Favorite Rejects 2023-01-30

Aaron Green @AaronGuhreen

Hiring more people to process permits is one way of handling this. Making permit applications far simpler is another. City planners generally spend way too much time on minor, minor details.

Scott Lewis @vosdscott

The Politics Report is open today to all. The mayor is pulling in outside workers to clear a massive backlog of pending building permits and the union is ok with it. Plus, a brief history of SANDAG’s interest in Elon Musk. https://t.co/SaVRG9AAZR

Joshua Harris @joshualeeharris

It really is striking how little you hear about Ontario's energy transition in mainstream environmental studies discourse. An amazing achievement that just flies right under the radar.

Christopher Adlam @cadlam

Ontario was again the lowest emissions large grid on earth yesterday (North Sweden is today). 4.54GW of wind showed up, 2,226MW of which was exported. We also spilled about 1.2GW of hydro (wind has priority). https://t.co/skwwx7XdPI

Lior⚡ @AlphaSignalAI

I just came across the most realistic text-to-audio model I've ever seen. You can even clone your voice. The audiobook industry is about to change forever. Demo: beta.elevenlabs.io from @elevenlabsio

Benjy Sarlin @BenjySarlin

. @mckaycoppins on the central story of 2024 so far: The core of the GOP quietly predicting Trump will lose or drop out or disappear without doing anything to make it happen theatlantic.com/politics/archi…

Coby @Cobylefko

The fact that it's impossible to walk somewhere as simple as a coffee shop nearly anywhere in the US, because we've made it illegal, is really one of the craziest things about modern America. We have to build walkable cities!

Audrey Goodson Kingo @AudreyNGoodson

I highly recommend reading the comments (really). It’s clear that a lot of this is driven by unwarranted parental fear. Statistically, we live in a pretty safe time for kids. Yet no one believes this.

nytimes.comHow Parenting Today Is Different, and HarderParents feel intense pressure to be more hands-on, and a new survey shows this often means more emotional engagement.

Alec Stapp @AlecStapp

Privacy regulations may have destroyed the web browsing experience with endless cookie consent pop-ups but you have to admit they *checks notes* do nothing to actually protect our privacy

Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇦 @Noahpinion

Police killings are up from 2013, but they have not reached a "record high" in per capita terms. In fact, the 60s were far far worse.

Bella Chu @bellachu10

Counting deaths per VMT is a bit like counting deaths per cigarette. If the rate of smoking is going up, so do deaths even if deaths/cigarette are coming down. The number that matters is deaths/100K population. By that measure the US is 72nd (2018) worldwide, and falling. https://t.co/JOfkxtrbXK

Alec Stapp @AlecStapp

One underrated area of progress: Cars are so much safer than they used to be https://t.co/NW3CAZ8HWQ

Ethan Mollick @emollick

When the Louisiana State University football team loses in an upset, it causes judges in Louisiana to add 1,296 days of punishment to juvenile defendants (& 136 extra days of jail time!) as the judges are grumpy. Judges with degrees from LSU are harshest. aeaweb.org/articles?id=10…

Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇦 @Noahpinion

Yep, when people ask me what comes after Twitter, I say "Discord".

Balaji @balajis

I am very impressed by how well Discord has executed recently. The slew of new features they’ve added — from Reddit-style forums to Substack-style subscriptions — has really leveled up the platform. It's truly a private social network.

Mountain View YIMBY 🥑 @MVyimby

"We have an appointee, and it's Emily Ann Ramos" - Mayor Hicks