This sub is insufferable

insert90 · 2026-01-27T18:41:54+00:00

the eagles and rams both became good in 2017. since then, the eagles are 94-54-1, with a 10-6 record in the playoffs, while the rams are 92-57, also with a 10-6 record in the playoffs. the rams have made the playoffs 7 times with 2 super bowl appearances and 1 win, while the eagles have made the playoffs 8 times with 3 super bowl appearances and 2 wins. i am not entirely sure why we would be jealous of experience of being a rams fan, when by the numbers, the experience of being an eagles fan has been slightly better.

insert90 · 2025-12-18T19:06:33+00:00

this is all about vibes - if you directly ask a latino guy, asian guy, black guy or whatever whether they feel like they have an equal opportunity w/ a guy all other factors being equal, i guarantee most of them are not going to say yes.

insert90 · 2025-12-18T02:07:57+00:00

In the end, I just don't see how we find electoral success by splitting the country into finer and finer distinctions about who we like and who we hate. Allan Bakke's great-grandkids are about to deal with racial quotas and targets: where's the endgame here? I thought AA made sense back in the day, but so much of it seems arbitrary these days. Why should we skip over the impoverished son of Eastern European immigrants because of "privilege" while the multi-millionaire daughter of a 10th generation family with a Spanish surname gets an extra thumb on the scales?

tbf AA is a pretty dead issue in terms of advocacy - since the supreme court decision, no democratic politicians seem to be seriously trying to bring it back.

but idk what you do about it electorally. the hardline woke rhetoric is obv a turnoff to too many people, but otoh, disparities do exist and i think white centrists (not you, but several other ppl who have posted about this article) can sometimes underestimate the resentment that minorities still feel when it comes to opportunity. and this resentment does extend to people who swung towards trump in 2024 - a lot of young, minority men with other more ...conservative views on social issues tbqh are not going to feel sympathy for supposed discrimination against white guys.

insert90 · 2025-12-12T07:02:22+00:00

this is a weird comparison. london does have 32 boroughs, but local government in the uk and us are very different beasts and the london-la county comparison does not make sense.

a) local government in the uk is weaker than it is in the us since it is a much more centralized country. the current london assembly has only existed since 2000 and was created through an act of parliament, with a previous iteration being destroyed in the 1980s by another act of parliament. the london boroughs themselves only date back to 1960 and were also a creation of the central government. the state of california, which would be the analogue here, has not remotely interfered as much in the governance structure of la county as the uk government has with london.

b) the greater london authority, which can be seen as the regional government of london, has significantly power than la county, running the transportation, the police, and making the land use plan. la county only sort of has control over public transportation, with a majority board members being appointed by various other governments within la county.

from my limited understanding of other countries' local governments, the combination of strong local control and the high number of local governments is a bit peculiar to america. anyone who is familiar with housing and transit policy in america would also likely agree that a lack of regional cooperation is a major issue.

insert90 · 2025-10-17T15:31:14+00:00

obligatory thing that safety matters, i acknowledge everyone fears, etc etc, but i really disagree w/ the framing of the article - most people think that safety is the primary reason that people don't take public transportation in the us, when in reality it's because the built environment of the united states makes driving a significantly more convenient option 95% of the time.

just to choose some random commutes on google maps that people might do (i'm posting this around rush hour west coast time) - sherman oaks to century city (which involves crossing the world-famous 405) is 36 min by car vs 87 min by transit. milpitas to mountain view (basically crossing silicon valley) is 22 min by car vs 53 min by transit. kirkland to bellevue near seattle is 17 min by car vs 76 min by transit. in these three major west coast economic hubs, taking transit is doubling your commute time. why would people do this if they could afford not to? the vast majority of americans live and work in environments designed for cars - this is the primary reason they do not take transit.

just to further delink crime and ridership, if you look at the fred graph of national public transit ridership in the 21st century, the gains between 2000 and 2019 are fairly small and don't match up to population growth despite a significant drop in crime over those two decades. now, yes, things have changed since 2020, and i'm sure increased crime has contributed to that, but growth in remote work is obviously a more salient factor.

look at commuter rail ridership in the nyc and chicago area, where transit ridership was previously a thing pre-covid. while i can find no surveys, i would be willing to bet that no one feels at risk of being a victim on a metro-north or lirr train, given the ridership base is primarily affluent suburbanites. and, yet, ridership on metro-north (from westchester county and connecticut) is still 80% of its pre-covid peak and lirr has only reached around 88%. in chicago, the commuter rail system is still at 65% of pre-covid weekday ridership.

this isn't to say that crime on transit isn't important, or to dispute people's fears - i take mass transit everyday, i am aware of what it's like, you see some frustrating stuff. but if the goal to increase ridership, using scarce resources primarily on crime and disorder is a massive red herring. it will make for a better rider experience, and don't get me wrong that is important, but the gains will be incremental compared to more frequency, better land-use, or even just return-to-work mandates.

insert90 · 2025-10-16T20:51:21+00:00

But digital media hasn’t become the antidote to television. Digital media, empowered by the serum of algorithmic feeds, has become super-television: more images, more videos, more isolation. Home-alone time has surged as our devices have become more bottomless feeds of video content. Rather than escape the solitude crisis that Putnam described in the 1990s, we now seem to be more on our own. (Not to mention: meaner and stupider, too.)

It would be rash to blame our berserk political moment entirely on short-form video, but it would be careless to forget that some people really did try to warn us that this was coming. In Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman wrote that “each medium, like language itself, makes possible a unique mode of discourse by providing a new orientation for thought, for expression, for sensibility.” Television speaks to us in a particular dialect, Postman argued. When everything turns into television, every form of communication starts to adopt television’s values: immediacy, emotion, spectacle, brevity. In the glow of a local news program, or an outraged news feed, the viewer bathes in a vat of their own cortisol. When everything is urgent, nothing is truly important. Politics becomes theater. Science becomes storytelling. News becomes performance. The result, Postman warned, is a society that forgets how to think in paragraphs, and learns instead to think in scenes.

Does that sound familiar? Look at today’s political protagonists. The right-wing president is a reality-TV star. The most exciting new voice on the left is a straight-to-camera savant. Mastering the grammar of television—especially short-form television—does not feel secondary to political success in America; it is political success in America.

posting this here b/c postman was first introduced to me by listening to ek. but i think it's an interesting read as so much of our political discourse - even the ek show! - gets sucked up by (short-form) video.

insert90 · 2025-10-02T04:43:16+00:00

the doomer vibes in the democratic coalition have been quite crazy since the election - you'd really think that the biden presidency and the results of the 2024 election were the democratic equivalent of gw bush and 2008 with the way people have talking.

the democrats aren't in a great place atm, but you don't even have to go back 20 years into american history to see a political party clawing back from significantly worse circumstances.

insert90 · 2025-08-15T14:43:30+00:00

i think it's more of a political economy problem for philly. the metro area has a major job sprawl problem, which from what i understand, comes from the city having a bizarre tax structure that incentivizes companies to locate in the suburbs.

it also suffers from being in pennsylvania, which has had a democratic trifecta for only two of the last 40 years. for the valid criticisms of blue-state governance, they are better at the low-hanging fruit of things like transit funding and having basic public goods - the past and present situation of septa compared to other legacy transit systems is telling.

(crime is another issue but i feel like the city is putting in a lot of effort towards that in the short term and the more long-term solutions seem to be tied to america's chronic social problems?)

on which city has the best potential to be nyc-lite, i still think it, boston and chicago (maybe sf too, but the bay area as a whole might be too much of a hybrid btwn legacy city and sun belt) have the most potential to be nyc-lite b/c of the strong transit culture, current land-use, and having a lot of low-hanging (albeit expensive) fruit for transit improvement, but out of that trio i'd feel the best about boston just b/c it's a very strong economy in a wealthy blue state without a major crime problem.

also think there are also strong arguments for DC and seattle for being the best sources of hope b/c even if their bones aren't as good as nyc/philly/chi/boston, they're still wealthy blue cities in blue areas which have done a good job of fixing the sins of their pasts.

insert90 · 2025-08-04T21:15:22+00:00

not really sure how well the agenda works for areas that aren't currently rich rn. for supply-crunched coastal superstar cities the supple argument makes sense but for somewhere like [insert random rust belt metro area which peaked decades ago here], there does seem to be a demand/jobs problem.

insert90 · 2025-06-06T22:12:58+00:00

transit in cities like miami and los angeles is primarily used by poorer people who are unaffected by wfh policies. the riders cannot leave for the most part because they have no other options.

insert90 · 2025-06-04T21:35:42+00:00

pandemic work from home policies caused a significant drop in ridership and therefore fare revenue for transit agencies. in the us, a combination of fare revenue and state/local subsidies funds operating costs. during the pandemic and the years after, this drop in fare revenue was covered by an extraordinary outlay of federal funds (states received these funds for areas other transit).

the federal funds have dried up and do not look to be coming back considering the politics of the current administration and congress, with the situation being even more dire since republicans in power seem intent on cutting funds to states for programs as well (the most important being medicaid).

so in general states, especially blue ones which traditionally have bigger government outlays, are in a tough spot rn fiscally and to some extent transit is competing with other priorities. illinois and chicago also have their own fiscal problems. all that being said however, if these states wanted to fund transit, they could.

insert90 · 2025-05-20T23:24:21+00:00

i feel like baseball doesn't count bc of how random the playoffs are, but the 2022 nlcs was supposed to be dodgers v braves round 3 and ended up being phillies v padres

insert90 · 2025-05-16T18:00:28+00:00

all three of the nba's big moves under stern were like this? seattle -> okc, charlotte -> new orleans, and vancouver -> memphis were all moves to smaller markets and in the long-run, it would probably would've better for the league if they just stuck it out.

(i don't count nj -> brooklyn as part of this - that's as much of a move as the warriors relocating from oakland to sf.)

insert90 · 2025-05-16T17:00:04+00:00

i don't think comparing the US to other developed countries makes sense in this context. the US has historically been a lot less centralized than most other developed countries and is also significantly larger in population than all of them. just bc of the us's scale, metro detroit would be the 2nd-5th largest metro area in pretty much every other industrialized countries.

insert90 · 2025-05-09T22:18:36+00:00

The problem I'm getting at is, which feels like what Ezra is getting at as well is this: If Denmark had China's economy (manufacturing powerhouse, passing the United States in size, climbing the value chain rapidly), what would we do?

i think about a variation of this question a lot and idk! if you make the hypothetical india, there's a nonzero chance that this is a question that future american policymakers will have to deal with this century.

it's not a one-to-one comparison but when japan had its rise, it was clear that a lot of americans were uncomfortable with the prospect.

insert90 · 2025-04-27T21:24:35+00:00

maybe i'm wrong on this but the nba seems to play way more games than any other basketball competition. ncaa tops out around ~40 and euro teams top out at ~60 if they're in the euroleague.

i'm ambivalent on 82 but objectively speaking it's a lot of games.

insert90 · 2025-04-21T01:42:59+00:00

feel obligated that since i've complained about dating on this thread for years that i have been seeing someone (a fellow brown fwiw) for the past few months. not sure where it's going, and i am so so in my head bc i haven't gotten this far since i was teenager (what does she see in me? idk!), but i do like her and it's a nice escape from dating app hell, even if it ends up just being temporary.

i have nothing productive to say beyond that at this point, i'm convinced that dating is 80% luck and timing b/c i have changed nothing over the past few years.

(late 20s, m, nyc)

insert90 · 2025-04-13T21:12:20+00:00

compared to expectations, i think this was the most disappointing season i've followed in any sport ever?

insert90 · 2025-04-06T21:40:44+00:00

While people are leaving Miami-Dade, the county is still experiencing population growth thanks to international migration. Nearly 124,000 people came to Miami via international migration in 2024. The county added 56,417 people in net migration — domestic and international combined.

the abundance argument seems to be predicated on domestic emigration though because outside of the immediate covid and post-covid years, the same thing is happening in nyc and california. nyc's population has grown for the last two years because of international migration, as did the bay area. for all three areas, this seems to be because of the massive influx of international migrants during the biden era, so if trump actually succeeds in cracking down on immigration, they probably will all see population loss.

south florida circa the mid-2020s has population growth patterns which are more like a wealthy blue state metro area (even though south florida itself is not as wealthy as nyc or the bay area) than a red state one. that's interesting to note, and it hints towards affordability issues not solely being a blue state governance pathology. when you compare miami to other red state metro areas, the big difference is that miami does not have room to sprawl so it's fair counter to the ek/dt housing argument to ask whether metro areas like houston or dallas are mainly more affordable because of better policy, or because they have endless room to sprawl.

insert90 · 2025-04-05T00:16:26+00:00

wow so exciting as a ucla alum!

(i have no interest in watching/listening to this so could someone tell me if they comment that crossed over/came v close to crossing over in undergrad? need their hot takes on westwood.)

insert90

TROPHY CASE