Thursday: Three Morning Takes
just make them pretty, stupid / substack is over / air force huang
PW Daily
May 14, 2026
Just make them pretty, stupid
America’s favorite future president Spencer Pratt is in some trouble after arguing LA should be “beautiful” again, and “No more of these high-density, SB-79, prison-like structures. We need to bring Art Deco back.” Housing advocates are furious, and look, high-density is important. But Pratt specifically called out the disgusting cookie cutter Lego-looking plastic box buildings of the sort we all — or all of us with a soul — hate. The problem here is YIMBYs spent the last decade+ associating the phrase “high-density” with ugly shit, even often *explicitly* defending ugliness to some ambiguous far off utilitarian end. Frankly, I think Spencer is just confused, and new to this, and would be fine with high-density deco buildings, which are already all over LA. And that confusion is on YIMBYs, who will now unfortunately learn the hard way: if you tell people ugly things are good, they will just assume you’re evil. Just make things pretty, stupid.
sUbStAcK iS oVeR
The Verge has published a new piece on the supposed trend of writers leaving Substack for platforms like Ghost and Beehiiv, which charge monthly fees rather than taking cuts of paid subscriptions, and… sorry, but a few people moving to different services with different business models? Not exactly a trend. In reality, the media wants to manufacture Substack’s downfall because of its refusal to deplatform people with “controversial” ideas. All the predictions of a mass exodus haven’t come true, including claims from The Verge alleging Substack faced a “talent drain.” Reminds me of when Elon acquired X and everyone claimed it would fail: sure, people did leave… but I wouldn’t call them talented. Truth is, free speech outweighs the cost of hosting Andrew Tate’s daily manosphere poems, and Substack won the hearts of writers fair and square. Media darling Bluesky, on the other hand? All three users will be sad when they inevitably go under.
Air Force Huang
In a Tuesday night reboot of Entourage, Air Force One made its journey from D.C. to Beijing for a summit with President Xi, as tech’s favorite characters tagged along playing the roles of Drama and Turtle. Tim Cook (née Apple) was aboard, presumably chasing one last sweet Chinese deal before retirement; so, too, was Elon, as a courtroom in Oakland simultaneously pored over his texts 30,000 feet below. One notable omission: Jensen Huang, who didn’t make the cut until Trump reportedly called and picked up the Nvidia CEO last-minute during an Alaskan layover (what Bristol Palin calls one-night stands). So… did a billionaire chip salesman really just get “forgotten”? Or (more likely) was Trump making sure he and the man eager to sell advanced chips to China were aligned before ultimately determining, “fine, meet us in Anchorage, buddy”? As another iconic Turtle (Master Oogway, Kung Fu Panda, 2008), once famously said: “There are no accidents.”
