Favorites June 1st 2022: EU Membership, Big Funerals, and Managing Inflation

June 2021, San Francisco

Phillips P. OBrien @PhillipsPOBrien

When the dust settles on this, europe will be more united in two different security structures (NATO and EU) than it has even been in its history, including the Roman Empire, Charlemagne, etc). In that way, Putin is one of the most important figures in European history. https://t.co/OgwlcRFWKq

Bloomberg UK @BloombergUK

Danes head to polls today to vote on joining the EU’s defense pact, as the country is pushed closer to the bloc by Russia’s war against Ukraine https://t.co/o8GTC2id5b

Sort of a bummer that Hungary has gone crazy recently.

b-boy bouiebaisse @jbouie

murder is effectively legal in most places as long as you do it with a car

debdrens @debdrens

another sweet little baby murdered by a driver. maximum penalty $750 fine and up to 15 days in jail. FIFTEEN DAYS FOR MURDER. FIFTEEN. https://t.co/R8ZWCFtR7s

Technically manslaughter, I'm not sure a super big fine or a long prison sentence really fix this. Loss of drivers license seems like a good start? As with the bicyclist killed recently in Mountain View, street design probably plays a role as well.

Joseph Addington @GeorgistJoseph

When Karl Marx died, there were about 25 people at his funeral. When Henry George died, there were 100,000 people who filled Grand Central Palace in NYC to hear his eulogy, and another estimated 100,000 crowded outside. It remains the second largest funeral in US history.

I had no idea Henry George was so popular in his lifetime. (I'm a big fan of his) Here's a thread on why he's important if you're unfamiliar.

Derek Thompson @DKThomp

I wrote about a socioeconomic puzzle: the very wide and suddenly widening gap between how Americans say they feel about themselves versus their country—the “everything sucks, but I’m fine” effect theatlantic.com/newsletters/ar…

People's own well being near a 40 year high, their opinion of the nation's well-being is near a 40 year low. "Individual hope and national despair are not contradictions. For now, they form the double helix of the American spirit."

Catherine Rampell @crampell

Who has "a lot" of control over managing inflation in the US? Only a third say the Fed. Most common answer given by Repubs: the president. Most common answer given by Dems: large corps. morningconsult.com/2022/05/18/pow…

Economics reporter Kai Ryssdal did not take the news of the public's lack of knowledge on this particularly well.

Threads

• A few threads about DALLE-2 (the amazing AI image generator). One about the internal language that it seems to have developed, and one by XKCD author Randall Munroe where he experiments with creating city travel posters.

• Amazing thread from a congressional candidate on why infrastructure is hard in the US. Follows up with details on simple improvements, one I like is "start by requiring local agencies to hire their own experts to keep institutional knowledge in-house".