Favorite Rejects 2022-04-20

Colin McMillen @mcmillen

and that's why Arizona needs more money to beef up security on their land border with [checks notes] China

Randall Munroe @xkcd

Entwives xkcd.com/2609

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

Granting that there are some logistical snags with distribution as well as public ignorance, I think people who want to do more to protect the vulnerable from Covid should focus on *solving those problems* so people can get the medicine they need.

Quantian @quantian1

Not to go all Yggy on people, but it *is* wild that we have a straight-up cure for Covid now and people are just not taking it

Rebecca Klein @rklein90

New York state has allotted millions of dollars to turn hotels into affordable housing. But onerous zoning laws has made the plan impossible to implement, via @SamMellins

nysfocus.comZoning Laws Are Blocking the Conversion of Hotels into Affordable Housing - New York FocusThe state’s grand plan to convert unused hotels into affordable housing hasn’t gotten off the ground. Lawmakers just boosted funding — but developers and housing advocates say that won’t help without lifting onerous zoning restrictions.

Maria Snegovaya @MSnegovaya

Big news from Russia today is that China's payment system UnionPay which was widely advertised in Russia as an alternative to Visa/Mastercard, has refused to cooperate with Russia's largest bank Sberbank our of fear of being sanctioned by the West.

t.meNEXTA LiveУдар в спину от брата Си Китайская платёжная система UnionPay отказалась сотрудничать со Сбером, опасаясь попасть под санкции. Ранее США заявляли, что если китайские компании будут помогать России в обходе санкций, то они попадут под ограничения.

Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇦 @Noahpinion

Most importantly, due to sanctions, these vehicles are mostly not getting replaced.

Blake Allen @Blake_Allen13

Russia has now lost 3k, visually identified, military vehicles. The toll this war has taken on their armed forces is staggering. And we still have multiple regions where we don’t know the true scale of Russian losses (and new losses are being found every day in the north) https://t.co/RYpeKyfR83

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

WRT Netflix, I think people are underestimating the extent to which further growth is inherently hard once you reach a certain scale. The Slow Boring growth curve has flattened out a lot; my best customers already signed up.

Mike Duncan @mikeduncan

If you look at birth years of presidential candidates back to 1789 they typically follow each other by 4-8 years as you'd expect (1732, 1735, 1743, 1751 etc) Then in 1992 we hit people born in the 1940s and it just grinds to an absolute halt...

Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇦 @Noahpinion

Musk actually did fight Putin for the future of Ukraine...but it wasn't a boxing match.

Rob Lee @RALee85

The performance and role of SpaceX's Starlink in Ukraine is one of the most interesting aspects of this war. It also demonstrates the huge advantage the US has with innovative high-tech private companies. https://t.co/wzS0tBLmoQ

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

Unless they sent @DonaldShoup, exporting US parking regulations is probably the most dangerous thing we could do short provoking a nuclear war.

Michael Tracey @mtracey

The US has been so granularly embedded in the governance of Ukraine that it even created a plan for street parking https://t.co/BXbDZQZqWn

Mike Duncan @mikeduncan

I guess that explains why the Second International didn't implode in 1914 and instead went on to usher in a new age of international solidarity.

Richard D. Wolff @profwolff

In World War 1 leading leftists rejected both sides. Eugene Victor Debs (US) and Vladimir Lenin (Russia) urged their respective working classes not to support or fight and die in what they called a capitalist war.