Favorite Rejects 2021-10-24

Noah Smith 🐇 @Noahpinion

Still impressed that Frank Herbert managed to write an allegory for America's wars in the Middle East decades before they actually happened

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

Like what share of the “experts” given screen time to pontificate about the war in Afghanistan on television over the past six months speak the local languages? I think the number is closer to zero than to ten.

Market Urbanism @MarketUrbanism

What the climate movement needs is a little less interest in which American Jewish groups (?) are participating in DC statehood rallies (??) and a little more interest in promoting low-carbon urban land use

Sunrise DC @SunriseMvmtDC

Our statement on future coalition spaces with Zionist organizations: https://t.co/oBj6pbtv6r

dune opinions account @fellawhomstdve

I love that the Atreides national anthem is just screaming “ATREIDES! ATREIDES!” imagine if the military invaded Iraq yelling “AMERICA! AMERICA!”

Scientific American @sciam

After devastating setbacks at the turn of the century, gene therapy is now successfully treating diseases including neuromuscular disorders, cancer and blindness.

scientificamerican.comFour Success Stories in Gene TherapyThe field is beginning to fulfill its potential. These therapies offer a glimpse of what’s to come

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

In his new book @ScottGottliebMD argues that US public health agencies overprepared for a flu pandemic and were caught flat-footed by aerosol transmission but it seems like the latest thinking is that flu transmission is also largely airborne.

Colin McMillen @mcmillen

As a former Googler, I strongly agree with this statement. Any Google employee who talks publicly about an ongoing legal matter would likely get in trouble with Legal & PR & management. Asking individual Googlers for comment is not likely to be fruitful for anyone involved.

Jake Archibald @jaffathecake

In terms of the stuff going around about AMP and ads, the general rule for Googlers is not to comment on ongoing legal stuff. So, silence doesn't mean we have inside info, or support anything in particular etc etc. I won't speak for others, but I feel totally in the dark & angry.

Noah Smith 🐇 @Noahpinion

In many fields, we don't know what will happen until it happens. In macroeconomics, we usually don't even know what happened AFTER it happened.

Noah Smith 🐇 @Noahpinion

One way Dune manages to create an exotic, irreducibly weird setting is that it has names like "gom jabbar" and "bene gesserit" with names like "Duncan Idaho". You can never quite tell if this is supposed to be our future or some bizarre alternate universe.

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

Wisdom of the Atreides — generating abundance is highly progressive, scarcity is inherently regressive.

Noah Smith 🐇 @Noahpinion

Degrowthers: We've never decarbonized our economy before, so of course we can't do it now

Ketan Joshi @KetanJ0

If Vaclav Smil can't imagine it, then it isn't likely to happen. That's the rule, folks https://t.co/92D1FPrnPc

Noah Smith 🐇 @Noahpinion

The social credit system just sends you a text every day that says: "You're French. Don't even bother going outside. You're just going to riot."

Michael P Senger @MichaelPSenger

Lin Jinyue, lead designer of China’s social credit system, extolls its value and his hope for worldwide adoption: “If you had the social credit system, there would never have been the Yellow Vests, we would have detected that before they acted.” https://t.co/6JKC8tDVzP