Favorite Rejects 2022-02-11

Laurie Voss @seldo

Forbes is going to be mostly owned by a Bitcoin exchange as a result of a SPAC merger so get ready for the most objective reporting you've ever seen

cnbc.comBinance, led by the world’s richest crypto billionaire, is taking a $200 million stake in ForbesThe move shows the increasing influence of the crypto industry with the sector’s first big investment in a traditional U.S. media property.

Noah Smith 🌐+🧦=🐇 @Noahpinion

Enthusiasm alone will never drive a revival of the labor movement in this country. Either change the law to mandate sectoral bargaining, or it's over.

Noah Smith 🌐+🧦=🐇 @Noahpinion

"The internet must be destroyed, to save science!!" is a position I haven't seen anyone take yet, but it seems like something that would be fun to shout at people until they block you

techcrunch.comResearchers warn that social media may be ‘fundamentally at odds’ with science – TechCrunchA special set of editorials published in today’s issue of the journal Science argue that social media in its current form may well be fundamentally broken for the purposes of presenting and disseminating facts and reason. The algorithms are running the show now, they argue, and the systems pr…

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

Plus lead pipe cleanup, plus abandoned well cleanup, plus grid upgrades — it’s a good law!

Alon (they/them) @alon_levy

American environmentalists and transit activists keep making up criticisms of the BIF, but it took the road:transit formula from 4:1 to 2:1.

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

It’s in fact critically important that the world not allow democratic self-government to be replaced by heckler’s veto by whichever faction happens to own larger vehicles.

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

People on foot blocking traffic for short periods of time isn’t great but society survives it happening because it’s a fairly ineffective tactic. The truck blockade is more potent & would be a great tactic for bringing down a dictator, exactly why democracies can’t tolerate it.

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

Well now I have unpaywalled the column in question so the whole senate can read it. washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2022…

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

Something that I think has been underrated is the extent to which Sinema's stubborn attachment to the (very unpopular) Trump corporate tax cut has denied Democrats their most baseline obvious class-oriented message.

Noah Smith 🌐+🧦=🐇 @Noahpinion

This is the scariest version of the "Xi is incompetent" theory:

Chris Horton 何貴森 @heguisen

The moment I read this, I was struck by something I hadn't considered before: the possibility that some who have Xi's ear might encourage him to attack Taiwan in order to hasten Xi's downfall, and thereby create political opportunities for themselves https://t.co/dnd5UVmbZ8 https://t.co/CYQrbod3eP

Noah Smith 🌐+🧦=🐇 @Noahpinion

Trying to think of reasons why this might be wrong, and failing

Cory Doctorow @doctorow

Uber is (still) a bezzle ("the magic interval when a confidence trickster knows he has the money he has appropriated but the victim does not yet understand that he has lost it"). And every bezzle - *every* bezzle - ends. 1/ https://t.co/KzixQfYYYU

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

@Noahpinion IDK I think rideshare companies score at a high percentile in serving a useful need that had reflected a real market inefficiency before it was met.