President Donald Trump shared a photo of the DOGE staffer after the alleged attack and threatened to “federalize” Washington, DC. WIRED obtained the police report.
I am amazed that they managed to get a photo with DC's ubiquitous American Pest exterminator van in the background in such a way that, unless you're from DC, you just see the word "American" and don't notice it's the rat guys.
Thomas Cotter asks why people think “consistency” is an important moral value. After all, he says, the Nazis and Soviets were “consistent” with their evil beliefs. I’m not so sure of his examples - the Soviets massacred workers striking for better conditions, and the Nazis were so bad at race science that they banned IQ research after Jews outscored Aryans - but I’m sure if he looked harder he could find some evil person who was superficially consistent with themselves.
Hen Mazzig on Twitter is suspicious that lots of people oppose the massacres in Gaza without having objected equally strenuously to various other things. Again, he’s bad at examples - most of the things he names are less bad than the massacres in Gaza - but I’m sure if he looked harder he could find some thing which was worse than Gaza and which not quite as many people had protested. Therefore, people who object to the massacres in Gaza must be motivated by anti-Semitism.
An r/TrueUnpopularOpinion poster argues that No One Actually Cares About Gaza; Your Anger Is Performative. They say that (almost) nobody can actually sustain strong emotions about the deaths of some hard-to-pin-down number of people they don’t know, and so probably people who claim to care are virtue-signaling or luxury-believing or one of those things.
Since 2/3 of these are about Gaza, we’ll start there. And since there’s so much virtue-signaling and luxury-believing going around these days, I assure you that what I am about to share is my absolute most honest and deepest opinion, the one I hold in my heart of hearts.
A few months ago, I read an article by an aid worker in Gaza recounting the horrors he’d seen. Among a long litany, one stood out. A little kid came into the hospital with a backpack. The doctors told him he had to put it down so they could treat him, and he refused. The doctors insisted. The kid fought back. Finally someone opened the bag. It was some body part fragments from the kid’s dead brother. He couldn’t bear to leave him, so he carried them everywhere he went.
I am a Real Man and therefore do not cry. But I confess to getting a little misty at this story, and I know exactly why. When my 1.5-year-old son wakes up early, the first words out of his mouth when I extract him from his crib are “Yaya? Yaya?” which is how he says his sister Lyra’s name. No matter how I distract him, he’ll keep saying “Yaya? Yaya?” and pointing at the door to her room until she wakes up, at which point he’ll get a big smile and run over to her. It’s impossible for me to read this story without imagining her body parts in the backpack and him saying “Yaya? Yaya?” in an increasingly distressed voice, over and over again, until the doctors drag him away.
So my absolute most honest and deepest opinion on the war in Gaza, the one I hold in my heart of hearts, is: I would kill everyone in the entire region, on both sides, if it would give that kid his brother back.
Probably this is why God doesn’t connect people’s heart-of-hearts directly to their motor cortex. Instead, He wisely intermediates other brain regions with names like “anterior cingulate gyrus” and “dorsolateral prefrontal area”, the places where rationality happens. When I use my anterior cingulate gyrus and dorsolateral prefrontal area, I have thoughts like these:
Probably there are many other people in that region who have stories which are objectively just as sad as that boy’s, but not precisely targeted to my personal heart-strings.
Probably there are many other people in that region who have stories which would tug on my heart-strings just as much if I knew about them, but nobody has written articles about them. Or someone did, but I didn’t read them.
Even if I could kill everyone in the region to get that kid his brother back (how? some kind of deal with the Devil?) probably some of those people who I killed would have brothers, and some of those people would meet aid workers who would write sad articles, and then I’d be sad about them.
If my country were being bombed, and my kids were being killed, and someone in another country had the capacity to affect the situation - even in the tiniest of ways - I would want that person doing the most sophisticated utility-maximization possible, not making semi-random bad decisions based on who got sympathetic articles written about them or tugged at their heart-strings the most.
If I were to get all Kantian about it, I would say it feels beneath my dignity as a rational being to let my opinion on important world affairs be determined by which journalist managed to get the most horrifying story in front of my eyeballs today - and maybe pivot to the opposite side tomorrow when someone else catches my attention.
Instead I try to have general principles. It’s bad to kill people. It’s bad to make people suffer. Then I add epicycle upon epicycle - is there a principle that countries which suffer terrorist attacks have the right to defend themselves? If no, then kids might lose their siblings in terrorist attacks that haven’t been disincentivized; if yes, that “defense” might produce “collateral damage”. Is there a principle that people who have had their land stolen can launch terrorist attacks to get it back? If yes, those terrorist attacks might kill kids’ siblings; if no, land-stealing might be so costless that rights become meaningless and the world devolves into constant colonial conflict, which seems like the sort of thing where lots of siblings might die. I won’t mention where I stand on these questions - partly because I don’t want to start WWIII in the comments, partly because I’m not that sure myself - but I want to defend considering them. But at the end of considering them, I should treat whatever answer I get not as an alternative to doing something about my grief at the few stories that really catch my attention, but as an apotheosis of that grief - a stronger, more rigorous version of that grief, better by its own values and more capable of achieving its own goals.
I already know how some of you are going to respond. You’ll say that caring about a kid in Gaza because they passingly resemble my own kids is a misfire, a chance coincidence of emotional circuits. I should simply care about my own kids directly. But even caring about my own kids is a shaky alliance between my heart of hearts and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. There are moments when I catch my kids smiling at me, and I know in my heart of hearts that I love them more than life itself and would do anything for them. There are also moments - usually when my son is throwing a tantrum - where I want to strangle him. Being a good parent involves this same process of deciding that a rational being shouldn’t be whirled back and forth by random emotions all the time - loving his kids one moment and strangling them the next. It’s transmuting transitory emotions into trustworthy principles like “I love my children all the time and want the best for them”. I could not love you so, my dear, loved I not Honor more.
(also, real evolution fans don’t even love their own children - they donate to sperm banks and let other people invest resources in raising them. All human values disappear if you zoom out too far or zoom in too far - so what? So don’t do that.)
So here is my response to all three of the people I said I owed responses to.
To Thomas: consistency matters because it’s how morality forms in the first place. Everybody has some moral impulses. Those become principles only under the influence of a desire for consistency and for the dignity of a rational being. Hitler was a vegetarian, so he must have had some aversion to cruelty. That plus a dollar will buy you a soda a desire for consistency can prevent you from being history’s greatest villain.
To Hen: absent a level of perfect angelic rationality that no one has, we will never complete the process of generalization. Part of us will remain undignified slaves to whatever we hear heart-wrenching media stories about, whatever reminds us of people we know, and whatever sparks enough controversy to keep our attention. I can be sad about 9-11 even if I forgot to condemn a terrorist attack in Ougadogou two weeks earlier; I can be sad about the Holocaust even if I've never cried equally hard reading a book about the Taiping Rebellion, I can see my own kids in Columbine victims even if I have failed to see them in children affected by hookworm in Uganda. I’m not even sure I want to become a perfectly rational angelic being who has generalized every principle to the maximum extent - it sounds scarily inhuman. But to the extent that I do generalize, I would like to at least consider generalizing in the direction of more empathy (this one kid tugs at my heart - maybe I should also care about the war in Sudan!) rather than always in the direction of callousness (I didn’t notice the war in Sudan when it was happening - perhaps I’m not allowed to care about this kid either).
To the anonymous Redditor: no, I can’t actually feel emotions about everyone in Gaza, and I’m not sure anyone else can either. This doesn’t mean concern must be virtue signaling or luxury beliefs. It just means that it requires principle rather than raw emotion. One death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic. But if you’re interested in having the dignity of a rational animal (a perfectly acceptable hobby! no worse than trying to get good at Fortnite or whatever!) then eventually you notice that a million is made out of a million ones and try to act accordingly.
We issued this press release today that outlines the results of a poll of DC residents we commissioned as the DC Council heads toward an August 1 vote on the Commanders stadium deal. We’re publishing it here on the blog, as well, to share the findings directly with our readers.
60% of DC residents want the DC Council to continue negotiations with the Commanders to strike a better deal for District taxpayers, even if it risks the deal altogether, or to explore other options for the RFK site, according to a new poll commissioned by Greater Greater Washington and conducted by Tavern Research from July 27-29, 2025. Just 26% want the Council to approve the proposed deal as-is, with no amendments or negotiations.
This majority finding holds across demographic lines and all eight wards, including 58% of Ward 7 residents. Poll results indicate public support for the Council’s deal is soft, as it fell from 56% to just 47% after residents were asked about the specifics, with large majorities supporting amendments.
When asked about provisions of the DC Council’s current deal with the Commanders, as well as possible amendments to that deal:
65% of poll respondents oppose exempting the Commanders from paying property taxes for 30 years.
62% oppose exempting the Commanders from paying sales taxes on the sale of personal seat licenses, which give owners the right to buy tickets for a certain seat at any public stadium event.
54% oppose giving the Commanders exclusive rights to develop housing and retail around a football stadium at RFK for $1 per year.
63% believe the District should instead hold a competitive bidding process to assign development rights to the land around a football stadium.
61% believe the DC Council should eliminate some stadium parking spots to pay for a new Metrorail station.
The DC Council has the authority to make the amendments above. A majority of residents support the Council taking the time to make changes to its plans for the site:
41% of poll respondents believe the council should continue negotiations with the Commanders to strike a better deal for District taxpayers, even if doing so takes longer and risks the deal not happening at all.
19% believe the council should explore other options for the RFK site, even if doing so takes longer.
26% believe the council should approve its proposed deal as-is, with no amendments or negotiations.
Decades’ worth of peer-reviewed research consistently finds that publicly funded football stadiums do not generate economic returns. Analysis from the DC Council Budget Office, released on July 24, 2025, confirms that the proposed deal with the Commanders is no exception. The deal would cost taxpayers $4.4 billion in subsidies, and would generate $2.2 billion less in tax revenue than an alternative economic development scenario involving no stadium. A tax abatement financial analysis from the District’s Office of the Chief Financial Officer, also released on July 24, describes the tax abatements as “not financially necessary for the Team.”
“The DC Council’s deal with the Commanders is particularly bad for the public. This poll confirms that voters expect more from their elected officials and aren’t concerned about an arbitrary timeline,” said Chelsea Allinger, executive director of Greater Greater Washington. “Councilmembers who ignore their own economic analysis at least have an obligation to listen to DC voters and push through strong amendments to rein in tax and real estate giveaways, and eliminate parking to pay for a Metro station, to improve this terrible deal.”
Tavern Research polled 838 DC residents from July 27-29, 2025, on the DC Council’s deal with the Commanders introduced by Council Chair Phil Mendelson on July 24, 2025. Poll respondents were fielded over web panels. The margin of error for findings is 4.1%.
Mendelson has scheduled the first vote on his proposed deal for this Friday, August 1, 2025, only eight days after he announced it. Mendelson’s deal is a better offering than the mayor’s, but not by much. Councilmembers should lean on their government’s own findings and vote no on Friday.
If every other city jumped off an economic cliff, would you, too?
The Office of the Chief Financial Officer’s tax abatement financial analysis (TAFA), a process required by law if the District is offering a tax abatement to a private entity, was the first out the gate on Thursday, July 24.
The CFO quantified the value of all the subsidies in Bowser’s initial proposed deal with the Commanders at $1.48 billion over the 30-year span of the lease, including exemptions on property taxes, deed recordation taxes, sales taxes on personal seat licenses, and sales taxes on parking. The TAFA concludes that such abatements “are not financially necessary for the Team,” simply that they are “customary” economic incentives to lure teams to relocate.
Tax breaks for stadiums are not investments. They’re bribes that NFL teams demand from cities, under explicit or implicit threat of playing elsewhere, and elected officials have gotten used to giving in.
The ghost of neighborhood future
The second study, also released on the 24th, shows why the District should firmly decline to pay such bribes. In it, the council budget office calculates the value of taxes on tickets, concessions, and merchandise redirected to a team-controlled “reinvestment fund”; foregone ground rent as a result of the mayor’s declination to charge the team for occupying public land; and construction bonds for which the District would be responsible (including interest). The budget office’s grand total is $4.4 billion dollars in subsidies.
Image by DC Council Budget Office via Councilmember Charles Allen.
That’s still probably only half the true cost. As Nick and Pat Garofalo wrote in June to explain the sham report Bowser and the team bandied about to justify their proposed deal, any economic analysis is incomplete if you don’t compare your treatment condition (in this case, a proposal for a football stadium, tons of parking, and a little bit of mixed-use development) with the counterfactual, or what we would do instead (in this case, a neighborhood). Using that analysis, the Council Office on Budget revealed the true cost is an additional $2.2 billion over 30 years.
And that’s the best-case scenario.
The budget office’s report gives the with-a-stadium scenario outsized credit for the incredulous claim it will accelerate neighborhood development, projecting that everything else—i.e., the mixed-use stuff—will deliver six years faster than the no-stadium scenario. But even that head start isn’t enough to save the District money. While the with-a-stadium scenario delivers some more tax revenue in the early years, the no-stadium scenario’s revenue ultimately wins out. By the end of the 30-year window, the no-stadium scenario delivers $32 billion dollars in cumulative tax revenue against the stadium’s $26.7 billion. The budget office says that, in present-day value, this is $10.2 billion versus $8 billion, a difference of $2.2 billion.
The Council’s Office of Budget’s analysis shows that a stadium costs the District billions of dollars in a 30-year window. Image by DC Council Office of Budget.
That is a ridiculous price to pay to say that a team plays within your jurisdictional borders. A fiscally responsible DC Council would say, “Thanks, but no thanks,” to the Commanders and encourage the team to build its new stadium just ten minutes further away in Landover.
Lipstick on a pigskin
It’s unclear if the council will, indeed, be fiscally responsible. The same day the two reports were released, DC Council Chair Phil Mendelson announced he had reached his own deal with the Commanders, amending the terms of the mayor’s initial proposal to squeeze out some savings.
In an apparent exchange for Mendelson hastening a council vote, the team agreed to relinquish the redirected concessions taxes back to the District’s general fund, forgo the sales tax exemption on parking, and let the District keep the revenue collected—on non-event days, that is—from the parking garages that the city will build and own. Mendelson also announced that excess tax dollars from a “sports facility fee” charged on businesses would be directed to a transportation fund; this is not money that was previously pledged to the team, so the budget office did not identify it as “new-to-DC money” in its analysis.
All told, the council budget office projects that Mendelson’s changes would net the District $677 million dollars more than the mayor’s original proposal.
The Council Office of Budget outlined the changes between Mendelson’s proposed deal and Bowser’s. The former would result in a net gain to the District of $677 million in tax revenue, over the latter. Image by DC Council Budget Office.
The District is staring down a $6.6 billion loss if it accommodates a football stadium at RFK. So, while $677 million in savings is nothing to sneer at, of course, it’s not much to boast about, either—it’s only a 10% improvement on the mayor’s suggested giveaway to the Commanders.
The Chair’s deal improves upon the Mayor’s on the margins, but does not alter the fundamental losses the District would suffer from a stadium. Image by Nick Sementelli.
It’s not much of a concession by the team, either. The Commanders will still get $4 billion worth of subsidies from the District if Mendelson’s colleagues support his proposed deal. That’s on top of the immense profit the team will earn from the new stadium, plus additional development rights. It’s no wonder the Commanders want the council to let them ram this through. They’re likely to get less if councilmembers take time to look under the hood.
The council successfully resisted the mayor’s stadium subsidy speed-run, delaying its consideration of her deal past July 15, 2025, the date by which Bowser insisted that the legislative branch approve it. That pause was the bare minimum we should expect for such a potentially high cost to taxpayers, and resulted in the useful analyses we’ve reviewed here.
A first vote on August 1, and a second and final vote on September 17, isn’t a timeline. It’s a trap. Councilmembers shouldn’t get caught in it, and should vote no on Friday.
Top image: Findings in reports from the Office of the Chief Financial Officer and the DC Council’s budget office do not portend a fantastic financial outlook for a football stadium at RFK. Image by Emma K Alexandra licensed under Creative Commons.
In 2012 fewer than 10% of the egg-laying hens in the US were cage-free. Instead the vast majority were raised in enclosures that longtime animal welfare campaigner Josh Balk describes as “the size of a home microwave.” By then, Balk had been pushing his cage-free agenda for the better part of a decade, starting as a recent graduate of George Washington University working with students on their successful petition to remove eggs from caged birds from a campus market in 2005. Less than two years later, more than 100 college and university dining systems had joined the cage-free movement, despite a then-40% price premium over regular eggs...
But the real turning point came in 2015. That year packaged-food companies including General Mills and Nestlé, as well as restaurant giants Cheesecake Factory, Starbucks, Subway and others, announced their own plans to achieve 100% cage-free egg status... The Golden Arches then beat its own timeline, announcing in February 2024 that it was sourcing all its eggs from hens that could spread their wings and walk around outside the confines of teeny-tiny metal cages...
California passed Proposition 2 in 2008 in a landslide—with 63.5% of voters choosing to require that all egg-laying hens in the state, as well as pregnant pigs and veal calves, be housed in quarters that let them stand up, fully stretch limbs, lie down and turn around. Nine other states, including Arizona, Massachusetts and Michigan, have since passed similar measures. The year after Prop 2 passed, the California legislature mandated that as of 2015 all eggs sold in the state—the most populous in the country—would meet the Prop 2 standards...
“There is a lot of talk about cage-free, but are people actually buying them?” he asked. Data from NielsenIQ offers a clear answer: yes. At US retailers, unit sales of eggs labeled “cage-free” were up about 16% for the 52 weeks ended on June 28. Pasture-raised eggs, a category that goes even further than cage-free, were up even more, at 25%. Unit sales of eggs overall were up a mere 1.6% in the same period...
Now the Department of Justice is stepping in with a lawsuit against the state of California that it says will protect residents from the “real harm” caused by its “rogue” cage-free egg commitments and the ensuing higher prices, as USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins put it in a press release. “Thankfully, President Trump is standing up against this overreach,” she said... Although the suit blames cage-free laws for higher prices in the state, there’s widespread agreement within the industry that price spikes have been a direct result of bird flu, not cage-free eggs...
Something I need to be reminded of often. Yes, I’m very lazy and also have executive problems up the wazoo (the difference? laziness is fun), but the cultural expectation of being productive every waking moment isn’t healthy either. And the business of feeding ourselves is especially fraught these days.
This is the same topic and screenshot that gave some of my chudliest chud haters such a meltdown after I posted it myself once, they raged at me for days and one by one dropped off of Tumblr forever. This subject kills idiots.
based on what we’ve found in Pompei the majority of roman citizens in the city got their food from fast food places like this
from a cultural perspective a roman’s typical daily schedual after work would look no different to a modern day worker commuting home and swinging by a fast food joint for chinese, kebab, or a pizza on the way as they unwound before bed
Human life remains the same down through the ages just as much as it changes
Thai people do a whole lot with a single, tabletop gas burner. A lot of cooking also is done outside the house, so a westerner looking for a “kitchen” may be confused. High-end homes and condos will even have two kitchens. One will be integrated with the living space and only for show. The real kitchen will be in a back room thats fully enclosed.
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