Favorites June 22nd 2022

San Diego, June 2022

Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇦 @Noahpinion

It's just wild that China would be authoritarian enough to shut entire cities in their houses and regulate every waking minute of their lives, but would shy away from making old people take a vaccine.

Dan Wang @danwwang

China is preparing to be more coercive to vaccinate its elderly: if residents over 60 in this Shanghai district don’t get the shot (and can’t provide a medical reason for refusing), they’ll lose various benefits like their rice subsidy and holiday gifts https://t.co/Zlj6hv4iF6

I guess I wasn't the only one who assumed that they'd have higher elderly vaccination rates already.

Sauna Insider @NickHannula

In the first six months after the passage of rent control in Saint Paul (November 2021 to April 2022), Saint Paul permitted a total of 352 housing units, down from 2,180 units from the same period a year prior. This is a decline of 84%.

Wow! One of the minor upsides of California's housing laws is that rent control can't apply to new buildings. This prevents what happened in Saint Paul. Here's a similar analysis of changes to inclusionary zoning requirements, although the outcome there is not as stark.

Jake Schmidt🥑🚲 @TheJakeSchmidt

As luck would have it, we have a real-world experiment with exactly this unfunded inclusionary housing percentage (25%). In 2016, San Francisco increased their unfunded inclusionary requirement from 12% to 25%. They got much less subsidized housing built as a result, not more.

Zohran Kwame Mamdani @ZohranKMamdani

To build 2120 market rate units with a set aside of only the legal minimum of 25% affordability is not an answer to this housing crisis – it is a cause. And not all of that "affordability" is even truly affordable, as 5% is a set aside for 120-130% AMI ($112-$121k for 1 person).

While we're at it, here's a study of what *can* go wrong with a California City's housing laws.

urbanmountain @urbanmountainv

“Across the world, 85% of housing is built illegally. In other words squatters and favelados build more square miles of city than governments, developers, architects or anyone else” Justin McGuirk - Radical Cities

Looking into this further, I found out that there's a 42 story tower in Caracas that was illegally turned into Favelas when it's construction was unexpectedly halted before the building was completed.

Kai Ryssdal @kairyssdal

This. Is. Wild. ‘What the F-ck Is This?’: Team Trump Blindsided by Jan. 6 Committee Getting Doc Footage rollingstone.com/politics/polit… via @RollingStone

rollingstone.com‘What the F-ck Is This?’: Team Trump Blindsided by Jan. 6 Committee Getting Doc FootageFormer administration and campaign officials tell Rolling Stone they had no idea a film crew had months of access to the former president and his family

"the first time several members of the Trump campaign leadership even heard of the documentary was when Politico reported the committee had subpoenaed"

Thread

• Very long thread about the question of why Russia didn't buy Chinese machine tools previously, and whether they may in the future.