Texas is really, really good at building housing

Important to understand that "environment review" is not a substantive set of rules that protect the environment (the way that, say, the Clean Air Act is) it's a kind of free-floating attack surface for project opponents.

It's important to double check things that "everyone knows to be true" by actually looking at the data. For example, people think indirect costs for publicly-funded research have exploded, when in fact they've been pretty stable over the last 40 years:

Most people think “indirect costs” for government-funded scientific research have grown out of control (some universities charge >60% rates). In response, the Trump admin tried to cap them at 15%. But this whole debate rests on a false premise: While ***negotiated indirect cost rates*** have gone up over time, ***effective indirect cost rates*** — the overhead costs the government actually ends up paying for — have not. Here’s what the data shows…

The past was bloody awful and damn ignorant.

The scientist who discovered that hand washing dramatically reduces mortality during child birth was ridiculed by his colleagues and committed to an insane asylum. In the asylum, he was beaten by the guards and died 2 weeks later after a wound on his hand had become gangrenous.

Sure looks to me like there's been a slowdown since we started implementing the tariffs that Oren has been so thirsty for. Average of 182K jobs created a month from Jan. 2023 through Apr. 2025. Since Liberation Day, just 35K jobs per month.

Very, very bad to behave this way...

This is genuinely unbelievable. These antitrust goobers don't seem to realize that I have a telephone. This whole pathetic, pissy thread is about how I'm lying about my conversation with the real estate analyst Lance Lambert and misrepresenting him in my article. So, guess what I just did? Called Lance, of course! He told me again that he agrees with all of my major points and reiterated over and over that he's "pushing back" on the strongest claims of the antitrust left. Some notes from our call: 1. I read him the quotes from my article again in their full context. He signed off on everything. We went over it three times. He agrees with my language. He agrees with my position. "I stand by what I told you." That's a direct quote. 2. I asked him again, for clarification: Do you think homebuilders are a “cartel,” as Matt Stoller has claimed? He said no. 3. I asked again: Do you believe, as Basel Musharbash has claimed, that homebuilders are an “oligopoly"? He said no. 4. I asked him if he thinks that the biggest homebuilders are withholding supply or playing a key role in driving up prices. He said absolutely not. 5. This is a direct quote: "I hope you both communicate my view that I don't think the big builders are bad actors, or even that they have the power to be the bad actors." We're done here.

I'm grateful to Jeremy Lewin for appearing on Ross Douthat's podcast to talk about how he sees the future of foreign aid, and I am glad to hear that he doesn't approve of the wholesale destruction of PEPFAR. But he makes a bunch of false claims I want to address: