Aaron W. Gordon
@agordon.me
Data reporter at Bloomberg News. Opinions are my cat's. Clips and contact info at agordon.me.
In which @suryamattu.com and I try to answer the age-old question: Are we smarter than Billy the Cat, the World Cup-predicting phenom? The answer is, definitively: No.
What Happened When We Let Claude Pick Our World Cup Brackets
Could Claude narrow the gap between a soccer expert and a novice? A World Cup prediction contest put AI-assisted forecasting to the test.
bloomberg.com
“The players reached out to me and said, ‘Thank you for what you have made.’ They told me story after story of what they did. The letters coming from people’s deathbed telling me, ‘Thank you, High 5. Thank you, High 5.’ People with cancer saying, ‘You got me through this. Thank you."
The $11 Billion Casino-Style Economy Built on Players Who Can Never Cash Out
Apple and Google are raking in money from social casinos that replace real winnings with virtual coins and dopamine hits. Some players have spent more than $1 million to keep playing.
bloomberg.com
Behind the preserved historical facades, the ultra-rich are buying up adjacent townhomes in the West Village and Upper East Side, combining them into a megamansion. It's part of a broader trend of small multifamily buildings being turned into single-family homes. www.bloomberg.com/graphics/202...
The Rise of the Manhattan Mega-Mansion
In the West Village and other historic neighborhoods, buyers are consolidating apartments and combining townhomes, a sign of New York’s allure to the ultra-rich.
bloomberg.com
One thing working on this series helped me realize is how long it can take regulatory failures to manifest in people's lives. In these cases, we're talking decades later. www.bloomberg.com/graphics/202...
How Banks, Regulators Spawned the Zombie Mortgage Nightmare
Federal officials and banks dealing with the subprime mortgage mess helped create the “zombie” mortgages crisis
bloomberg.com
One thing I wrote about here is how technology has made buses *way* more convenient while techno-futurists were obsessed with flying taxis and self-driving cars.
Aaron W. Gordon@agordon.me · 8mo agoI wrote about how surprised I still am a candidate for NYC mayor won in large part by talking incessantly about buses, and also about how making them fast as promised will be an immense challenge. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
I wrote about how surprised I still am a candidate for NYC mayor won in large part by talking incessantly about buses, and also about how making them fast as promised will be an immense challenge. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
With Mamdani, the Humble Bus Gets Its Due
Enthusiasm for NYC’s mayor-elect may reflect a little-understood reality about the essential role of buses. Still, making them faster won’t be easy.
bloomberg.com
The government shutdown got me thinking: How many flights in the US are actually replaceable by train? It depends on how insane you are, but the basic answer is: Not Many! 70% of flights shorter than 500 miles have no train option at all. Out of those that do, 65% would likely be faster by car.
Where Is Traveling by Train a Good Option in the US?
When air travel falters, how many travelers even have the train available as backup?
bloomberg.com
Congratulations to all the abundance bros who joined the fight behind "permitting reform" on your victory today www.nytimes.com/2025/11/17/c...
E.P.A. Rule Would Drastically Curb Protections for Wetlands
nytimes.com
New from me: Global Entry revocations are surging in the last ~2 years, well outpacing enrollment, according to data from a FOIA. People often don't know why their membership was revoked. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
There's a persistent reflex to assume that projects like this are liberally coded, only popular in progressive enclaves. But the actual evidence goes the other way. Liberals aren't the only ones who like to cross the street safely. Conservatives also ride bikes and like to do so without dying.
Edward Russell@byerussell.com · 9mo agoUtah, a leader in bike infrastructure.
There are hundreds of thousands of homeowners in the US who probably don't realize there's a ticking time bomb on their American Dream in the form of a zombie second mortgage. And the agency tasked with policing this—wait for it—has been gutted by the Trump admin. www.bloomberg.com/graphics/202...
Trump Gutted Agency Investigating Zombie Mortgage Debt Collectors
Many homeowners were blindsided by huge bills from zombie mortgages. A federal investigation of unlawful debt collections has stalled after the Trump administration gutted the Consumer Financial Prote...
bloomberg.com
NYC people: @suryamattu.com, @mariepastora.bsky.social and I will be talking about our NJ Transit/NYC commuter rail story on Nov 5. Hope to see some of you there! www.meetup.com/transit-tech...
Transit Techies #35: Aaron Gordon, Surya Mattu, Marie Patino / Elif Ensari, Wed, Nov 5, 2025, 6:30 PM | Meetup
This will be **Transit Techies NYC**'s final session of the year, and we have some amazing speakers to look forward to. Talks will start at 6:30pm, and we'll mingle over li
meetup.com
I am continually impressed by Alissa's coverage of LA transportation and also how insane LA's transportation spending is.
Alissa Walker@awalkerinla.bsky.social · 10mo agoLA is building a new $1.5 billion freeway into LAX. The very same airport where we just spent $2 billion on the people mover — actually, more like $3 billion, plus another $900 million if you count Metro's investment in the LAX station; so let's just say $4 billion — to make cars go away
"Don't bother looking for me. I'll be next to my pool with a margarita."
Nolan Hicks@ndhapple.bsky.social · 10mo agoNormality is important in these times. Thankfully, the Long Island Rail Road is here to help with a new entry in its recurring annual series: Overtime by the pool -- mtaig.ny.gov/Reports/2025...
Coffee futures hit a new record high. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
Coffee Prices Reach Record as Trade and Supply Concerns Mount
Coffee futures rose to a fresh record in New York as crop concerns and US tariffs revived supply worries, risking further price hikes at cafes and supermarkets.
bloomberg.com
Tell 2018 me that in 2025 Andrew Cuomo will be running for mayor and proposing the city take over key parts of the MTA and I might have had an actual stroke www.nytimes.com/2025/10/21/n...
Cuomo to Propose That New York City Take Partial Control of Subway
nytimes.com
Key stat from @amandamull.bsky.social article "The richest 10% of US households—those making roughly $250,000 or more—now account for almost half the country’s consumer purchases, according to Moody’s Analytics" www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...
Inside the Credit Card Battle to Win America’s Richest Shoppers
The fierce fight between Amex and Chase is playing out over higher fees, extravagant events and every perk imaginable.
bloomberg.com
"Mansion Boy" is also good because Andrew Cuomo owned a $1.8 million, 4,000 sq ft house with its own pond until his divorce. (Reportedly it would have sold for much more but was not maintained well and was "in dire need of considerable work.") nypost.com/2021/03/03/a...
Andrew Cuomo and Sandra Lee sell longtime Mount Kisco house before scandal
The four-bedroom, six-bathroom home spent over a year on the market before finding a buyer.
nypost.com
Colin Dickey@colindickey.com · 10mo ago[Me, a poor, on the subway, glowering jealously at all those fat cat, fancy pants rich people on the public bus]
Fun fact: All of the MTA's rolling stock bought in the last several decades is capable of this too!
Yonah Freemark@yonahfreemark.com · 10mo agoCaltrain’s new electric trains are designed to recuperate energy when breaking. The agency made a deal to sell that energy back to the local power supplier, which will net the agency millions of dollars in annual revenues.
For Bessent’s $20 billion bet on Argentina to pay off, a lot of things have to go right. The problem is that in Argentina -- a nation with a track record of squandering other people’s money and defaulting on its own debts -- those things have tended to go wrong. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...
Bessent’s Big Gamble on Argentina Has a Narrow Road to Pay Off
For Scott Bessent’s $20 billion bet on Argentina to pay off, a lot of things have to go right – things that in the past, in Argentina, have tended to go wrong.
bloomberg.com
Since I've moved to Manhattan it has really sunk in just how useless the non-SBS buses are if you want to get anywhere faster than walking. The north-south routes stop every block or two! The bus literally travels 10-15 bus lengths at a time, up and down Manhattan. It's so stupid.
True New Yorker quizzes are fun and all but there is only one question in the actual True New Yorker test: Do You Take The Subway?
A fun game is to ask people what they think "independent" journalism means and/or to rank various sources on a scale of independence. Answers vary wildly! www.nytimes.com/2025/10/06/b...
I once did a bunch of archival research on the origins and history of junk mail. This talking point—that not everyone has the same definition of "junk"—was used by the junk mail industry for *decades* to fight anti-junk mail policies. (It's also not true. ) www.nytimes.com/2025/10/02/t...
Back when I did this kind of thing, the pitch for why more NYC newsrooms should have dedicated MTA reporters—not even "transportation" generally, just MTA—was that the MTA's annual budget was larger than that of 10 states.
Nolan Hicks@ndhapple.bsky.social · 10mo agoYou see this particularly in the crime discussion nationally, but folks outside of New York City (and often times in New York City) do not grasp the scale and scope of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.
