I’m not saying this will definitely happen, but I think we could be on the cusp of a significant shift in Windows market share for consumer computers. It is not going to drop to 2% in a year or anything, but I feel like a few pieces are coming together that could move the needle in a way we have not seen in several decades. There are three things on my mind .

Number one is that Microsoft just does not feel like a consumer tech company at all anymore. Yes, they have always been much more corporate than the likes of Apple or Google, but it really shows in the last few years as they seem to only have energy for AI and web services. If you are not a customer who is a major business or a developer creating the next AI-powered app, Microsoft does not seem to care about you.

I just do not see excitement there. The only thing of note they have added to Windows in the last five years is Copilot, and I have yet to meet a normal human being who enjoys using it. And all the Windows 11 changes seem to have just gone over about as well as a lead balloon. I just do not think they care at all about Windows with consumers.

The second thing is the affordable MacBook rumored to be coming out in 2026. This will be a meaningfully cheaper MacBook that people can purchase at price points that many Windows computers have been hovering around for many years. Considering Apple’s focus on consumers first and a price point that can get more people in the door, it seems like that could move the needle.

The third thing is gamers. Gamers use Windows largely because they have to, not because they are passionate about it. Maybe they were passionate about it in the 90s, but any passion has gone away. Now it is just the operating system they use to launch Steam. In early 2026, Valve is going to release the Steam Machine after a few years of success with the Steam Deck. We will see how they do there, but what they are doing is releasing a machine that runs Windows games on Linux. And it runs them really well. The Steam Deck has proven that over the last few years. If someone can package up a version of Linux that is optimized for gamers, then I think there is a meaningful number of PC gamers who would happily run that on their computer instead.

I do not know if this is going to happen. It is always easy to be cynical and suggest everything will stay the same, and I understand that markets of this size take a long time to change. However, it just feels like there are some things happening right now that are going to move the needle, and I am excited to see what happens.

Ryan Lizza on discovering that his now-ex was having a sexual relationship with old guy running a marginal presidential campaign even though he was the subject of profile and an ongoing source for their proposed campaign book:

“If I swallowed every drop of water from the tower above your house,” Olivia had written, “I would still thirst for you.”

Unfortunately, the lack of a water tower on our Georgetown home’s roof ruled me out as the note’s intended recipient.

I flipped to another page and saw a name and the first line of an unfinished love letter to him that included enough details to confirm a physical relationship and the hint of some kind of falling out.

My heart stopped when I realized who he was.

He was a famous politician, 32 years older than Olivia, and well-known for a sex scandal. But more importantly, he was a presidential candidate, a source, and the subject of Olivia’s recent profile for New York.

I started to build a mental map of the potential blast zone, ticking through the concentric circles of our lives that her recklessness could shatter: the privacy of my children, the wedding Olivia was pressuring me to plan, her journalism career, our book project.

I was not a perfect partner, but the scale of Olivia’s betrayal was devastating. She had an affair with someone who would provide the maximum level of humiliation and personal and professional ruin, perhaps for both of us.

She later explained to me that she became “infatuated” with him after their interview, that she couldn’t get him out of her head, and that as her obsession intensified, she sent him increasingly risqué pictures and texts, secretly followed him on the campaign trail when she told me she was out covering other candidates, and fantasized about a rendezvous, which was consummated at his home in South Carolina one night after she went dark on me and made up a story about how she was dealing with a crisis concerning her sick mother.

I was sure our relationship was over. And certainly our book project was dead. She had crossed a journalistic red line. How could we write a book about the presidential campaign if Olivia had a sexual relationship with one of the candidates?

I looked at the date on her aborted letter to “Mark”: March 5, 2020—just a few days ago.

I called my agent.

“We have a big problem,” I said. “Olivia is sleeping with Mark Sanford.”

Well, at least we know she didn’t do it for the money.

So, one of the ethical questions we’re now dealing with “how many article subjects seeking political power can you have a sexual relationship with without disclosing it and still keep your lucrative sinecure at Conde Nast?” The fact that “one” isn’t enough is depressing enough. Oh, I’m guessing we’ll be hearing more about this:

 She orchestrated a plot with the help of a senior Trump official to try to have me imprisoned, and now she’s written what appears to be a largely fictitious and self-serving account about it all.

This sequel to Eyes Wide Shut is becoming increasingly implausible.

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Washington, DC, is running out of homes that middle-income families can afford to buy. Homeownership has plunged from 47.5% in 2007 to just 40% today even as thousands of new apartment units, almost exclusively rentals, have been built in neighborhoods like NoMa and Navy Yard.

These outcomes are the natural, albeit perhaps unintended, consequences of the District’s land use policies. For decades, exclusionary zoning has blocked smaller, moderately priced homes from being built. As a result, options have dwindled for working and middle-class families who want to own a home.

The District’s elected and appointed officials have a rare chance to change course. As they steward a rewrite of its Comprehensive Plan, which will govern what is allowed to be built where over the next 25 years, it should legalize “light-touch density.” That means allowing any owner of a single-family detached home to, should they wish, convert them into duplexes, triplexes, or townhomes, provided that each parcel meets a minimum lot size.

This isn’t radical. A century ago, American neighborhoods featured a mix of different sizes and types of homes. That changed in the 1920s, when federal guidance and a Supreme Court ruling upheld exclusionary zoning practices that segregated real estate by price point and, indirectly, by race. Cities quickly banned what we now refer to as “missing middle” housing from most neighborhoods and increasingly gave private groups veto power over new construction. The result was higher prices, less diversity, and more McMansions.

Allowing light-touch density would help to reverse the negative trends brought about by exclusionary zoning. If existing lots were allowed to contain more than one home, neighborhoods like the Palisades, Michigan Park, Takoma, and Hillcrest—by using land more efficiently—could accommodate more residents while remaining low-rise and residential.

In high-demand cities like DC, land appreciates while buildings depreciate. As a result, market forces incentivize redevelopment. If zoning permits only one large home, you get a $4 million McMansion. If zoning allowed light-touch density, the same land could support four to eight moderately sized homes instead. In DC, these would sell for roughly 75 percent of the price of the home they replaced—not cheap, but attainable for middle-income buyers. Many would serve as “starter homes,” the kind of family-sized, lower-cost options that are increasingly scarce.

And new, moderately priced homes free up older housing. This process, known as filtering, means that building new homes doesn’t just help new buyers—it helps renters and lower-income families too.

By our estimates, allowing light-touch density could enable 800–1,100 homes to be built in the District annually, six times the past decade’s single-family pace. Crucially, these would mostly be for-sale units, with ownership rates around 80 percent, far above the sub-10% ownership rate typical of new multifamily buildings.

The neighborhoods most suited for light-touch density are those most at risk of McMansionization: Chevy Chase, Forest Hills, and American University Park. They have large lots, aging homes, and high land values. Without reform to the District’s land-use policies, these areas will see ever-larger luxury homes that only single wealthy households will occupy. With light-touch density regulations in place, they could welcome multiple families at moderate price points to high-opportunity neighborhoods with strong schools, good transit, and stable property values.

Most buyers of these homes will be District residents; most of them will be young families, first-time buyers, and people of color. These are the groups getting shut out of these neighborhoods today. Legalizing light-touch density would expand housing choices and help build a more inclusive and equitable city.

Some may fear that light-touch density will hurt neighborhood character or property values. But evidence from cities like Seattle or Charlotte show modest density increases have no measurable effect on surrounding prices. New units would match the scale of existing homes, and new residents would largely be middle-class households. Parking and traffic concerns can be addressed through market tools like priced curbside parking. And unlike large apartment buildings, light-touch density would fill in incrementally over time, preserving community continuity.

We recently released a report proposing light-touch density reforms for DC, outlining their housing supply potential and broader benefits. For current homeowners, it would enable them to partner with small builders to redevelop their lot, keep a unit and downsize, create housing for adult children or aging parents, or simply unlock wealth without leaving the neighborhood.

The fiscal upside is substantial. According to our calculations, over ten years, homes built as a result of legalizing light-touch density could generate about $1.2 billion in recurring property, income, and sales taxes for the District—without subsidies. That’s revenue that could be reinvested in infrastructure, schools, or lowering taxes for everyone.

But the details matter. Conversions must be allowed by right, with simple, clear rules—no permit caps and no excessive affordability mandates that make projects unworkable. The District should further improve its zoning code to be small-lot friendly, reduce parking minimums, and offer pre-approved design templates to speed permitting. Neighboring Arlington and Montgomery counties are cautionary tales: Both passed light-touch density-style reforms, but blunted them with strict limits and costly requirements.

Politically, the challenge is that neighborhoods that are prime candidates for light-touch density have long resisted change and are politically powerful enough to continue to do so. Still, the alternative is more McMansions, rising prices, and falling rates of homeownership. Once a lot becomes a single high-cost home, it’s locked in for decades—and once the Comp Plan rewrite is finalized, there won’t be another opportunity to legalize light-touch density for over a decade. Successful reforms in Portland and Austin prove that it can be done.

Light-touch density alone will not solve DC’s housing crisis. But it will increase ownership opportunities, support the middle class, promote a more equitable city, and better align market incentives with public goals. In an era of fiscal strain for the District, it will also more than pay for itself. The District should make light-touch density one of the pillars of its new Comprehensive Plan.

Top image: A satellite view of the intersection of 38th and Albemarle streets NW. It looks all single-family, but, behold the duplexes in between (highlighted). Image by Google Maps and AEI Housing Center.

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“We are laser-focused on our safety efforts,” said Sharon Kershbaum, director of the District Department of Transportation (DDOT), this summer. District of Columbia residents might be tempted to be reassured by her words — and stated commitment to “making the city … safe and inviting for transit and for pedestrians and for bikers and for drivers” — but that would be a mistake.

Since DDOT committed itself in 2017 to eliminating deaths on its roads, the tempo of fatalities has only increased, from 28 that year to 52 in 2024. This is no accident.

In the last year and a half, DDOT has abandoned plans for protected bicycle lanes on Connecticut Avenue for political reasons, torn out protective flex posts on Arizona Avenue for aesthetic reasons, quietly shelved plans for a busway redesign on H Street NE for unknown reasons, and decried efforts by the National Park Service to improve safety on Rock Creek Parkway for reasons of commuter convenience. In every case, DDOT has chosen to compromise safety in the name of some other priority, and this pattern of compromise is showing up even in the projects still under development.

A little safety for U

Take, for instance, its approach to U Street NW and Florida Avenue NW/NE. The two roads are among the most dangerous in the District. Since 2017, nine people have died there and dozens more have suffered life-changing injuries, according to official crash data. The thriving nightlife and restaurants of U Street and Shaw spawn an obstacle course of double-parked taxis and rideshare vehicles, food delivery drivers, and freight trucks. Buses carrying more than 18,000 people per day slow to a crawl as they weave around the parked cars and through traffic to access the disordered curb space. Drivers who are just passing through frequently shift lanes to avoid left-turning drivers and double-parked cars, while pedestrians hope cars stop at the lights so they can safely cross. Bicyclists, wisely, try to avoid the roads entirely.

To deal with the chaos, DDOT has proposed, with two projects, a busway from 18th Street to the brand-new Mamie “Peanut” Johnson Plaza. Unfortunately, despite some improvements, it’s yet another example of the agency’s failure to truly make safety its top priority.

Two bus lanes will take the place of two of the through-traffic lanes. Some intersections will be hardened to prevent left turns, while others will have new bump-outs and pedestrian refuge islands. Parking will be blocked near intersections so drivers will be able to better see pedestrians crossing.

In presentations, DDOT staff explained that their goal was to speed up buses while still providing space for traffic, parking, and deliveries. Safety improvements were made to the corridor only where they did not interfere with these primary aims. Shunting bicyclists into the bus lanes — which degrades bus reliability and travel speed as well as bicyclist safety — was, according to DDOT, a necessary compromise to ensure drivers were not overly constrained. This is even more dangerous at corners, where turning drivers must merge into the combined bus/bike lane to avoid interfering with the flow of traffic behind them, which also significantly increases stress for bicyclists.

“It’s sad to say … [but] our sweet spot is really, everyone’s a little unhappy,” said Kershbaum in the same July 17 CityCast interview in which she claimed safety was paramount.

DDOT’s deliberate mediocrity

This deliberate mediocrity is a direct outgrowth of DDOT’s approach to Complete Streets, the road-design philosophy under which the department has been operating since 2017. The philosophy, first articulated in 2004 by Smart Growth America and best codified by guidance published by the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO), attempts to reprogram streets to provide safe and comfortable access for bicyclists and pedestrians alongside drivers and transit. It is a philosophy of deliberate, thoughtful compromise, flexible enough that any department of transportation can adopt the system without harming its commitment to existing standards. But in DDOT’s case, that wiggle room has only enabled it to wiggle away from adequately prioritizing safety.

The shortcomings of DDOT’s approach to Complete Streets are obscured by the fact that it largely has been a revolution for bicyclists in the city. In 2017, just 5% of District trips were done primarily by bicycle, according to the regional Transportation Planning Board. By 2019, the proportion had jumped to 15% and by 2022 it had risen to 22%, according to a GGWash-commissioned analysis cited by DDOT. And, even with more bicyclists on the roads, the number of deaths stayed flat at between 1 and 3 per year while major injuries declined from 61 to 32.

For everyone else, however, the roads became more deadly. In 2024, 19 pedestrians died, up from 11 in 2017. Drivers, their passengers, motorcyclists, and even scooter riders all saw jumps in fatality numbers. Leaving out bicyclists, deaths per year nearly doubled, from 26 to 50.

This is not the fault of more bike lanes on the road: The deadliest roads in the District largely lack safe spaces for bicyclists. Nor is it one of “extreme anti-social behavior” and “incredibly high speeds,” as Kershbaum put it in July. On U Street and Florida Avenue, at least, just two of that corridor’s nine deaths were a result of speed. Rather, it’s the fault of DDOT’s abuse of a philosophy with built-in room for compromise. Perhaps a more prescriptive philosophy is called for.

An uncompromising approach

In 1998, the Netherlands adopted Sustainable Safety, a road-design approach that established a strict hierarchy of roads and associated, necessary measures to achieve safety. At its core are three design principles: function, user vulnerability (“biomechanics”), and clarity (“psychologics”).

Function is dictated by the concept of monofunctionality: the road’s primary traffic purpose. It must be classified as one of three types: a through road with no access to property, a distributor road to move people between neighborhoods, or an access road to get to a destination’s front door. Unlike an American stroad, a Dutch road cannot be both a high-speed thoroughfare and a place to live or shop.

This single classification then dictates the design requirements for all the transportation networks — walking, bicycling, driving, and transit — that use the street. The road’s importance within each network determines the quality of its infrastructure. A distributor road that is also a main bicycling route requires a wide and comfortable cycle track. If it hosts a major, frequent bus route, it needs a dedicated busway. If there is not enough room to serve all of these functions with excellence and safety, the road’s functions must be reduced until it is safe and excellent. A design that is merely adequate is a failure.

Second, the road must address vulnerability. An engineer must ask whether pedestrians or bicyclists will be exposed to traffic and, if so, design the speed limit and any physical protections accordingly. On distributor and access roads, the presence of pedestrians and bicyclists is treated as a given, not an option, and so some form of protection is always required.

Finally, a road’s purpose and the hierarchy of users must be clear to everyone. It must be obvious, so all users understand their place, priority, and obligations.

By focusing on function, safety, and clarity, a Sustainable Safety engineer doesn’t seek to merely balance all users, as the American does, but to establish a hierarchy, creating roads that always put the most vulnerable at the top.

And this method works. Over the first decade of the Sustainable Safety program, road deaths per capita in the Netherlands dropped by 38%, from 7.3 per 100,000 people in 1998 to 4.6 in 2008, stabilizing at a 5-year average of around 3.7 since 2014, according to official data, even while maintaining a road network rated as among the best in the world. (Keep in mind that 74% of Dutch households own a car compared with 65% of Washingtonian households as of 2022.)

Bringing sustainable safety home

We can see how this could play out back home on U Street and Florida Avenue. DC has classified both as “primary arterials,” which means they are distributor roads. Bicyclists and pedestrians will be on the road, so they will need physical protection from other traffic. Looking at the transit network, we find that these roads are also major transit routes, serving more than 18,000 bus riders per day, so they will need dedicated bus lanes.

At this point, the road’s physical constraints start to bite. At just 45 feet wide curb to curb, there is not enough space to add protected bicycle lanes and transit lanes and vehicle lanes, so the lowest-priority network — driving — needs to adjust. For much of the corridor, that will mean removing driving lanes entirely: Neither Florida Avenue nor U Street can safely be major transit routes while catering to drivers as primary arterials. The broader driving network will need to adjust to accommodate spillover traffic, and provisions (such as designated delivery hours or disability exceptions) will need to be made so people can still get to their front doors and deliveries can still be made.

Such a major reworking of the road network would be a significant undertaking: New parking structures would need to be built, new flow patterns accommodated for, and a hefty dose of traffic evaporation encouraged. But because safety cannot be compromised, there is simply no choice.

This is a stark contrast to the compromises made in the busway plans guided by Complete Streets. With DDOT’s preferred approach, it has the risky freedom to weigh safety as just one among many priorities and to balance it against the needs of drivers. The agency’s proposal includes fewer driving lanes, but because it is unthinkable to remove these roads’ designations as primary arterials, the safety and capabilities of all three networks (car, bicycle, and transit) will be degraded. If mere adequacy is failure, these streetscapes, trying to be everything to everyone, certainly qualify.

DDOT is waking up to this reality in its own way. “There used to be a real push for complete streets, and that concept was, ‘We need streets to be all things to all users,’” Kershbaum said. “I believe the reality is [that] the roads just don’t have the dimensions and space to be all things to all users. So, we’re trying to focus on networks.”

“That means that we’re not going to have bike lanes on every road,” she added.

Of course, one should assume there will be car lanes, however shoehorned, on every road.

DC’s walking, bicycling, transit, and driving networks malfunction because they overlap and interfere with one another, with delay and death being the inevitable outcomes. DDOT’s “sweet spot” engineers new failures on Florida Avenue and U Street, sacrifices safety for aesthetics on Arizona Avenue, and wants the National Park Service to put commuter convenience over commuter safety on Rock Creek Parkway. Everyone, even drivers and their passengers, lose.

Adopting Complete Streets was supposed to be the lens that focused DDOT’s energy into making DC’s roads safer. Instead, it has been warped, transforming safety into just another competing priority — a competition it often loses. In reality, DDOT’s “laser focus” is fragmented and diffuse.

As it continues to compromise safety in the name of its myopic notion of “completeness,” the District faces a choice not between bike lanes or bus lanes but rather between the ongoing percussion of death or an actual prioritization of safety that is clear-eyed and purposeful. No compromises.

Correction: A previous version of this post attributed the jump in bicycling to 15% in 2019 and 22% in 2022 to a DDOT study, instead of a GGWash-commisisoned analysis cited by DDOT. The post has been corrected.

Top image: U Street NW can’t safely be a major transit route and a car-first road. But DDOT is allowed to weigh safety as just one of many priorities in its “Complete Streets” approach. Image by Mike Maguire licensed under Creative Commons.

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