yermin
npub1tjne...fszd
An adopted son of God (Galatians 4:6)
100 renters competing for 35 affordable and available homes
Strip away the politics and the housing shortage reduces to arithmetic.
*This map shows the same ratio across the country: far fewer affordable homes than renters who need them.*
The U.S. currently has **100 extremely low-income renter households competing for just 35 affordable and available rental homes.**
🏠🏠🏠🏠🏠🏠🏠🏠🏠🏠
🏠🏠🏠🏠🏠🏠🏠🏠🏠🏠
🏠🏠🏠🏠🏠🏠🏠🏠🏠🏠
🏠🏠🏠🏠🏠👤👤👤👤👤
👤👤👤👤👤👤👤👤👤👤
👤👤👤👤👤👤👤👤👤👤
👤👤👤👤👤👤👤👤👤👤
👤👤👤👤👤👤👤👤👤👤
👤👤👤👤👤👤👤👤👤👤
👤👤👤👤👤👤👤👤👤👤
🏠 = Affordable and available home
👤 = Extremely low-income renter without one
That leaves **65 households forced into units priced above what they can afford.**
I’m not claiming why the shortage exists.
I’m pointing out **what happens once the ratio breaks this badly.**
One structural constraint matters:
**Extremely low-income renters simply cannot pay the rents required to produce new housing in the private market.**
So the market underproduces units at that price level.
**When renter households exceed affordable and available supply,
competition spills upward into higher-priced units.**
That cascade produces:
- severe rent burdens
- overcrowding
- displacement
Nationally the shortage is about **7.2 million affordable and available rental homes** for extremely low-income renters.
No intent required — this is structural.
**When the number of people who need housing exceeds the number of affordable units by this margin, prices stop being the key variable.**
Availability becomes the constraint.
If the units don’t exist, affordability cannot emerge.
National Low Income Housing Coalition
The GAP
The U.S. has a shortage of more than 7.2 million rental homes affordable and available to extremely low-income renter households. Find out more. #T...
Stacker News
100 renters competing for 35 affordable and available homes \ stacker news
Strip away the politics and the housing shortage reduces to arithmetic. This map shows the same ratio across the country: far fewer affordable home...
Alito: “nowhere else to turn.” Dissent: they didn’t even ask NY’s top court.
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/25a914_1p24.pdf
A New York judge ordered a congressional district redraw to improve minority voting power. The Supreme Court just **froze that order early**, before New York’s appeals fully played out. The real fight here isn’t just race or maps. It’s **whether the challengers actually ran out of options before going to SCOTUS.**
⸻
**MAJORITY SIDE (Alito concurring in the stay)**
The trial court ordered a new district to ensure “minority voters” can elect their candidate of choice.
— **ALITO (majority-side)**
That is unadorned racial discrimination…
— **ALITO (majority-side)**
With nowhere else to turn, the applicants asked us to issue a stay…
— **ALITO (majority-side)**
⸻
**DISSENT (Sotomayor, joined by Kagan + Jackson)**
“Rules for thee, but not for me.”
— **SOTOMAYOR (dissent)**
[An] unprecedented step… without giving the State’s highest court a chance to act.
— **SOTOMAYOR (dissent)**
Defendants have neither sought leave… nor asked for a stay from the New York Court of Appeals, an obvious place “to turn”…
— **SOTOMAYOR (dissent)**
⸻
**Alito says “nowhere else to turn.” The dissent points to the place they didn’t turn, New York’s highest court. That’s not a nuance. That’s two different versions of what actually happened.**
Stacker News
Alito: “nowhere else to turn.” Dissent: they didn’t even ask NY’s top court. \ stacker news
A New York judge ordered a congressional district redraw to improve minority voting power. The Supreme Court just froze that order early, before Ne...
Grocery inflation meets reality: nobody wants liver.
>“Most of the cheap cuts of meat are very inexpensive…If you buy a *Porterhouse steak* or a strip steak, it is gonna set you back…
You can buy **liver** or the cheaper cuts… that are very, very affordable.”
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The funny part is he’s not wrong on price.
The real reason people aren’t “solving” grocery inflation with liver is simpler:
**Most people don’t want to serve liver for dinner.**
The Independent
RFK Jr. mocked after suggesting Americans eat liver over beef to save on groceries
‘You can buy liver or the cheaper cuts of steak that are very, very affordable,’ the Health and Human Services secretary said at a MAHA event
Stacker News
Grocery inflation meets reality: nobody wants liver. \ stacker news
“Most of the cheap cuts of meat are very inexpensive…If you buy a Porterhouse steak or a strip steak, it is gonna set you back… You can buy l...
Grocery inflation meets reality: nobody wants liver.
>“Most of the cheap cuts of meat are very inexpensive…If you buy a *Porterhouse steak* or a strip steak, it is gonna set you back…
You can buy **liver** or the cheaper cuts… that are very, very affordable.”
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The funny part is he’s not wrong on price.
The real reason people aren’t “solving” grocery inflation with liver is simpler:
**Most people don’t want to serve liver for dinner.**
The Independent
RFK Jr. mocked after suggesting Americans eat liver over beef to save on groceries
‘You can buy liver or the cheaper cuts of steak that are very, very affordable,’ the Health and Human Services secretary said at a MAHA event
Stacker News
Grocery inflation meets reality: nobody wants liver. \ stacker news
“Most of the cheap cuts of meat are very inexpensive…If you buy a Porterhouse steak or a strip steak, it is gonna set you back… You can buy l...
Americans are voting with their feet
https://www.wsj.com/us-news/americans-leaving-the-us-migration-a5795bfa
>“Last year the U.S. experienced something that hasn’t definitively occurred since the Great Depression: more people moved out than moved in.”
>“America’s own citizens are leaving in record numbers, replanting themselves and their families in lands they find more affordable and safe.”
>“The new American dream, for some of its citizens, is to no longer live there.”
>“In nearly all of the European Union’s 27 member states, the number of Americans arriving to live and work is at a record and rising.”
>“The total living in Portugal has jumped more than 500% since the Covid pandemic.”
>“More than 100,000 young students are enrolled abroad for a more affordable university degree.”
>“You don’t face the prospect of your 5-year-old going into a kindergarten and doing an active shooter drill.”
>“Americans move abroad and find they like life better abroad. They like the social democratic policies.”
Stacker News
Americans are voting with their feet \ stacker news
“Last year the U.S. experienced something that hasn’t definitively occurred since the Great Depression: more people moved out than moved in.”...
When ‘babies of slaves’ is a talking point, you’re watching a rights rewrite
It’s easy to treat this like a tantrum about the Court.
But the signal is simpler: this is a **power expansion being described in real time.**
>“The Supreme Court… gave me… far more powers and strength than I had prior…”
>“I can use Licenses to do absolutely ‘terrible’ things…”
That’s not commentary. That’s a mechanism:
**Ruling → usable authority expands → discretion increases → outcomes get more coercive with “legal certainty.”**
He’s not arguing for tighter limits. He’s identifying alternative pathways. Tools that remain available and can be used more aggressively.
Then comes the second tell:
>“babies of slaves”
That’s not historical framing. It’s a **scope reduction**, turning a constitutional guarantee into a narrow, negotiable exception.
Once a guarantee becomes “only for X,” exclusion becomes administratively easy.
**Expand authority without tightening constraints, and discretion fills the gap.**
This doesn’t require bad intent. It's how systems behave under these conditions.
What evidence would distinguish a real expansion of power from rhetoric here?
Trump's Truth
Donald J. Trump: "The supreme court (will be using lower case letters for a while based on a c...
The supreme court (will be using lower case letters for a while based on ...
Stacker News
When ‘babies of slaves’ is a talking point, you’re watching a rights rewrite \ stacker news
It’s easy to treat this like a tantrum about the Court. But the signal is simpler: this is a power expansion being described in real time. “The...
Trump admin will collect social media handles from legal immigrants and citizens
It is easy to treat this like a niche “immigration paperwork” story, or just another privacy gripe. But the real shift is procedural: **USCIS is turning online identity into a screening input.**
I’m not claiming this instantly becomes a First Amendment showdown. I’m claiming it **widens discretionary power** by making speech, association, and networks part of the adjudication file.
The administration approved a plan requiring people applying to change immigration status (work/travel authorization, green cards, citizenship) to submit every social media handle they’ve used over the past five years. In some cases, they must also list handles for close family members, including people who are in the U.S. legally and even U.S. citizens.
That matters because once the government has a durable index of your online presence, the “standard” it applies becomes the real policy. And the standards being invoked here are vague: screening for things like “hostile attitudes” or “anti-Americanism” without clear definitions. When categories are that fuzzy, the effective rule is set by **case-by-case interpretation**, exercised at scale across millions of applications.
The predictable result isn’t cleaner vetting. It’s a climate where people self-censor because they can’t know what will be read as disqualifying, and where outcomes vary based on who is holding the file.
What evidence would convince you this improves screening accuracy rather than just expanding enforcement latitude through discretion?
Brennan Center for Justice
Trump Administration Will Collect Social Media Handles from Legal Immigrants and U.S. Citizens
The new requirement poses serious threats to free speech and privacy rights.
Stacker News
Trump admin will collect social media handles from legal immigrants and citizens \ stacker news
It is easy to treat this like a niche “immigration paperwork” story, or just another privacy gripe. But the real shift is procedural: USCIS is ...
Before Zoom: Marian Croak built internet calling (200+ patents)
When people say “Zoom changed communication,” they’re usually pointing at the app layer.
The deeper shift happened earlier: voice moving from circuit-switched phone lines to internet packets.
According to the U.S. Patent Office, Marian Rogers Croak pioneered Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technologies and holds **more than 200 patents**. That work helped make large-scale, reliable internet calling practical.
**In 2022, she was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame for pioneering VoIP.**
Modern platforms like Zoom Video Communications run on that foundation: voice converted to data, routed across IP networks, reconstructed in real time.
She didn’t build Zoom.
She helped build the infrastructure that made Zoom possible.
Sometimes the most consequential innovation isn’t the interface. It's the plumbing.
United States Patent and Trademark Office
Positively connected
Marian Croak is a pioneer in Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and the inventor of text-to-donate technology.
Stacker News
Before Zoom: Marian Croak built internet calling (200+ patents) \ stacker news
When people say “Zoom changed communication,” they’re usually pointing at the app layer. The deeper shift happened earlier: voice moving from...
NPS Likely Acted Unlawfully Removing Slavery Exhibits from President's House
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.paed.648842/gov.uscourts.paed.648842.53.0.pdf
They didn't "update" an exhibit. **They removed the subject.**
*This memo opinion says the National Park Service likely acted unlawfully when it removed slavery-related materials from the President's House site at Independence National Historical Park without the City's required consultation/mutual agreement, and that the City is likely to succeed on the merits at the preliminary-injunction stage.*
**Key points from the opinion itself:**
• The opinion states that on Jan. 22, 2026, NPS removed **34 educational panels** and deactivated related videos at the President's House exhibit that referenced slavery and the people Washington enslaved.
• The City sued under the APA; the court finds the City has standing tied to Congress-authorized cooperative agreements and the City's role/funding in the exhibit.
• The court treats the removals as **final agency action** reviewable under the APA (not just "day-to-day operations").
• On the preliminary record, the court concludes the City is likely to show the removals were *arbitrary and capricious* because they disregarded governing constraints (including mutual-assent requirements and the site's agreed interpretive framework).
**Question:** What would the administrative record need to show for this kind of exhibit removal to be lawful under the APA?
Stacker News
NPS Likely Acted Unlawfully Removing Slavery Exhibits from President's House \ stacker news
They didn't "update" an exhibit. They removed the subject. This memo opinion says the National Park Service likely acted unlawfully when it removed...
He Defined "White Culture" by Contrasting It With Black Church Music
If you want the cleanest signal from Jeremy Carl's confirmation hearing, **don't start with tweets.**
**Start with this exchange.**
Pressed to define "white culture," Carl didn't cite constitutional principles, legal traditions, or philosophical heritage.
He cited **church aesthetics**, saying *"the white church is very different than the Black church"* and that *"music could be different."*
That's not policy analysis. **That's racialized worship framing.**
When Sen. Murphy followed up, *"So our ability to access white churches or white music is being erased?"*, the claim visibly collapsed. No statute. No federal action. No measurable deprivation. **Just grievance language.**
This matters because **the job in question isn't a podcast seat.** It's Assistant Secretary for International Organizations. The portfolio that interfaces with the UN system and multilateral institutions.
If your definition of cultural harm centers on contrasting "white church" and "Black church" music styles, that's not just rhetoric. **It's worldview.**
And worldview is exactly what confirmation hearings are meant to test.
Carl's [nomination has faced GOP opposition](https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-nomination-senior-diplomatic-post-doubt-over-insensitive-remarks-2026-02-12/) over his remarks, with the [official nomination](https://www.congress.gov/nomination/119th-congress/730/13/) still pending Senate action.
Murphy Grills Unqualified Trump Nominee On His White Nationalist Views | U.S. Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut
WASHINGTON—U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Europe and Regional Security,...
Stacker News
He Defined "White Culture" by Contrasting It With Black Church Music \ stacker news
If you want the cleanest signal from Jeremy Carl's confirmation hearing, don't start with tweets. Start with this exchange. Pressed to define "whit...
DOJ Slide Lists Trump Allegation: FBI 302 Confirms Minor-Victim Interview
Most arguments about the Epstein files focus on spectacle. **The real signal is institutional handling.**
I'm not claiming the DOJ proved a crime by a sitting president. **I'm claiming the FBI formally interviewed a minor-aged Epstein victim who accused Trump of assault, and the allegation was included in an internal DOJ investigative presentation.**
That's a bureaucratic decision, not a tweet.
Here's the machinery:
• A hotline tip identified a South Carolina victim alleging abuse at ages 13–15
• **FBI agents conducted a July 24, 2019 interview memorialized in an FD-302**
• DOJ later compiled a 21-page internal slideshow listing prominent-name allegations
• **The Trump allegation appears on that slide deck alongside other vetted claims**
The slide quotes the victim stating Epstein introduced her to Trump, who allegedly forced her head down and struck her when she resisted. **The victim would have been approximately 13–15 at the time.** A separate entry references a Mar-a-Lago encounter involving a 14-year-old, sourced to a Maxwell trial witness.
Yes, allegations are not convictions. That's a courtroom standard. **The narrower question is institutional: *why was this allegation preserved, briefed, and attributed to a victim interview rather than dismissed as noise?***
If the public claim is "no credible accusations," *what threshold excludes an FBI 302 and inclusion in an internal DOJ investigative presentation?*
*What evidence would move this from "lead" to "cleared," and where is that documentation?*
Age Verification | United States Department of Justice
Stacker News
DOJ Slide Lists Trump Allegation: FBI 302 Confirms Minor-Victim Interview \ stacker news
Most arguments about the Epstein files focus on spectacle. The real signal is institutional handling. I'm not claiming the DOJ proved a crime by a ...
The claim here is narrow but important: Early Christian art suggests “what Jesus looked like” was never a fixed portrait, images were a network output (region + style conventions + patronage), not a preserved photo.
Before we go further, let’s be clear about what this isn’t. I’m not claiming this painting is “the one true face of Jesus.” I’m saying it’s evidence that the modern default image is not inevitable or original.
If the goal is historical honesty, the question worth asking isn’t “my Jesus vs your Jesus". it's how images propagate through institutions, copying, and canon-building in the first place.
What most people miss when they see an early Jesus like this
Look at the painting: tight curls, dark tones, a battered surface, and a very “Mediterranean” feel, nothing like the sanitized, Northern-European Sunday-school poster. The reaction most people have is to turn this into an identity argument, but that misses the deeper mechanism at work.
To make a serious claim that “Jesus looks like X,” you’d need a stable, early visual tradition tied to eyewitness-era communities, consistent descriptors across regions, or evidence that later depictions preserved rather than rebranded an original image. What we actually see is something else entirely, a system where images emerged from local conditions and then calcified through institutional power.
Local artists used local faces and local styles because you paint what you know. As Christianity gained scale, institutions standardized the “safe” image. Copying, through icons, manuscripts, and church art, locked in defaults via repetition. Power and patronage decided what became “normal,” not archaeology or preserved memory.
Now, it’s true that pigments age and styles vary, so no single image proves skin tone or exact features. But the broader pattern is hard to miss: the “default Jesus” is downstream of transmission networks, not historical certainty.
Which raises a question worth sitting with: If images are shaped by institutional copying rather than preservation of fact, what other “defaults”, in theology, politics, or identity, are we treating as original when they’re really just the winners of a distribution war?
A question I keep running into in U.S. politics isn’t “how much immigration,” but:
What does “American” mean?
Two definitions keep colliding:
• Civic/legal: citizenship (birthright + naturalization), equal standing under law.
• Inherited: ancestry/“stock”/a cultural baseline treated as the “real” nation.
My hypothesis is a recurring pipeline:
definition → orgs → policy templates → campaign messaging.
A compressed throughline:
• 1937: Pioneer Fund is chartered with “heredity/eugenics” + “race betterment” language (nation-as-bloodline stated explicitly).
• 1980s–90s: records/reporting describe Pioneer Fund grants to FAIR (often summarized ≈ $1.2M).
• 2023–25: Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership functions as a coalition transition blueprint; contributors include people tied to FAIR/IRLI/CIS.
• 2017–present: Miller isn’t the origin—he’s an operational connector across the enforcement ecosystem (incl. AFL overlaps/distancing).
Two Ohio snapshots of “who counts” politics:
• “Replacement” framing in candidate messaging (“End the Replacement of Ohio Workers”).
• Open boundary enforcement (Coulter: “I wouldn’t vote for you because you’re an Indian”; Fuentes urging a block on Vivek).
Question: is this a traceable continuity—American = inherited membership—moving through institutions into everyday politics?
Or am I linking separate arguments that only look connected from 30,000 feet?
We built civilization by outsourcing ourselves.
Writing = memory.
Money = value.
Networks = communication.
Bitcoin = verification.
AI = cognitive labor.
Every upgrade scales cooperation and control.
So don’t act shocked when it works.
This piece argues that constitutional protections exist to safeguard the conditions people need to discover and become their true selves, but culture-war politics and certain systems—including monetary policy—have become machines that capture identity and interrupt human flourishing. View article →
Examining the documented history of Christian Right legal organizations founded by leaders who explicitly defended racial segregation in the 1950s-70s, and asking whether today’s dismantling of DEI programs and affirmative action, resulting in measurable declines in Black institutional access. represents coincidence or infrastructure working as designed with evolved messaging. View article →
BLS Reality Check: Unemployment by Race (Seasonally Adjusted:
I pulled the official numbers from the BLS Employment Situation release (Table A-2) and charted the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate (%) for selected months.
Selected months (SA):
• White: 3.8 (Nov ’24) → 3.7 (Jul ’25) → 3.7 (Aug ’25) → 3.8 (Sep ’25) → 3.9 (Nov ’25)
• Asian: 3.8 → 3.9 → 3.6 → 4.4 → 3.6
• Black: 6.4 → 7.2 → 7.5 → 7.5 → 8.3
Source (BLS): 
TL;DR: This is what the official data shows for unemployment by race across those months.
Bureau of Labor Statistics
Table A-2. Employment status of the civilian population by race, sex, and age
- 2026 M03 Results