Favorites January 24th 2023

Mountain View, January 2023

Quantian @quantian1

When I was a child, I assumed the Golden Gate bridge was like the Brooklyn Bridge (which I was obsessed with), and it must have connected SF to a huge city like LA. I was very disappointed to learn it’s a literal bridge to nowhere that was just a Depression make-work project. https://t.co/AwrRfdUwZH

Secretary Pete Buttigieg @SecretaryPete

Good morning! We're in San Francisco today, marking infrastructure investments that will improve the Golden Gate Bridge and increase its resiliency against earthquakes. https://t.co/ajeFps76Gw

While it might have much utility, at least it's a great landmark at the same time. The Eiffel Tower has significantly less utility. On the other hand, the Golden Gate Bridge was about 10 times as expensive.

NASA @NASA

We’re partnering with @DARPA to demonstrate a nuclear thermal rocket engine in space. This new engine would allow us to do more science and reach destinations faster—key steps for sending the first crewed mission to Mars. go.nasa.gov/3DaNirN

I'm not an expert, but I use these a lot in Kerbal Space Program, highly recommended. Plus, there's so much background radiation in space that the spent fuel barely registers after a few meters.

Alec Stapp @AlecStapp

Reading the background history on why prediction markets are illegal in the US and getting progressively angrier and angrier

Here's the underlying article, I'm personally skeptical that prediction markets are the best way to gather accurate predictions about the future, but they're better than many of the alternatives that we're currently using.

The Intercept @theintercept

“Free-speech absolutist” @elonmusk caved when India’s right-wing prime minister asked him to remove a critical BBC documentary interc.pt/3Ww3hHv by @MazMHussain, @ryangrim

interc.ptElon Musk Caves to Pressure From India to Remove BBC Doc Critical of ModiOfficials from India’s ruling right-wing party said American tech companies like Twitter and YouTube complied with demands to remove the documentary.

Yea, Musk being in charge of Twitter causes many problems, but once again, too much free speech is probably not one of them.

Will Truman @trumwill

"Mitt Romney as Batman" is one of my test images for various style prompts and I love how frequently they put a suit collar on Mitt's Batman suit.

Threads

• Senator Scott Wiener has a thread describing San Francisco's freshly state-approved housing element. TL;DR: they're going to be building homes three times faster over the next 8 years than the last 8 years.

• A thread on the value of all US land. TL:DR: $35 Trillion, and a 2% tax on that could go a very very long way.