Favorite Rejects 2022-03-21

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

I’m an inflation hawk now because the Fed is mirror-imaging the mistakes of ten years ago — too much supply-side analysis and not enough simplistic looking at aggregate spending.

slowboring.comThe Fed should do more to fight inflationA simplistic — but correct — look at the situation

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

What does this even mean? I think I missed the step in the discourse where someone explains the theory “if a country has labs in it, that means it’s good for Russia to invade it.”

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

An idea guaranteed to increase Boston transit ridership would be to reduce rules limiting the size of buildings and number of units you are allowed to construct on residentially zoned parcels. https://t.co/L5GamJjJmn

David Zipper @DavidZipper

In Boston, fare-free buses have apparently replaced more walking/biking (8% of riders) than driving (5%). https://t.co/AXyGs3201h

Julie Pace @JuliePace

Many of you have asked about our brave @AP team in Mariupol. This is the story of how they covered a city under siege, and how they escaped.

apnews.com20 days in Mariupol: The team that documented city’s agonyOver the last three weeks, a team of AP journalists have been documenting the agony of the Ukrainian city of Mariupol from inside the city center. They quickly became the only journalists on the ground, taking risks to show the world the war’s human toll.

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

A big problem with Russia's current strategic direction is that China is a really shitty ally.

Lyman Stone 石來民 🦬🦬🦬 @lymanstoneky

A nontrivial piece of China's foreign policy is kidnapping women from its allies so that Chinese men, who greatly outnumber reproductive-age Chinese women due to the One Child policy, can have wives and prostitutes. https://t.co/nPQ97vwBUZ

Colin McMillen @mcmillen

Lots of good anthropic arguments in the replies. I've always liked "it's relatively easy to find reductions of P problems to other P problems & NP-C problems to other NP-C problems; it'd be *weird* if there exists a reduction from an NP-C problem to P, but it's just hard to find" https://t.co/UtEkCfbM7c

Zach Weinersmith @ZachWeiner

Hey math/CS dorks - what's your intuition on why it's almost certainly the case that P=/=NP? Like, if a philosophy-minded student asked you why it'd surprise you if P=NP, what would you say?

Timothy B. Lee @binarybits

Facebook seems to be congenitally incapable of thinking through the obvious consequences of their actions. Seriously every step of this fiasco was completely predictable. sfist.com/2022/03/14/fac… npr.org/2022/03/21/108…

nilay patel @reckless

There was a meeting where someone at Apple was like, "Okay, let's reduce the functionality of the Apple TV app to avoid Google's platform fees" without even a hint of irony

The Verge @verge

Apple TV app on Android TV no longer allows rentals, purchases, or subscriptions https://t.co/vf9Pb3h3ad https://t.co/dWlKafo3HB

Justin Sandefur @JustinSandefur

Half the replies arguing nobody actually worries about overpopulation and the other half screaming “what myth?!”

eddie | ☭ @fruitbatblues

the grip that the myth of overpopulation has on climate activists

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

Fifteen years ago, I thought progressives exaggerated the importance of money in politics issues but that doing so was plausibly just a fundraising tactic ... I now think it's become a genuinely damaging cope.

Xenocrypt @xenocryptsite

I'm just not convinced that Democratic state legislative issues are primarily about them not caring enough or not spending enough money or "organizing" or whatever. I think it's very largely just the maps. I've never seen an actual analysis of campaign $ to tell me otherwise. https://t.co/Gnr16F8lEi

Michelle Goldberg @michelleinbklyn

nytimes.com/2022/03/21/opi…