![M. Nolan Gray @mnolangray It really was so foolish to design our housing system around home values serving as a de facto social safety net. Imagine how messed up the US would be if enjoying a stable retirement depended on food prices outpacing incomes. We'd be in a famine—not unlike our housing crisis. M. Nolan Gray @mnolangray It really was so foolish to design our housing system around home values serving as a de facto social safety net. Imagine how messed up the US would be if enjoying a stable retirement depended on food prices outpacing incomes. We'd be in a famine—not unlike our housing crisis.](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fa3e81e54-e505-4a3d-ad55-0cc192ac75ca_1176x354.png)
We've massively reduced the occurences of famines by using technology to get more food from the same land. The good news is that we have technology for building more homes with the same land: elevators.
![financialtimes's profile picture financialtimes 11h Breaking news: A plane carrying Russian warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin has crashed on a flight from Moscow to St Petersburg. All 10 people on the plane died in the crash, according to Russia's emergency ministry ft.com/conte… ft.com Yevgeny Prigozhin in fatal plane crash, Russian officials say financialtimes's profile picture financialtimes 11h Breaking news: A plane carrying Russian warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin has crashed on a flight from Moscow to St Petersburg. All 10 people on the plane died in the crash, according to Russia's emergency ministry ft.com/conte… ft.com Yevgeny Prigozhin in fatal plane crash, Russian officials say](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F66b2195b-2ad0-4b36-9aa3-176a0a1a2c83_1176x794.png)
One commenter made the obvious reference to The Wire.
![See new Tweets Conversation Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇸🇺🇦 @Noahpinion · 22h Solar is for real. Quote RethinkX @rethink_x · Aug 22 A large majority of EU countries will hit 2030 solar targets ahead of schedule. Some have already achieved them. https://politico.eu/article/solar-power-global-emissions-climate-crisis-eu-blindsided-by-spectacular-solar-rollout/ Chris Flemming @chris_flemming I’ve been making solar propaganda posters with Midjourney See new Tweets Conversation Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇸🇺🇦 @Noahpinion · 22h Solar is for real. Quote RethinkX @rethink_x · Aug 22 A large majority of EU countries will hit 2030 solar targets ahead of schedule. Some have already achieved them. https://politico.eu/article/solar-power-global-emissions-climate-crisis-eu-blindsided-by-spectacular-solar-rollout/ Chris Flemming @chris_flemming I’ve been making solar propaganda posters with Midjourney](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8d166732-5459-4029-bbf6-3504ddad407b_1158x1350.png)
These are pretty great. He also did some with wind turbines that I thought were pretty good. I gave a shot to making some geothermal ones, I think they came out great:
Longer Reads
• Short list of ways industrialized countries could boost fertility: More homes, let kids play outside, lower education requirements for more jobs.
• The proposed UK surveillance law seems really bad, it seems clear they don't understand that if they pass it, Whatsapp, iMessage and Signal are going to all go away.
Flotsam and Jetsam
– Strict Zoning and NEPA are neoliberalism (Reagan era anti-government reforms) (src)
– [Black, Bridge] * [rock, water, stone] are all real companies, mostly investment firms (src)
– Strong towns comes out in favor of LVT (src)
– Xi's inner circle doesn't have any technocrats, they don't actually know how to fix an economic slump. (src)
– Vonnegut worried TV was like lead pipes, but it turns out, we still had way too much lead (src)
– Deaths per billion passenger miles cars are ahead of everything besides motorcycles by a fair margin. I spent a while trying to find bike info in the underlying article, it’s just not there. (src)
– Thrilling to watch Musk make terrible decisions for Twitter. "Like watching a blackout drunk F1 driver" (src)
– Paris before / after the switch to bike focused development (src)
– A 4 year old kid was killed by a car in SF, city will take over a month to install a barrier to disuade future cars. Gurilla urbanists installed one in days. (src)
– Hawai'i Governor declares "YIMBY martial law", although it's only expected to get 50,000 over 'the next few years' (src)
– Liberty University banned dancing, "Footloose is real" (src)
– Extremely long post describing how you can use adverse selection to make a tax policy work better (src)
– Families of people who have fled Hong Kong being punished, unthinkable before China took over the city. (src)
– India successfully put a rover on the moon. Only the 4th country to land something there! (src)