After a brutal winter, the catkins are enacting their revenge plot.

Steep Stims - Wikipedia

This recent album can also scratch some of that itch: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steep_S...

This and A Little to the Left have been a hit with 10.3 in our house

Yuppies: The Bankers, Lawyers, Joggers, and Gourmands Who Conquered New York The Bankers, Lawyers, Joggers, and Gourmands Who Conquered New York

My former student @dygottlieb.bsky.social has his amazing first book coming out in May. It's all about the way NYC helped create the "yuppies" and how those yuppies then remade NYC.

It's brilliant. You'll never think about Zagat's or the NYC Marathon the same way, trust me.

Pre-order here:

I wrote about Quinn Slobodian and Ben Tarnoff’s Muskism for @theguardian.com —it’s a brilliant take on why we ought to focus on the hellish 21st century update on Fordism rather than the man himself.

Seeing Like a Supply Chain A history of the technology of supply-chain management from punch cards to neural nets, and how the ambiguity built into that technology helps companies and ...

You really should preorder @miriamposner.com's Seeing Like a Supply Chain. Out this fall and so so good. The sort of software studies project we need rn.

🏠 Today #Rutgers researchers presented at the State House in Trenton discussing their recent and ongoing research into affordable housing and the corporate acquisition of property in #NJ. @stuartshapiroblou.bsky.social @bloustein.rutgers.edu @ericseymour.bsky.social @willbpayne.bsky.social

There’s a lot more, including how some of these overwhelmingly young male influencers use imagery of luxury cars and parties alongside trolling about how they love evicting tenants and charging monthly rent for ceiling fans etc. All publicity (perhaps even this paper 🙃) is good if new clients sign…

Map of HUD Metro Areas with Small Area Fair Market Rent (SAFMR) Status

Finally, this map, showing Small-Area Fair Market Rent implementation
progress by HUD, shows that the spatial arbitrage loophole Section 8 investors targeted (rents set by metro area, higher than local asking, see work of @evarosen.bsky.social etc.) has already been closed in these markets

Map of the United States showing turnkey rental markets suggested by ChatGPT and Google Gemini sized by total Housing Choice Vouchers

This map shows the results of me taking the advice of one of these finfluencers and repeatedly prompting ChatGPT & Gemini to suggest turnkey low-cost housing markets (investment message boards like BiggerPockets likely in training data), with most markets in the Rust Belt & Deep South

Image from “Section 8 Training” website home page talking about how this is a method to “build passive income” with “government guaranteed rent”

A few images; first, this page shows the kind of promotional strategy influencers use to sell training courses & coaching. Almost every post mentions that rents are government-guaranteed (true besides the tenant contribution), and encourages inexperienced investors to participate

The Section 8 (F)influencer economy The Housing Choice Voucher (HCV, colloquially known as “Section 8” vouchers) program is one of the largest affordable housing programs in the United S…

I have a new open access article in Geoforum, looking at how abrasive online “finfluencers” promise riches through buying cheap properties to rent to Housing Choice Voucher (“Section 8”) holders, using outdated spatial arbitrage strategies and AI automation: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Kind of sad to have started going to AAG after the legendary Tampa meeting, apparently attendance was way down but people who went said it was great

Also Oakland is definitely west of the (Tampa) Bay Area

Really excited to share my latest paper in @ijurresearch.bsky.social on mapping (a more expansive understanding of) absentee housing ownership in Atlanta! 🗺️🏘️📌 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Our new paper audits ChatGPT’s place-based judgements using 20 million pairwise comparisons. We find systematic geographic biases in how places are described and evaluated.

journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... (authors: Francisco W. Kerche, Matthew Zook, Mark Graham)

Prefuse 73 was maybe the first concert I got to cover “on assignment” for my college newspaper’s art section, if I remember right it was at the Avalon in 2005 and there were two live drummers… I’m pretty sure my article was in English though

Guided by Voices?

DJ Earworm - United State of Pop 2010 (Don't Stop the Pop) YouTube video by Dj Earworm

Has to be 2010 for me; I don’t know if it’s just that the electro pop bangers of that year were all so similar, but it just works so well and has some great little puns and grace notes in there… www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLA7...

Counter Culture Hologram beans that were roasted in August using a relative’s very good grinder, but a basket filter on a V60 pourover… a real coffee nerd rollercoaster!

Desert Island for me, other songs have wittier lyrics, but that hook is just 💯

New article with @lfalvarezleon.bsky.social on the different geographies created by digital capitalism, urbanization, and global production networks

The attack at a Hanukkah celebration in Sydney today was a vile act of antisemitic terror. I mourn those who were murdered and will be keeping their families, the Jewish community, and the Chabad movement in my prayers. May the memories of all those killed be a blessing. While we are still waiting for all the facts to emerge, what we already know is devastating. At least 11 dead, including Rabbi Eli Schlanger, who held deep ties to Crown Heights. At least 29 injured. Another Jewish community plunged into mourning and loss, a holiday of light so painfully reduced to a day of darkness. This attack is merely the latest, most horrifying iteration in a growing pattern of violence targeted at Jewish people across the world. Too many no longer feel safe to be themselves, to express their faith publicly, to worship in their synagogues without armed security stationed outside. What happened at Bondi is what many Jewish people fear will happen in their communities too. On Bondi Beach today, as men with long guns targeted innocents, another man ran towards the gunfire and disarmed a shooter. Tonight, as Jewish New Yorkers light menorahs and usher in a first night of Hanukkah clouded by grief, let us look to his example and confront hatred with the urgency and action it demands. When I am Mayor, I will work every day to keep Jewish New Yorkers safe—on our streets, our subways, at shul, in every moment of every day. Let this be a purpose shared by every New Yorker, and let us banish this horrific violence to the past.

Yeah for me it’s this or “On the Beach” 🏖️

‪The latest ‪@njpolicylab.bsky.social‬ report written by professors @ericseymour.bsky.social & @willbpayne.bsky.social looks at corporate ownership of 1–4-unit residential properties in #NJ. Between 2012 and 2022 ownership more than doubled. policylab.rutgers.edu/publication/...

Between 2012 and 2022, corporate ownership of 1–4-unit residential properties more than doubled in #NJ, according to this latest report from NJSPL and authored by #Rutgers researchers @ericseymour.bsky.social & @willbpayne.bsky.social:
policylab.rutgers.edu/publication/...

Similar to its precursor (smart cities), the real money in these speculative projects lies not in any eventual product but in the ecosystem of summits, workshops, and gatherings that circulate the idea and monetize the fiction itself under the pretense of design or planning.

The land and waterhemispheres. Equal-area projection. Map from wikipedia.

OK, so I just got really obsessed with a very arcane question. There are 'land' and 'water' hemispheres that maximize the amount of each (below). But can you divide the earth into two hemispheres that are each 29% land, 71% water, just like the earth as a whole? The LLMs said no… but I persisted.

Out in spring from @bentarnoff.com & I www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews...

Tírame magnolias