Favorites January 30th 2024
The mars helicopter, Ingenuity has flown it's final flight. The goal was to operate for a couple weeks, and it's survived almost 3 years. This was a great article summarizing the entire history of the project. One fun highlight is that Ingenuity had 100x more computational power in it's 2015-era phone processor than everything else nasa has ever sent beyond low earth orbit.
Building homes lowers rents. It's also really clear in the University towns that built homes recently vs ones that didn't. Look at UC Berkeley vs UC Santa Cruz, they're worlds apart in terms of student rent.
Happy Apple review embargo day to those who celebrate. The headset reviews, and unboxings are out. Joanna Stern wore one for a day straight, and I watched the one from The Verge.
Flotsam and Jetsam
– Thanks to the American Rescue Plan signed in 2021 by Biden, uninsurance has reached its lowest level in US history. (src)(cached)
– Beutler argues that the GOP is trying to end the primaries early because things will become messy after the NY lawsuit against Trump reaches a verdict. (src)
– Drinking alcohol in the US is now a high-class, rather than low class, activity. (src)(cached)
– The baseline scene in Blade Runner 2049 was written by Ryan Gosling, based on an acting exercise (src)
– Someone argues that soft tissue injuries should *not* be treated with ice and advil. They linked a 2020 paper on the subject, although I have no idea how accurate any of this is. (src)
– Mexico's investment in construction is way up (src)(cached)
– Leaderless movements are not effective. (src)
– Sand is a major input for concrete, and as demand for concrete has gone up, so has sand, which is now the second most widely consumed natural resource, after water. And so of course now there's a lot of illegal sand mining. Tyler Cowen found some interesting excerpts, here's the full article in scientific american. (src)
– The world is having more conflicts in part because Russia and China started funding insurgencies again, after having stopped at the end of the Cold War. Relately, Spain uncovered that Russia was offering billions of dollars and military support to Catalonian separatists. (src)(cached)
– 20 years of high housing costs have been driven by supply constraints (src)
– If you want to win the votes of young americans, climate change isn't actually their main issue. (src)(cached)
– Biden Admin is offering a loan to restart Michigan's nuclear power plant. (src)
– UNRWA situation is complicated (src)(cached)