Favorites January 14th 2022

Jan 15, 2022

New paper on the city-wide effect of new housing supply in Helsinki. Impressively, researchers secured access to the Finnish total population register, and were able to prove that newly built homes enable "moving chains" and free up more affordable homes.

ideas.repec.orgCity-wide effects of new housing supply: Evidence from moving chains,We study the city-wide effects of new, centrally-located market-rate housing supply using geo-coded total population register data from the Helsinki Metropolitan Area. The supply of new market rate u

This is hardly the first study to show it, but once again, evidence that new high end apartments reduce rents all the way down to the cheaper end of the market.

Jonathan Chait @jonathanchait

I've seen speculation as to why the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act passed the Senate and nothing's happened. There's some reporting here by @IgnatiusPost -- the bottom line is the House and White House just need to get moving

washingtonpost.comOpinion | Biden is failing politically, and not just because of Republican obstructionThe inability to pass a bill helping the United States compete with China in chipmaking is a symptom of the problem — and a test.

I'm really quite stunned that the House is just sitting on a great bill from the senate for no reason.

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

1999 New York Post story on Donald Trump’s leadership of a successful lobbying campaign against a sprinkler mandate in tall NYC buildings (ht @ericuman) nypost.com/1999/01/04/sur…

While I'm very much against double staircases as a fire safety measure, sprinklers are good folks.

Jeremy Hoffman @jeremyhoffman

Tl;dr - gas stoves aren't safe. If you have one, open your windows after you use it.

Michael Thomas @curious_founder

Over the last two months I've read dozens of studies about gas stoves and indoor air quality. I also installed monitors in our home and ran my own tests. Here's a thread on what I learned 🧵 #energytwitter

I have a very loud range hood fan that I turn on whenever I'm using the stove. But I'm getting ever closer to regretting going with a gas stove.

The New York Times @nytimes

Breaking News: The U.S. accused Russia of sending saboteurs into Ukraine to stage “a false-flag operation” that would create a pretext for Moscow to invade.

nyti.msU.S. Says Russia Sent Saboteurs Into Ukraine to Create Pretext for InvasionJohn F. Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman, said U.S. intelligence indicated that Russia was actively working to create a pretext to invade Ukraine. He called the information “very credible” but did not provide details.

I mentioned it yesterday, but the Ukraine situation continues to look worrying.

Randall Munroe @xkcd

Spinthariscope xkcd.com/2568

Yup, you can see what they look like on wikipedia

Ryan Lackey @octal

The dystopia is already here, it just isn't evenly distributed.

politico.comFedEx proposing anti-missile lasers for some planesThe technology was previously tested in some cargo jets in 2008.

Uhh.... do these kinds of anti-missile defences work? Don't these cargo planes still have pilots?

Tugboat for Today

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