versus Israel and the Gulf — are similarly uncertain. Uncertain balances of power are scarier than known balances of power.
So while World War 3 doesn’t seem imminent, we may be inching closer in that direction. If it sneaks up and surprises us, we’ll probably conclude that the Iran War was part of the lead-up.
A New Jersey Girl Scout troop has taken cookie sales to new heights, setting up shop right outside a popular cannabis dispensary.
A South Jersey-based troop recently teamed up with Daylite Dispensary in Mount Laurel to sell their beloved cookies at the cannabis shop this cookie season.
“You use cannabis, you get the munchies,” Daylite Dispensary owner Steve Cassidy told NJ.com “There’s a connection between snacks and cannabis and the fact that we don’t have to pretend that doesn’t exist anymore is really awesome.”
Daylite became Mount Laurel’s first dispensary when it opened in 2023. Cassidy said the idea was proposed back in 2024, but it was turned down by Girl Scouts of Central & Southern New Jersey, the Girl Scout council that oversees troops in the region.
When the idea reemerged ahead of this year’s cookie season, the troop was allowed to sell cookies at Daylite on a trial basis, according to Cassidy.
A NASA satellite that spent more than a decade coursing through the Van Allen radiation belts encircling Earth is about to fall back into the atmosphere.
Most of the spacecraft will burn up during reentry, but a fraction of the material making up the 1,323-pound (600-kilogram) satellite will likely reach Earth's surface without vaporizing in the atmosphere. Uncontrolled reentries of satellites with comparable mass happen quite regularly—multiple times per month, according to one recent study—but most of them are older spacecraft or spent rocket bodies.
This reentry is notable because it poses a higher risk to the public than the US government typically allows. The risk of harm coming to anyone on Earth is still low, approximately 1 in 4,200, but it exceeds the government standard of a 1 in 10,000 chance of an uncontrolled reentry causing a casualty.
Countries around the world are becoming increasingly concerned about their dependencies on the US. If you’ve purchase US-made F-35 fighter jets, you are dependent on the US for software maintenance.
The Dutch Defense Secretary recently said that he could jailbreak the planes to accept third-party software.
Citi sees Latin America as one of the main winners of the “great trade realignment”
A new Citi report positions Latin America as one of the main winners of what it calls the “great trade realignment”, as global supply chains shift toward a more multipolar structure driven by tariff volatility, AI adoption and nearshoring trends.
Trade flows from Latin America to ASEAN countries surged 82% between 2019 and 2024, while exports from China to the region grew 59% over the same period.
Latin America’s exports to North America also rose 43% in the same period.
Citi highlights the region’s growing role as a vital supplier of critical minerals to Asia’s electronics industry, an agricultural alternative to the United States for products like soybeans, and an increasingly attractive destination for foreign direct investment, which grew 12% in the first half of 2025 against a negative trend in other developed economies.
NASA's inspector general released a new report on Tuesday that examines the space agency's management of the Human Landing System development contracts signed with SpaceX and Blue Origin.
These landers are essential for NASA's program to land humans on the Moon this decade and then establish a long-term settlement on the lunar surface. However, both NASA and the companies developing the landers have largely been silent about their efforts. For this reason the new report on Human Landing Systems (HLS) provides some interesting insights previously unknown to the public.
Overall, the report, signed by Office of Inspector General senior official Robert Steinau, finds that the fixed-price contracting approach has been beneficial for NASA as it seeks to broaden its utilization of the US commercial space industry.
Just before we push from the gate, a suite of weight-and-balance data is beamed to us. The message is delivered through a communications platform called ACARS. The info is then entered (some we type in manually, some of it uploads automatically) into the flight management system to help us compute our takeoff speeds, flap and trim settings, and whatnot.
The message includes a tally of the plane’s occupants, or “souls on board,” as we call it. This includes everyone: passengers, crew, and lap children. I normally jot this number down on my cheat-sheet. In the event of an emergency, controllers will ask for it to assist with fire and rescue planning.
The other night, departing for Paris, as the message unspooled from the ship’s printer, something caught my eye. The SOB total read 301. This was the first time in my career that I’d pilot a plane carrying three hundred or more people.
With every seat taken and a full complement of crew, our jet doesn’t quite hold that many. It was the lap kids, bless their boisterous hearts, that tipped us over the edge.
No shortage of pilots out there fly planes with room for well over three-hundred, or even four-hundred passengers (some of Emirates’ high-density A380s carry over six-hundred). What such a number means for them, if anything, I can’t say. But for me it felt important. Not for bragging rights, but as a personal point of pride. It was, in a way, a redemption.
My flying career, beleaguered and busted-up as it was at times, had been building to this moment. For decades it had been a struggle. Bankruptcies, furloughs, bounced paychecks. Crappy jobs with crappy airlines flying crappy planes. Now here I was, about to take a widebody jet across the ocean with three-hundred people on it (or souls, if you’d rather, making it sound more lofty).
Pilots measure their progress by different milestones. First solo (I barely remember), first upgrade to captain (it happened in 1991). This seemed, well, heavier.
It took a long damn time, but things had finally paid off. And there was the number that, to me, best quantified it: 301.
I was going to include a photo of the printout with the total circled… until I realized I’d lost it.
Scientists estimate that Earth is home to more than 100 million lakes. Among the most unusual is Lake Unter-See, one of Antarctica’s largest and deepest surface lakes, known for its distinctive water chemistry. Its ice-covered waters have exceptionally high levels of dissolved oxygen, low dissolved carbon dioxide, and a strongly alkaline (basic) pH.
The OLI (Operational Land Imager) on Landsat 9 captured this image on February 16, 2026, during the Antarctic summer. Most of the lake’s water comes from seasonal meltwater draining from the margins of the nearby Anuchin Glacier, which flows south from the Gruber Mountains in Queen Maud Land.
With mean annual temperatures of about minus 10 degrees Celsius (14 degrees Fahrenheit), Lake Unter-See remains frozen year-round, its waters sealed beneath several meters of ice. Sunlight penetrates the ice and warms the water below, but the cold surface and strong winds drive evaporation and sublimation, preventing significant surface melting. The lake’s maximum depth is thought to reach nearly 170 meters (558 feet).
The lake’s water chemistry is unusual partly because it is one of the only perennially frozen lakes with a community of large, conical stromatolites. The layered microbial reef structures grow slowly upward as photosynthetic microbes—primarily cyanobacteria—trap sediment on their sticky surfaces and form calcium carbonate mineral crusts. These conical stromatolites—as well as pinnacle and flat forms of the microbial communities—release oxygen that becomes trapped under the ice, increasing its concentration in the lake.
Lake Unter-See’s stromatolites, discovered by SETI geobiologist Dale Andersen and colleagues in 2011, offer a glimpse into a time more than 3 billion years ago, when microbes were the only form of life on Earth. The formations are thought to be modern, living examples of the organisms that likely produced some of Earth’s oldest fossils—stromatolites found in places such as southwestern Greenland and western Australia.
The scientists noted that similar periodic flooding may provide "biological stimuli to other carbon dioxide-depleted Antarctic ecosystems and perhaps even icy lakes on early Mars.”
Some Antarctic lakes, such as Lake Joyce in the McMurdo Dry Valleys, contain conical stromatolites, but they reach only a few centimeters tall. By contrast, the formations in Lake Unter-See tower up to half a meter. Scientists think Unter-See’s stromatolites grow unusually tall because they are sheltered from tides and waves beneath permanent ice, live in exceptionally clear waters with little sediment, grow toward limited light, and face little grazing. The lake’s largest creatures are tardigrades—microscopic “water bear” invertebrates known for their ability to survive in extreme environments.
Astrobiologists also point to the lake as a possible analog for the type of environment where life might have formed or survived on icy moons with oceans such as Europa and Enceladus, or perhaps on Mars, which has ice caps and glaciers.
Yet despite its seemingly stable conditions, Lake Unter-See occasionally experiences abrupt changes. During fieldwork in 2019, researchers observed an increase in the lake’s water levels. The team, led by scientists at the University of Ottawa, later analyzed elevation data from NASA’s ICESat-2 (Ice, Cloud, and Land Elevation Satellite-2) and confirmed a 2-meter rise was caused by a glacial lake outburst flood from nearby Lake Ober-See.
The University of Ottawa team also showed that the outburst flood had released 17.5 million cubic meters of meltwater, altering Unter-See’s pH and replenishing it with carbon dioxide-rich waters that likely enhanced the productivity of the lake’s microbial life. The scientists noted that similar periodic flooding may provide “biological stimuli to other carbon dioxide-depleted Antarctic ecosystems and perhaps even icy lakes on early Mars.”
NASA Earth Observatory image by Michala Garrison, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey.Story by Adam Voiland.
The president makes sure to wear one of his dumbass branded ball caps during the most somber duty imaginable, witnessing the dignified transfer of the body of a soldier who died in his misbegotten war. (photo by Emily J. Hughes)
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Donald Trump has always believed in the value of superlatives. Everything he does is the greatest, the biggest, the most spectacular anywhere in the world or anyone has ever seen. So it is appropriate that he has now succeeded in launching the most unpopular war in American history.
For many decades, the common wisdom was that the prospect of war produces a “rally-round-the-flag” effect, as Americans unite behind their government in the face of external threats. What Trump is demonstrating, however, is that the effect isn’t just a lever you can pull; there isn’t anything inherent in an international conflict that produces that result. Given the right circumstances and the right president — or more precisely, the wrong circumstances and president — the public may simply decline to rally round the flag.
Let’s begin by comparing opinions on this war to previous ones. Here’s a handy chart from the New York Times showing how much this war stands out:
I wouldn’t have included Kosovo, Libya, and perhaps even Grenada (which took all of a week), not only because of their scale but because they weren’t really presented to the public as large conflicts necessary to secure America’s immediate national security. Which is one of the factors that produces the rally-round-the-flag effect: It’s essential for the public to believe they are threatened in some real way, and the war is necessary to confront that threat. And as my friend Sean Aday (who studies media, public opinion, and war) reminded me when I checked in with him, the rally-round-the-flag effect has never been as powerful as most people assume; it’s contingent on many variables that might or might not be present in a given conflict.
With that in mind, I’d point to a few critical factors that determine how much the public is going to support the war:
Perception of a threat that makes the conflict necessary
Potential risks and rewards
Popularity of the president
Visible success or failure once the conflict begins
In most of our previous major wars, the threat was at least based in something real. Korea and Vietnam were presented as part of our Cold War conflict with the Soviet Union, which had the power to annihilate us; Afghanistan and Iraq were offered as a response to 9/11, in which 3,000 Americans were killed and which had upended all our lives. The first Gulf War was sold not as a response to a threat but as a humanitarian intervention on behalf of Kuwait; we’d go in there with our mighty military, kick the stuffing out of a country that had no chance against us, and be hailed as heroes (which is pretty much what happened). In that case, the risks were small and the rewards at least meaningful.
But the president has to have a well of good will he can call upon to make the case, which Trump doesn’t have. If a popular president tells the public we have to go to war, the response is going to be very different than if it comes from an unpopular president. Here’s how Trump compares to his predecessors:
I’ve taken Gallup poll results from as close as possible to a week before the conflict began and a week after. I used passage of the Tonkin Gulf resolution to date the beginning of the Vietnam War, and since Gallup has stopped measuring Trump’s approval, for the current war I’m using the FiftyPlusOne average. Trump’s approval before and after the war began are identical, which is why the “before” data point isn’t visible.
The Bushes did both get boosts after their wars against Saddam Hussein began, which is probably explained by the fact that 1) they were popular at the time to begin with, and 2) initially, the war seemed to be going great. On the other hand, if you’re unpopular and you don’t even bother trying to make a coherent argument for war, and it doesn’t seem to be a smashing success, the public is not going to go along.
And while Trump could have tried to persuade the public that we’re doing this to liberate the genuinely oppressed Iranian people, he can’t bring himself to do that; here he is threatening to utterly destroy Iran as “Death, Fire, and Fury will reign [sic] upon them,” which does not exactly communicate “We’re here to help” to either the Iranian or American people:
War is not inherently popular
If the lack of an immediate and durable rally-round-the-flag effect is at all surprising, it may be not just because it’s a familiar bit of conventional wisdom but because for so many of us, the Iraq War was the formative experience on this question. When it was being debated in 2002 and 2003, most Democrats probably understood that the Bush administration was lying about the threat from Iraq and deluded about how wonderfully everything would turn out. But most of the key leaders in the party, including the entire congressional leadership and future presidential candidates like Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, and Joe Biden, clearly believed that opposing any war at its outset would be political suicide. They didn’t want to look weak, which led them to become even weaker.
Supporting that war was an act of moral cowardice, but somewhat understandable as a political matter, since the war was in fact popular before it began. Of course, one of the reasons it was widely popular was precisely because Democrats joined Republicans in supporting it, which signaled to their party’s rank-and-file that it was a good idea. Today, most Democratic politicians remember that experience and have been unwilling to cheer for Trump’s war, which has encouraged their base to reject it.
To a significant extent, everything changes when the war begins and the reality on the ground becomes undeniable. In Iraq, we saw a devastatingly effective propaganda campaign to sell it beforehand, but once the war began, the administration’s lack of strategic thinking and deep incompetence quickly revealed themselves.
In the Iran case, both incompetence and lack of strategic vision have been evident from the get-go. There hasn’t been anything one could call a battlefield defeat, since we’re just pummeling the country from the air. But Americans are looking at what’s happening and saying, OK, so we blew up a bunch of stuff. And?Bombing a girls’ school and killing 165 people, mostly children, didn’t help. We killed the Supreme Leader, who has been duly replaced with another Supreme Leader.
In short, to return to the list of key factors above, here’s what’s influencing people’s understanding of the war:
There was never any widespread belief that Iran was an immediate threat to the U.S.
The risks of regional instability are ample, while there is no obvious reward for the U.S. in this war.
The president is deeply unpopular.
There has been little in the way of visible success, even if our bombs are (mostly) hitting their targets. Here at home, the most obvious effect of the war is a dramatic increase in oil prices, which is something people really don’t like.
Add it up, and you have the least popular war in history, at least at this stage. It’s hard to know whether the administration thought the public would rally to the cause; they do tend to delude themselves about how beloved Trump is and how much the public supports everything he does. But I wouldn’t be surprised if behind the scenes, most of the people around Trump knew that this wasn’t going to go well. And unless Iran quickly transforms itself into a liberal democracy that is a force of stability and peace in the region, it’s unlikely that the war will get any more popular as time goes on. It’ll be just one more superlative to add to Trump’s list.
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Yesterday, I wrote that President Trump was moonwalking out of his war in Iran. Then later that afternoon and last night he made a series of highly bellicose and bombastic statements that the war is only getting started, and he may destroy Iran altogether as a people, as a nation.
Today, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth I think told us the story because now he’s bringing his daily briefing in line with Trump‘s idea that this war is pretty much over. A couple more hard-core days and it’s gonna be done. So which is happening here? I think we can really see by the oil futures. Oil went up dramatically over the weekend. I believe it briefly got up to over $110 a barrel and then it fell yesterday when Trump made these statements that the war is pretty much over we’re gonna be wrapping it up, and in anticipation of G7 nations releasing oil reserves. Now today it’s continuing that and it’s fallen significantly below $80, so investors think that Trump is going full taco here i.e. Trump always chickens out.
What does clearly mean though? Is it that regime change, Trump‘s demand for unconditional surrender, is done? Iran is clearly taking a huge beating to its civilian and military infrastructure, but the clerical regime in Iran has made very clear that they’re not even close to giving up. The selection of Khameni’s son is, if anything, a statement of defiance, and given that they have held on as long as they have, it seems basically impossible to imagine that they are going to give up or make major concessions now that Trump is signaling that he’s tired of this, not even two weeks into the war.
There’s another question I wanted to address that one of our readers asked. This reader said, For all the specific policy that commentators are debating, they’re doing so on the basis of the idea that Iran, even if it didn’t pose an eminent threat, posed some big threat to the United States and/or to Israel. Am I missing something? The answer is I don’t think you’re missing anything at all. The reason this is happening is not because Iran is strong or is posing some imminent threat to anybody. Iran is incredibly weak. If anything, their deterrence is shattered between the damage to their missile program and their military infrastructure, and especially to their proxies around the Middle East. They are down. They are on their back. So this is happening not because Iran is strong, but because they are weak. And it seems to the people who made the decision to go to war that they may be so weak that the regime might actually be overthrown, and even if it’s not overthrown, they are so weak that they really can’t retaliate in any meaningful way. Everything we’ve seen backs up that assumption. Yes, they’re firing missiles and drones into the neighboring states, but they’re not really able to do major damage anywhere, and I mean major damage that is gonna knock someone out of the war.
It’s Trump so obviously anything could change but I think right now it’s clear that Trump does not have the stomach for a true regime change war, and he’s going to try to get out of this as quickly as he can. The question is can he actually do so fast enough, not look completely stupid and still preserve some idea that the U.S. succeeded at whatever it was we were trying to do?
The Josh Marshall Podcast featuring Kate Riga heads to Austin, Texas to check in with our friends at Texas Observer. Tickets are on sale now!
There’s so much going on in Texas right now that the TPM team decided to come down to sort through it all.
Can James Talarico become the first Democratic senator to represent the state in more than 30 years? What’s the latest political fallout from the Tony Gonzales affair scandal? How will Republicans’ messy redistricting scheme impact the midterms?
Come hang out with us on Wednesday, April 8 at the Alamo Drafthouse as we dig into some of these questions. If you are an Prime Member or an Inside Member, you get discounted tickets. If you missed the email with the access code, feel free to email me directly at Joe at talkingpointsmemo dot comand I’ll help you out. (If you’re not a member, well, now is the time, friend. Now is the time.)
The night will begin with a conversation between TPM founder and editor-in-chief Josh Marshall and the Observer’s politics editor, Justin Miller. Then, D.C. reporter Kate Riga and Josh will record a live episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast featuring Kate Riga.
After the pod, there will be an audience Q&A and then we’ll wrap up the night in the bar.
(And don’t worry, the evening doesn’t have to be all politics. You can ask Josh about his favorite kind of wood or if Kate thinks her Washington Mystics will ever be good.)
Many developers worry that outsourcing their code to AI tools will result in a drop in quality, producing bad code that's churned out fast enough that decision makers are willing to overlook its flaws.
If adopting coding agents demonstrably reduces the quality of the code and features you are producing, you should address that problem directly: figure out which aspects of your process are hurting the quality of your output and fix them.
Shipping worse code with agents is a choice. We can choose to ship code that is better instead.
Avoiding taking on technical debt
I like to think about shipping better code in terms of technical debt. We take on technical debt as the result of trade-offs: doing things "the right way" would take too long, so we work within the time constraints we are under and cross our fingers that our project will survive long enough to pay down the debt later on.
The best mitigation for technical debt is to avoid taking it on in the first place.
In my experience, a common category of technical debt fixes is changes that are simple but time-consuming.
Our original API design doesn't cover an important case that emerged later on. Fixing that API would require changing code in dozens of different places, making it quicker to add a very slightly different new API and live with the duplication.
We made a poor choice naming a concept early on - teams rather than groups for example - but cleaning up that nomenclature everywhere in the code is too much work so we only fix it in the UI.
Our system has grown duplicate but slightly different functionality over time which needs combining and refactoring.
One of our files has grown to several thousand lines of code which we would ideally split into separate modules.
All of these changes are conceptually simple but still need time dedicated to them, which can be hard to justify given more pressing issues.
Coding agents can handle these for us
Refactoring tasks like this are an ideal application of coding agents.
Fire up an agent, tell it what to change and leave it to churn away in a branch or worktree somewhere in the background.
I usually use asynchronous coding agents for this such as Gemini Jules, OpenAI Codex web, or Claude Code on the web. That way I can run those refactoring jobs without interrupting my flow on my laptop.
Evaluate the result in a Pull Request. If it's good, land it. If it's almost there, prompt it and tell it what to do differently. If it's bad, throw it away.
The cost of these code improvements has dropped so low that we can afford a zero tolerance attitude to minor code smells and inconveniences.
AI tools let us consider more options
Any software development task comes with a wealth of options for approaching the problem. Some of the most significant technical debt comes from making poor choices at the planning step - missing out on an obvious simple solution, or picking a technology that later turns out not to be exactly the right fit.
LLMs can help ensure we don't miss any obvious solutions that may not have crossed our radar before. They'll only suggest solutions that are common in their training data but those tend to be the Boring Technology that's most likely to work.
More importantly, coding agents can help with exploratory prototyping.
The best way to make confident technology choices is to prove that they are fit for purpose with a prototype.
Is Redis a good choice for the activity feed on a site which expects thousands of concurrent users?
The best way to know for sure is to wire up a simulation of that system and run a load test against it to see what breaks.
Coding agents can build this kind of simulation from a single well crafted prompt, which drops the cost of this kind of experiment to almost nothing. And since they're so cheap we can run multiple experiments at once, testing several solutions to pick the one that is the best fit for our problem.
Embrace the compound engineering loop
Agents follow instructions. We can evolve these instructions over time to get better results from future runs, based on what we've learned previously.
Dan Shipper and Kieran Klaassen at Every describe their company's approach to working with coding agents as Compound Engineering. Every coding project they complete ends with a retrospective, which they call the compound step where they take what worked and document that for future agent runs.
If we want the best results from our agents, we should aim to continually increase the quality of our codebase over time. Small improvements compound. Quality enhancements that used to be time-consuming have now dropped in cost to the point that there's no excuse not to invest in quality at the same time as shipping new features. Coding agents mean we can finally have both.
The Five Tastes: Delicious Recipes for Chinese Flavor, due out this fall. Via Joe Powers in the MR comments section. Hers are the very best Chinese cookbooks and they are also wonderful books more generally. She has been a CWT guest three times now. Let us hope a fourth episode is in order…
At a summit with Latin American leaders over the weekend, Marco Rubio said a few words in Spanish. Then Pete Hegseth popped up to say “I only speak American.” And that’s why we’re facing disaster in the Persian Gulf.
A brief note as the war winds down/intensifies/God knows
Donald Trump talked a lot of nonsense about energy during the 2024 campaign. But in fairness, some of the underlying premises behind “drill, baby, drill” were accepted by many people. At the very least, it was widely presumed that U.S. self-sufficiency in oil would protect America from disruptions in oil supplies overseas.
But that presumption was wrong. America produces a lot of oil, substantially more than we consume. Although we import some oil, mainly from Canada and Mexico, while exporting even more oil, mainly from Texas, we buy hardly any oil from the Persian Gulf. Yet the closure of the Strait of Hormuz has caused U.S. prices of oil products to soar. Self-sufficiency in oil has done nothing at all to insulate the U.S. economy from Middle East chaos.
Now, we should have expected that. Oil is traded on world markets, so the price is more or less the same everywhere. The two most widely watched barometers of oil prices are the West Texas Intermediate price in the United States and Brent crude in Europe. America exports more oil than it imports, while Europe is a massive net importer. Yet the two prices have moved in tandem over the years:
Some people have been shocked at the way U.S. gasoline, diesel and heating oil prices have soared over the past few days. But they shouldn’t have been surprised.
So does U.S. oil production give Americans no insulation at all from world market events? Not under the current rules of the game.
It could be different. In the 1970s the U.S. imposed price controls on domestically produced oil and partially insulated consumers from global oil shocks. Over time, however, these price controls led to shortages — the infamous gasoline lines. When price controls were lifted, they were replaced by a windfall profits tax intended to capture part of the gains experienced by oil companies. This tax was repealed after prices plunged in the mid-1980s.
Whatever you think of these past policies, however, they took place in a political environment in which corporations and moneyed interests in general had far less power than they do now. It’s almost inconceivable that 1970s-type price controls or excess profits taxes would be imposed today. So US prices of gasoline and other oil products reflect world crude prices, and the fact that America produces a lot of oil doesn’t matter at all.
If anything, US families are more exposed to Middle East chaos than their counterparts in, say, Europe or Japan, mainly because we drive bigger, less fuel-efficient cars.
The people who decided to begin this war should have seen this coming. All the evidence, however, suggests that they didn’t.
I like being optimistic, I like helping Democrats, I like the idea of good people rising and saving America.
I do, I do, I do, I do …
That said, approaching an insanely important slate of votes, we also have to be politically honest about shit. And as we sit here, three months before state primaries, there is a reality to the CA-40 election. One you won’t like. One you’ll, perhaps, criticize me for stating. One that doesn’t bode well. One that multiple local political experts agree upon.
In short—a Democrat will not be on the final ballot.
As we speak, two popular Republicans—the 40th incumbent, Young Kim, and the 41st-moved-to-40th incumbent, Ken Calvert—have more money, more name recognition and more support than Esther Kim Varet, Lisa Ramirez and Joe Kerr, the three Democrats slugging it out. Thanks to the aftermath of Prop 50, they also happen to be competing in a district that now leans Republican by about a nine-point margin (it’s 40 percent GOP, 31 percent Dem and 27 percent independent).
… she is waaaaaaaybehind Young Kim and waaaaaaaybehind Ken Calvert. And maybe you’re thinking, “Well, that’s OK—because Young Kim and Ken Calvert will cancel each other out in the primary, thereby leading to Esther’s rise toward the general!”
Alas, no.
Because politics suck and politicians suck and no one is ever willing to take one for the team, Esther, Lisa and Joe will all have their names listed on the primary ballot (along with the two Republicans and a bunch of lessers). So let’s say Kerr gets (at the minimum) four percent of the vote. And let’s say either Varet or Ramirez snag, oh, eight-to-10 percent. Well, that makes it a near statistical impossibility for the leading Democrat to surpass the inevitable totals of Young Kim and Ken Calvert, who (I repeat) are both quite (politically) famous, savvy veterans of the game and extremely well-funded—in a firm Republican district. Even if, oh, Kerr and Ramirez decide tomorrow to drop out, it’s too late. Their names will be listed, and folks will vote for them. It’s a certainty.
Again, I friggin’ hate being the messenger of death. But had the three Democrats been legitimately serious about winning this for (above all else) the good of democracy, they would have secretly met at the Orange Inn for breakfast burritos and coffee, played rock, paper, scissors and come up with a singular candidate to at least offer a puncher’s chance.
Then they would have held a joint press conference, pretend smiling and holding hands and saying, “WE’RE DOING THIS FOR DEMOCRACY!” as some meh Bieber song blares in the background.
And (cough) even then it would have been a major longshot.
•••
Who do I blame?
No one. And everyone.
I blame Esther for going scorched earth on her fellow Democrats—beginning with young, earnest Perry Meade, then turning her wrath toward Lisa (thereby branding herself an asshole to a huge number of Democrats). I blame her for presenting herself as an entitled art dealer (which, cough, she sorta is) who blessed us with her Christ-like visage. I blame her for funneling through 654,221 campaign managers and spending way too much of her dough on gimmicks. I blame her for weird-ass stuff like this.
I blame Lisa for mid-level fundraising efforts (you cannot win a campaign like this with this level of dough. It’s impossible); for a late entrance into the race; for offering enough mixed messages on her pro-choice bonafides that I keep getting asked, “So … is she against abortion or what?” I also blame her for poor social media output and low visibility. It takes work to be a candidate for fairly high-profile office and have 601 Instagram followers.
I blame Joe for having no realistic shot, but running nonetheless. I blame him for being the evergreen candidate who has enough name recognition to siphon votes from other Democrats, but lacking the mojo and zest to possibly win. Joe is Jerry Quarry fighting Ron Cranmer in 1992. And since that reference will go over the heads of 98 percent of my readers, here’s a study guide.
Hell, here’s Joe Kerr’s financial status (literally, this website has generated more money than Kerr—and I’m not running for shit) …
I blame ego. I blame dough. I blame Prop 50 (which, obviously, I supported). I blame a broken system. I blame the DCCC. I blame In-N-Out’s disgusting milkshakes. I blame Hall and Oates for splitting up. I blame laundry lint.
Just because I need to redirect my frustration. And Arnold Jackson was adorable.
•••
And here’s the worst part.
As we speak, Young Kim and Ken Calvert are two lions, desperately trying to rip one another’s eyes out. They are spending tons of dough to gain the conservative edge; to go full MAGA; to establish themselves as the kings of right-wing Southern California. They are thrashing each other, battering each other, killing each other. They are affixing themselves to an increasingly unpopular president who is drowning in the polls and who (if we’re being honest) likely had sexual relations with girls.
That means, had the Democrats thought this through and planned appropriately, there could have been an opening. In particular, I believe (in an ideal world) Ramirez had the best shot. She’s an anti-ICE immigration attorney in a district that’s about 25 percent Latino. She has a story to tell; a saga to share; a got-her-hands-dirty-in-the-fight rep that could have possibly played well. I believe she’s a genuinely good person and a brawler.
But.
She.
Barely.
Has.
Any.
Money.
And as much as it sucks, you’re not capturing this seat on $300,000. Not when your opponents can outspend you 10-to-1. It’s beyond unlikely. It’s impossible.
So, yeah. Maybe, at one point, it paid to dream the dream and hope the hope and think, deep down, a Democrat could win the 40th.
But sitting here—glum but realistic—I don’t believe it’s attainable.
Up and to my office all the morning, and great pleasure it is to be doing my business betimes. About noon Sir J. Minnes came to me and staid half an hour with me in my office talking about his business with Sir W. Pen, and (though with me an old doter) yet he told me freely how sensible he is of Sir W. Pen’s treachery in this business, and what poor ways he has taken all along to ingratiate himself by making Mr. Turner write out things for him and then he gives them to the Duke, and how he directed him to give Mr. Coventry 100l. for his place, but that Mr. Coventry did give him 20l. back again. All this I am pleased to hear that his knavery is found out. Dined upon a poor Lenten dinner at home, my wife being vexed at a fray this morning with my Lady Batten about my boy’s going thither to turn the watercock with their maydes’ leave, but my Lady was mighty high upon it and she would teach his mistress better manners, which my wife answered aloud that she might hear, that she could learn little manners of her. After dinner to my office, and there we sat all the afternoon till 8 at night, and so wrote my letters by the post and so before 9 home, which is rare with me of late, I staying longer, but with multitude of business my head akes, and so I can stay no longer, but home to supper and to bed.
It has become clear that Trump had no plan in Iran other than to strike it, knock out the leaders he didn’t like, and hope the Iranian people would rise up and put in place new leaders he could deal with. It was supposed to look like what happened in Venezuela in January, when U.S. forces launched a surprise military strike that enabled them to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, leaving in his place the vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, who promises to work with Trump and has given him access to the country’s oil resources.
Andrew Egger of The Bulwark explains that the Trump administration didn’t bother to have a theory for why the U.S. was going to war with Iran, or to explain to the American people why such a war would be a good thing, because they didn’t think there was going to be a war, just a fast, hard strike that would enable the U.S. to put a new Iranian leader in place.
But the initial Israeli strikes killed most of the people the administration hoped would replace 86-year-old hardline ayatollah Ali Khamenei as supreme leader, and yesterday Iran proclaimed as his successor Khamenei’s 56-year-old son Mojtaba Khamenei despite Trump’s statement that “Khamenei’s son is unacceptable to me.” Mojtaba Khamenei is thought to be even more extreme a hardliner than his father.
Wall Street Journal national security reporter Alex Ward reported today that according to current and former U.S. officials, “President Trump has told aides he would back the killing of new Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei if he proves unwilling to cede to U.S. demands, such as ending Iran’s nuclear development.”
This morning, Joe Wallace, Summer Said, Rebecca Feng, and Georgi Kantchev of the Wall Street Journal wrote an article titled “The Long-Feared Persian Gulf Oil Squeeze Is Upon Us,” warning that the stoppage of traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has set off “the most severe energy crisis since the 1970s and [is] threatening the global economy.” Ships move not only oil but also fertilizer used for crops around the globe through that strait.
On March 3, Trump offered government insurance for shipping and floated the possibility of Navy escorts for ships in the strait, but that has not been enough to restore voyages. So this morning, on the Fox News Channel, Brian Kilmeade, who cheered on Trump’s attack on Iran from the television studio, told the captains of oil tankers they must simply conquer their fear and start up. “If you want to diminish the Iranian threat, if you want to make sure this ends up with complete Iran capitulation,” he said, “show some guts and go through that Strait, and do it.”
The spreading war in the Middle East threatens the ties between the region and the U.S. that Trump has pushed since taking office. As Eliot Brown, Georgi Kantchev, and Lauren Thomas of the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, the richest countries in the Persian Gulf last year tried to strengthen ties with Trump by pledging billions of dollars of investment into the U.S. Now they are having second thoughts. A prominent Dubai businessman posted at Trump on social media: “Who gave you the authority to drag our region into a war?” Trump had placed the Gulf states “at the heart of a danger they did not choose,” he wrote.
On Saturday, Vivienne Walt of the New York Times warned that such investments have gone both ways, with U.S. tech giants like Nvidia, Microsoft, and Oracle investing in large-scale facilities across the Middle East with an eye to making the region a global center for AI. Now they are questioning the security of such investments.
Aaron Katersky and Josh Margolin of ABC News reported today that shortly after the death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on February 28, the U.S. intercepted encrypted messages suggesting that Iran has activated covert operatives, or “sleeper assets,” in other countries. When Eric Cortellessa of Time magazine asked Trump if Americans should worry about attacks at home, Trump answered: “I guess. But I think they’re worried about that all the time. We think about it all the time. We plan for it. But yeah, you know, we expect some things. Like I said, some people will die. When you go to war, some people will die.”
Under increasing pressure over the Epstein files, the Department of Justice (DOJ) today released some of the missing documents concerning an allegation from an Epstein survivor that Trump raped her when she was thirteen or fourteen. The so-called 302 report released today concerns four separate FBI interviews with the woman. (FD-302 is the form used by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to provide an official record of summarized interviews.) The DOJ’s initial document drop included only the interview in which she talked about her abuse at Epstein’s hands; the other interviews discuss Trump. Some of the files related to that accusation and those interviews are still missing.
The White House has responded to the pressure on Trump by posting an image of what appears to be a pilot in an aircraft under the caption “PATRIOTS ARE IN CONTROL.” The Steady State, a group made up of former national security officials, explains that in Q-Anon circles, that phrase “refers to the long-standing belief that Trump and a hidden network inside government were secretly running things the entire time.”
Trump has become so desperate to force Republicans in Congress to limit voting before the 2026 midterms that yesterday morning he took to social media to threaten them. He said that unless the Senate weakens the filibuster to pass the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act over the objections of Democrats, “I, as President, will not sign other Bills until this is passed, AND NOT THE WATERED DOWN VERSION—GO FOR THE GOLD: MUST SHOW VOTER I.D. & PROOF OF CITIZENSHIP: NO MAIL-IN BALLOTS EXCEPT FOR MILITARY—ILLNESS, DISABILITY, TRAVEL: NO MEN IN WOMEN’S SPORTS: NO TRANSGENDER MUTILATION FOR CHILDREN! DO NOT FAIL!!!”
Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) responded: “The SAVE Act is Jim Crow 2.0. It would disenfranchise tens of millions of people. If Trump is saying he won’t sign any bills until the SAVE Act is passed, then so be it: there will be total gridlock in the Senate. Senate Democrats will not help pass the SAVE Act under any circumstances.”
Senate majority leader John Thune (R-SC) does not have the votes even to make up a majority in favor of the act, let alone the 60 he would need to overcome a filibuster, and has said he will not change the filibuster to try to pass the measure.
Brian Finucane noted today in Just Security that Congress, especially the Senate, could cause other problems for Trump. Although it has so far declined to reclaim its power to rein in his military adventures, it could still do so through the power of the purse. The administration appears to be planning to ask for more money to fund the war in Iran. Congress could refuse that money or could place restrictions on it by passing laws establishing such restrictions, although Trump could veto such measures and it would take a supermajority in each chamber of Congress to override his veto.
In the midst of Trump’s tanking numbers on all the issues that used to be Republicans’ strength—the economy, immigration, national security—Trump spoke today to Republican members of the House at their annual policy retreat at Trump’s property in Doral, Florida.
The Republican majority is now so thin that Johnson can afford to lose just a single vote on the House floor, and as of this morning, that seat seemed to be in jeopardy with Representative Tony Gonzales (R-TX) facing calls to resign after admitting to an affair with a former staffer who later died by suicide.
This afternoon, Representative Kevin Kiley of California announced he was leaving the Republican Party to become an Independent. When California redistricted the state to counter Texas’s redistricting, Kiley’s district became much more competitive. Kiley says that going forward, he will “have to consider” every bill “on its own merits.”
This afternoon, Weijia Jiang of CBS reported: “NEW—In a phone interview, President Trump told me the war could be over soon: ‘I think the war is very complete, pretty much. They have no navy, no communications, they’ve got no Air Force.’ He added that the U.S. is ‘very far’ ahead of his initial 4–5 week estimated time frame. Asked about Iran’s new Supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei, who Trump has openly criticized, he said, ‘I have no message for him. None, whatsoever.’ Trump said he has someone in mind to replace Khamenei, but he did not elaborate. As for the Strait of Hormuz, Trump noted that ships are moving through now, but he is ‘thinking about taking it over.’ Trump warned Iran, ‘They’ve shot everything they have to shoot, and they better not try anything cute or it’s going to be the end of that country.’”
The price of oil had spiked overnight up to its highest level since global trade surged in 2022 after the Covid-19 lockdowns, peaking briefly at over $100 a barrel. News that the Group of Seven advanced economies (G7) is willing to consider releasing strategic oil reserves if necessary brought it down from its highs. A dropping stock market reflected the spike in oil prices. Those drops moderated after news about the possible release of strategic oil reserves, and the news that Trump considers the war ending meant the market ended up higher by the end of the day than it had begun.
But once the market had closed, Trump changed his tune, telling House Republicans, “We have won in many ways, but not enough. We go forward more determined than ever to achieve ultimate victory that will end this long-running danger once and for all.” When asked at a later news conference if the war would be over this week, Mr. Trump said, “No.”
This evening, Trump’s account posted: “If Iran does anything that stops the flow of Oil within the Strait of Hormuz, they will be hit by the United States of America TWENTY TIMES HARDER than they have been hit thus far. Additionally, we will take out easily destroyable targets that will make it virtually impossible for Iran to ever be built back, as a Nation, again—Death, Fire, and Fury will reign [sic] upon them—But I hope, and pray, that it does not happen! This is a gift from the United States of America to China, and all of those Nations that heavily use the Hormuz Strait. Hopefully, it is a gesture that will be greatly appreciated.”
Aaron Rupar of Public Notice commented: “Trump is completely flailing. He didn’t anticipate the economic blowback and now he’s trying to undo the past 10 days and contain the damage.”
As part of its apparent war on what the administration calls “narco-terrorists” in Latin America, U.S. Southern Command announced yesterday that it has struck another small vessel in the eastern Pacific, killing another six men.
An artist’s impression of an Apollo-era lunar module (left) and moon landers being built by Blue Origin (center) and SpaceX (right). Graphic: NASA Office of Inspector General
NASA is working to reduce the risks of upcoming Artemis moon missions, but there are “gaps” in the agency’s approach, including in planned tests of some critical lander systems, the agency’s Office of Inspector General said in a report released Tuesday.
The OIG also noted that, like the Apollo landing missions more than 50 years ago, if Artemis astronauts “encounter a life-threatening emergency in space or on the lunar surface, NASA does not have the capability to rescue the stranded crew.”
The OIG said that while NASA is working to “mitigate and prevent hazards” associated with lunar landers being built by SpaceX and Blue Origin, “there are currently gaps in the agency’s approach, including in its testing posture and crew survival analyses,” including what might happen after a catastrophic but non-fatal event.
NASA is currently working to ready a Space Launch System rocket and Orion crew capsule — Integrity — for launch by around April 1 on the Artemis II mission. The nine-day flight will carry four astronauts around the moon and back.
The mission originally was planned for early February, but it has been delayed by hydrogen propellant leaks and, more recently, by problems with its upper stage propellant pressurization system that forced NASA to haul the rocket back to its processing hangar for repairs.
That issue has been resolved, and NASA plans to hold a flight readiness review Wednesday and Thursday. If all goes well, the SLS rocket will be hauled back out to pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center around March 19 or 20 for final launch preparations.
In the meantime, NASA announced a major overhaul of the Artemis program on Feb. 27. The agency now plans to launch an additional mission next year — Artemis III — sending an Orion capsule into Earth orbit to carry out rendezvous and checkout operations with one or both of the moon landers now under development.
Based in part on lessons learned, the agency hopes to launch two lunar-landing missions in 2028 using one or both landers if both are deemed ready to fly. Those missions will be preceded by unpiloted lunar landing test flights.
The OIG report released Tuesday was completed before the revised mission architecture was announced by NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman. As such, it mostly concentrated on SpaceX’s lander, which was to make the first two Artemis moon landings with Blue Origin following after. As it now stands, NASA plans to use whichever lander is ready when it’s needed.
SpaceX’s lander is a variant of the company’s Starship, which normally serves as the second stage of its gargantuan Super Heavy-Starship rocket. To reach the moon, the 171-foot-tall HLS must be refueled in low-Earth orbit by an estimated 10-to-20 Starship tanker flights.
The OIG said the company plans to launch a propellant depot ship well ahead of a moon landing mission. The depot will be filled with propellants by a steady stream of Super Heavy-tanker flights taking off every week or so from launch pads in Florida and Texas.
Orbital refueling at that scale has never been attempted. Complicating the picture, it’s not yet publicly known how SpaceX will mitigate the constant loss of cryogenic propellants as they warm up and evaporate.
In any case, when the depot has been topped off, the lander will be launched, autonomously reloaded with propellants and then fired off to the moon where it will enter orbit and await the arrival of Artemis astronauts aboard an Orion crew ship.
Blue Origin plans to follow a somewhat similar strategy, refueling its lander in Earth orbit to provide the propellant needed to reach the moon. Once in lunar orbit, a tanker will top off its tanks again before carrying astronauts down to the lunar surface.
The OIG noted that the established loss-of-crew threshold faced by Artemis astronauts in the first two moon landings was expected to be in 1-in-40 range for lunar operations and 1-in-30 overall, from launch to splashdown. For comparison, Apollo astronauts faced 1-in-10 odds of a crew loss while space shuttle crews flew with an actual 1-in-70 risk.
Before any moonwalkers are launched, both landers will be put through an exhaustive series of tests in lunar orbit to verify their operational readiness. After docking with a given lander, astronauts will descend to the surface while the Orion remains in orbit awaiting their return.
Landing near the moon’s south pole poses more severe challenges than Apollo crews faced when landing near the lunar equator.
“Steep slopes of up to 20 degrees on the lunar South Pole present navigation and landing challenges,” the OIG said. “Given Starship’s height of 171 feet — about the equivalent of a 14-story tall commercial building — there is a risk that its momentum will continue after landing causing it to tip over.”
NASA’s requirement for “tilt tolerance” is a slope of just 8 degrees.
“Blue Moon — standing at 53 feet tall — also faces landing risks, including exceeding the lander’s tilt tolerance for safe and effective execution of critical crew functions. Surpassing the tilt tolerance for either lander … could impact the operation of equipment such as the hatch used by the crew to exit and enter the vehicle.”
For comparison, the Apollo lunar modules, which carried 12 astronauts to the moon’s surface in six flights, were half the height of Blue Moon’s and seven times shorter than SpaceX’s.
Unlike astronauts aboard Blue Origin’s lander, who can use stairs to reach the surface six feet below, crews aboard SpaceX’s lander will have to ride an external elevator some 10 stories down the side of their rocket. While that might seem a minor engineering issue given the challenges of orbital refueling and propellant boil off, program managers view it as an issue worth close attention.
“Starship’s elevator sits just below the crew compartment and is approximately 115 feet above the ground,” the inspector general wrote. “Currently, there is no other method for the crew to enter the vehicle from the lunar surface in the event of an elevator failure.”
NASA requires “at least single failure tolerance to catastrophic events, meaning the ability of a system to sustain a single failure and not have it affect the design goal. SpaceX is focused on building a robust standard elevator design with redundant mechanisms.”
“However, the HLS Program is tracking the elevator as a top risk and is actively working with SpaceX to develop alternate means of vehicle ingress should the elevator become stuck or fail while the crew is on the lunar surface.”
Hello! My big takeaway from last month’s musings about man pages
was that examples in man pages are really great, so I worked on adding (or
improving) examples to two of my favourite tools’ man pages.
The goal here was really just to give the absolute most basic examples of how to
use the tool, for people who use tcpdump or dig infrequently (or have never used
it before!) and don’t remember how it works.
So far saying “hey, I want to write an examples section for beginners and
infrequent users of this tools” has been working really well. It’s easy to
explain, I think it makes sense from everything I’ve heard from users about what
they want from a man page, and maintainers seem to find it compelling.
Thanks to Denis Ovsienko, Guy Harris, Ondřej Surý, and everyone else who
reviewed the docs changes, it was a good experience and left me motivated to do
a little more work on man pages.
why improve the man pages?
I’m interested in working on tools’ official documentation right now
because:
Man pages can actually have close to 100% accurate information!
Going through a review process to make sure that the information is actually true has a lot of value.
Even with basic questions “what are the most commonly used tcpdump flags”,
often maintainers are aware of useful features that I’m not! For
example I learned by working on these tcpdump examples that if you’re saving
packets to a file with tcpdump -w out.pcap, it’s useful to pass -v to print
a live summary of how many packets have been captured so far. That’s really
useful, I didn’t know it, and I don’t think I ever would have noticed it on
my own.
It’s kind of a weird place for me to be because honestly I always kind of assume
documentation is going to be hard to read, and I usually just skip it and read
a blog post or Stack Overflow comment or ask a friend instead. But right now
I’m feeling optimistic, like maybe the documentation doesn’t have to be bad?
Maybe it could be just as good as reading a really great blog post, but with the
benefit of also being actually correct? I’ve been using the Django documentation
recently, and it’s really good! We’ll see.
on avoiding writing the man page language
The tcpdump project tool’s man page is
written in the roff language,
which is kind of hard to use and that I really did not feel like learning it.
I handled this by writing a
very basic markdown-to-roff script to
convert Markdown to roff, using similar conventions to what the man page was
already using. I could maybe have just used pandoc, but the output pandoc
produced seemed pretty different, so I thought it might be better to write my
own script instead. Who knows.
I did think it was cool to be able to just use an existing Markdown library’s
ability to parse the Markdown AST and then implement my own code-emitting
methods to format things in a way that seemed to make sense in this context.
man pages are complicated
I went on a whole rabbit hole learning about the history of roff, how it’s
evolved since the 70s, and who’s working on it today, inspired by learning about
the mandoc project that BSD systems (and some Linux
systems, and I think Mac OS) use for formatting man pages. I won’t say more
about that today though, maybe another time.
In general it seems like there’s a technical and cultural divide in how
documentation works on BSD and on Linux that I still haven’t really understood,
but I have been feeling curious about what’s going on in the BSD world.
D.C. statehood is often portrayed as critical because Democrats almost certainly would gain two seats, and it makes sense that is how most people who live outside of D.C. would view the issue. But for D.C. residents, the most noticeable effect is how Congress can influence how we govern ourselves at the state/local level. Some Republican congressmen want to eliminate D.C.’s speeding cameras, which have been very successful (boldface mine):
Nobody enjoys opening that ominous white envelope from the Department of Motor Vehicles, with its creepy photos of your speeding car and the sting of a three-figure fine. But the strategy seems to be effective: A major drop in traffic deaths last year reversed a decade-long climb, and Mayor Muriel Bowser has called automated traffic-enforcement cameras a “critical tool” for roadway safety whose removal would endanger people.
Though it’s hard to prove direct cause and effect, the data does suggest that traffic-calming efforts—including speed cameras—are making a difference. In 2025, 25 people died in traffic accidents in DC, down from 52 in 2024. That’s the lowest level since 2012, and it comes on the heels of a burst of new camera installations. In 2020, there were just over 100 in DC. By 2024, the number had risen to 477, and it’s now at 546, including 212 speed cameras, several dozen red-light and stop-sign devices, and a handful of truck-restriction cameras. More than 200 Metrobuses are also equipped with cameras to nab vehicles that block the bus lane.
Though they certainly can annoy drivers, many residents seem to approve of them: The District Department of Transportation says it has received thousands of requests for new cameras from frustrated pedestrians. It can feel, in a tangible way, as though cars are moving around town at a slower pace.
While some of the decline in traffic deaths might be, ironically, due to more traffic (anecdotally, there seem to be more cars, leading to possible lower traffic speeds), this is the second lowest number of traffic deaths in twenty years. It is not just a post-peak COVID, post-remote work decline.
But multiple Republicans want to end speeding cameras for various reasons, including one who was ticketed–unfairly, in my opinion*. It is one thing if that congressman wants to be petty in his own district, and the others just stupid in theirs; voters should get what they voted for, and get it good and hard. But the residents of D.C. would like to officials chosen by us to make those decisions, especially when it will prevent D.C. residents and visitors from dying.
In other words, Republicans want D.C. residents to be maimed or killed because of their own, unaccountable to D.C. bullshit.
D.C. statehood now.
*Ironically, if D.C. had House and Senate representation, he could have reached out to our congressional officials, who likely would have asked the city to waive the ticketl
We examine the historical frequency of stock market booms, crashes, and bubbles in the United States from 1792 to 2024 using aggregate market data and industry-level portfolios. We define a bubble as a large boom followed by a crash that reverses the market’s prior gains. Bubbles are extremely rare. We extend the industry-level analysis of Greenwood, Shleifer, and You (2019) through 2024 and replicate their findings out of sample using Cowles Commission industry data from 1871 to 1938. Booms do not reliably predict crashes, but they do predict higher subsequent volatility, increasing the likelihood of both large gains and large losses.
The second part of Jim Benford’s examination of Breakthrough Starshot concludes our look at the numerous issues advanced by Phase I of the project. Largely discounted in recent press coverage, the Starshot effort in fact completed a successful Phase I and left behind numerous papers that illuminate the path forward for interstellar flight. This is solid work on everything from laser arrays to metamaterials and the engineering of data return at light-year distances. Read on.
by James Benford
“I have learned to use the word ‘impossible’ with great caution.”
— Wernher Von Braun, after the lunar landing
In this second report, I will describe the major results of Starshot beginning with the mission scenario and then treating each major technical area in terms of how solutions have been resolved and issues retired. In Part 1, I described Phase 1 objectives.
One of the causes of Starshot results not being well-known publicly is that the Breakthrough Foundation has not publicized its events and results during most of its duration. After its completion, substantial reports have appeared, but are not commonly available to the public. There is a final report, but it has yet to be published. There are briefings by Harry Atwater at Breakthrough Discuss and the IRG in Montreal in 2023 [1,2].
The most detailed discussions are in the book Laser Propulsion in Space edited by Claude Phipps, with a system overview by Pete Worden and others, a description of his system model by Kevin Parkin and other aspects of directed energy in space by Philip Lubin, all in the one volume [3]. The Kevin Parkin article is particularly interesting because it contains fully worked-out examples of the possibility of future voyages of humans traveling to the stars in large >100 m sailcraft in future centuries. Note that there are many journal publications produced by Breakthrough Starshot. And there are many papers that have been published since Starshot was put on hold.
The Starshot Mission Scenario has evolved as a substantial improvement over previous beam-driven sail mission concepts. A mothership is launched which houses a fleet of membrane-like sailcraft measuring ~5 meters in diameter and less than a micron thick. The traditional standard laser guide star adaptive optic system can’t be scaled to Starshot-sized apertures to deal with the time–dependent fluctuations due to atmospheric turbulence. The system uses a satellite–based laser which is called the Beacon. It’s in an orbit at the launch time of apogee 200,000 km.
Image: Starshot system geometry. Arrows indicate that the array acquires atmospheric turbulence data from a Beacon and points the beam at the sailcraft. (Courtesy of Breakthrough Foundation.)
The sailcraft are composed of super-reflective metamaterials that stabilize the perturbations that could prevent beam-riding during the propulsion phase. The scientific instruments that are the payload are integrated into the sail. The mission begins as the mothership deploys a sailcraft into space.
Meanwhile on Earth, a phased array of 100 million small lasers turns on, generates ~100 GW of optical power and, using information from a Beacon in high orbit, digitally adjusts the phase of the emitted light to correct for atmospheric turbulence. These small lasers would be manufactured in printed sheets, following the fabrication techniques of the semiconductor industry. This is the means of lowering laser prices.
The single 100 GW beam focuses on the sail and accelerates the sail. Almost no energy is absorbed by the sail’s reflective surface, so imparting force. The sail rides the beam for ten minutes and reaches relativistic speed. It leaves the solar system in less than a week. Soon after acceleration it encounters dust and charged particles, so can be oriented edge-on to avoid such collisions. On arriving at the Alpha Centauri system, it captures images, detects dust and particles and measures fields. The sail transmits data home to an array of optical receivers on Earth, so it begins to arrive four years later. Data return may take decades because of limited data rate. Recall that complete data return from the New Horizons flyby took about a year.
The above figure shows a concept for the sail, about 5 m in diameter. Some studies show that at the velocity under consideration the gas and dust will pass through the thin sail with virtually no damage if it travels face-on. Only the payload would need protection. The sail can also be oriented edge-on in order to avoid such collisions, giving meters of material protection to the center. The payload is around the center, protected from damage due to incoming gas and dust.
Key issues for beam-driven sail systems have been retired by high levels of Starshot research. Most are resolved at the conceptual level. Experiments are needed to verify solutions for these major issues, discussed below.
Can phase be maintained across a large aperture composed of many sources? This is well demonstrated historically for microwaves, principally for radar. For lasers, a new concept has been quantified [4, 5]. Building the hundred million laser emitters into a large array is the driving technical challenge of the project. The principle of the design is to interferometrically link multiple arrays which are phase-locked into modular tiers of larger size. That is, multiple areas which are individually phase controlled would be linked together by interferometry. This approach of linking multiple optical phased arrays is called a hierarchical array. The array design that resulted has laser dimensions and total power levels that are about five orders of magnitude beyond present state of the art capabilities. To control the phase over such a large aperture is the most significant technical challenge to Starshot.
Can a sail material be found which can meet the many constraints on sail acceleration? Most materials effort has been for laser propulsion, where the leading candidate for sail material is silicon nitride. There are no fundamental limits to optimize that material for the key parameters of mass, reflectivity, refractive index, and thermal properties. (For microwaves various types of carbon are preferred, such as microtruss and graphene.)
Can the sail ride on the beam stably? (Feedback is impossible over long ranges.) If not, sails can veer off-course on millisecond timescale. The notion of beam-riding, stable flight of a sail propelled by a beam, places considerable emphasis on the sail shape. Even for a steady beam, the sail can wander off if its shape becomes deformed or if it does not have enough spin to keep its angular momentum aligned with the beam direction in the face of perturbations. Beam pressure will keep a concave shape sail in tension, and it will resist sidewise motion if the beam moves off-center, as a sidewise restoring force restores it to its position. Early stability experiments verified that beam-riding does occur with a conical sail [6].
Experiments and simulations show that conical sails ride a microwave beam stably. The carbon–carbon sail diameter is 5 cm, height 2 cm, and mass 0.056 g.
Beam riding and structural stability is difficult. (a), beam-riding stability, where bold upward arrows depict accelerating beam, light upward arrows the force of radiation pressure, downward arrows the direction of reflected light (b) structural stability methods (c) mechanical issues [7].
Meter-scale shaped sails of submicron, ~100 atomic layer thickness can ride with stability along the axis of the accelerating beam despite the many types of deformations caused by photon pressure and thermal expansion. There is also a requirement for structural stability, the ability to survive acceleration without collapse, and crumpling under acceleration, as depicted in the figure above. And there could be thermal and tensile failure as well as rupture of sail materials. Many studies of this issue have shown multiple solutions.
Stable designs exist for concave shapes and for flat flexible sails with millimeter scale photonic structures to control reflections. (Simple flat sails cannot achieve beam-riding stability because specular reflection produces forces only normal (perpendicular) to the surface.) A considerable advantage of flat sails is that curved sail shapes are more difficult to fabricate at meter scales. However, Starshot has shown that even flat sails can beam-ride by tailoring asymmetric optical properties to produce transverse restoring forces with millimeter-scale photonic structures to control reflections. So a flat sailcraft can be modified to scatter light as if it were curved. For example, the Swartzlander group, in a series of theoretical, computational, and experimental studies, has shown that a flat sail whose reflecting surface is equipped with diffractive gratings is directionally stable [8,9]. Anisotropic scattering of incident light into the grating diffraction orders manifests in optical restoring forces transverse to the membrane, redirecting incident photon momentum to produce beam-riding.
Such metagratings or metasurfaces consist of subwavelength scatterers shaped as disks, blocks, spheres, etc. shape the scattered wavefronts, redirecting incident photon momentum transversely. This provides stabilizing restoring forces and torques. However, adding metagratings makes the sail heavier than the ~0.1 gram per square meter goal. And photonic grating patterns would have to be produced over a large area. The advantage of flat sails will significantly streamline and simplify the fabrication process. The issue is whether such structures can be scaled to manufacture on the size of meters with low mass.
Spin-stabilization will likely be needed to prevent the collapse of sails while acceleration is underway. A beam can carry angular momentum and communicate it to a sail to help control it in flight. Spin can be modified remotely by circularly polarized beams from the ground [10]. It also allows ‘hands-off’ unfurling deployment through control of the sail spin at a distance [10-12]. Spinning them at ~100 Hz rates gyroscopically stabilizes sails against drift, yaw and tilting, allowing numerous shapes to retain their stability. (Circularly polarized electromagnetic fields carry both linear and angular momentum, which acts to produce a torque through an effective moment arm of a wavelength, so longer wavelengths are more efficient in producing spin.)
A final and crucial issue: Can the data be returned from distant space targets at sufficient data rates before the sail moves far beyond the star? For solar system-scale missions this is possible with existing microwave communication technologies. that were realized 50 years ago in the Deep Space Network. For interstellar missions it is possible by using laser communications. Though today’s laser communication systems are far too heavy for Starshot, which instead aims to operate part of its sail as an optical phased array. There are methods of making this likely in future decades [13]. That is because we understand essentially completely the fundamental limits on communication, and our technology today is able to operate very close to those limits.
The mission objective is to return 100 kB of data. The power requirement on board is driven primarily by the communication needs as well as pointing, tracking and computation. The energy technology is a thin film, radioisotope thermoelectric generator.
Propulsion-oriented scientists usually assume that the mission should be done at maximum speed. But information scientists’ relation to speed is different; they focus on how it affects the data return:
* Slower is better since observations are easier and there is more time in the vicinity of the target star.
* The measure of mission performance is the volume of data returned reliably vs the ‘data latency’ (defined as time from acquisition at Centauri to return to Earth of an entire observational data set).
So from this perspective speed is a secondary parameter except as it influences the data volume and data latency, which will relate to the payload mass, and in particular the communications mass.
Messerschmitt, Lubin and Morrison have studied the minimum data latency that can be achieved for a given data volume, or equivalently the maximum data volume that can be achieved for a given data latency [13, 14]. Generally, they reduce speed for high latency (with the benefit of larger data volume, so larger mass, more instrumentation, and larger data volume).
From this, the key insight that governs the difficult problem of returning data over interstellar distance is that a cost-optimized (meaning cost minimized) system scales as the relation between speed v and mass m: v~1/m1/4. That means we can have a much heavier communication system onboard. Achieving the data return is more credible. This leads to an optimum mass that maximizes data volume for a given data latency. Future communications research will deal with several probes downlinking concurrently from the same target star. Separating these downlinks (‘multiplexing’, using different formats, polarization, etc.) is very challenging,
That leads to a very significant development conclusion: We would of course develop heavier, lower velocity probes early on as the Beamer is being built out. The Beamer will be built by adding modules of power and aperture over time. It is likely what will happen is that technologies advance, such as sail materials are improved and mass is reduced. As faster solar system deep space missions occur, mass will either drop as the system performance improves or will increase for faster, better data return. That’s the natural development path, leading to faster, better missions.
The on-board pointing system of the sail is also a technical challenge. It must point in the direction of our Solar System, and the beam will be larger than Earth’s orbital diameter, 2 AU. That means a pointing accuracy of a milliarcsecond, about 10 microradians.
Phase I confirmed that short wavelength optical communications can provide the required down-link capability with limited data rate. Low-cost receiver aperture concepts were developed.
System Cost
Before I joined Starshot, I developed an analysis for cost optimization of beam-driven sail systems. In it, the trade-off was between the cost of the sources powering the array versus the cost of the array itself. That was in agreement with the cost of transmitter systems that had been built for interplanetary communications. My conclusion was that the minimum capital cost is achieved when the cost is equally divided between the array antenna and the radiated power [15].
However, Starshot requires more power than can be directly supplied by the normal electrical grid. Therefore, energy storage for the system has to be included, and becomes a substantial cost element [16, 17]. That results in a considerable change in the laser aperture, laser power, and energy storage cost. The result is that the laser cost, which is ~80% of the array cost, becomes the dominant element in the total project cost. The cost trends shown below demonstrate that cost is viable for future fiber amplifiers at ~$0.10/W, and future semiconductor lasers at ~$0.01/W.
The figure below shows that current laser fiber amplifiers and semiconductor laser costs are far too high to afford a Starshot system today. The hope is that economies of scale in the application of lasers to aspects of modern life, for example self-driving cars, will drive down the cost of lasers by economies of scale. In order to reach an affordable level for Starshot, the prices have to fall to order of cents per watt, not many dollars per watt we have today. The points at 2040 and 2050 shows what will have to occur if the cost of Starshot is to be of order 10 billion dollars. That requirement is two to three orders of magnitude cost reduction.
Image: Cost trends for fiber amplifiers and semiconductor lasers.
The Future of Beam-driven Sails
Phase II technical demonstrations, such as laboratory beam-riding sail flights and including orbital sail deployment and sail acceleration, would lead to a firm experimental basis for pilot production of the key sub-systems, leading to the beginning of array construction. That would later lead to precursor missions.
While the Beamer is under construction, many missions become possible that are at speeds lower than interstellar, as well as other applications. The laser driver can beam power to locations in space, such as Earth satellites and space stations. It can deorbit orbital debris. It can drive fast sail missions to the Moon, Mars and the outer planets. At Mars, it could have a second laser array to decelerate the spacecraft, or a retro reflector system, such as proposed by Forward, could reflect a beam from Earth to slow the sailcraft at Mars. And it can beam power to high-performance ion engines.
Development of fast sailcraft that can travel beyond our solar system will enable us to understand the interstellar medium and then, in the fast encounter with other star systems, acquire imaging, spectroscopy, and in situ particle and field measurements.
Beam-driven sails are the only way that probes can be sent to the stars in this century. Completion of Phase II would bring much-increased credibility to the concept by demonstrating beam-riding and operation of a Beamer module in the laboratory. Then the dream of beam-driven interstellar travel could be realized.
Kevin Parkin has even envisioned human beam-driven fast travel to the stars. Accelerating at Earth gravity to relativistic speeds, allowing us to contemplate human travel in future. He points out that human civilizations’ energy production doubled every 40 years since 1800, so that the energies needed for the simplest such missions will be attainable by the end of the century.
Acknowledgements: Figures are by permission of Breakthrough Starshot and Michael Kelzenberg. I also want to thank Kevin Parkin, Dave Messerschmitt and Al Jackson for technical discussions about Starshot.
3. Laser Propulsion in Space: Fundamentals, Technology, and Future Missions, Claude Phipps, ed., Elsevier., Cambridge, MA ,2024.
4. Worden S., Green, W. Schalkwyk, J., Parkin K., and Fugate R., “Progress on the Starshot Laser Propulsion System,” Applied Optics, doi: 10.1364/AO.435858, 2021.
5. Bandutunga C., Sibley P., Ireland M. J., and Ward, R., “Photonic solution to phase sensing and control for light-based interstellar propulsion”, J. Opt. Soc. of Am. B, 38, 1477-1486, 2021.
6. Benford, G., Goronostavea, O., and Benford, J., “Experimental tests of beam-riding sail dynamics” in Beamed Energy Propulsion, AIP Conference Proceedings 664, Pakhomov, A., Ed. 325, 2003.
7. Gao, R., Kelzenberg M. D., and Atwater H. A., “Dynamically Stable Radiation Pressure Propulsion of Flexible Lightsails for Interstellar Exploration”, Nature Comun, 15, 4203. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-47476-1, 2024,
8. Srivastava P., Chu Y., and Swartzlander G., “Stable diffractive beam rider,” Opt. Lett. 44, 3082-3085, 2019.
9. Chu Y., Tabiryan N. and Swartzlander G., Experimental Verification of a Bigrating Beam Rider. Phys Rev Lett. (123(24), 2024.
10. Benford, G., Goronostavea, O., and Benford, J., “Spin of microwave propelled sails,” in Beamed Energy Propulsion, AIP Conference Proceedings 664, Pakhomov, A., Ed., 313, 2003.
11. Benford, J. and Benford, G., “Elastic, electrostatic and spin deployment of ultralight sails”, JBIS 59 76, 2006.
12. Martin, P. et al., “Detection of a Spinning Object Using Light’s Orbital Angular Momentum” Science 341 537, 2013.
13. Messerschmitt D., Lubin P. and Morrison I., “Challenges in Scientific Data Communication from Low-mass Interstellar Probes”, ApJS 249,36, 2020.
14. Messerschmitt D., Lubin P. and Morrison I., “Interstellar flyby scientific data downlink design,” arXiv preprint arXiv:2306.13550, 2023.
16 Parkin, K., “The Breakthrough Starshot Systems Model”, Acta Astronautica 152, 370–384, 2018.
17. Parkin, K., “Starshot System Model” in Laser Propulsion in Space: Fundamentals, Technology, and Future Missions, Claude Phipps, ed., Elsevier., Cambridge, MA ,2024.
Repossessed cars for sale attract serious buyers for one reason: these vehicles are usually in good condition. They weren’t wrecked. They weren’t flooded. They ended up at auction because a loan went unpaid, not because the car failed.
But “good shape” still needs to be verified. Maintenance gaps, undisclosed mileage irregularities, and clean-looking titles that hide a complicated history are all real risks in this segment. Researching before you bid is the difference between a smart purchase and a costly one.
In this post, we’ll break down a data-first approach to evaluating repo cars for sale — what to check, where to find the information, and how to use it to set a bid you won’t regret.
Understanding the Origin of Repossessed Assets
The term “repossession” often carries a stigma, but in the context of professional vehicle auctions, it simply refers to a change in ownership triggered by a financial default. These vehicles are often sourced from major lenders, credit unions, and captive finance companies. Because these institutions are in the business of lending rather than car sales, they utilize auction platforms to recoup the remaining loan balances as efficiently as possible.
When searching for repossessed cars for sale, you are often looking at a cross-section of the general driving public. These are not necessarily damaged cars; in many cases, they are well-maintained daily drivers that happened to be involved in a personal financial transition. This means the inventory frequently includes late-model SUVs, fuel-efficient sedans, and work-ready trucks that are only a few years old. The primary difference between these and a retail used car is the price point and the venue of sale.
The Strategic Value of Repo Auctions
The specialized nature of the bank repo auction creates a distinct pricing environment. Unlike a traditional used-car lot, where a dealer adds a markup to cover overhead, sales commissions, and marketing, an auction focuses on the true market value determined by active bidders. This “pure” pricing model offers a level of transparency rarely found in the retail world.
For a buyer, the goal is to identify vehicles that have been overlooked or undervalued by others. This is where integrating vehicle history data becomes essential. By reviewing the title records, lien history, and previous sales data, you can build a profile of the vehicle’s life before it reached the auction block. Knowing that a vehicle had a single owner or a clean maintenance record in a specific region provides the confidence needed to bid aggressively on high-quality assets.
Mitigating Risks Through Detailed Documentation
While the financial benefits of buying repossessed inventory are clear, the process is not without its variables. Since the previous owner may have been under financial stress, it’s possible that routine maintenance, such as oil changes or brake service, was deferred in the months leading up to the repossession.
When evaluating repo cars for sale, we recommend a “data-first” approach. This involves checking for any outstanding recalls and reviewing the odometer progression. A vehicle that shows a consistent, logical increase in mileage is often a reliable daily driver. Conversely, large gaps in the history or inconsistencies in the title branding should be flagged for further investigation. By using professional history reports, you can verify that the “bank-seized” status hasn’t masked other underlying issues, such as past accidents or mechanical failures that weren’t reported to the lender.
Comparing Financial Liquidations to Insurance Losses
It is important to distinguish between vehicles sold due to financial reasons and those sold due to damage. While insurance-sourced vehicles (such as salvage or rebuilt units) are priced based on repair costs, repossessed units are priced based on market demand and the lender’s urgency. This often results in a higher “floor” price for repossessed units, but with the trade-off of a much lower repair requirement.
For many buyers, the ideal scenario is finding a vehicle that fits into both categories — perhaps a repossessed unit with minor cosmetic flaws. These “hybrid” opportunities allow for the maximum possible discount. By focusing on the structural and mechanical health revealed in the data, you can determine if a vehicle is worth the investment. The availability of 2026-level diagnostic tools and historical auction photos makes it easier than ever to assess the car’s condition at the exact moment the bank took possession.
Navigating the Bidding Process With Confidence
Success at a bank repo auction requires a combination of discipline and speed. Because these auctions move quickly, having your research completed beforehand is vital. We suggest creating a shortlist of potential targets and setting a maximum bid for each based on the “all-in” cost, including the winning bid, auction fees, and transport costs.
Once the bidding begins, the data you’ve gathered serves as your guide. If the price exceeds your calculated value, it is time to move on to the next unit. The volume of repossessed inventory is consistent enough that another opportunity is usually just a few days away. This “patience-led” strategy ensures you acquire only assets that meet your specific criteria for quality and price.
Finalizing the Logistics After the Auction Ends
The work isn’t finished when the screen says “Sold.” As mentioned, the transition period is critical. Most auction yards have limited space and will begin charging daily storage fees almost immediately. Coordinating with a reliable shipping partner ensures your new acquisition is picked up promptly, protecting your margins from unnecessary fees.
Furthermore, ensure that all title documentation is handled through the proper channels. Most auction platforms facilitate the transfer of title from the bank to the buyer, but timelines can vary by state and lender. Keeping a clear record of the bill of sale and the transport receipt is essential for a smooth registration process at the DMV.
Conclusion
The repossessed vehicle market is one of the most effective ways to acquire late-model transportation at a professional price. By moving away from the retail showroom and into the data-driven world of the auction, you gain access to a wider variety of inventory and a more transparent pricing structure. Whether you are a first-time buyer looking for a reliable sedan or a professional looking to expand a fleet, the combination of thorough history research and a disciplined bidding strategy is the key to unlocking the true value of repossessed assets.
For many years, getting approved for a loan in America was difficult if your credit history was less than perfect. Many borrowers found themselves with few options when traditional lenders turned them away. Today, that situation is changing as more lenders offer loan options designed for people with lower credit scores.
As access to bad credit loans expands, more Americans are finding it easier to borrow when they need financial help. Simple online applications and faster decisions have made loans more accessible than before. These changes are starting to influence how people borrow, manage money, and plan for unexpected expenses.
Rise in Online Loan Applications
The growth of digital lending has made online applications a normal part of the borrowing process. Today, borrowers can apply for loans from almost anywhere, giving them the freedom to explore options at their own pace. This convenience has encouraged more people to consider borrowing when financial needs arise.
Online lenders have also expanded access for individuals with less-than-perfect credit, offering solutions designed for a wider range of financial profiles. Companies such as CreditNinja, for instance, focus on providing online installment loans that can help cover unexpected expenses, medical bills, or other urgent costs. The ability to complete an application digitally and, in some cases, receive funds quickly has made this type of borrowing particularly practical in time-sensitive situations.
Digital tools have also made the application process easier to understand and complete. Clear instructions and simple forms guide borrowers through each step so they know what information is required. As online lending continues to expand, it is becoming an important part of how Americans borrow and manage short-term financial needs.
More People Using Loans for Everyday Expenses
Access to bad credit loans has enabled more households to use borrowing as a practical way to manage daily expenses. Instead of limiting loans to major purchases, many borrowers now use them to cover necessary costs that arise throughout the month. This approach gives people more flexibility when balancing income and expenses.
Many borrowers appreciate having an option available when bills or essential purchases cannot be postponed. Access to funds at the right time can help households stay current on essential financial obligations. As lending options continue to expand, short-term borrowing has become a more accessible and practical solution for a broader range of Americans
This shift reflects a broader change in how loans fit into personal financial planning. Borrowing is increasingly viewed as a tool that supports financial stability rather than a last resort. Expanded loan access has helped make this approach possible for more consumers.
Increased Reliance on Short-Term Credit
Short-term borrowing has become more common as access to loans expands to include a wider range of credit profiles. Many borrowers now have the opportunity to obtain funds quickly when temporary financial needs arise. This availability has made short-term credit a useful resource for managing short-term financial pressure.
Access to short-term loans enables borrowers to respond quickly to changing financial circumstances. Whether dealing with unexpected expenses or timing differences between income and bills, short-term credit offers a flexible solution. The ability to secure funds quickly is one reason more people are incorporating short-term loans into their financial plans.
Wider availability of these loans reflects how lending has adapted to modern financial needs. Borrowers benefit from options that match real-life situations rather than rigid lending standards. Expanded access to bad credit loans has played an important role in making these options available.
Faster Decision Making by Borrowers
Modern lending processes enable borrowers to move from application to decision far more efficiently than in the past. Quicker responses allow individuals to address financial needs without extended delays or uncertainty.This efficiency has become an important part of how people approach borrowing decisions.
When decisions can be made quickly, borrowers can plan with greater certainty. Knowing whether funds will be available helps people organize their finances and move forward with confidence. Faster timelines have made borrowing feel more manageable and predictable.
Improved technology has helped simplify each step of the borrowing process. Applications are designed to be straightforward to complete. As a result, borrowers can make informed choices without unnecessary delays.
More Frequent Borrowing Cycles
Improved loan access has made borrowing a more regular activity for some consumers. Instead of applying for loans only occasionally, borrowers may seek funding at different times throughout the year as needs arise. This pattern reflects the growing role of flexible credit in modern financial life.
Experience with the borrowing process often makes future applications easier and more familiar. Once borrowers understand how loan applications work, they tend to feel more comfortable using them again. This familiarity contributes to a steady pattern of borrowing over time.
A New Era of Borrowing
Borrowing is entering a new phase as more Americans gain access to loans that were once harder to get. With more options available, people have greater freedom to handle financial needs in ways that work for their situation.
Loans are becoming a more practical and accessible tool for managing everyday finances. This change is making credit easier to understand and use for a wider range of borrowers. As access to borrowing continues to grow, many Americans will have more opportunities to use it to support their financial goals.
NASA’s Commercial Crew Program was supposed to be the template: services-based procurement, private ownership of hardware and competition between providers. Yet NASA has now formally designated Boeing’s 2024 Starliner crewed test flight as a Type A mishap — its most serious category — and leadership has been explicit that the most troubling failure was not […]
Denver-based Lux Aeterna has secured $10 million in seed funding to develop a reusable satellite designed to survive atmospheric reentry and fly again with new payloads, starting with a demonstration flight slated for early 2027.
Chinese launch startup Landspace says it has completed a long-duration full-system hot-fire test of its new 220-ton-class methane rocket engine for new-generation launchers.
"TheR. K. Cho Economics Prize 2026will beawarded to ProfessorFuhito Kojima(University of Tokyo) for the practical development and implementation of matching theory.
"Professor Kojima is a leading scholar in the fields of matching theory and market design. He hasdeveloped these fields by studying practical aspects of matching markets such as large markets and distributional constraints. Building on his theoreticalknowledge, he has contributed to the improvement of real-world matching and allocation mechanisms, including medical residency programs and nursery school admissions in Japan."
Symposium Celebrating Fuhito Kojima's Prize 323 Daewoo Hall, Yonsei University May 6 (Wednesday) 9:00-9:20 Registration, Opening Remark
9:20-10:10 Fuhito Kojima (University of Tokyo)
"Fragmentation of Matching Markets and How Economics Can Help Integrate Them"
10:10-11:00 Michihiro Kandori (University of Tokyo)
"The Second Welfare Theorem in Markets with Discrete and Continuous Goods"
11:10-12:00 Yeon-Koo Che (Columbia University)
"Learning Against Nature: Minimax Regret and the Price of Robustness"
13:00-13:50 Duk Gyoo Kim (Yonsei University)
"Good-Citizen Lottery"
14:00-14:50 Jinwoo Kim (Hong Kong University of Science and Technology)
"Monotone Comparative Statics without Lattices"
Prize Ceremony B130 Daewoo Hall, Yonsei University May 6 (Wednesday) 15:00-15:20 Registration
15:20-16:10 Award Ceremony
16:20-17:10 Award Lecture by Fuhito Kojima
"Science and Engineering of Market Design: Call for Action"
Fuhito Kojima Public Lecture Series 323 Daewoo Hall, Yonsei University May 7 (Thursday) 13:00-14:30 Lecture 1: "Introduction to Matching Theory and Market Design"
15:00-16:30 Lecture 2: "How to Use Market Design under Practical Constraints of Society: Part 1"
May 8 (Friday) 10:00-11:30 Lecture 3: "How to Use Market Design under Practical Constraints of Society: Part 2"
Organizers: Jaeok Park, Daeyoung Jeong, Duk Gyoo Kim
I tweeted: Should I be worried or reassured that my taxi driver isn’t wearing a seat belt? An econ puzzle.
Most replies said I should be worried. I think that is correct and it reveals something of importance. First note that there is an incentive and a selection effect. All else equal, a driver without a seat belt should drive more carefully—that’s the rational response to increased personal risk. But drivers who forgo seat belts are probably more risk-loving or less safety-conscious across many dimensions. I think the replies were correct, the second effect, the selection effect, dominates: be worried.
What makes this an economics puzzle is that it reveals a failure of the standard adverse selection story. Adverse selection predicts that if someone wants to buy a lot of life insurance, the seller should be suspicious—fearing the buyer knows something about their own health that the seller doesn’t. Unusually healthy people, by the same logic, should buy less life insurance.
Notice the parallel to the taxi driver: the driver is buying less insurance (by not wearing a seat belt) and so, by adverse selection logic, should be the safer type. But that’s exactly backwards.
In reality, people who buy a lot of life insurance tend to be the kind of people who take care of themselves on many margins—they eat well, exercise, go to the doctor. Insurers know this, which is why the per-unit price of life insurance falls with quantity. Big buyers are the good risk, not the bad one.
The taxi driver puzzle is a clean real-world case where the selection effect runs opposite to what adverse selection theory predicts. Adverse selection theory is correct that information asymmetries can challenge markets but it’s often not obvious which way the asymmetry runs (who know more about your life expectancy, you or an insurance company with millions of data points?). Moreover, preferences and norms can make the selection run the opposite way so be worried about the taxi driver without a seat belt and be happy when someone demands a lot of life insurance.
If you are a Dubai resident, the chance that you will die in this conflict is very small. But you no longer can treat safety as something you do not have to think about. And you may face some uncertainty about when and how you can leave the country, a question that formerly was never in doubt. So two major advantages have vanished, even if the current conflict is settled soon. Another problem is that a substantial part of your supply of desalinated fresh water can be taken out by a well-placed missile.
More generally, the war underlines how tenuous the position of a place like Dubai is in the geopolitical order. I have enjoyed my three trips to Dubai, but I never felt entirely safe there on anything beyond a day-to-day basis. I always knew the place relied on protection from the United States and a certain degree of forbearance from its larger neighbors, including Saudi Arabia. Both Dubai and its larger encompassing unit, the United Arab Emirates, are extremely small.
And:
In most daily life, the small tax havens will feel safer than Cape Town. In the longer run, I am not entirely sure. My longer-run plans might be more robust in Cape Town. Or in Brazil. Or in Mexico. Those are all fairly dangerous places that nonetheless seem to have considerable macro stability in the longer run. South Africa has a pre-1930 history of taking in persecuted Jews from Europe and giving them an environment where they can thrive. Even the coming and going of apartheid, in 1948 and 1994, did not change South Africa’s high degree of security from foreign threats.
Dare I suggest that these larger places are more fun and also have more soul?
Worth a ponder.
I would much rather be exiled to Cape Town than to Dubai, all things considered, even assuming away the current conflict in the Middle East.
Cowen: Mainly what they have done is tricked people. The Apollo program was a big trick. It was not intended as a trick. I’m pretty sure almost everyone behind it was quite sincere that it would lead to whatever. It was vague all along, but everyone was truly excited back then. I even remember those times, but it didn’t lead to what we were promised at all.
And you see that when you compare science fiction over time. So I think the norm is that new technology comes and people are tricked. Again, it doesn’t have to be a sinister, devious, conspiracy laden thing, but in fact, they’re tricked. And then it happens anyway. And then we clean up the mess and deal with it and move on to the next set of problems.
And that’s what I think it will be with AI as well.
Murphy: What is the trick with AI?
Cowen: It’s the old paradox. When you add grains of sugar to your coffee. Every extra grain is fine, or it may even taste better, but at some point, you’ve just added too many grains. So that’s the way it is with change. People use ChatGPT. It diagnoses your dog. Do I need to take the dog to the vet? What’s with this rash?
You take the photo…You get a great answer. Everyone’s happy. They’re not actually going to be happy at all the changes that will bring. And here I’m talking about positive ones. I’m not saying, oh, it’s going to kill us all. People just don’t like change that much. So they’ll be sold on the immediate, concrete things and end up seeing things happen where they feel there’s too much change because it will devalue their human capital, and we’ll adjust and get over it and move on to the next set of tricks. That’s my forecast.
Murphy: People don’t like change, but also people are bad at long term planning. Yeah. You’ve spoken before about how faith is a key requirement in terms of being able to plan over the long term. How do you bring that idea to policymakers?
Cowen: I don’t know, I think things will get pushed through for myopic reasons, like we must outpace China, which might even be true, to be clear, but it’s a somewhat myopic reason, and that will be the selling point. You know, I’ve read a lot of texts from the early days of the Industrial Revolution. Adam Smith is one of them, but there’s many others, and a lot of people are for what’s going on, they understand they will be richer, maybe healthier.
They do see the downsides, but they have a pretty decent perspective. But no one from then understood. You’d have this second order fossil fuel revolution, say the 1880s where just things explode and the world is very much different. And whether they would have liked that, you can debate, but they just didn’t see it at all.
We’re probably in a somewhat analogous position. I would say that the Second Industrial Revolution was the more important one. It was a very good thing, even though climate change is a big problem, but it really built the modern world. And with something like AI or any advance, there’s probably some second order version of it that’s coming in our equivalent of 1880 that we just don’t see, and it will be wonderful for us.
But if you told us, we’d be terrified. So how should you feel about myopia? I think as an intellectual, you should be willing to talk about it openly and honestly. But at the end of the day, I think myopia still will rule. And I’m not in a big panic about that.
Washington, D.C. has more single people per capita than almost any major American city, and yet the running complaint among those same single people is that they cannot find anyone worth seeing twice. That contradiction tells you something about the place. A city full of ambitious, educated, overworked professionals who are all technically available but functionally unreachable produces a dating environment that frustrates nearly everyone in it. The numbers say the options are there. The lived reality says otherwise, which is why conversations about dating in Washington, D.C. often sound more pessimistic than the statistics suggest.
The Numbers Look Promising Until They Don’t
About 69.3% of D.C. residents aged 20 and older are single, per U.S. Census data. Compare that to the national figure of 49.1%, and the city looks like it should be one of the easiest places in the country to meet someone. But a closer look at the same Census Bureau data shows a persistent imbalance: there are roughly 80 unmarried men for every 100 unmarried women in the city. That gap puts pressure on the dating pool in ways that raw totals never capture.
The Chamber of Commerce has ranked D.C. as the loneliest city in the country. Nearly 48.6% of its households consist of a single person living alone. A large unmarried population and a large lonely population existing in the same city at the same time is not a paradox. It is a predictable outcome when people are too busy, too burned out, or too guarded to form the connections they say they want.
Relationships Outside Conventionality
Washington, D.C. has a dating pool where 69.3% of residents aged 20 and older are single, according to U.S. Census data, yet finding a compatible partner remains stubbornly hard. With careers consuming most of the energy people in their twenties and thirties have, many pursue connections that fit their actual lives rather than conventional expectations. Some look into sugar baby dating, others prefer casual arrangements, and plenty still aim for long-term commitment.
The point is that no single model of dating works for everyone in a city this career-driven. People make choices based on what they want and what they realistically have time for, and those choices vary widely from person to person.
Work Comes First, and Everything Else Gets the Leftovers
Careers dominate the lives of D.C. residents in their 20s and 30s in a way that is hard to overstate. Long hours, demanding roles, and the social pressure to appear constantly productive push dating into whatever small windows remain at the end of the week. A Wednesday evening after a 12-hour day does not leave much room for genuine curiosity about another person.
As Washingtonian has reported, a dating coach in the area has had to tell clients to leave their “networking mindset at the office,” because people are “too focused on qualifying the buyer.” That phrasing is telling. When you treat a date the way you treat a professional contact, you are filtering for credentials, not chemistry.
The result is a lot of polite first dates that feel like interviews. People ask about job titles, alma maters, and five-year plans before they ask a single question that might reveal personality. That approach weeds out plenty of good matches for the wrong reasons.
App Fatigue Is Real and Getting Worse
A Forbes Health survey conducted with OnePoll found that 78% of dating app users report burnout. Among Millennials and Gen Z, that number rises to 79%. Dating in Washington, D.C. sits right at the center of this exhaustion.
WTOP reported that one D.C. matchmaker saw nearly four times the average number of clients under 30, with young professionals openly admitting they were already tired of the apps and burned out before they had even turned 28.
Washingtonian described dating apps as a “digital hellscape,” and a 2023 Pew report cited in the same article found 46% of respondents had somewhat negative online dating outcomes. The fatigue in D.C. is compounded by the fact that many people are swiping after long workdays when their patience and attention are already depleted. Conversations fizzle. Matches go unanswered. Plans get canceled.
The Cost of Going on a Date
Even when two people manage to find the time and energy to meet, D.C. makes them pay for it. A study by The Black Tux found D.C. is the sixth most expensive city for dating in the country. Dinner and drinks in most neighborhoods will run well above $100 for two people, and that adds up fast when you are going on multiple first dates a month trying to find someone compatible.
The expense discourages frequency. People become more selective about who they will spend money on, which in theory sounds reasonable but in practice means fewer chances to connect with someone who might surprise them.
Is It Difficult?
Yes. The city has a large pool of single people, a gender ratio that works against women in particular, a culture of overwork that sidelines personal connection, widespread app burnout, and a high cost of going out. Each of these factors is manageable on its own. Stacked together, they make Washington, D.C. one of the harder American cities to date in, despite the fact that nearly seven out of ten adults in it are available.
The problem was never supply. The problem is that supply alone has never been enough.
Conclusion
Dating in Washington, D.C. highlights the difference between theoretical opportunity and real-world experience. On paper, the city appears ideal for singles, with a large population of educated and unattached professionals. In practice, the pace of work, the imbalance in the gender ratio, the fatigue created by dating apps, and the high cost of socializing combine to make genuine connection harder than statistics alone would suggest.
The result is a dating environment where availability does not automatically translate into compatibility or meaningful relationships. For many people navigating the D.C. dating scene, success often depends less on the size of the dating pool and more on patience, timing, and the ability to look beyond the city’s demanding professional culture in order to build authentic connections.
On March 3, 2026, Earth lined up directly between the Moon and the Sun, casting its shadow on the full Moon. The total lunar eclipse was visible throughout the Americas, East Asia, Australia, and the Pacific. Skygazers in those parts of the world may have witnessed a “Blood Moon,” when the dimmed lunar surface temporarily turned an orange-red color.
Meanwhile, satellites observed the effect of the darkened Moon on Earth’s surface. Changes in the amount of moonlight reflected back to Earth as the eclipse progressed appear in this composite image, composed of nighttime observations made by the VIIRS (Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite) on the NOAA-21 satellite. The satellite collected these images of the Arctic about every 100 minutes, with earlier swaths toward the right and later swaths to the left.
The VIIRS day-night band detects nighttime light in a range of wavelengths from green to near-infrared and uses filtering techniques to observe signals such as city lights, reflected moonlight, and auroras. The darkest swath was acquired at 11:20 Universal Time (2:20 a.m. Alaska Standard Time), about 15 minutes after the total phase had begun. With very little moonlight reaching Earth, ribbons of light from the aurora borealis shine through, along with specks of artificial light from settlements in the Yukon and eastern Alaska.
When the satellite passed over western Alaska and the Bering Strait, at 13:00 Universal Time (4:00 a.m. Alaska Standard Time), the eclipse was in the partial phase. The scene is noticeably brighter than the earlier one, and light from the partially shaded Moon illuminates snow-covered topography and offshore clouds. The brightest swaths on the far right and left sides were acquired before and after the eclipse, respectively, with light from the full Moon.
The next chance to view a total lunar eclipse will occur on December 31, 2028, when it will add a dash of astronomical flair to New Year’s Eve celebrations in Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, and the Pacific.
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