Favorites January 5th 2023

2017, Toronto

Michael Bradley 🍕 @MikeBradleyMKE

Fascinating. Folks looked at the hundreds of pedestrian-involved crashes in Milwaukee from 2011 to 2015 and found that 85% of the time the driver was from a higher-income census tract than the pedestrian.

Tanya Snyder @TSnyderDC

27% involved an adult driver striking a child pedestrian. Where income data existed, 85% involved drivers who lived in a wealthier census tract than the pedestrian. via Antonio Giron, @CountyParks and Xiaohan Gu and Robert Schneider, @UWM

Also, people from outside of the city are more likely to hit pedestrians from within the city than the reverse.

Phillips P. OBrien @PhillipsPOBrien

There has been a consistent uptick in the last few days, both in what is being supplied to Ukraine militarily and how Ukraine’s victory is the goal. Think we can say there is growing consensus in NATO countries that Ukraine can win this war outright https://t.co/Vb8i7RrZDh

Jennifer Jacobs @JenniferJJacobs

Scoop: US **and Germany** will send armored vehicles to Ukraine, a significant upgrade in firepower urgently sought by @ZelenskyyUa. US will send Bradleys; Germany to send Marders, sources tell @mcnienaber @PeterMartin_PCM & me. Biden to speak to @OlafScholz today, I’m told.

This is the beginning of a whole thread on the subject, but Germany sending tanks may be a bigger deal than the US sending them.

Jason Furman @jasonfurman

Terrific to see @FTC moving ahead with a proposed rule banning non-compete agreements in labor markets—one of many steps that will help reduce the market power of employers and raise workers wages.

ftc.govNon-Compete Clause RulemakingOverview About one in five American workers—approximately 30 million people—are bound by a non-compete clause and are thus restricted from pursuing better employment opportunities.

This seems like really great news. Further, as Tim Lee said today, it's really great that California banned non-competes in 1872 and existed all this time as a counter-example any time someone tried to argue that non-competes are necessary for the labor market to function.

Robotbeat🗽 ➐ @Robotbeat

We used to double electric capacity EVERY DECADE for like 3-4 decades in a row starting in the 1940s.

Michael Thomas @curious_founder

I see a lot of people say things like "Our grid can't handle more EVs or heat pumps." Imagine if 100 years ago, people were like "Light bulbs, dishwashers, etc. are all great, but we don't have enough electric capacity." We can electrify everything *and* build more capacity.

When we stopped adding coal things slowed down for a while, but now that solar and wind are getting so cheap, hopefully things will turn around again.

Threads

• Short thread summarizing findings on what aspects help protests achieve their political goals

• After the profile of Paul Ehrlich a few days back, here's a thread by Yglesias of extremely dumb predictions and recommendations from Ehrlich over the years.

• Thread from Mountain View YIMBY about how our city will be going into a 'zoning holiday' January 31st. (The Ron Swanson building permit)

• Thread covering the origin story of a false report about athletes being killed by vaccines.