Busy day, so let's line up some links

Stuff to read:

• Forgetting (or just plain ignorant) that we have a Coast Guard better suited to the task of guarding our coasts, the OAFPOTUS has ordered the guided missile destroyer USS Gravely to the Texas-Mexico border.
• The OAFPOTUS and the Clown Prince of X, apparently not seeing the connection between weather forecasters and weather forecasts, have illegally fired 10% of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration staff just as a violent tornado outbreak killed 40 people in the Midwest and South.
• The administration's attacks on universities fit the Orban plan of creating a failed democracy, so naturally the OAFPOTUS has doubled down on them.
• Krugman points out that all of the above administration malfeasance has had a depressing effect on the US economy by reducing demand for our key exports, not least of which includes the $50 billion foreigners used to spend to get American educations. (He also has a good, long explanation of how inflation works, if you subscribe.)
• Surprising no one but still an illegally-targeted exercise of Federal power, the Federal Communications Commission has demanded to see the contracts between a number of National Public Radio and Public Broadcasting System stations and their acknowledged donors.
• The Waterbeach development outside Cambridge, England, has a new car-free housing complex—though it's still a 10 kilometer walk from the nearest railway station.
• Pilot Patrick Smith wishes the public would have a better sense of perspective about the safety of air travel, while acknowledging that it has seemed a bit rockier than usual.

Finally, thanks to reduced funding and deferred maintenance, the Chicago El has seen slow zones balloon from 13% of its tracks to 30% since 2019. Fully 70% of the Forest Park branch has reduced speed limits, making the trip from there to downtown take over an hour. But sure, let's  keep funding below the minimum needed to function, and keep the CTA, Metra, and Pace all separate so they can each fail in their own ways.

Apropos the "cyclist-friendly" Waterbeach development, which is just a few miles from where I live: most residents are going to be working in Cambridge, since that's the economic hub of the region. That's going to involve cycling down the busy A10 route, which is most definitely not cyclist-friendly, at least as far as the junction with the A14. Once you're inside the city limits on Milton Road, things get better: the entire length of Milton Road was converted to include good, wide cycle lanes recently. But if you're working on the west or south sides of Cambridge, where the major science and biomedical campuses are located, then you have to cycle several miles along busy roads that do not have cycle lanes. Also, public transport from Waterbeach into Cambridge is pretty limited. There are buses, but they are not frequent, and they stop running in the early evening, so don't plan on working late in your city job.

By the way, Cambridge North railway station is only 6 kilometres from Waterbeach. It's on the Cambridge to Ely line, and many of the trains linking Ely, Cambridge and London Kings Cross call at Cambridge North. And another new station is under construction at the Addenbrookes Hospital/Biomedical Campus site, a couple of kilometres south of the historic centre of Cambridge. It is expected to open early in 2026 and is likely to serve trains to/from both Kings Cross and Liverpool Street.