Favorites June 12th 2022

San Jose, May 2022

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

Inflation overshadows everything these days but Biden’s unrealistic-sounding promise to lower the temperature on the Hill and do more bipartisanship arguably been fulfilled.

Shannon Watts @shannonrwatts

BREAKING: Senate negotiators in both parties are pushing to announce today the outlines of an agreement on new measures to address gun violence. 👏👏👏 https://t.co/IqOVMSs7OS

I am quite surprised that it was possible, although maybe this is how progress works. Ironically it may be because the president isn't seeking a public part in the discussions. BTW, looks like it's also a pretty good bill compared to what you might have expected for something with Republicans signed on.

Kumar Garg @KumarAGarg

This is the key paragraph for me. No amount of pre-planning is a substitute for iterative improvement. nytimes.com/2022/06/12/opi…

You can't learn from your mistakes till you actually go out and make them.

Ethan Mollick @emollick

We don’t tend to believe it but complex laws are good laws. More elaborate state laws boost economic growth. Why? They mean more careful consideration & rules for key edge cases, rather than writing shorter, but broader, laws that lump everything together research-collection.ethz.ch/bitstream/hand…

I think this is an interesting example where it's quite clear that it's a correlation, but it's still interesting. Long laws might indicate that the legislators were thinking carefully about what they were doing. Obviously you could write something very unproductive and also long (zoning).

Adam Ozimek @ModeledBehavior

This is an interesting suggestion for companies struggling to get remote workers back to the office: count commute time as work time towards the 40 hour or whatever workweek cost @I_Am_NickBloom https://t.co/SAFDA73yj3

the wonderful lizard of oz 🧙‍♀️🦎 @LizCGil

My firm is 100% remote so I’ve got no skin in this game: but if firms are going to force people to come in, then “transit” should be billable. Like, *actually* counted in everyone’s year-end hours. If face time is important to the point of mandating it, then pay the Time Debt.

Presumably you'd make it a set amount, otherwise folks will try to game it by living really far away.

Byron Wan @Byron_Wan

A mysterious series of attacks on US Navy warships off the coast of California in 2019 have been revealed to be caused by a cluster of drones launched from Hong Kong-flagged bulk carrier MV Bass Strait, owned and operated by Hong Kong-based Pacific Basin.

thedrive.comDrone Swarms That Harassed Navy Ships Off California Demystified In New DocumentsA major release of documents provides the highest level of detail yet about mysterious drone swarms involving U.S. Navy ships off California.

Best I can tell they didn't actually violate maritime law with the drones, but I'm not exactly an expert. Maybe this is just a new way for militaries to annoy each other?