Favorite Rejects 2021-10-31

David Schleicher @ProfSchleich

One of the academic points people make about exactions (including things like CBAs) is that they are payoffs to whomever is politically powerful, not necessarily genuinely local concerns. This is usually disguised a bit, but San Francisco just.... says it.

Conor Dougherty @ConorDougherty

If that's really the job of a Supervisor, SF is in more trouble than I thought. https://t.co/qEdGUNOw84 https://t.co/xK3rBlsFWt

Spuk der Weiße Neger @PushingPastNumb

as much as we like to dunk on centrists on here, this analysis isn't entirely wrong—the pattern of pop-radicalism becoming an entertainment product is, tbh, leftists' curse—it popularizes our ideas, but it has the added effect of ensuring they won't be given serious thought

Noah Smith 🐇 @Noahpinion

As usual, all my predictions for American society this decade are just "the 70s, but with the internet this time". But I think the phenomenon of "radical online ideology as consumer product" is under-studied and deserves more attention from researchers, writers, and marketers.

Noah Smith 🐇 @Noahpinion

There are hopeful, optimistic people on the left, working to build a better America -- the YIMBYs, the socdems, the Green New Dealers -- but they need the sustaining energy of positivity and hope. At the mass level, our current online culture just saps hope.

Noah Smith 🐇 @Noahpinion

Don't think that our modern challenges are worse than the 70s. Those people faced plummeting wages, inflation, a disintegrating social contract, environmental devastation, an out-of-control FBI and CIA, and the ever-present looming threat of nuclear war and the end of humanity.

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

It’s @ATabarrok getting everything he ever dreamed of. https://t.co/oMqhjVVts9

Myles N. Miller @MylesMill

NEW: @FDNY says more than 2000 firefighters are on medical leave, in apparent response to vaccine mandate.

Noah Smith 🐇 @Noahpinion

I'll write more about this, but it's easy to simultaneously believe that: A) IQ is a poor proxy for true mental ability, and B) CHANGE in IQ due to some environmental influence is a good proxy for CHANGE in true mental ability. The math of this is pretty simple...

Damien Morris @DamienMorris

It's amazing how the scepticism towards IQ research VANISHES when it fits a moral crusader narrative—here the environmental impacts of poverty on IQ. Suddenly people are prepared to believe that merely IMAGINING getting stung by a large bill will cause major cognitive impairment. https://t.co/i1sfo0mdK1