Next month, @timdugganbooks will publish my big climate book, The Uninhabitable Earth, in which I try to take a very broad, and very long, view of the state of the climate crisis and all the ways it promises to transform how we live on this planet—all of us. (1/x)

The world has warmed by around 1.4C since 1850. It took 148 years for the first half of that warming to occur, and just 27 years for the second half!

Most of the obituaries and tributes to David Hockney will, I imagine, focus primarily on his extraordinary craft and brilliance as an artist. Perhaps they might also mention his brilliance as a communicator (he was such a fine writer and speaker). But there was something else rather unique about him too. He was also strikingly honest about the tricks/techniques artists use and used to paint. His book Secret Knowledge is a rather wonderful detective work into how renaissance and Dutch golden age painters used glass and mirrors to help them master perspective. It's a pretty compelling case (see this video clip from a BBC doc he made alongside the book👇) though I'm sure some art historians will raise their eyebrows. Many will be aghast at the notion that greats like Vermeer might have been using lenses and camera obscuras to help them draw and paint. As if it were in some way "cheating". But Hockney was so self-evidently brilliant he was one of the few people who could document this without anyone gainsaying his own talent. There are very few artists, living or dead, who have this degree of self-confidence. Not just to know their craft, but to be bracingly honest about how it works. One other who comes to mind is Paul Simon: not just an extraordinary musician but is also an extraordinary communicator about the tricks and techniques of how to write and perform music. For many great artists, the temptation is to cloak their crafts in mystery, like a member of the magic circle. Hockney wasn't having any of it. So yes, he was a legend in all the obvious ways. But also in a few other less obvious ways as well. RIP.

can't believe I missed the Economist's update to its affordability index... it is BAD News for boosterism of the simple Blue State Bad, Red State's Rock binary framing Many red states scored very poorly, including yimby darlings in TX (Austin, Dallas, Houston) and NC (Raleigh):

Republican money machine go brrrr?

0.3% of the water consumed by US golf courses last year

Is this good

Amazing: KPMG wrote a report describing the successful use of AI by businesses. But the case studies turned out to be AI hallucinations. giftarticle.ft.com/giftartic…

That the U.S. military is losing the first war of the drone era while the television-trained defense secretary focuses on facial hair and push-ups is probably not a coincidence. theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0…

Not that long ago “abolish billionaires” was a hyperbolic talking point on the left. Now we have the first trillionaire. One thing that is under appreciated about this is that a trillion is a thousand billion.

Americans also dislike the billionaires who launched or run these companies, yet you hear a lot of advice that Democrats and progressives need to be friendlier to tech billionaires.

The largest single super PAC in NY-12 is not from any Artificial Intelligence group (supporting or opposing Alex Bores), but from former Mayor Michael Bloomberg (supporting Micah Lasher) with $10M

3/1: "four to five weeks" 3/9: "very soon" 3/16: "won't be long" 3/23: "very good and productive conversations" 3/26: talks to end the war are “going very well" 3/29: "I think we'll make a deal with them, pretty sure" 4/1: “very shortly” 4/6: "They’ve made a proposal, and it’s a significant proposal." 4/8: ""A big day for World Peace!" 5/18: "we’ve had very big discussions with Iran" 5/23: "will be announced shortly." 6/1: "rapid pace" 6/11: "next few days"

People have also been making the facile comparison for a long time, since before Brexit and Nigel Farage and much else to which the supposed decline is attributed.

Trump is a whopping 50 points underwater on inflation in many polls, per new CNN analysis. No other president has come close. Another poll finds Dems 15 among indys in battle for House. On the pod, @creynoldsnc is great on how Dems are expanding the map: newrepublic.com/article/2117…

Just 16% of Americans say it's appropriate to hold an MMA fight on the South Lawn of the White House. 46% say it's inappropriate.

The war is almost 3.5 months old, and Brent crude is below $90

The latest UN housing report shows 3.4 billion people worldwide lack access to adequate housing, with 1.1 billion living in informal settlements – the highest level on record In most countries home ownership is now described as ‘impossibly unaffordable’

🚨🚨 Trump is taking Iranian women who fled Iran for fear of persecution and putting them on planes today to deport them to the Central African Republican to live in the violence and famine there. They have no criminal record.

Our 2026 Indicators of Global Climate Change paper is out! We find that the human-induced warming was 1.37C in 2025, and the current rate of warming is 0.27C per decade, on track to firmly pass 1.5C in about four years.

And then some good news: Baltimore's incredible decline in homicides was driven by intervening early with those at risk of committing a violent crime. Although that idea wasn't new, dedicated execution made the difference. nber.org/papers/w35292