Matt Edens

Shakedowns, but leftistly...

Don't threaten me with a good time.

One of the most salient aspects of today's politics is how everyone imagines a conspiratorial "them" controlling things behind the scenes. Elon Musk is literally powerful enough to affect the course of the Ukraine war, but he's still imagining faceless puppet masters who need to be unmasked.

Postwar attempts to rebuild American downtowns for the convenience of suburban drivers fail because cities cannot compete with the suburbs on ease of driving and parking; and attempting to do so destroys the vibrant street life that makes cities worth living in or visiting in the first place.

Metaphor Watch: My wife and I almost ran into a bald eagle sitting directly in the road on the way to work this morning. The bald eagle picked up a rat and flew away—in the middle of Baltimore.

<Downtown Frederick has entered the chat>

Wonder what Kirby Delauter's up to these days?

"Restrictive zoning that made it socially acceptable to equate homes for lower-income people with pollution is exactly the kind of regulation that progressives should support eliminating..."

1. RM is of course entirely right. Sulla wiped out his enemies and totally remade all of Rome’s institutions, and it *didn’t work* 2. I think it’s also extremely important to understand *why* it didn’t work, as Ronald Syme memorably put it…

Next visit to Lancaster, I look forward to riding the Amish Light Rail.

feels like at least part of what is happening is that a lot of people want politics to solve the "my life feels empty" problem and the populist right is directly appealing to them

New York City has recorded the fewest murders through September since before 1960, Baltimore since 1962, Philadelphia and Detroit since 1964, Oakland since 1967, and New Orleans since 1969.

Teens…and the poors.

Most TV is just this now.

gotta say there’s something almost poetic about Trump incentivizing less fuel efficient vehicles as the Iran war keeps pushing up the price of gas

Regular reminder that the most progressive place in the world cannot protect people who can’t afford to live in it, and I do not care about your “neighborhood character” as much as I care about that, and it is not close

Decades and decades of a national policy and zeitgeist that amounts to 'nobody needs to care about social studies' and we're now in an unwinnable war with a foreign country whose culture and leadership we did not understand based around geography we ignored. 🤷‍♂️

Among the right-wing real estate grifts looking to cash in on the blue state "refugees" moving to my home state of Tennessee, this one - feels like pure vaporware: a "true conservative" Cracker Barrel knockoff on a which, according to TDOT, sees an average of 146 cars per day. rockwellsgas.com

Two crazy things takeaways from this article: the Baltimore Sun's daily print circulation is down to 11,800 and the newspaper in The Villages - the giant retirement community in Florida - has the ninth highest circulation of any daily in the country. pressgazette.co.uk/north-americ...

Ironically a good argument for DEI is “it would help the NYT find someone other than a Princeton grad, suit wearing right wing magazine editor dweeb to write about rural America” www.nytimes.com/2026/09/13/o...

The only person I don't want to participate in sports is me

The operative word in "Protect our women!" is not "women" but "our".

I do appreciate it when NIMBYs just say "the thing," instead of trotting out a bunch of bullshit about imagined sewer capacity or whatever

It’s so strange that these anxieties about housing, infrastructure, and carrying capacity are never articulated before the speaker moves into a community.

"emotional support munitions"

Can we get weekend service From Frederick to DC? Sorry, a new daily train from Brunswick to Baltimore is the best we can do... top.com/maryland/2026/09/marc-train-introducing-new-service-between-montgomery-county-baltimore/

“Established cities that are dispersed and auto-centric are likely to have higher per capita emissions and thus can reduce emissions by focusing on creating modal shift and improving public transit systems… as well as focusing on infilling and densifying,”

New York’s congestion pricing program has resulted in a statistically significant reduction in travel times for EMS vehicles

“You have this post-economic, older, economically insulated voting bloc that could afford to be anti-growth almost as a luxury, because they don’t have to care about economic outcomes.” www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/...

Were you raised in a barn? www.barndominiumlife.com

"when I was young. I packed my bags, left my major city, and moved all the way to a redlined suburb...built specifically for people who looked like me. If I can do that, young people should be willing to live on an active Superfund site" www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/why...

Interesting piece. Back in the late 80s/early 90s (at least in the South) living in the center-city was a bit like rummaging around in very big junk store. Nowadays it's more like a "vintage" store - curated...and with a substantial markup. www.ruins.blog/p/in-praise-...

The beautiful chaos of a used bookstore is unmatched.

Remember, Dolly "wasn't political..."

As a post down thread notes: Immigrants share of US population was at its lowest in 1970.

building wire mother for my child

anytime people raise concerns about land use for solar projects or anything like that i just want to point out that half the corn we grow in this country gets used to make gasoline slightly worse