Favorites August 16th 2021

Andy Vance @AndyVance

Everyone seems to have an opinion on Afghanistan today, and most of them are absolute garbage. This piece, however, is worth reading. Noah provides a brilliant frame for understanding why what’s happening today was always going to happen - 10 years ago or 10 years from now. https://t.co/lLMKAGxuHX

Noah Smith 🐇 @Noahpinion

My thoughts on the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan, in light of the U.S. occupation of Japan. If we understood how little we actually transformed Japan, maybe we wouldn't have expected to transform Afghanistan. https://t.co/bngAHbs9T7

In the end, we aren't an empire, we're a nation state. Our military can at best rebuild a government, not create one from scratch.

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

Good. And I'm glad the White House is taking the lead on this rather than delaying the inevitable.

nytimes.comU.S. to Advise Boosters for Most Americans 8 Months After VaccinationNursing home residents and health care workers will most likely be the first to get booster shots, as soon as September, followed by other older people who were vaccinated last winter.

Hopefully it'll be three shots for me this year. Honestly I was hoping to get some Novavax, which I understand to be 'the good stuff'. But Moderna is fine I guess.

Charles Fain Lehman @CharlesFLehman

Large effects of juvenile restorative justice conferencing on moderate offenders' propensity to reoffend nber.org/papers/w29150

Somehow restorative justice has always sounded sounds kinda hokey, but apparently it works.

Catherine Rampell @crampell

There's precedent for US evacuating refugees to Guam—isolated island, out of harm's way—for further screening before transfer to US mainland. We did this with Vietnamese refugees after fall of Saigon (Operation New Life) and with Iraqi Kurds in the '90s (Operation Pacific Haven)

I didn't know that this was an option. Apparently Guam is cool with it too.

Nate Silver @NateSilver538

The thing is there's much more we could be doing on just the vaccine front. —More aggressive use of vaccine mandates —Require vaccines (except for kids) for attending mass gatherings —Full FDA vaccine approval —EUA for kids 5-12 —Booster doses for adults age 65+, J&J recipients

Don't get too distracted by conversations about non-pharmecutal interventions. Vaccines are the *most* important part.

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

What happened, as the hawkish experts are aware but are trying to dupe you into not realizing, is that the Trump administration signed a deal with the Taliban that they opposed.

It's wild how fast this little note completely discredited some experts today. Everyone knew the date of the withdrawl, that's why things had been so calm for so long. Hawks saying otherwise absolutely know better.

Darrell Owens @IDoTheThinking

Vox did a great video about the national American housing crisis. Less homes constructed in this 2010s than any decade after the WW2 baby boom. Dozens of buyers competing for shacks in the Bay Area. Vox goes into why this is the case (spoiler: its zoning).

youtube.comHow the US made affordable homes illegalThe rules that keep American housing expensive.Subscribe and turn on notifications (🔔) so you don’t miss any videos: http://goo.gl/0bsAjOOver the past year,...

Great new video from Jerusalem at Vox.

Noah Smith 🐇 @Noahpinion

This isn't true, but if China's leaders *think* it's true, it could increase the risk of a miscalculation that results in a major war.

Global Times @globaltimesnews

#环球时报Editorial: From what happened in Afghanistan, those in Taiwan should perceive that once a war breaks out in the Straits, the island’s defense will collapse in hours and US military won’t come to help. As a result, the DPP will quickly surrender. https://t.co/ZUrZmcsSWf https://t.co/wFG4vrHbTo

Taiwan has a functioning government and a real, non-heroin based, economy. Not something that can be said for Afghanistan.

Noah Smith 🐇 @Noahpinion

Woohoo! We're down from locking up 1% of our adult population to locking up only 0.81% of our adult population (at any given time)!

Pew Research Center @pewresearch

The U.S. had 810 prison and jail inmates for every 100,000 adults in 2019 – the nation’s lowest incarceration rate since 1995, according to new federal data https://t.co/6gYG7rdyEu

So, good, but that still puts us in a bad place worldwide.

Patrick Collison @patrickc

Based on the responses, we funded two clinical trials for fluvoxamine. One of those trials failed to recruit enough participants. Another did and the results are summarized here: blogs.jwatch.org/hiv-id-observa….

blogs.jwatch.orgCould This Be Our First Effective, Inexpensive, Widely Available Outpatient Treatment for COVID-19? - HIV and ID ObservationsIt’s fluvoxamine. This rarely used antidepressant, long off-patent, has quietly been going through high-quality clinical studies for treatment of COVID-19. It certainly won’t be endorsed or promoted by any deep-pocketed pharmaceutical company, but deserves some attention nonetheless. Here’s why I th…

More good results from Fast Grants. I really hope they find a way to use the Fast Grants structure at a much larger scale with Government Research Money.

Santa Cruz, March 2021