David's Favorites: October 5th 2022

Trying to get a ‘realistic’ Dali melting clock out of Dall•e, instead they were mostly just… wet. Anyway, yes, I got the date wrong in the title yesterday.

Jason Crawford @jasoncrawford

TIL over 50% of the Earth's fresh surface water is in just three lakes: Baikal, Tanganyika, and Superior

And of course here's the full list of lakes from wikipedia.

CBC News @CBCNews

The European Parliament has approved new rules that will introduce a single charging port for mobile phones, tablets and cameras in the EU by 2024. The move is expected to affect Apple more than its rivals.

cbc.caSorry Apple: New European rules about phone chargers will finally mandate the U in USB | CBC NewsThe European Parliament approved new rules on Tuesday that will introduce a single charging port for mobile phones, tablets and cameras in the EU by 2024 — a world first that is expected to affect iPhone maker Apple more than its rivals.

I think there's a good chance that apple's response to this will be to remove the charging port and go wireless-only for the iPhone.

Henry Grabar @henrygrabar

truth is, living in a big city can be a lot of fun if you don't have to be in the office all day

Justin Fox @foxjust

The freedom afforded by remote work has allowed WFHers to congregate in such scenic and low-cost locations as ... central DC and the Inner Mission in San Francisco (column and 🧵) https://t.co/VbUoSilRmC https://t.co/cpK5n0YOFO

People like living in cities, even if they don't need to go into an office. Since we've suddenly got a bunch of excess office space, maybe we should think about how to convert some of it to residential?

Josh Rogin @joshrogin

Fine. If that’s the way you want it, seems like our economic interests are to not provide Saudi Arabia’s security anymore. Good luck with your new friends Putin and Xi. https://t.co/H5Y5166g3R

Ali Shihabi علي الشهابي @aliShihabi

When oil prices went negative in 2020 US politicians loudly accused Saudi of trying to destroy the US energy industry. You can’t win here unless you ignore it all and focus on your own economic interests. https://t.co/BT25niOF7T

OPEC decided to pump less oil, helping Russia and hurting the west. "U.S. foreign policy is not a jobs program." There's a bill being discussed to end military support of the Saudis.

Anton Troianovski @antontroian

US intelligence agencies believe parts of the Ukrainian government authorized the car bomb attack near Moscow in August that killed Daria Dugina, @julianbarnes @adamgoldmanNYT @adamentous @mschwirtz report

nytimes.comU.S. Believes Ukrainians Were Behind an Assassination in RussiaAmerican officials said they were not aware of the plan ahead of time for the attack that killed Daria Dugina and that they had admonished Ukraine over it.

Andrew Prokop's take: "This is a very interesting article and the question of why we are reading it is even more interesting. Sure seems to me like this is being strategically leaked by the US as a warning to Ukraine." Probably a good idea to be drawing the line at assassinations.

Thomas C. Theiner @noclador

The tracer rounds streaking across Odesa tonight are likely a Gepard taking down some Iranian/russian drones. Here is a Gepard night fire training to compare it with.

Noah Smith realizes: "that's where the blasters in Star Wars come from"

Threads

• After the story about the NYU prof yesterday, there are now multiple responses from long graduated students who are saying that this professor was simply a bad teacher. Finally, however, Intelligencer brought this back to the larger point which I've covered before: the US simply makes it unnecessarily expensive and difficult to become a doctor.

• Short thread about why vaccines and sanitation should be considered part of the Industrial Revolution. TL;DR: it's hard to build large sewer systems without industrial tools.