Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Aaron W. Gordon @agordon.me · 2d

Your theory is based on the idea people want to move to cities but can't afford to and that's why they don't care what is happening here? That's not my read on what's going on at all. And the historical migrations you cite followed manufacturing booms. Those jobs are gone.

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Aaron W. Gordon @agordon.me · 2d

He keeps running a statewide campaign for a city office. It's wild to watch.

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Aaron W. Gordon @agordon.me · 2d

"Mansion Boy" is also good because Andrew Cuomo owned a $1.8 million, 4,000 sq ft house with its own pond until his divorce. (Reportedly it would have sold for much more but was not maintained well and was "in dire need of considerable work.") nypost.com/2021/03/03/a...

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Aaron W. Gordon @agordon.me · 2d

Fun fact: All of the MTA's rolling stock bought in the last several decades is capable of this too!

Yonah Freemark @yonahfreemark.com · 2d

Caltrain’s new electric trains are designed to recuperate energy when breaking. The agency made a deal to sell that energy back to the local power supplier, which will net the agency millions of dollars in annual revenues.

Caltrain electrified trains return power to grid, offsetting energy costs

For decades, Caltrain has been known for what it takes off the roads. Now, it's being rewarded for what it puts back into the power grid.

www.cbsnews.com

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Reposted by Aaron W. Gordon

Travis Waldron @traviswaldron.bsky.social · 2d

For Bessent’s $20 billion bet on Argentina to pay off, a lot of things have to go right.

The problem is that in Argentina -- a nation with a track record of squandering other people’s money and defaulting on its own debts -- those things have tended to go wrong.

www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Bessent’s Big Gamble on Argentina Has a Narrow Road to Pay Off

For Scott Bessent’s $20 billion bet on Argentina to pay off, a lot of things have to go right – things that in the past, in Argentina, have tended to go wrong.

www.bloomberg.com

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Aaron W. Gordon @agordon.me · 5d

Certainly a lot of the slow bus problem in Manhattan is due to traffic but it a few weekends ago it took me 30 minutes to go 35 blocks on one of these local routes with no traffic whatsoever.

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Aaron W. Gordon @agordon.me · 5d

Since I've moved to Manhattan it has really sunk in just how useless the non-SBS buses are if you want to get anywhere faster than walking. The north-south routes stop every block or two! The bus literally travels 10-15 bus lengths at a time, up and down Manhattan. It's so stupid.

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Aaron W. Gordon @agordon.me · 5d

I've actually found the criticism of this hire to be remarkably laser-focused on what she has actually done!

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Aaron W. Gordon @agordon.me · 5d

Some Personal News:

Jason Rabinowitz @airlineflyer.net · 5d

Bluesky glitches are fun but also not that far off from reality

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Aaron W. Gordon @agordon.me · 5d

True New Yorker quizzes are fun and all but there is only one question in the actual True New Yorker test: Do You Take The Subway?

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Reposted by Aaron W. Gordon

Smalls @shutupsmalls.bsky.social · 7d

@agordon.me is so right about this buttondown.com/Booktime/arc...

I have become interested in the experience of ordinary Germans during the rise of Nazism. You know, for no particular reason whatsoever. There are classics in the field I could have tackled, but I chose to read two lesser known and more recent works on the subject. It was a harrowing couple of weeks but well worth the intellectual adventure.
I felt compelled to read Promise Me You'll Shoot Yourself based on the title alone (browsing library stacks is the original and undefeated recommendation algorithm).

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Aaron W. Gordon @agordon.me · 6d

A fun game is to ask people what they think "independent" journalism means and/or to rank various sources on a scale of independence. Answers vary wildly! www.nytimes.com/2025/10/06/b...

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Aaron W. Gordon @agordon.me · 9d

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Aaron W. Gordon @agordon.me · 10d

Junk mail has a pretty stable definition: Unsolicited commercial offers. The junk mail industry says they would be out of business if everyone thought it was junk. And they would be if the USPS didn't offer them artificially low postage rates to compensate for the ~1% conversion rate!

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Aaron W. Gordon @agordon.me · 10d

Said junk mail research: themail.substack.com/p/how-we-end...

How We Ended Up With All This Junk Mail

Believe it or not, this pop-up newsletter only has about a month left!

themail.substack.com

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Aaron W. Gordon @agordon.me · 10d

I once did a bunch of archival research on the origins and history of junk mail. This talking point—that not everyone has the same definition of "junk"—was used by the junk mail industry for *decades* to fight anti-junk mail policies. (It's also not true. ) www.nytimes.com/2025/10/02/t...

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Aaron W. Gordon @agordon.me · 10d

Back when I did this kind of thing, the pitch for why more NYC newsrooms should have dedicated MTA reporters—not even "transportation" generally, just MTA—was that the MTA's annual budget was larger than that of 10 states.

City Nolan @ndhapple.bsky.social · 10d

You see this particularly in the crime discussion nationally, but folks outside of New York City (and often times in New York City) do not grasp the scale and scope of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

Reinvent Albany @reinventalbany.bsky.social · 10d

NEW Report: States that voted for Trump got billions from MTA Spending

Companies in red states by U.S. Senate seats received more than $3.5 billion in MTA payments over 14 years. States that voted for Trump in 2024 received nearly $7 billion from the MTA over this period.

buff.ly/Yxt4KZ6

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Aaron W. Gordon @agordon.me · 12d

These seem like smaller ifs to me than Riding The Subway 12 Times A Week Every Week of the Year

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Aaron W. Gordon @agordon.me · 12d

Doesn't the flexibility of the one-week structure counterbalance the lower 30-day rate? Because with the 30-day rate, if you get sick or accidentally re-up the month you go on vacation, you're paying for rides you don't take. That doesn't happen with the 7-day cap.

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Aaron W. Gordon @agordon.me · 12d

The amazing thing about the hundreds of billions of dollars being spent on AI development is it doesn't even include all the externalized costs like higher electricity prices for hundreds of millions of people.

AI Data Centers Are Sending Power Bills Soaring

Wholesale electricity costs as much as 267% more than it did five years ago in areas near data centers. That’s being passed on to customers.

www.bloomberg.com

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Aaron W. Gordon @agordon.me · 13d

I say this because Eric Adams is not just a one-term mayor in a city that rarely has them. Had he not dropped out he may well have had the lowest vote percentage of any sitting politician running for re-election in modern US political history.

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Aaron W. Gordon @agordon.me · 13d

One thing to know about the "Eric Adams Is The Future of the Democratic Party" takes from 2021 is not only were they obviously wrong at the time, not only are they embarrassing to the authors now, but they are objectively among the most wrong takes in the history of political punditry.

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Aaron W. Gordon @agordon.me · 16d

Watched The Odd Couple movie with Lemmon and Matthau (so good) but the biggest laugh of the night came halfway through was finding out Matthau's character, with an 8 room apartment on the top floor of a West End Drive doorman building, was a sports columnist writing about the Mets.

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Aaron W. Gordon @agordon.me · 16d

Great story. Many similar lessons for buying trains, too.

David Zipper @davidzipper.bsky.social · 16d

In the US, even a “cheap” transit bus costs 2-3x more than in Asia or Europe -- and one agency may pay twice as much as another for nearly identical vehicles.

In Bloomberg, I explored a ripe opportunity to improve transportation by applying Abundance-coded, supply-side reforms.

🧵

Why US Cities Pay Too Much for Transit Buses

A new paper argues that lack of competition, demand for custom features and “Buy America” rules have driven up costs for transit agencies in the US.

www.bloomberg.com

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Aaron W. Gordon @agordon.me · 16d

Funny you mention it (maybe you knew this) but the Bloomingdale branch is attached to a DOH facility which is also part of the redevelopment plans.

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