Favorite Rejects 2021-08-29

𝐮𝐩𝐡𝐨𝐥𝐝 𝐂𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐓𝐎𝐑 𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡𝐭 @yhdistyminen

It really comes down to a shallow analysis of the factors of production, incl. a failure to consider land entirely. Developers represent capital and are therefore evil, whereas homeowners passively accumulating income at the community's expense are merely morally neutral

sam deutsch @samdman95

left-NIMBYism is such an incoherent ideology people are unironically like “I hate landlords, that’s why I think we need to stop building new housing” like, congrats on giving existing landlords a monopoly on housing so they can raise rents

Daniel W. Drezner @dandrezner

I’m assuming that the Taliban provided the intel on this? Is there another plausible explanation?

Lauren Peikoff @laurenpeikoff

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Taliban spokesman says a US airstrike targeted a suicide bomber in a vehicle who wanted to strike Kabul airport.

Arindrajit Dube @arindube

If the number one concern really were safety of children, we would have a vaccine for kids under 12 by now, keeping them safe from Covid. The lack of re-weighting of risks by FDA to account for a pandemic is really catastrophic. nytimes.com/2021/08/27/wel…

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

I'm sure there are a lot of potentially unaccounted-for confounders here, but at the same time, people need to stop saying there's "no evidence" that boosters work.

Eric Topol @EricTopol

Israeli data for 1 million people, age > 60, 4 million person-days with no booster vs 3.4 million person-days with booster >10-fold reduction of severe illness ~11 fold reduction of infections Preprint by @MiloLabWIS @IsraelMoH and colleagues just posted https://t.co/kSl7XcDoKz https://t.co/wEpKsfZ93i

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

In general I'm suspicious of the term "no evidence", which is rarely literally true. When people say that it often means they're setting the bar extremely high because they're clinging to arbitrarily-chosen null hypotheses, sometimes for political reasons.

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@K_G_Andersen I'm sensitive to this language because it comes after a year of the WHO and other groups saying that there was "no evidence" of things that later proved to be true when what they really meant (in a layperson's terms) was "no definitive proof yet". https://t.co/77ulagloBp

Noah Smith 🐇 @Noahpinion

This is the case that Xi is China's Trump -- he doesn't do much of substance, but he attacks all the right people.

Elliott Zaagman @ElliottZaagman

I think a lotta folks in China would disagree w/this, based on that it’s emotionally satisfying for some to see corrupt officials and billionaires get taken down, a foreign ministry that doesn’t hold back its vitriol, and those disloyal troublemakers in HK get cracked down on. https://t.co/WeXQC3xiIA

Alec MacGillis @AlecMacGillis

Sitting here watching the first German TV debate to replace Merkel as chancellor devote *25 minutes* to climate change, far more even than Afghanistan & pandemic. Fine points of emissions targets, power grid, steel making, electric vehicles, downtown car bans...a different world.

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

I avoid this problem by exclusively doing bad tweets. https://t.co/Pr0WDzyI1G

Noah Smith 🐇 @Noahpinion

Being a pundit who doesn't really adhere to any party line or ideological package means getting a lot of quote-tweets of the form: 1. "I usually disagree with Noah, but this is really smart." and 2. "Weird, I usually agree with Noah, why is he being stupid here?"

Noah Smith 🐇 @Noahpinion

That said, the Osaka subway is the most amazing train *system* I've ever ridden on. It's like they solved the traveling salesman problem in super high dimensions. There's always a transfer train waiting right there, and every destination is within a 10 minute walk from a station.

Noah Smith 🐇 @Noahpinion

I once asked a transportation engineer in Tokyo why the Tokyo subway wasn't as amazing as the Osaka subway. He pointed to a city map (which of course was right next to us), and pointed at the Imperial Palace grounds, and said "Because we have to go around THIS thing!!"