Favorite Rejects 2021-12-03

David Watson

Dec 04, 2021

Kim-Mai Cutler@kimmaicutler

Why is the FDA/Pfizer/etc. taking so long for vaccines for kids under 5?

Jorge A. Caballero, MD @DataDrivenMD

#Omicron is sending more kids to the hospital than #Delta in South Africa https://t.co/bv5CxIag2u

6:41 AM · Dec 3, 2021

9 Reposts · 110 Likes

Noah Smith 🐇@Noahpinion

Project Hail Mary is excellent. Weir does a good job of transitioning to interstellar sci-fi by adding only a couple small bits of unobtanium. This is how hard sci-fi ought to be -- almost entirely real science, but still a great story with fun characters.

8:12 AM · Dec 3, 2021

4 Reposts · 154 Likes

Noah Smith 🐇@Noahpinion

I'm not really enjoying the Wheel of Time TV series, but maybe that's just because I don't really like the Wheel of Time books.

8:37 AM · Dec 3, 2021

1 Repost · 114 Likes

Matthew Yglesias@mattyglesias

This was not my preferred course of action, but one highly effective response to the GOP threat to steal elections that Democrats have hit on is becoming unpopular so they'll likely lose fair and square.

3:09 PM · Dec 3, 2021

107 Reposts · 1.42K Likes

Matthew Yglesias@mattyglesias

Part of what makes online so tedious is the idea that "not literally a fascist takeover of the country" gets coded as identity to "things aren't that bad." It's actually quite bad to have the worse party win elections and implement their bad ideas.

Centrist 🤝Madness @CentristMadness

A few months ago this guy wrote a column about how trump isn’t really a fascist and things aren’t that bad https://t.co/07q3d9xM5D

3:22 PM · Dec 3, 2021

14 Reposts · 270 Likes

Matthew Yglesias@mattyglesias

My basic view is that in a proper system of government courts should have almost no power, but in the United States the elected branches *also* have very little democratic legitimacy so it's extremely hard to have a coherent view about how branches should relate.

3:28 PM · Dec 3, 2021

7 Reposts · 163 Likes

Matthew Yglesias@mattyglesias

Like on the Obergerfell case, the Court swept aside the legislative process but actually landed on the outcome that was supported by the electorate (and tellingly, Republicans don't bother complaining about it anymore).

3:30 PM · Dec 3, 2021

6 Reposts · 129 Likes

Matthew Yglesias@mattyglesias

In Baker v Carr the Court refused to defer to undemocratically constituted state legislatures and forced them to be more democratic. But then in the more recent partisan gerrymandering case, they chose to defer rather impose.

3:32 PM · Dec 3, 2021

5 Reposts · 82 Likes

Matthew Yglesias@mattyglesias

Covid alarmism is uncool but it seems like there’s a very good chance of this omicron situation being genuinely disastrous, prompting many re-infections and breakthrough.

4:34 PM · Dec 3, 2021

112 Reposts · 1.02K Likes

Matthew Yglesias@mattyglesias

If you understand the South African data correctly, I don’t think there’s any basis for the view that omicron outcomes are less severe. What’s true is that SA is much younger than the United States, so our outcomes will be worse than theirs.

John Burn-Murdoch @jburnmurdoch

This is why: South Africa’s weekly hospital admission counts are back-filled every day as new patient data comes in, so the figure for the week ending Nov 28 has been rising in recent days, from 580 in the data published on the 29th, to 788 in today’s report. https://t.co/7I6Y3uMpyo

4:39 PM · Dec 3, 2021

25 Reposts · 231 Likes

Timothy B. Lee@binarybits

Today's employment numbers seem a bit contradictory. Payrolls grew a disappointing 210,000. But the prime-age employment/population ratio jumped from 78.3 percent to 78.8 percent—a big improvement for one month. I asked @JosephPolitano for his insights and here's what he said.

5:50 PM · Dec 3, 2021

3 Reposts · 30 Likes

Noah Smith 🐇@Noahpinion

After I characterized conservatives as "not the most thoughtful" on the abortion issue, this guy kept haranguing me to post my GRE scores. Then National Review wrote an article about it, claiming that 474 is half of 1474.

5:52 PM · Dec 3, 2021

11 Reposts · 392 Likes

Noah Smith 🐇@Noahpinion

My GRE was 1590, I missed a question on the English part but I still think my answer was right

5:55 PM · Dec 3, 2021

188 Likes

Noah Smith 🐇@Noahpinion

Actually this is a complete myth. The study found that policy is closely aligned with the preferences of both the middle class and the upper middle class, but *slightly* more with the upper middle class. vox.com/2016/5/9/11502…

Cory Doctorow PO-BOY MENTALITY @doctorow

Back in 2014, a pair of political scientists published a study of 1,779 US "policy issues" over 20 years, concluding that elected officials make policy to benefit the richest ten percent of the country to the exclusion of the needs of everyone else. https://t.co/hRu5sz79fT 1/ https://t.co/DkUztWU3Zr

6:23 PM · Dec 3, 2021

15 Reposts · 134 Likes

Noah Smith 🐇@Noahpinion

Politics in the U.S. is bad now BUT It's only 10 more years til @IDoTheThinking can run for President. We just have to hold the line until then.

7:46 PM · Dec 3, 2021

4 Reposts · 108 Likes

Noah Smith 🐇@Noahpinion

In fact we got rapid growth and a surge of inflation. And here you thought Summers covered all his bases!

Steve Matthews @SteveMatthews12

Larry Summers on U.S. economic outlook: 33% odds of stagflation 33% odds of recession 33% rapid growth, no surge in inflation https://t.co/HusmxWIexj via @economics

11:39 PM · Dec 3, 2021

5 Reposts · 217 Likes