Favorites August 14th 2023
Not enough happened on Sunday, so no August 13th newsletter.
So, this fourth criminal indictment of Trump is a doozy. Here's a list of who these charged people are. Ken White famously insists that almost no one ever goes to trial on RICO charges, but he has had to qualify that the state RICO charges are different, and he admits in a short youtube clip, this time it is RICO.
As one commenter points out, the end of that segment seems to be saying "it's not treason if you do it for money", which doesn't seem quite right to me.
Longer Reads
• Sweden is building a bunch of new nuclear power plants, here's a thread about why. But you already know why, TL;DR: they're safe, stable, zero-emission power.
Flotsam and Jetsam
– Taking someone on a date to IKEA can be effective (src)
– Leftists misunderstanding Georgism, repeatedly (src)
– Real Estate activities as a percentage of GDP for various countries over time (src)
– Democrat Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice faces impeachment if she rules against GOP gerrymander. She was elected by a significant margin. (src)
– Sierra Club congratulates Illinois for upholding nuclear power ban. (src)
– The biggest non-technology change to society is the fall of smoking (src)
– Really impressive honest self-assessment of 2020 primary from Eric Levitz. (src)
– Wordcell vs Shape Rotator quiz from a university. (src)
– The FAA has no mandate for innovation or competitiveness, so they basically outlaw any new kind of drone. (src)
– Republican congressional districts get approximately all the renewable energy money (src)
– RFK comes out against abortion, not sure he realizes he's trying to win a democratic primary. (src)
– Ban lawns? Sure, but how about we ban setbacks first (src)
– None of the Republicans are discussing jettisoning their regressive tax positions in order to keep their unpopular abortion positions. All their other policy positions are a wrapper for the tax stuff. (src)
– SAT seems to be trying to make their test more practicable. (src)
– Twitter is throttling links to threads and NYT. (src)
– Star Wars was allegory for Vietnam, but some people don't understand that in the allegory the US is the Empire. (src)