Market Urbanism@MarketUrbanism
“Drivers praised the removal of dozens of checkpoints where security forces and militias had previously extorted bribes — replaced with a single toll payment to the Taliban.”
nytimes.com
Under Taliban Rule, Life in Kabul Transforms Once Again
8:01 AM · Aug 25, 2021
24 Reposts · 96 Likes
Adem and Jasharive@GeorgeHemingto1
The central idea behind crypto is in direct conflict with even the most respectably libertarian monetary policy
No levers on monetary policy, everything is fiscal, you trade exclusively in a commodity - barter, essentially
These people just don’t know their *own* economics
Stephen Diehl @smdiehl
Bitcoin's only intellectual contribution seems to be turning an entire generation of software developers into neo-metallist cranks, as a result of massive right-wing misinformation campaign about inflation and monetary theory.
9:02 AM · Aug 25, 2021
31 Reposts · 102 Likes
Matthew Yglesias@mattyglesias
One of Afghanistan's neighbors is Iran, for example, but the US government consistently prioritized pressuring Iran over nuclear weapons, Saudi Arabia, and Israel over trying to stabilize Afghanistan.
slowboring.com/p/the-national…
11:21 AM · Aug 25, 2021
11 Reposts · 89 Likes
Matthew Yglesias@mattyglesias
We ended up in a situation where our only regional partner in fighting the Taliban was Pakistan, which didn't really work because Pakistan wanted the Taliban to win.
slowboring.com/p/the-national…
11:23 AM · Aug 25, 2021
18 Reposts · 141 Likes
Matthew Yglesias@mattyglesias
Good piece by @DLeonhardt if necessarily a bit gentle on some of the bad actors in the press….
nytimes.com
A Better Afghan Policy
1:25 PM · Aug 25, 2021
21 Reposts · 119 Likes
Matthew Yglesias@mattyglesias
It would be a much better story if the hubris inherent in selling a mid-pandemic book while covering up a pandemic-related scandal was the thing that brought him down.
Jonathan Lemire @JonLemire
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — Gov. Kathy Hochul acknowledges nearly 12,000 more COVID-19 fatalities in NY than publicized by Cuomo administration.
3:12 PM · Aug 25, 2021
28 Reposts · 521 Likes
Matthew Yglesias@mattyglesias
Canada has perfected democracy:
— Outcomes are driven entirely by tactical voting (or lack thereof) between different left of center parties
— Regardless of who "wins," the median MP is always a centrist Liberal even in the weird election when they were in third place.
3:57 PM · Aug 25, 2021
31 Reposts · 475 Likes
Matthew Yglesias@mattyglesias
There was this brief moment of time where there was bipartisan consensus that letting a weird app controlled by the government of China program our society might be a bad idea.
Daniel Friedman @DanFriedman81
When I talk about the collapse of norms and standards in media, this story is what I am talking about. Mentally ill fans followed around this Broadway actress and then accused her of abuse for not loving them, and the Daily Beast has run with this story. https://t.co/DNu647bqc8
5:10 PM · Aug 25, 2021
17 Reposts · 157 Likes
JW Mason@JWMason1
Over on the right, you see how home purchases went up, and then when prices rose, purchases went down and construction went up? It's almost like there's a market or something. theovershoot.co/p/us-housing-n
8:30 PM · Aug 25, 2021
15 Reposts · 143 Likes
Noah Smith 🐇@Noahpinion
Some evidence that single-family zoning laws are especially burdensome on the West Coast:
nber.org
The Impact of Local Residential Land Use Restrictions on Land Values Across and Within Single Family Housing Markets
10:23 PM · Aug 25, 2021
5 Reposts · 27 Likes
Zeeshan Aleem@ZeeshanAleem
Pulling out of a two decade long imperial fantasy that achieved little more than mass casualties — and deciding to eat the political costs that accompany the complicated maneuver — is the precise opposite of pure rhetoric and drift from the real world.
Bruno Maçães @MacaesBruno
A journalist asked me today how I made sense of the Biden administration. My answer, perhaps too charitable, is that I think they live in a world of pure rhetoric, where speeches alone matter and the real world has been lost
12:19 AM · Aug 26, 2021
252 Reposts · 1.69K Likes