I am deeply moved each time I read stories that draw from Jewish culture and history. How is it possible that the importance of representation is non-obvious to anyone?

In fact, I reject that. It is obvious to everyone. Those that fight representation know what they’re doing.

Data is Overrated is about transit, but I think the same can be applied to education.

Our challenges don’t require ever more specific and granular data. The solutions are about solving structural challenges, not marginal, high precision optimization for individuals.

Why did Jesse have to call me out like this ¹ on a week when I’m already struggling with whether/how I need to actually do the whole branding thing to be more professionally satisfied?

Focusing on closing the resource gap in education is important as a mechanism to close the outcomes gap. Possibly the greatest flaw of the outcomes focused accountability regime of the last 20+ years was trying to eliminate the idea that changing inputs changes outcomes.

Of course outcomes matter! Of course the goal of equitable resources in education is to build systems that result in equitable outcomes! But the feedback loop has not been, “Our system provides inequitable resources, then provides inequitable services, and the result is inequitable outcomes.”

Instead, the feedback loop has been “Our system produces inequitable outcomes, you should change how you provide inequitable or ineffective or inefficient services.”

I am the first person to tell you schools and districts have room to operate better– it’s what I spend my professional career on! But there are severe limits when many districts are starved of the necessary supports.

We know how poverty makes it significantly harder for individuals to always make the “best” decisions that will lead to the greatest chance of escaping poverty. We talk far too little about how impoverished institutions and organizations face those same challenges. And that kind of institutional capacity rot is stacked on top of simply having too little to succeed.

My morning

Dinner. A lot of food for just under 700 calories (not shown, the rest of that pita in my hand that I ate already).

13 days until vacation. It’s been years since I’ve needed one as badly as I do right now.

There’s Nothing Especially Democratic about Local Control of Land Use is so good. A near perfect combination of things I’m academically interested in— federalism, Tiebout sorting, democratic authority— to explain why the NIMBY legal regime is bullshit.

Yeah, yeah, the patriarchy hurts men too, but have you spoken with women?

Men should be projected into the sun.

Apparently holidays are some kind of scarce resource, and we can’t have two summer holidays without the second one… erasing the first, still very real holiday? I’m struggling here.

My new favorite coffee spot closes at 4pm, and it’s really messing with my desired way to live my life.

At least they survived long enough to be the neighborhood third space I needed.

Not sure I should admit this, but here goes nothing:

I’ve never been to a Waffle House.

I didn’t eat so well for dinner last night so… this should be a fun hour at the gym.

Two patterns that I’m looking to read more about are user-customizable approval flow (think rules-based chain of responsibility/business process docs, but not bad) and, closely related, event/action/CQRS data structures to support change request-approval/rejection. Send me links!

My mental health feels like it’s slowly restoring as I sit in a coffee shop, listening to coffee shop music and coffee shop sounds, doing some focus work in the afternoon as I lost steam at my desk at home.

I thought I might try to be a Product Thought Leader ™, but flopped. Turns out, it’s hard to write about when you should not build a feature without sharing lots of specific details that I’m not able to.

Maybe this is why I read almost nothing about product management.

Call it authoritarianism.

We are suffering from the same rot that has brought down democracy in other countries: a party that has decided it no longer wants to play by the rules and that would instead prefer to rule as authoritarians rather than share power with its opponents.

Step 1: Tell people what you’re feeling and talk about it rather than make assumptions about their feelings or beliefs.

Ok got that one. ✅

Step 2: Believe what they tell you instead of the story you tell yourself.

Miles to go before I sleep.

The more I learn, the more I become convinced that the wealth tax is a much worse idea than estate taxes.

I kind of think that Day One + Tumblr make the perfect amateur writing platform. Day One is an amazing experience for personal journaling, and if you choose to publish something, Tumblr offers a great out of the box experience for posting publicly on the web.

I spent a significant portion of my day talking about my work/professional fears and insecurities, including with a paid professional.

Just putting that out there in case anyone thinks I’ve got all my shit together or that they’re the only one struggling.

Demonizing the bureaucracy is a great way to destroy state capacity, which is a great way to destroy the state itself.

One thing too stupid to believe.

Oh wow, Apple added a TabularData framework. This looks pretty great!

Look, I don’t think it’s too much to ask that members of Congress don’t need to visit the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum to avoid making ridiculous comparisons. “Turns out the Holocaust was bad,” is not a thing you should have to learn as a grown ass, powerful adult.