Favorites June 15th 2022: Megafauna, Error Bars and Basis Points

April 2017

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

I love Jurassic Park but building a theme park full of cloned dinosaurs would be good, actually. And sending the message that it was doomed hubris is bad.

slowboring.comWe should build Jurassic ParkOne of my favorite movies promotes an unfortunate anti-progress worldview

I think I'm actually on board with this assessment, Michael Crichton had good ideas for books about disasters, but probably not a great source of policy advice. We're also really good at hunting megafauna.

Donald Shoup @DonaldShoup

How green is my free parking structure? Still, not very. parkingreform.org/2022/06/13/how… via @Parking_Reform

parkingreform.orgHow green is my free parking structure? Still, not very.No matter how many solar panels it has, your parking garage isn’t green, and especially if you don’t charge for parking. Almost five years ago, we called out the folks at the National Renewable Energy…

The opening quote is amazing: "No matter how many solar panels it has, your parking garage isn’t green, and especially if you don’t charge for parking."

ryan cooper @ryanlcooper

one reason for automated traffic enforcement is that in a growing number of cities, police refuse to do it in order to punish city residents and elected officials who criticize them

Heather Knight @hknightsf

San Francisco police seem to have almost entirely abandoned enforcement of traffic laws. In April, the most recent data available, the dept issued 338 tickets for traffic violations. By comparison, in April 2014, the year Vision Zero began, the department issued 11,612 tickets.

We really need to legalize speed cameras in California.

Leah Greenberg @Leahgreenb

and if they'd approved Moderna back when its application was first submitted OUR KIDS WOULD BE FULLY VACCINATED NOW, NOT THAT I'M STILL MAD ABOUT THAT OR ANYTHING

Sarah Karlin-Smith @SarahKarlin

it is interesting that a few speakers have pointed out that if their child gets moderna they can be vaccinated before new school year starts vs. pfizer won't have finished primary series by then

Plus, the Pfizer data turned out to be terrible, their error bars are between -300% and 100%. Why the heck did we wait 3 months for this?

Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇦 @Noahpinion

Stocks rose after the 75bps rate hike. If this rate hike made a deep recession likely, it seems unlikely that stocks would have immediately risen. wsj.com/articles/globa…

The facts on the ground changed, and the fed adjusted, this is good to see, although I still think maybe they could have gone even higher. If they realize they've gone too far they can back off just as quickly. The last housing boom happened during even higher inflation rates.

Threads

• Pretty long thread about why the Ruble remains strong, the upshot is that it's the natural extension of allowing imports but banning most exports to Russia.