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Pumpkin Baby

@hessianhunter.bsky.social
364 followers 313 following 960 posts

Philly rock and roll baby

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Pumpkin Baby @hessianhunter.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Now I very much align with peds and transit riders and understand that I have to wait my turn sometimes. I see it like pedestrians are sacred, then cyclists/scooters etc. should be given space to do our thing so we're not incentivized to be in the way of peds and also safe from fast motorists.
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Pumpkin Baby @hessianhunter.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
I got into city cycling because I couldn't afford a car and now I've stuck with it because I hate driving. Early on I caught myself having that "get out of my way" mentality and realized I was acting like the motorists I was so frustrated by.
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Pumpkin Baby @hessianhunter.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
He temporarily broke the spell for himself when he got divorced, but has since gotten re-lost in the sauce. My understanding is that that's typical - people mostly only rethink their worldviews in response to jarring life changes.
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Pumpkin Baby @hessianhunter.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Someone in my family is very much like this. None of my many detailed explanations about how his worldview doesn't align with reality made a dent because he believes that stuff for the same reasons people hold religious views. They are not available to be persuaded.
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Pumpkin Baby @hessianhunter.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
I believe you are arguing my point for me. Yes, it can be sensible for a small system to be fare-free. The LA Metro is not a small system currently and shouldn't aspire to be such a system.
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Pumpkin Baby @hessianhunter.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
DART is light rail. There are free light rails, trams, and streetcars in the world, but no free heavy rail lines anywhere.
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Pumpkin Baby @hessianhunter.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
I'll put it more specifically - there isn't a single free heavy rail system in the entire world, including in countries that have a much more robust social safety net than ours.
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Pumpkin Baby @hessianhunter.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
When I saw that the Mongol Empire episode was seven hours long I cackled. Then I listened to it twice. Incredible series.
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Pumpkin Baby @hessianhunter.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
I'm a White Midwest "transplant" to a different large US city but I suppose the ethical choice was that I should've stayed in a segregated car-dependent suburb forever and live a super resource-intensive lifestyle that kills the planet instead of moving to somewhere I can ride trains to get around.
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Pumpkin Baby @hessianhunter.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
How about my Ajani example? What original artist should be asked to give their input on every future artist who portrays Ajani? None of this makes any sense when we're talking about artists contracted for making visuals for a game.
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Pumpkin Baby @hessianhunter.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Zoltan Boros painted Simic Charm. You're saying Zoltan Boros should have hashed out his interpretation of Simic Charm not with the WOTC creative department, but with whatever specific employee happened to have the largest hand in creating the Simic symbol, which probably isn't public information?
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Pumpkin Baby @hessianhunter.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
So the designers of the Ravnica sigils deserve a cut every time there's a painting using that iconography? Does Ajani's original artist get a cut of every depiction of Ajani? I don't think you've thought this through.
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Pumpkin Baby @hessianhunter.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
I think Ezra Klein and his Abundance book both stink but YIMBYism predates it and is based on objectively real housing dynamics. "[New thing] is just [old thing I dislike]" is a recipe for not understanding the world and for spending the rest of your life allergic to updating your priors.
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Pumpkin Baby @hessianhunter.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
"Just because it looks cool"? The new card is referencing the old card. That's the goal of it because that's the major theme of Reality Fracture. It was not an arbitrary artistic choice to reference the older piece.
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Urban Land Rent 🇸🇴🚰 @urbanlandrent.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
One thing that I think about a lot is in “Wages of Destruction” Tooze describes how the Third Reich didn’t really have a theory about public policy or the economy. They limped from crisis to crisis their entire existence finding emergency stop-gaps to achieve short term priorities.
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Urban Land Rent 🇸🇴🚰 @urbanlandrent.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Germany’s political leadership believed in esoteric theories around racial supremacy and ultimately believed good outcomes would naturally flow from Aryan’s natural superiority. This is the same vibe the GOP has in 2026.
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Pumpkin Baby @hessianhunter.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
If I may humbly suggest a newer band in the trip hop canon - DC's Beauty Pill @beautypill.bsky.social tidal.com/album/109699...
tidal.com
Beauty Pill - Beauty Pill Describes Things As They Are
Listen to Beauty Pill Describes Things As They Are on TIDAL in exceptional sound quality, or on your choice of service
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Urban Land Rent 🇸🇴🚰 @urbanlandrent.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Conservatives never post shit like this. Only liberals do because they have a nagging insecurity, don’t believe liberals can ever wield power legitimately and don’t believe liberal constituencies can legitimately govern without the blessing of the Volk.
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Pumpkin Baby @hessianhunter.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Multiple estimations I've seen over the years have put the cost of car ownership at right around $10k. I wonder if this new higher figure comes from new methodology or from costs rising suddenly.
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scwiba @scwiba.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
This man won his primary by 30 points.
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Pumpkin Baby @hessianhunter.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
My understanding of it is that she was offered a general NDA about Musk for that money but declined to sign. This was maybe a year back. I didn't hear about it being specifically for a documentary.
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Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
if it took you 5 seconds of contemplation to think of an alternative you should take at least another 5-10 to at least consider the possibility that it at least crossed the minds of 1 or 2 of the people who dedicate their lives and research careers to dealing with the problems we post about on here
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Pumpkin Baby @hessianhunter.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Surely the children will keel over dead outside the warmth of a car, no?
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Better Things Are Possible @internethippo.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
Antebellum politics is fascinating, the South kept getting policy concessions and whipped themselves up into a paranoid rage anyway, essentially because they couldn't stand being culturally judged for having slaves
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Pumpkin Baby @hessianhunter.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
Wow, you're saying that a lot of people want to live in NYC but can't afford it? But also rent is expensive for reasons that are mostly not basic supply and demand? You're fighting really hard against Occam's razor here.
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Pumpkin Baby @hessianhunter.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
It clearly is, because people voluntarily pay the $4k instead of moving somewhere else. They, uh, demand to live in NYC instead of Ronkonkoma.
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Pumpkin Baby @hessianhunter.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
Price fixing is extremely hard to do in decentralized markets. Price fixing is *harder* in NYC than in a small town because there are many thousands of owners of millions of properties. Compare that to a mcmansion development where price fixing is easy but, somehow, those houses are cheaper than NYC
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Pumpkin Baby @hessianhunter.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
No one outside of your imagination argues that there are zero factors besides a simple monoaxial supply and demand curve. The problem is that you think supply and demand is a small piece of the puzzle when it's more like 90%.
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Pumpkin Baby @hessianhunter.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
So landlords in NYC and SF are just more clever than landlords in Cleveland? Quite the coincidence that landlords in low supply and high demand areas happen to also be better at colluding on prices!
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Pumpkin Baby @hessianhunter.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
If I did live in NYC or San Francisco, my exact same apartment would go for 5-10x as much as it does. This is readily explained by how there's greater demand to live in those cities than mine. Pretending that's not true is part of the reason NYC and SF are so expensive now.
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Pumpkin Baby @hessianhunter.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
I don't live in Manhattan or NYC at all so I'm not part of that same housing market. My rent isn't cheap because my landlord forgot that big numbers exist. My rent is cheap because supply outpaces demand in my area.
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Pumpkin Baby @hessianhunter.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
Look at what 3k/month buys you in Manhattan. They are shitty little apartments. Rich people still pay that price because Manhattan is a desirable enough location. This is readily explained by 101 economics theory. You can't explain that if you refuse to accept economics 101 principles.
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Pumpkin Baby @hessianhunter.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
Specifically the government added so much supply that my greedy private landlord was forced to charge less rent to keep up. Too bad supply and demand isn't real or I might learn a lesson about how economies work from the experience
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Pumpkin Baby @hessianhunter.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
I was paying 4 whole eels but then supply outpaced demand so I found a nicer place for only 3 eels
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Pumpkin Baby @hessianhunter.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
You seem to think that housing has an inherent cost, which tells me you don't understand what demand is.
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Pumpkin Baby @hessianhunter.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
Abundant for the people that can afford it. There are no homeless millionaires. I want them to live in swanky new build towers instead of buying me out for my shitty little apartment, which is what happened in SF and NYC because there isn't enough housing to go around at all income levels.
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Pumpkin Baby @hessianhunter.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
Speculations don't pan out when their speculation is in ample supply. My goal is to make housing speculation unprofitable. Housing abundance is what does that, whether the housing is public or private.
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Pumpkin Baby @hessianhunter.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
I am extremely confused about you you're arguing against and what you think their position is
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Pumpkin Baby @hessianhunter.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
I am literally a working scientist, calm tf down. Not everyone who thinks supply and demand dynamics are a fundamental element of housing prices is a propagandized illiterate idiot. Quite the reverse, imo. I began as a supply-side skeptic but then looked at the data honestly and changed.
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Pumpkin Baby @hessianhunter.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
You say this as if there is no case study of areas that built housing vs places that haven't. I doubt you are swayed by data, though.
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Pumpkin Baby @hessianhunter.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
I have and, it turns out, supply and demand simply exist and it applies to housing. The only way to increase accessibility of housing is to build a more of it where people want to live whether it's public or private housing. New fancy private housing, much to my chagrin, is not the enemy.
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Pumpkin Baby @hessianhunter.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
How did China building a bunch of housing causes prices to fall? Like, what's the mechanism? Why can't the private landlords just keep charging as much as they want? Did they forget to ask for a bigger number?
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Pumpkin Baby @hessianhunter.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
So you agree that abundant housing pushes down housing costs in the private market?
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Pumpkin Baby @hessianhunter.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
Like, I can't decide today to be a criminal engineering prices around peanut butter. That stuff is everywhere. No one wants my blood money peanut butter when the corner store has it for $2.
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Pumpkin Baby @hessianhunter.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
Because to successfully be a criminal there has to be a functional market for your enterprise to produce fruits. Cartels exist for foods that are both highly desired and in low supply for a given group. China understands this. They built so much housing that they broke the private housing market.
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Pumpkin Baby @hessianhunter.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
"forced busing" of the 21st century
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Pumpkin Baby @hessianhunter.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Yes, that is one way to address this tension. It has its own downsides (everything does) but it's a perfectly rational thing to consider!
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Pumpkin Baby @hessianhunter.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
I pointed to an extreme end of the spectrum to highlight that *everyone* sensible agrees that SOME amount of consolidation is necessary compared to stopping at literally every single home along the route.
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Pumpkin Baby @hessianhunter.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
If you ONLY highlight the benefits of one end of the spectrum as if that inherently outweighs the benefit of the other side you are not having the actual conversation to be had.
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Pumpkin Baby @hessianhunter.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
The tension I'm speaking of is that fewer stops = faster service while more stops = better accessibility. There's no getting around that fundamental tradeoff.
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