Favorite Rejects 2023-01-05

Joey Politano 🏳️‍🌈 @JosephPolitano

I've said it before and will say it again, but the core battle for YIMBYism is between the ~60% of citydwellers who are pro new housing and the ~40% of entrenched landlords and homeowners who are against new housing, not the cat fights between the leftmost 5% and 1% on Twitter.

Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇦 @Noahpinion

If anyone has chronic insomnia, my recommendation is to turn down the temperature in your room (and if necessary, stick your feet out from under the covers. I had chronic untreatable insomnia for 7 years, and what eventually cured it was just cold.

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

Financial catastrophe unless we get unspecific Social Security cuts idk. Wouldn’t everyone be happier doing nothing and making vague complaints about “the border”? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ https://t.co/vFoXeR7eDD

Chris Cioffi @ReporterCioffi

McCarthy critic Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) said he wanted McCarthy to devise a debt-limit deal suitable to fiscal conservatives. "Is he willing to shut the government down rather than raise the debt ceiling? That's a non-negotiable item."

Derek Thompson @DKThomp

A silver lining of this weird and somewhat crummy economy is that inequality is falling in almost every possible way: 1. Federal redistribution is more egalitarian 2. Assets held disproportionately by the rich are losing value 3. Real wage gains only happening among low-income

Jason Furman @jasonfurman

Over the last three years (roughly the pandemic period) the bottom two quartiles have seen real wage gains--albeit smaller than the pace prior to the pandemic. The top two quartiles have seen losses. This is based on the Atlanta Fed wage tracker which holds composition constant. https://t.co/5pFzXExXmd

Jason Crawford @jasoncrawford

Sanger's Rule: “Anytime you get technical development that's two to threefold or more efficient, accurate, cheaper, a whole range of experiments opens up”

Will @Willyintheworld

Sanger's Rule on tech improvement --> scientific improvement. Large Language Models will make many textual scientific tasks much more efficient (10x faster summarizing / categorizing etc.) What will this enable? https://t.co/k14Lerj7lL

Ian James @ByIanJames

The Drought Monitor’s latest update, as of Tuesday, shows some improvement in California. The areas in extreme or ‘exceptional’ drought shrank from 35% to 27%. More to come with the latest storms. droughtmonitor.unl.edu/CurrentMap/Sta…

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

Seems like a bad approach to me

Grid @gridnews

They only want "to throw sand in the gears of the hated federal government until it fails and they’ve finally proved that it’s beyond saving.” “What they’re really interested in is chaos.” - Former House Speaker John Boehner https://t.co/4Vcb8upc4E

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

"Replacing the federal income tax with a sales tax" would be a huge tax hike on most people.

Christian Britschgi @christianbrits

The AP is describing the McCarthy challengers as "far-right", but all their stated demands are pretty basic; hold votes on more border wall spending, replacing the federal income tax with a sales tax, a balanced budget, Congressional term limits https://t.co/JLkJec1ENl

Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇦 @Noahpinion

Did China's one-child policy actually reduce the birth rate, or did it just terrorize people?