Favorites February 3rd 2022

Elise Hu @elisewho

None of Beijing's snow will be real. It's the first Winter Olympics to rely 100% on fake powder

qz.comA short history of how the Winter Olympics came to rely on fake snowSnowmaking’s attempts to cool the slopes contributes to a warming climate

"climate change is driving eight of the 21 sites where previous Winter Olympics have been held out of the running."

Kieran Healy @kjhealy

Yea, I saw this picture and thought it must be hollow, but no, just surprisingly small. Also, it's kinda funny how uneven gold looks when you try to make big flat pieces like this. The final picture is a reference to Spinal Tap, here's the clip.

Seth W. Bigelow, Ph.D. @BigelowSeth

2 year burn interval on left, no-burn on right. Since *1958*. Stunning and awe-inspiring to see the vision and commitment of ⁦@forestservice⁩ scientists and managers in this long-term study

Wow, really cool to see the results of the two strategies side by side like that.

Noah Shachtman @NoahShachtman

How damaging is the dirt that CNN's probe uncovered? So bad, Jeff Zucker resigned before he could be fired "and is not poised to receive any severance," @TatianaSiegel27 reports.

rollingstone.comCNN Probe Eyes Jeff Zucker’s Ties to Andrew CuomoThe ongoing investigation, which exposed an affair that led to Zucker’s abrupt resignation yesterday, has expanded to include possible improprieties during Cuomo’s tenure as governor of…

Zucker was the president of CNN till he suddenly resigned yesterday.

Charles #GetCovered-ba 🩺 @charles_gaba

@gtconway3d This suggests that if 77% of the entire U.S. population was 2-dose vaxxed by now (evenly spread), about half of the 285K Americans who've died since the end of June would still be alive, or ~143K people.

As Noah Smith notes, antivax caused deaths on the scale of a large war.

Jordan Grimes 🚰 @cafedujord

Some thoughts on vacant housing discourse

Sure, vacancy taxes are good, but also building more homes is good. (BTW, yes, I've really met people with the opinions expressed by Patrick in this meme)

Senator Scott Wiener @Scott_Wiener

Town of Woodside: “our town is allowed to ignore state housing law because we have mountain lions” The actual Mountain Lion Foundation: “um, no” https://t.co/GkgD5lK740

Mountain Lion Fdn @MtnLionFdn

While Woodside abuts and contains mountain lion habitat, a blanket prohibition against adding an additional unit on an already developed parcel anywhere in the town is neither required by the California Endangered Species Act, nor contributing to the protection of mountain lions. https://t.co/NCGOub6PEK

Not to be confused with the recent discussion about Leopards.

August 2021