Favorites January 20th 2023

Mountain View, October 2016

James Medlock @jdcmedlock

Lmao

Alex Burns @alexanderburns

New: MACRON confronted Joe Manchin face to face over US energy policy “You’re hurting my country,” Macron said Now the Dem Senate kingpin meets elite wrath in Davos over made-in-America agenda @alexbward & @suzannelynch1 on the Mountaineer in the Alps👇 https://t.co/Clsfuj1Fym

Apparently when he wrote the requirements, Manchin didn't know the US doesn't have a free trade agreement with the EU, clearly he knows now. There are simple fixes though. One person commenting on this suggested that because of the huge amounts of money floating around US politics, there's more incentive for American politicians to simply be better at politics than European politicians. So they just weren't ready for Manchin.

Sami Scheetz @SamiScheetz

The GOP just proposed new restrictions on the types of food eligible for purchase with SNAP benefits, putting even more pressure on families with children. In addition, they would aim to keep families with more than one vehicle from receiving help. 👎

This is totally ridiculous for so many reasons. No red meat? No American Cheese? and they call themselves conservatives? Ok, they allow canned meat, which is more expensive and less healthy than raw.

Stephan J. Guyenet @sguyenet

First of all, check out these weight loss curves for sema vs. placebo. Sema plus diet/lifestyle led to profound (14.8%) and sustained weight loss over two years in adults with obesity or overweight. Keep in mind this analysis *includes* ppl assigned sema who discontinued.

Apparently cravings stay down long term, and people report a positive mood effect compared to placebo even at 2 years. This is going to totally change how we handle obeasity and it doesn't seem like anyone is ready for that.

Sam Knowlton @samdknowlton

A polyculture of wheat grown with walnut trees produces ~ 40% higher yields. 1 hectare of wheat/walnut mix yields the same as 1.4 hectares of each crop grown separately. This is an example of overyielding.

He explains: "Overyielding is when a polyculture (multiple crops grown together) produces higher yields than equal areas of the same crops grown separately." Very cool. If it wasn't for the photo, my first question was going to be "how do you get through there with mechanized harvesting".

Randall Munroe @xkcd

Runtime xkcd.com/2727

Threads

• There was an article in the LA Times about the AIDS Healthcare Foundation and here's a short thread. I mostly know them as a NIMBY group, but apparently a bunch of their other activities are awful as well, including opposition to PrEP, a significant advancement in HIV medicine.

• Short thread about last year's book by the founder of Trader Joe's. Takeaway is that a big part of the grocery business is regulatory arbitrage.

• Short thread on this year's flu wave. TL;DR: relatively normal peak but short and much earlier than usual, the wave seems to be nearly over at this point, about two months early.

• Thread about the "Arlington Miracle", it appears that massive amounts of new dense construction near transit stations actually lowered total driving in the area. Paraphrasing the thread a bit, as a YIMBY, I'd expect vehicle miles traveled per capita to go down in such a situation, but never in my wildest dreams would I expect total travel to fall. Like a YIMBY laffer curve, wild.