Favorites August 1st 2024
This is OpenAI's voice-to-voice model, which has been made available to a few reviewers now. In one interesting video, the reviewer asks it to count to 50 as fast as possible without stopping, and it still stops to take a "breath". Interestingly, the transcript doesn't give any indication of the pause.
There were a bunch of indications that the vote counts were fradulent, but the first one I saw was that the percentages all came out to suspiciously round percentage points. Not sure what can be done to actually remove Maduro from power though...
The core idea is that the Euclid ruling allowed governments to take something from citizens without compensating them. Overturning it wouldn't make zoning illegal, it would just require that any zoning beyond health and safety would require compensation to landowners. Seems like a good idea, and the Lawyer arguing against zoning in the original case was a Georgist. Here’s the full article.
She now holds the 20 fastest times in the Women's 1500M Freestyle, plus there's this video of her swimming across a pool with a glass of chocolate milk on her head.
Live TV watching is just absolutely cratering. I've been using the Peacock app to watch Olympics coverage and it's a huge improvement over standard TV.
Longer Reads
• A short thread about the assassination of the head of Hamas in Tehran. TL;DR: it won't change either group's positions, and will probably result in Iran striking Israel again. (src)(cached)
• Thread about wealth inequality in the US, it's actually stayed stable for thirty years. TL;DR: future social security payouts are a kind of wealth, and for many people, it's effective total value is enormous. (src)(cached)
Flotsam and Jetsam
– You would not believe how many Community actors, even minor ones, were also in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But a few major ones still missing: Brita, Annie and Jeff. McHale's small role in Spiderman 2 doesn't count, it wasn't MCU. (src)
– It's not happenstance that music streaming services all have the same catalog and compete on features, while video streaming services are all separate. It's actually a government policy choice for things to work this way. (src)(cached)
– Israel analyst explaining how he realized he was lied to about Sde Taiman. And now it sort of looks like parts of the IDF are fighting each other. (src)(cached)
– Waymo went ahead and sued people who had been vandalizing the cars in SF, as you can imagine, they have a lot of video footage. (src)
– Anti Shapiro takes seem a bit out of step with how similar his views on Israel are to other VP possibilities. (src)(cached)
– Manchin's Permitting reform bill passed out of committee, and it looks pretty good! Unlike House Democrats idea, which is like the worst permitting reform adjacent policy you could possibly devise (pay people to file more lawsuits) (src)(cached)
– If you haven't seen the Italian gymnist who is sponsored by parmasean cheese. She poses with the cheese. (src)(cached)
– Single stair reform is one of the most successful kinds of pro housing reforms this year, 5 states made progress on making it easier to build single-stair housing. Here's the data on this year's housing reforms. (src)(cached)
– Project 2025 is 'shutting down' but they've already done everything they needed to do pre-election. If Trump wins, they're the only ones with a database of potential conservative appointees. He doesn't have any other transition team, what else could he do? (src)(cached)
– I mentioned the other day the theory that Inflammation is causing many modern medical problems. Eric Topol shared a new nature paper arguing that the core cause is diet. (src)(cached)
He actually is wearing some earplugs, but still, a big difference from the other competitors, who look like cyborgs with their crazy glasses. (src)(cached)