Favorites January 6th 2021

A lot of talk today about the anniversary of the failed coup. Not a ton of new insights, although it also came out that the bomb outside the DNC was found while Harris was in the building.

Andrew Prokop @awprokop

But if you are a Republican who loathes what happened at 1/6, if you want to be in a position to do something about it next time the thing to do might be... not to talk about it right now. Or else you'll get purged and replaced by a Trumpist. vox.com/2021/5/5/22419…

This is both hopeful and terrifying. The fact is, Republicans in the senate were largely unwilling to go along with Trump's attempt to steal the election, and that might be true again, but there's no advantage for them in announcing that fact.

Noah Smith 🐇 @Noahpinion

2/Japan had five significant coup attempts in the 1930s. All failed to topple the government. But in the end, they forced the government to do what the coup perpetrators wanted -- invade and attempt to conquer the rest of Asia.

The main takeaways for me from the full article is that coup attempts don't have to be successful to accomplish their goals, and that you should punish those people who participate so that they can't just do it again.

Bloomberg CityLab @CityLab

Oregon, Washington, New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts followed California in approving the Advanced Clean Truck rule late last year, requiring a growing percentage of all medium- and heavy-duty trucks sold to be zero-emission starting in 2025

trib.alBloomberg - Are you a robot?

It requires 30-50% of trucks sold in 2030 to be zero emission. Impressive, and I think it’s doable.

Noah Smith 🐇 @Noahpinion

These slides by @ramez are the most optimistic, exciting thing you'll see today. Maybe all week. Maybe all year.

dropbox.comNaam Clean Energy Revolution - Chinese Edition - Shareable - Jan 2022.pdfShared with Dropbox

It's true, the slides are amazing, Noah pulled some highlights:

Noah Smith 🐇 @Noahpinion

Now look at this chart of when building NEW solar plants is expected to be cheaper than continuing to operate EXISTING coal and gas plants in various regions!

Noah Smith 🐇 @Noahpinion

And look how much cheaper electric cars are to build!

Further the International Energy Agency is apparently hilariously bad at forecasting improvements in the renewable energy sector.

Eric Topol @EricTopol

For 951 individuals with Prior Covid prospectively assessed 4+ months after full vaccination, there was a ~60% reduction of most self-reported symptoms of #LongCovid compared with unvaccinated medrxiv.org/content/10.110… @atonotiku @epi_michael

Hey, that's some good news, also kinda wild to treat a disease with a vaccine.

wanye @_wayneburkett

This is the San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland Combined Statistical Area, a contiguous urbanized area that's home to almost 10 million people. You're allowed to build tall buildings in the red circle.

If you can't tell, the tiny highlighted area is FiDi in SF. I don't know how we get anything built around here.

RuralLiberal @HiraethResists

Marines perform boarding exercises with jetpacks and land on a high-speed ship

Ok, that's pretty impressive. Even if it’s the British.

November 2021