Why are we paying the USPS to deliver what seems like nothing but junk mail, only to turn around and pay the city trash service to haul it off to a landfill? We’re literally paying to have trash delivered to our house—and then paying again to get rid of it.

Perhaps the most damaging parenting belief is that every interaction we have with our children is super important. It is factually incorrect and unnecessarily multiplies parent anxiety and supports the belief that children are super fragile. Seriously, if you can do one thing as a parent, jettison that belief from your brain. You (and your kid) will be far happier.

We’re voting on a lot this election. But four propositions stand out because their impact could last for decades. Props A, D, E, and F would reform San Francisco’s charter and change how City Hall works. Vote YES on on these measures. Learn more at growsf.org/voter-guide/

Maybe we should stop teaching young people to think like anxious and depressed people in hopes that thinking with cognitive distortions in a kind of reverse cognitive behavioral therapy will either keep them safer or motivate them towards what adults sometimes assume are positive political ends?

Today is the anniversary of the Simon-Ehrlich Bet, one of the most famous wagers in economic history. The biologist Paul Ehrlich had long argued that population growth would push up against hard limits, leading to resource scarcity and population collapse. The economist Julian Simon claimed the opposite: that more minds would mean more innovation and, ultimately, more abundance. On Sept. 29, 1980, they made a bet, putting their competing views of humanity's relationship to scarcity to a 10-year test.

I bought a Tesla. The choice was simple; do I want a car or do I want a car + driver. FSD is as good as everyone says. Moreover, FSD will only get better at driving while I will only get worse. At similar price point there really is no reason to buy any other car.

“Your child’s assignment is in ParentVue. Have you checked Canvas? The homework is in EduSpot. The grades are available on Teacherly. I mentioned this in the WhatsApp group. It was literally sent to your comcast dot net email address. Canvas has it for you. It’s in Canvas.”

Yeah, sorry, it’s 2026. The results are in from new libertarian-left permissions on everything from gambling to marijuana to assisted suicide to decriminalizing of hard drugs and it’s just one repulsive degradation after another. Libertarians don’t understand people and they don’t culture, and anything they’re excited about is almost guaranteed to be a horror.

What can government do to restore sanity to drugged-out, filth-encrusted, dangerous city streets? Defund the advocates and refund jails and insane asylums. There is money to do so if we stop supporting activist social programs. Create ample incarceration and institutional capacity and thereby strip every excuse, such as prison overcrowding, from deincarcerating prosecutors and judges. Two strikes and you’re out. Ditch Housing First, replace with Treatment First and judicial oversight.

Very important lesson for Blue Cities here: Every change Lurie has made has been opposed by screaming, bullying activists -- ignoring them has been the path to policy success and extremely high popularity. @skaushik100 sfchronicle.com/election/art…

When Roland Fryer sought to improve 20 struggling Houston schools, he implemented five practices: more instructional time, high-dosage tutoring, frequent teacher feedback, data-driven instruction and a culture of high expectations. The results were extraordinary. In math, elementary students gained four additional months of learning each year; secondary students gained nearly eight months in a nine-month school year. Every graduating senior in the high schools was admitted to a two- or four-year college. Roland Fryer writes about Nikole Hannah-Jones, school choice, and the real way to turn struggling schools around in @WSJ: wsj.com/opinion/the-educatio…

If they will intentionally harm their own children to advance their cause, imagine what they’ll do to YOUR children.

I have some thoughts! Nikole Hannah-Jones interviewed me at the height of woke-1 to champion and virtue signal her “fight for every black child” and disparage and dismiss my fight for all NYC public school students to enjoy the rising tide that lifts all boats of academic rigor and meritocracy. She thought my support of the Specialized High School Admission Exam, the SHSAT, was racist. I thought her school politics were deeply misguided, and well, quite racist. Unlike Hannah-Jones I have nothing to walk back. I knew then what she has just figured out that her identitarian race-based grievance project would not fix anything. And in fact, it has hurt all public school students. Not just in NYC—her Magnum Opus of racial grievance, The 1619 Project, is taught in schools across the country and its reasoning is used to dismantle and stop the creation of the kind of high school that her daughter ultimately chose—the one that finally taught her algebra. NYC Public School students score lower on all academic metrics now than they did when her daughter started school—and we tax payers pay more for it. Enrollment continues to plummet while those in charge dumb down standards and hide results. So much of that is because any solution that challenged Hannah-Jones' race-baiting—endorsed by The Times and Democratic leaders alike—was verboten. Like Hannah-Jones I have a HS junior. My two older kids have graduated from NYCPS and are in college and my youngest is in NYCPS elementary school. I have qualms with parts of their education but also many success stories. Can you get a great education in NYCPS? Yes. But you have to fight for it. And insisting on the schools that grade math homework is a start. Knowing what your child is learning and mastering is a non-negotiable. Standardized tests help with that, but are a starting point only. Blaming phantom racists instead of understanding the role parents play was and is a lazy cop out. There is still an effort–alive and well right now-to dismantle great schools like NYC’s specialized high schools because they use standardized admissions tests. The effort still relies on the same failed logic that Hannah-Jones has peddled for years. She insisted that kids like her daughter who did not score high enough on a test to gain admission were the victims of racism. But she refused to acknowledge that poor Asian kids whose parents had NONE of the resources that her daughter enjoyed (or should have enjoyed) (English speaking parents, resources to pay for prep classes, knowledge of how the system works, etc) were not racist oppressors—but kids willing to work hard and apply their smarts with parents that prioritized subject mastery and took the time to make sure their kids were actually learning. Her daughter is right. She deserved much better. But it is not the cauldron of racist grievances that Hannah-Jones still cannot let go of that failed her daughter. It’s her daughter’s parents that did not figure out for NINE YEARS that their daughter was not learning enough. New York City Public Schools should be among the best in the world because we have so many incredibly talented, smart and hard-working students that could and should learn more by being challenged more–and that means sorting kids into cohorts where they can rise to the level of their abilities and willingness to work. In other words “screening”—the exact project Hannah-Jones fought against for so long and which she has now relied on to rescue her daughter’s education. You’re welcome Nikole. Your daughter’s chosen high school would not exist but for parents like me who fought so hard to keep screened schools.

Women's groups fought to dismantle men's clubs, fraternities, the Boy Scouts, the YMCA. Now they're surprised men are isolated — and that it's women who pay for it.

As you get older, you become allergic to this doomer bullshit, because you’ve seen a million doomsday prophecies fail to ever materialize, and you realize…they’re just constantly lying.

Six years ago Bernie told us that we had six years left because of climate change. That grift is over and now he’s onto the robots. Mock this miserable goon into oblivion.

Worth noting these were both huge scary new frontier technologies

Fantastic piece from @Chris_arnade on what tolerating anti-social behavior does to our public spaces: "It’s a primary reason why we shy away from dense walkable spaces and instead move towards suburban sprawl. People in the U.S. don’t respect, trust, or want to be around other random citizens, out of fear and disgust. Japanese/European style urbanism—density, fantastic public transport, mixed-use zoning, that so many American tourists admire—can't happen here because there is a fine line between vibrant streets and squalid ones, and that line is public trust. The U.S. is on the wrong side of it. Simply put, nobody wants to be accosted by a stranger, no matter how infrequent, and until that risk is close to nil, people will continue edging towards isolated living. It is why we “can’t have nice things” because we have to construct our infrastructure to be asshole-proof, and so we don’t build anything or build with a fortress mentality, stripping our public spaces down to the austere and utilitarian, emptying them of anything that can be vandalized."

When a wrong prediction about technological change repeats through history consistently across large groups of people it is a sign a cognitive bias is at play. Example: automation and the lump of labor fallacy newsletter.pessimistsarchive…

Left out of the equation is the advances in medical technology and the ability to treat GS wounds. Not just for NYC, but all major cities across the USA. Kind of hard comparing murder rates from half a century ago when taken into account.