Favorites August 8th 2023
The amazing recovery the US has had after COVID seems to have once again validated Keynesian economic policy as at least the closest to correct among the various modern contenders. It would be nice if Europe learned from our example.
I really enjoyed the Ocarina of Time levels, but it's worth noting they actually do have a bunch of non-nintendo stuff. It's wild to me that a browser can perfectly render the Portal and Portal 2 levels.
I find YouTube's recommendations to be very good, but to an extent I'm careful about watching logged in often and remembering to thumbs down things that I watch that turn out to be utter garbage. I wonder if other people find the recommendations useful though, will folks notice if they're gone?
He goes on to point out that they've already completed a two thousand page NEPA review for the wind farm. Of course it's not just wind projects, two thirds of large solar projects don't just need NEPA reviews, but face NEPA lawsuits anyway.
Threads
• A minor note: Zoom rushed out an update to their terms of service to clarify that users video/audio/chats won't be used to train AI. But as Ben Thompson pointed out: what was the point of taking this PR hit then? The metadata can't be that useful for training AI.
Flotsam and Jetsam
– Wavy brick walls use less bricks than straight ones because they can be a single brick wide (src)
– Verizon closes their Zoom competitor, still not their most unsuccessful acquisition though (sorry Yahoo) (src)
– Unnecessary Barbie content: an analysis of the strategy of the Kens. (src)
– Truck does something illegal, crashes into a Cruise AV, journalists in SF blame the AV. (src)
– Thread about chinese cities suddenly having trouble finding foreign investment, as well as an aside about one company that did invest but is now being required to separate off it's entire China division, which will make it easier to seize later. Look at this graph of net foreign investment in China. (src)
– The economy is good, voters think things are going great for them, Biden needs to convince them that everyone else is doing as well as they are. (src)
– Meta has shuttered their protein folding team. Higher interest rates mean less wild research from private tech companies (src)
– Interesting thread about how the Japanese dots and lines method of teaching multiplication maps to how standard long multiplication works (src)
– Excerpts from China state TV documentary about plans to invade Taiwan are yikes. (src)
– Countries ranked by percent of the country speaking fluent English. Before you look, guess how France, Finland, India, and Pakistan compare. (src)
– Article about General Leslie Groves (Matt Damon in the new Oppenheimer movie), who borrowed thirteen thousand tons of silver from the US treasury during the project. (src)
– Argument that illegal gun possession crimes should be treated as very serious, just as in the UK. (I had to look up 'ranking Bobby', ChatGPT is pretty sure, based on context, that it's a high ranking police officer) (src)
– An extremely comprehensive version of Henry George's Progress and Poverty as a sequence of memes (src)
– Absolutely insane heat in Iran today. (src)