#thepowerbroker — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #thepowerbroker, aggregated by home.social.
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Matthew Rhys Is In Talks With Netflix Over Adaptation Of Robert Caro’s ‘The Power Broker’
#News #MatthewRhys #Netflix #RobertCaro #RobertMoses #ThePowerBrokerhttps://deadline.com/2025/12/matthew-rhys-netflix-robert-caro-the-power-broker-1236631815/
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I'm personally neither a fan nor a critic of Brennan Lee Mulligan's roleplaying style. But I did enjoy The Power Broker episode where they interviewed Brendan, in part about his D&D campaign patterned as a sort of mythic NYC shaped by an esoteric version of Robert Moses, inspired directly by this book.
Potentially of interest to roleplayers, historians, and civics junkies.
https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-power-broker-11-brennan-lee-mulligan/
#ThePowerBroker
#99PercentInvisible
#RobertMoses
#DnD
#Dimension20
#BrennanLeeMulligan -
I finally finished reading The Power Broker by Robert A. Caro and while the book is extremely long, it paints an extremely detailed picture of Robert Moses' work in the City of New York. I read this as a part of the podcast 99% Invisible's book club, which went through all of 2024.
There are some chapters that feel like: 'here's a bunch of data'. There are other chapters that demonstrate how Moses would not help public transit, not on his watch, cars come first! One such example of that would be to run both sides of a highway far enough apart that you could run trains down the middle. Moses just wasn't interested.
And of course, there are examples of Moses pushing people out of their homes to make room for infrastructure. There are other examples where Moses is going to run a highway through some people's homes, even though there was a park one block south of there that would still work. Moses was having none of that. After all, he had the power – built up over decades.
And now that I'm done with The Power Broker, I need to read some more of the books on my shelf. I have such a backlog.
#thepowerbroker #99pi #Caro #reading #biographies #publicservice #RobertMoses
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https://nextcity.org/urbanist-news/jane-jacobs-missing-chapter-robert-caro “There are two entire chapters that were cut out…One was on Jane Jacobs stopping the Lower Manhattan Expressway. And one was why the New York City Planning Commission has no power” #ThePowerBroker #JaneJacobs #urbanplanning #NYC #RobertMoses
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Robert Caro Reflects on ‘The Power Broker’ and Its Legacy at 50
Caro’s book on Robert Moses, a city planner who reshaped New York, is also a reflection on “the dangers of unchecked power,” and remains more resonant and relevant than ever.
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I gotta wonder, what would be the computer science or software architecture equivalent of The Power Broker? What person had an extremely large influence on our digital infrastructure? Where are the books about them?
@99percentinvisible
#computerscience #softwareengineering #robertcaro #thepowerbroker -
A Couple Recent Interesting Podcast Episodes
First off, I’ve mentioned before that I enjoy listening to the science fiction short story podcast Escape Pod. Today I listened to episode 949, A Foundational Model for Talking to Girls. Large Language Models (LLMs), what we have colloquially called AI for the past few years, have been a giant source of wonder and consternation in the world. AI in general has long been a topic for science fiction, but this short story tackles the current LLM version of AIs. I found it to be a very fun episode that is a master class in providing a huge amount of backstory without an exposition dump. I don’t want to spoil anything about this story, but they naturally drop all these background details about the world that make me want more stories in this universe. It also has a fun, light tone to it. I highly recommend you either listen or read (the full text is available at the episode link above)
The other podcast episode I wanted to mention is actually a series of episodes. There have been a few times where I have come to the realization that I prefer the wikipedia summary of the story compared to the real thing. One example is Bioshock. I haven’t played it, but I know for a fact that I would not enjoy the story nearly as well as I enjoyed reading the summary of the story and all the backstory that led to the events of the game. The same is true of Robert Caro’s The Power Broker. I know myself and I know I would not nearly enjoy reading this book as much as I enjoy listening to Roman Mars, Elliott Kalan, and each episode’s guest discuss the contents of each chapter and provide color commentary. You can get to the archive of all the episodes here. It’s a fascinating story of one man’s transformation from working in the NYC parks department to becoming one of the most powerful men in NYC (able to challenge US presidents and win!).
#99PI #AI #LLM #NYC #podcast #RobertMoses #scienceFiction #shortStories #ThePowerBroker
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The new #99pi #thepowerbroker ep is already a banger from the start. Elliott Kalan, channeling #janeaustin on #induceddemand : “It is a truth universally acknowledged that the making of a bridge will lead to more cars on the bridge” https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-power-broker-07-sec-pete-buttigieg/
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I just finished reading The Power Broker and, man, that was a heck of a book!
I feel like RM was the epitome of the "brilliant jerk".
It makes me wonder what things would be like in New York (and elsewhere) if he had built public transit they way he built roads.
All-in-all, a good book. I'd recommend it.
(I started it because of 99% Invisible, but then I just kept reading...)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_Broker
#99PercentInvisible #ThePowerBroker #books #bookclub #RobertMoses #RobertCaro
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I’m doing 99 Percent Invisible’s year long read through The Power Broker by Robert A. Caro and it’s fascinating to see the parallels between the 1920’s and today – especially when it comes to courts and appeals.
I usually don’t highlight in my books but there are passages that really stand out to me:
On pages 193-194, the author talks about how many appeals Robert Moses had the commission's lawyers file. Moses only needed to keep the case going until the special session was over in the legislature. "Every appeal was denied–but every one used up time."
https://99percentinvisible.org/club/
#reading #thepowerbroker #robertmoses #robertacaro #newyork #newyorkcity
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https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/99-invisible/id394775318?i=1000642195418 Yes, finally an official #99pi episode! Great book, excited about this #nyc #urbanism #histodons #sophocles #robertmoses #thepowerbroker
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The Tyee: In ‘Turn Every Page,’ a Writer and Editor Shape America (in Culture) https://thetyee.ca/Culture/2023/01/19/Turn-Every-Page-Writer-Editor-Shape-America/ #bcnews #TheTyee - via @[email protected] #TurnEveryPage:TheAdventuresofRobertCaroandRobertGottlieb #ThePowerBroker:RobertMosesandtheFallofNewYork #RobertMosesurbanplanner #SmithCoronatypewriters #SmithCoronaElectra210 #ThePowerBrokerbook #NelsonRockefeller #NewYorkCityBallet #HoraceMannSchool #TurnEveryPagedoc #LyndonB.Johnson #AlanHathway
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The Tyee: In ‘Turn Every Page,’ a Writer and Editor Shape America (in Culture) https://thetyee.ca/Culture/2023/01/19/Turn-Every-Page-Writer-Editor-Shape-America/ #bcnews #TheTyee - via @[email protected] #TurnEveryPage:TheAdventuresofRobertCaroandRobertGottlieb #ThePowerBroker:RobertMosesandtheFallofNewYork #RobertMosesurbanplanner #SmithCoronatypewriters #SmithCoronaElectra210 #ThePowerBrokerbook #NelsonRockefeller #NewYorkCityBallet #HoraceMannSchool #TurnEveryPagedoc #LyndonB.Johnson #AlanHathway
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The Tyee: In ‘Turn Every Page,’ a Writer and Editor Shape America (in Culture) https://thetyee.ca/Culture/2023/01/19/Turn-Every-Page-Writer-Editor-Shape-America/ #bcnews #TheTyee - via @[email protected] #TurnEveryPage:TheAdventuresofRobertCaroandRobertGottlieb #ThePowerBroker:RobertMosesandtheFallofNewYork #RobertMosesurbanplanner #SmithCoronatypewriters #SmithCoronaElectra210 #ThePowerBrokerbook #NelsonRockefeller #NewYorkCityBallet #HoraceMannSchool #TurnEveryPagedoc #LyndonB.Johnson #AlanHathway
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The Tyee: In ‘Turn Every Page,’ a Writer and Editor Shape America (in Culture) https://thetyee.ca/Culture/2023/01/19/Turn-Every-Page-Writer-Editor-Shape-America/ #bcnews #TheTyee - via @[email protected] #TurnEveryPage:TheAdventuresofRobertCaroandRobertGottlieb #ThePowerBroker:RobertMosesandtheFallofNewYork #RobertMosesurbanplanner #SmithCoronatypewriters #SmithCoronaElectra210 #ThePowerBrokerbook #NelsonRockefeller #NewYorkCityBallet #HoraceMannSchool #TurnEveryPagedoc #LyndonB.Johnson #AlanHathway