Favorites April 27th 2024
This is being challenged in court of course. it seems like a good change, although it won't apply to nonprofits, where the FTC doesn't have jurisdiction. It's already the law in California, where it seems to work well. Some good stuff from Lina Khan, I hope this one works out, here's more details, and the FTC press release.
Student Debt and Israel/Palestine are also very low on this list of things younger voters care about! Yglesias jokes: '“Misinformation” about the role of climate in youth politics has been a big problem for Democrats' you can't win elections if you're confused about what voters want. One commenter asked when Climate Change concern peaked with young people, and how high it peaked, the answer (from a different poll) is just before the pandemic, at about double the current level of concern. Talk more about healthcare.
I tried to figure out how recently this became available. The article discusses a child who got bone marrow in 2022 as part of a trial that still isn't complete, but it seems that adults have been able to use this for at least a few years now. I also had somehow not realized that they can get the cells for bone marrow from blood now, the donor no longer needs surgery.
Longer Reads
• A detailed explanation of why the highspeed rail Brightline West project will stop short of LA, and has two stops in the middle of the desert. TL;DR: environemental review is unnecessarily expensive, and it's hard to get regional infrastructure organizations to cooperate with new projects. (src)(cached)
Flotsam and Jetsam
– Florida's Brightline train is surprisingly deadly. Like, more deadly than cars on a per-mile-traveled basis. It probably has something to do with the fact that they aren't grade-separated from cars. (src)(cached)
– UCSD is limiting admissions for engineering majors because too many people want to major in engineering. That seems bad, if there's proportionally more demand for engineering, make space for it. (src)(cached)
– WaPo reports on how China is using anti semitism as a way to attempt to influence events in western countries. Noah Smith doesn't get any anti semitic responses to things he says on Israel/Palestine, but gets tons of anti semitic stuff when he posts about TikTok. (src)(cached)
– Funding Ukraine is restrained compared to, for instance, getting involved in Iraq. A lot of Americans died there. Giving friendly nations military equipment is a much lower level of involvement. (src)(cached)
– In Rome, the Coliseum is across the street from brand new multistory buildings that look totally different. Is your historical preservation claim stronger than the Coliseum's? (src)(cached)
– Wow, Dallas has actually gotten rid of a ton of surface parking in their downtown. Look at these before/after photos for the last 20 years. (src)(cached)
– Alex Garland: "If the left wants to combat right-wing extremism, it needs to be in the business of winning elections", if you want to persuade people "you don't do that by screaming at them" (src)(cached)
– It confuses things to conflate "don't give Israel free stuff" and "refuse to sell stuff to Israel". These are different concepts. (src)(cached)
– The Sudan situation remains very bad (src)(cached)
– Just because the US passed Ukraine aid doesn't mean Europe should stop trying to help. (src)(cached)
– Social security stays solvent only because of immigration (src)(cached)
– Union formation at a site often causes the site to close, but only if it's the kind of thing that can be done elsewhere (manufacturing) if it’s services, unions don't lower employment. (src)(cached)
– TikTok's letter to Congress was ghost-written by a ByteDance employee, sorta seems like ByteDance is actually in charge over there. (src)(cached)
– Republican leaders think that fringe leftists are representative of Democratic voters at large, but they're not, and you see backlash against extreme left-wing positions, even in San Francisco. On the other hand, there's almost no voter backlash among conservatives against the most insane fringe Republicans. (src)(cached)
– Ukraine aid took forever to pass because Republican leaders were unwilling to confront the fringe elements of their own caucus (src)(cached)
– Music for Programming, some good stuff, cool interface. (src)
– Apple's former SVP of Software Engineering uploaded his first youtube video, explaining why LLMs work. (src)
– George W Bush's own list of his top ‘achievements’ starts with 'solving' two massive failures that happened on his own watch. He was not a good president! (src)(cached)
– New study showing banning smartphones in schools has good effects, but then again, there are some possible issues with the study as well. (src)(cached)
– A bunch of people indicted over the Arizona fake Republican electors scheme. The guy who plead guilty in the Georgia case, Ken Chesebro, decided to go ahead and plead guilty early this time, and turned over a ton of documents. (src)