Favorites August 4th 2024
This is a huge shift from where Biden's odds were, and also a huge shift from where Harris was just a week ago. Silver summarizes the current polling as somewhere between Biden 2020 and Clinton 2016, so extremely close, but that's a huge improvement. Harris' approval rating among young people has shifted almost 30 points (cached) in her favor in 11 days. Overall, it's clear that the "Biden should drop out" people were definitely right, as Ben Dreyfuss put it (cached).
Were you aware that FDR basically got Britain to agree to mostly dissolve their empire. Unique moment in history to use the second world war as an opportunity to scale back all empires, not just the losing side’s. Some pointed out that Spanish should use the Mexican flag. Also, I really like AI art for the purpose of throwing together a quick meme like this, it's one of the best uses of it IMO.
If you want to check out the live infographic from the NYTimes, here it is.
He actually is wearing some earplugs, but still, a big difference from the other competitors, who look like cyborgs with their crazy glasses.
Longer Reads
• A short thread with some info about how Tokyo's renter protections work. It's not quite rent control, but it has some similarities. If there's one key takeaway though, it's that it all works because they build so many apartments. (src)(cached)
Flotsam and Jetsam
– The WSJ journalist who was recently freed in a prisoner exchange with the US asked Putin for an interview on the way out. (src)(cached)
– SB423 had a specific provision to take away just San Francisco's ability to block homes with discretionary review, starting last month. The first project to try to use this has added 104 units to their building application. Pretty good. Plus they're doing the thing I've seen in Toronto where they keep the facade of the historic building and just put a huge tower behind it. (src)(cached)
– If you've ever seen those plastic license plate covers, they're 100% illegal. Some vigilanties remove them, one man was arrested for removing one in New York recently. It was a Secret Service vehicle! Ballsy. (src)(cached)
– If a concrete barrier protecting bikes or pedestrians is removed because it's getting hit too often, that's traffic engineers replacing the concrete with human bodies. (src)(cached)
– A few days ago, someone went on a rant about how food delivery shouldn't be a luxury, and only costs so much because of capitalism or inflation or something. This spawned the amazing 'private taxi for your burrito' meme. But it also spawned this graph of Uber's profit and loss over time. I had heard they're finally profitable as of last year, but they made about 300m in profit. They'll need to make another 31 billion to make back their investors money. (src)(cached)
– Did you want another thread about how rigged the Venezuelan election was? Here it is. There's a reason only the autocrats have recognized Maduro as the winner. (src)(cached)
– In reference to the 'Firebomb a Walmart' meme and also how George R.R. Martin said it was bad that The Lord of the Rings never gets into Aragorn's Tax policies, we have this quote from eigenrobot:
people will really be like "you invented entire languages for your fantasy world? that pales in effectiveness to my strategy, writing an epic story about medieval tax policy" and then not finish their epic story about medieval tax policy
(src)(cached)
– A study of housing approval and building timeline data in Los Angeles indicates that increasing the time to approval of multifamily housing by just 25% would increase the pace of construction by 33%. That's huge! Here's the paper. (src)(cached)
– A ton of investment in Geothermal power has been happening recently, over a billion in the last 10 years. (src)(cached)
– There's a new technology "Perovskite solar cells" that promises to be even cheaper and lighter than existing solar. David Roberts has an interview with the CEO of Swift Solar who are trying to bring the tech to market. I haven't had time to listen yet, but it seems like this is the way we will keep pushing the cost of solar power down. (src)(cached)