3x candidate for NYC Public Advocate. Boards @sarapisorg, @sahanafoss. Lead @wegovnyc. Advising green/distributed energy startups. Integrity over Ideology.

Joined February 2009
465 Photos and videos
Devin Balkind retweeted
Cleaning and "re-wilding" the oceans off the Northeast Coast is one of the greatest coups of environmental policy in the 21st century, extending back to the Marine Mammal Protection Act in the 1970s.
a federally-ENDANGERED FIN WHALE in front of south brooklyn and staten island today. crazy.
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Devin Balkind retweeted
Everyone who cares about climate should understand this. Texas, with no pro-climate policies, has blown passed California in clean energy. In large part because Texas has less red tape and makes it easier to build.
Texas just passed California in utility-scale solar. And it's not close in wind or energy storage.
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Devin Balkind retweeted
Really starting to feel like Donald Trump isn't taking being the first recipient of the FIFA Peace Prize all that seriously.
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Devin Balkind retweeted
worth considering
It’s going unnoticed because so much other news is happening, but the war drums are beating again in D.C. The warmongers worry this is their last chance to get the white whale they’ve been chasing for thirty years, an all-out regime change war against Iran. A new Middle East war would be a catastrophic mistake. Our military stockpiles are depleted from three years of backing Ukraine. Our effort to reshore manufacturing has only just begun and will take years to bear fruit. War would worsen our already immense deficit and national debt. Iran is larger than Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan combined. A war would not be easy and could easily become a calamity. Thanks to President Trump’s restraint during his first term, America has a golden opportunity to pull away from Middle East quagmires for good. We shouldn’t throw that opportunity away so that sone D.C. has-beens can feel tough by sending young Americans to die yet again.
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Devin Balkind retweeted
Blue cities are out of control, promising more, spending more, delivering less and pushing off fiscal problems to some future day. Democrats in city halls should stop governing as if the goal is to announce new entitlements, and instead make government work. My take:
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Devin Balkind retweeted
Bad Bunny Super Bowl halftime opening dubbed to English x.com/archibaldcrane/status/…

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Devin Balkind retweeted
Should have named his book "nuanced takes about the future with some caveats"
Fukuyama didn't say it was the end of history. In "The End of History and the Last Man" the part no one reads is about "The Last Man". Go read the last chapter of the book, here is the important part summarised:
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Devin Balkind retweeted
When Democrats are in power, libertarians get called right-wingers. When Republicans are in power, libertarians get called liberals. We're the ones consistently calling out authoritarianism. They're the ones with blinders on half the time, when their side has control.
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Devin Balkind retweeted
Impeach and remove Kristi Noem. Congress must not fund DHS. No more money without disciplined leadership and massive reforms—real training, body cameras, no masks—and clear rules for how federal agent misconduct will be investigated, prosecuted, and punished.
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This sentiment will define the midterms.
nyc subway goes america first
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Devin Balkind retweeted
Unpopular opinion: Existing tools have become obsolete circa 2022-2023. Language models are more than generating code or enabling automation. If you are not curating or building new tooling, you are going in the wrong direction.
I've never felt this much behind as a programmer. The profession is being dramatically refactored as the bits contributed by the programmer are increasingly sparse and between. I have a sense that I could be 10X more powerful if I just properly string together what has become available over the last ~year and a failure to claim the boost feels decidedly like skill issue. There's a new programmable layer of abstraction to master (in addition to the usual layers below) involving agents, subagents, their prompts, contexts, memory, modes, permissions, tools, plugins, skills, hooks, MCP, LSP, slash commands, workflows, IDE integrations, and a need to build an all-encompassing mental model for strengths and pitfalls of fundamentally stochastic, fallible, unintelligible and changing entities suddenly intermingled with what used to be good old fashioned engineering. Clearly some powerful alien tool was handed around except it comes with no manual and everyone has to figure out how to hold it and operate it, while the resulting magnitude 9 earthquake is rocking the profession. Roll up your sleeves to not fall behind.
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Devin Balkind retweeted
14 Dec 2025
Rand Paul on mid-decade redistricting: "I think it's gonna lead to more civic tension and possibly more violence in our country. Think about it: if 35% of Texas is solidly Democrat and they have 0 representation, how does that make Democrats feel? I think it makes them feel like they're not represented."
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Devin Balkind retweeted
25 Oct 2025
An excellent demonstration of why we shouldn’t give one man the power to impose tariffs whenever he wants.
25 Oct 2025
Is the new 10% tariff on imports from Canada related to the fentanyl emergency or the reciprocal trade emergency or are hurt feelings also now a national emergency?
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Devin Balkind retweeted
17 Oct 2025
it literally started with Trump trying (and failing) to kill congestion pricing
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Devin Balkind retweeted
This project is good, the experimentation is deeply American, and I hope to visit it!
1/ 🇺🇸 Today, @CAForever submitted detailed plans for the next great American city, an hour north of Silicon Valley, including: Solano Foundry, America’s largest manufacturing park, Solano Shipyard, our largest shipyard, and walkable neighborhoods for 400,000 Californians.
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Devin Balkind retweeted
Why do I have to say things like this?
Replying to @FoggyTrails
Police can’t mace people for calling them names.
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Devin Balkind retweeted
This thread nails the issue at stake: the real “threat” for Russia was and is a wealthy Ukraine that follows and economic model that is inherently incompatible with Russian kleptocratic and nepotistic system.
Putin cannot let Ukraine become rich WSJ: Since 1990, ex-Soviet EU states grew GDP 10x. Russia only 4x. If Ukraine joins the EU and grows, Russians will see that a nation with the same Soviet past thrived without Moscow — and that their own stagnation comes from the Kremlin. 1/
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Devin Balkind retweeted
"Back when my team wasn't in power, it seemed important to respect free speech as a principle. Now that my team has all the power, I have rethought this principle."
18 Sep 2025
Republicans rethinking speech, @burgessev reports
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Devin Balkind retweeted
5 Sep 2025
Guy has been crushing it
4 Sep 2025
Fun with @joerogan
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