Favorites December 24th 2021

A Crime a Day @CrimeADay

The Federal government definitely knows who's been naughty on this one.

Ana Swanson @AnaSwanson

The Biden administration just signed a bill barring products made with forced labor in China into law. The implications for global supply chains will likely be sweeping, but much will hinge on the next few months nyti.ms/32pUl0l with @ewong @CatieEdmondson @LFFriedman

nyti.msU.S. Effort to Combat Forced Labor Targets Corporate China TiesThe Biden administration is expected to face scrutiny as it decides how to enforce a new ban on products made with forced labor in the Xinjiang region of China.

Also mentions some concern that the possibly supply chain disruption could worsen inflation.

Stanford Graduate School of Business @StanfordGSB

What can we learn from vaccine development programs to incentivize carbon removal? Professor @Susan_Athey shares her thoughts in @politico with @rglenner, @nanransohoff & Chris Snyder. “An “advance market commitment” could be the solution.”

politico.comOpinion | Advance Market Commitments Worked for Vaccines. They Could Work for Carbon Removal, Too.Through “advance market commitments,” we can incentivize the development of transformative carbon removal approaches.

This is so great, although I might add, maybe we should also spend money this way to get more vaccines.

Henry Grabar @henrygrabar

I wrote about one neat trick to give America the more slender, pleasant, and affordable apartment buildings we deserve

slate.comA Surprising Theory of What’s Wrong With American Apartment BuildingsCould this simple reform be the first step toward better, more affordable designs?

The problematic regulation is requiring two staircases in a building, which wastes space and makes apartments less pleasant, but interestingly, it's not because of the staircases themselves, it's because requiring access to *two* of them means that there *must* be a long corridor connecting all the apartments together. Check out the article for floor plans that make the problem super clear.

Jim Sciutto @jimsciutto

New: President Biden is lifting restrictions on eight southern African countries put in place last month after the Omicron variant was first identified in South Africa, a White House official tells CNN. The restrictions will lift on December 31 at 12:01 a.m. ET.

We already know the regulation is dumb now, it was dumb a week ago, why wait till the end of the year for it to go into effect? We want to reward countries for the kind of detailed reporting South Africa accomplished, not punish them.

Robotbeat🗽 ➐ @Robotbeat

Canada is very economically and culturally integrated into the US, so this is very good. Canada acting as a backup while we go deeper into anti-immigration. (Then later we’ll take many of those immigrants from Canada.) Thanks, Canada, I love you! https://t.co/gURSz8vMpb

BNN Bloomberg @BNNBloomberg

Canada has welcomed more than 401,000 permanent residents in 2021, achieving its goal set last year, and marking the highest immigration year on record. https://t.co/MdAViSB4A3

Feels like Maximum Canada is currently a lot more likely than One Billion Americans.

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

I don’t know how seriously to take these worried about molnupiravir, but it strikes me as an odd risk to take when its efficacy seems similar to fluvoxamine which is definitely safe and then the more effective pavloxid is coming down the pike.

Michael Lin, PhD-MD 🧬 @michaelzlin

The Washington Post @wapo has published my thoughts on how FDA's ill-considered approval of molnupiravir may result in more immunoevasive SARS-COV-2 variants. We should enforce isolation of patients using it until Merck describes the mutations it produces: https://t.co/8ngrqvAGhO

There are so many aspects to which drugs should be approved or not beyond how effective the drug is, I can certainly apprecate that these are difficult decisions, but it seems like the fda should be willing to consider public health and cost/benefit more seriously than they have.

Dr. Longissimus @DrLongissimus

In case anyone wondered what a hedgehog getting an X-ray looked like

Merry Christmas

I went and took a ton of Christmas tree photos, so I’m going to expose you to at least one more after this.