Favorites April 26th 2022: Gas, Ventilation and Industrial Capacity

Google Bayview, April 2022

Greg Ip @greg_ip

Xi Jinping says, "The East is rising, the West is declining." He's wrong. China may be rising but Russia & their assorted allies sure aren't. The West has a towering advantage in GDP, key industries & technology. Here's how it should use those assets. wsj.com/articles/how-t…

Smith points out that it's interesting that the definition of 'The West' is now just everyone opposed to Russia. Which I don’t even think is incorrect.

Gernot Wagner @GernotWagner

We can't stop importing Russian gas, they said. It's too difficult to even contemplate, they said. Unilaterally stopping would be considered an act of war, they said. After all, there are contracts, they said. Let's see, Putin said.

bloom.bgBloomberg - Are you a robot?

Perhaps the whole argument over how quickly Europe should stop buying gas from Russia will be rendered moot.

Magdi Semrau @magi_jay

Please consider this contrast in narrative framing from @politico. This is not to say that critics of Biden are unjustified, only to point out that very different standards were applied to his predecessor.

The key phrase in this thread (which has a ton more examples) is "asymmetry in expectations"

Alec Stapp @AlecStapp

During World War II, the US government built two giant oil pipelines from Texas to New Jersey — more than 1,200 miles (!) — in just one year (!!) Where is this sense of urgency when it comes to building infrastructure to address our current energy crisis?

It's been 20 years that San Francisco has been trying to paint 2 miles of street red for the Van Ness bus rapid transit project.

London Breed @LondonBreed

Today is a historic day. The Board just voted to make JFK Drive permanently car-free. An essential space for our residents and families that is now, a long-term benefit to this city. We still have work to do, but passing this legislation is where we begin to make real change.

Although there was some good news out of SF today.

Philip N Cohen @familyunequal

We should've had better ventilation all along. doi.org/10.1111/ina.12…

If they're going to keep packing sensors into phones and watches, I could really go for a CO2 sensor.

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Free speech is *such* a popular idea in the US that—even though most Americans favor imitations on it—Democrats are probably taking a political risk by letting it get coded as a conservative concept.

knightfoundation.orgFree Expression in America Post-2020Free expression and the freedom of speech are cornerstones of American democracy. Yet the interpretation of the First Amendment continues to be a flashpoint in the 21st century as the nation debates how to apply these rights to our society.

Musk's statements of freedom of speech don't seem particularly nuanced, but it's probably not a tactically good idea to attack him over it right now. It's super hard to rein in progressive voices on Twitter who are doing things that are tactically inadvisable.

• Thread with details of the Twitter purchase agreement. Most interesting part is that Musk can't pull out just because users all hate him.

• Short thread of careful parsing of the discussion of nuclear war by the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs.