Favorites, February 29th 2024
The 'Uncomitted' vote was not much higher than in 2012. Plus, Biden beat his pre-election polls by 4.1 percentage points, Trump underperformed by 7.8. Having Biden run again has a lot of risks, but it's not like it's unclear why we're going to be doing a rerun of the last election.
Someone immediately created the proposed Prometheus one
Seems pretty bad that the supreme court has agreed to even hear the argument of "The President is Immune from all Prosecution". Has some obvious bad implications. One timeline estimate indicates it now looks like a verdict would land in early December. Sentencing cannot be for at least another 50 days. You can tell this was the intention because of how willing SCOTUS is to go fast when it suits the conservative majority.
This definitely tracks, despite it's size, I enjoy going places on my electric cargo bike much more than my previous bike.
Noah smith argues that current nuclear nonproliferation agreements amount to "unilateral disarmament by democracies", Russia and China's allies have been allowed to get nuclear weapons, the West's allies haven't. Further, here's a pretty wild thread describing how the USSR/Russia seemed to have never negotiated with the west on disarmarment in good faith, it almost all happened after the end of the USSR.
Longer Reads
• I had never before heard of the Conspiracy among a few Youtube Engineers that killed IE6 (src)
• Film Crit hulk wrote a great essay about Bluey, 'It is remarkable, entertaining, and so much more than "just a kids show."' He's arguing it should be considered of the same category as Breaking Bad. (src)
• Great thread about a new kind of jet engine that uses an electric motor to drive the compressor, allowing it to operate efficiently at any speed, making it viable as a first stage of a rocket. Prototype pictured below, they already have one with 10x the thrust of the one pictured. (src)(cached)
Flotsam and Jetsam
– I did not realize that about a third of the EU budget goes towards supporting farming, makes it all the more insane that the pro-farming groups are essentially committing terrorism in Brussels (src)(cached)
– Sweden joined NATO, if Russia attacked Ukraine to avoid having more boarder with NATO, it hasn't worked out that way. (src)(cached)
– For just one kind of cancer that I had not heard of before, Accelerated FDA approval of various treatments over the years saved 100,000 person-years. (src)(cached)
– Trump owes New York $454 million, and even if he appeals, he has to turn over the money immediately. He's trying to get loans backed by his properties, but no one is willing to do it, the crime he was convicted of is falsifying the value of his properties! (src)
– Alec Stapp points out: "78% of noise complaints lodged against Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport were made by a single household." (src)(cached)
– "Pennsylvanian countryside really isn’t that much different from the Japanese countryside." (although in Japan there are more Sidewalks) (src)(cached)
– Why did it seem like so much of Me Too was in Hollywood? Does Hollywood just have a uniquely bad culture? (src)(cached)
– A new paper is out about rock weathering, a technique for capturing CO2 from the air, strong positive results after a 4 year field trial. (src)(cached)