John McLaren

@johnmclaren

Economist, classical music nerd, and family man.

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John McLaren@johnmclaren· 29d

This coyote wandered around on our block last night. It looks terribly thin to me.

Photo of a skinny coyote in the road at night under a streetlight, with a long, skinny tail.

John McLaren@johnmclaren· Jul 15

By contrast, here is a comment from Nextdoor on this topic.

KEVIN BILLIES 3h • Esmont, VA
...
Keep feeding the wildlife and they will not go to get a job

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John McLaren@johnmclaren· Jul 4

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Charlottesville Downtown Mall, here is some video I took on June 20, 2025.

John McLaren@johnmclaren· Jul 4

Fireworks, Mountain Lake Lodge, Virginia, July 2, 2023.

Independence-Day fireworks at Mountain Lake, VA. A kid is standing in the dry, grassy lake bed with his back to the camera, looking up at the fireworks. The lighting from the fireworks is eerily green.

John McLaren@johnmclaren· Jul 2

Biggest losses are in (1) agriculture, probably because of loss of workers; (2) construction, arguably because of loss of team members with specialized skills (losses are far larger than the undocumented share of the labor force); and (3) Arts/Recreation, prob. because customers are scared. (2/3)

Graph with title "Figure 5. Employment losses vary by sector." The horizontal axis measures percentage employment losses relative to a baseline of average employment losses from a surge of ICE raids. Each row shows the differential losses of a sector. The smallest losses are in Finance and Information, around zero. The biggest losses are in Agriculture (-2.1%), Construction (-2.2%) and Arts/Recreation (-3.2%).

John McLaren@johnmclaren· Jun 18

Passing through Storrs, CT, we had a look at the Benton Museum of Art at the University of Connecticut. Surprised to see a work inspired by Charlottesville! Specifically, our late and unlamented Robert E. Lee statue.

Bronze sculpture of an upside down horse’s head with a silver faucet growing out of its neck.

Close-up of the faucet portion resembling hot and cold faucets.

Close-up of the horse’s face. It does not look happy.

Museum card describing the piece. Text:

VALERIE HEGARTY
American (b. 1967)
NEW TO THE COLLECTION
Faucet with Horsehead (2021)
Paper, tape, wire, Apoxie Sculpt, acrylic paints
Museum Purchase, Doris A. and Herbert A. Lane Memorial Fund, 2022.5
This sculpture is part of Valerie Hearty's The Covid Diaries Series- a suite of sculptures inspired by the artist's personal journal entries from the onset of the Covid pandemic. In the series she depicts a domestic environment under assault by outside forces: a deadly, uncontrolled virus; political turmoil and social unrest; a worsening opioid epidemic; climate-related catastrophes; and violent manifestations of racism.
Faucet with Horsehead illustrates the intrusion of external calamities directly into the home; mundane daily chores performed in isolation in the artist's apartment collide with catastrophic world news. She says: "In this piece was thinking about what traces are left after monuments are physically removed and how the ideology of white supremacy infiltrates the home, including through everyday complicity." Hegarty modeled the horse head on the bronze equestrian statue of Robert E. Lee, which was ordered removed in 2021 from Charlottesville, Virginia's Market Street Park in the wake of the murder of George Floyd.

John McLaren@johnmclaren· Jun 17

Anyone else get this hilariously disingenuous pro-data-center spam text?

Screenshot of a text:

+1 (703) 831-2262

Text Message • SMS
Today 3:10 PM
Instead of making life more affordable, politicians in the Virginia Senate are pushing a new tax on digital infrastructure, which will increase costs on hardworking Virginians.
Tell Senators, "Stop the digital tax!"
Click here: https://
win.newmode.net/digitaltax
Tap to play video
Reply STOP to opt out

TELL LAWMAKERS
STOP
INFRASTRUCIURE
TAX

If you did not expect this message from an unknown sender, it may be spam.
Stop or Report Spam

John McLaren@johnmclaren· Jun 12

Better?

John McLaren@johnmclaren· Jun 12

My own pitiful attempt to respond to those folks. The animation does not always work.

Diagram with two circles. The first circle is marked “republic,“ and contains USSR, China, Sudan, France, USA, and South Korea. The second circle is marked “democracy,” and contains France, USA, South Korea, UK, Canada, and Japan. An animated arrow points to USA with the label “you are here” and then changes to a label “Republicans want to move you here,” which moves to the part of the diagram inside “republic” and outside “democracy.”

John McLaren@johnmclaren· Jun 10

My version: tower with Martin Luther and St. Mary’s Church, associated with a horrific 13th century antisemitic massacre.

Berlin snapshot: Bronze statue of Martin Luther holding a book in the foreground, Church of Saint Mary in the middle ground, and the Fehrnseturm tower in the background.

John McLaren@johnmclaren· Jun 1

I was inspired to grab the analogous graph for housing starts for Charlottesville. I am flummoxed. Can anyone tell me — is that giant spike for 2025 real, or some kind of data-entry error?

A graph from fred.stlouisfed.org.

Title: New Private Housing Structures Authorized by Building Permits for Charlottesville City, VA.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau via FRED®

The horizontal axis shows dates from 1990 to 2025. The vertical axis shows the number of new housing structures. Most years the numbers bounce around between 100 and a bit more than 200. Between 2003 and 2006 the numbers are in the 300-400 range, and then there are two huge spikes: 685 units in 2012 and 889 units in 2025.

John McLaren@johnmclaren· May 27

It’s a bold marketing strategy to associate your brand with an extinction-level cataclysmic event.

The sign outside of a Sherwin-Williams paint store. It shows a can of red paint being dumped on top of planet earth; the paint slowly covers the planet’s surface. The paint is marked with the slogan “cover the earth,” and the name “Sherwin-Williams” appears at the bottom of the sign.

John McLaren@johnmclaren· May 26

Folks, I think I have found peak Nextdoor.com. I posted information about public comment on the Swords Into Plowshares project (sipcville.com), and I got this amazing piece of gratuitous antisemitism. (By the way, I'm not even Jewish, not that it matters.)

Comment on Nextdoor.com, from one Fred Sumners, Rural Earlysville. Text:

"John your lips look like bicycle tire tubes. I wonder what eastern european country your clan hails from? Rootless cosmopolitans I would guess. McLaren is a wonderful Scottish surname to hide behind. Clever tribe." There is one "ha-ha" emoji in response.

John McLaren@johnmclaren· Apr 23

Accidentally took a picture of the ceiling. Doesn’t this look like some scary dystopian sci-fi setting?

A ceiling with square tiles framing a very bright rectangular fluorescent light. From this angle it looks as if the wall at the bottom of the frame is a white floor and the light is a bright window.

John McLaren@johnmclaren· Apr 15

A photo I took at lunch.

A large mirror hangs on a light-green painted wall. There is evidently an identical mirror on the opposite wall, because an infinite regress of the reflection is visible. A woman is walking past the mirror as she cleans up, and her head becomes part of the infinite regress.

John McLaren@johnmclaren· Apr 14

My new yard sign.

Lawn sign showing the Statue of Liberty in a boxing pose with two blue gloves. Text:

MAGA IS Rigging the Midterm Election
FIGHT BACK
Virginia
VOTE YES
APRIL 21
Early Voting Starts March 6

John McLaren@johnmclaren· Apr 3

Lawn sign:

VOTE YES BY APRIL 21ST TO LEVEL THE PLAYING FIELD

VIRGINIANS FOR FAIR ELECTIONS

John McLaren@johnmclaren· Mar 22

Not a lot of more joyous theater experiences one can have than the American Shakespeare Center in Staunton,VA.

The stage at the American Shakespeare Center as audience members arrive. Some are taking seats at the edge of the stage.

John McLaren@johnmclaren· Mar 14

Promising?

Poster with photo of a sumptuous beef rib dish. Text:

VIOLET CROWN
CINEMA · BISTRO
COMING SOON

John McLaren@johnmclaren· Mar 8

It always amazes me the amazing glimpses of natural beauty I sometimes come across within our city. Found this stream while canvassing in Charlottesville today.

A little stream with grassy Banks and saplings along the sides.

John McLaren@johnmclaren· Mar 3

Moon over my neighborhood, Cville 3/1/26.

Cloudy night sky over a white house, with a bright full moon piercing the cloud cover.

John McLaren@johnmclaren· Feb 23

A dog is a chaotic tangle of want and impulse.

A beagle on a sofa with a blankie draped alluringly over his back and the right side of his face.

John McLaren@johnmclaren· Feb 16

First blooms?

Branches of a tree viewed against a bright blue sky with yellow caution tape strewn randomly throughout.

John McLaren@johnmclaren· Feb 6

A Charlottesville friend sent me this screenshot today (Friday, February 6). Anyone hear anything like this going on?

Social media post (maybe Facebook):

Sylvia Chong
...

4h • 8:
UVA folks, I just heard rumors that ICE is on our campus monitoring dorms where students of color congregate. Is anyone else aware of this?

10 comments
• Send
Sylvia Chong
Hi all, to be clear, I cannot confirm or deny the validity of this sighting. A friend directed me here to where people are trying to keep track of these things: https://
cvilleicewatch.wordpress.com/
Cville ICE Watch
cvilleicewatch.wordpress.com

John McLaren@johnmclaren· Feb 2

That’s a tough job: pushing ice off of the roof of the pavilion.

Two men with woolen hats and black winter jackets on top of the tent covering of the Ting Pavilion in Charlottesville, working to break up the ice and pushing off the edge.

John McLaren@johnmclaren· Jan 30

All right, city — COME‘N GIT IT!!!

Huge drift of snowcrete on the side of a residential street, apparently and presumably with a big pile of leaves at the bottom of it.

John McLaren@johnmclaren· Jan 29

Thanks for this. Actually informative and balanced. It created a spirited discussion on Reddit: www.reddit.com/r/Charlottes... And this gem is found in the comments.

Post: “Local c-ville business owner sells ICE the software…”
112 upvotes • 109 comments

Comment by SirSpeedyCVA • 7h

Here we go again. Let's just cut to the chase and start painting gold 6 pointed stars on businesses we think dilute our ideological purity and are deemed a threat to our way of life Kristal nacht much?

-119 points

John McLaren@johnmclaren· Jan 26

We forgot to take in the patio tent before the snowstorm.

A patio with a metal table and metal chairs around it and a collapsed tent crumbled up at the edge of the table with a great quantity of snow bundled in its fabric.

John McLaren@johnmclaren· Jan 25

In front of our house today in Charlottesville.

A person wearing a red hooded jacket and black pants with ski goggles skiing past houses on a snow-covered city street.

John McLaren@johnmclaren· Dec 28

This bias is a distortion caused by the electoral college. And note: People tell you that the EC protects small states. That is rejected by the data. The swing state bias is *much* stronger for *large* swing states. Small swing states show no systematic benefit at all. (6/6)