Favorites June 24 2021

Skanda Amarnath ( Neoliberal Sellout ) @IrvingSwisher

This (the highlighted) seems like a good thing. bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…

I tend to agree that a situation where people with hard science degrees decide to go into finance is less than ideal. This whole article is framed like it’s bad that people are less interested in becoming bankers, which seems strange.

San Francisco Chronicle @sfchronicle

The new policy makes San Francisco the first city or county in California — and probably the U.S. — to mandate COVID vaccinations for all government employees. trib.al/Awxfkxy

I like it! More!

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

Note that gerrymandered state legislatures don’t actually need bogus vote fraud claims to do this, it’s just a huge lurking constitutional time bomb. Either it will go off or else we need to move more decisively to a normal of equal voting rights.

Lee Drutman @leedrutman

First, Republicans believe “Stop the Steal” propositions to varying degrees. Not a single garners majority support among all respondents. Most worryingly, almost half of Republicans surveyed (46%) thought Republican state legislatures should override their state's popular vote. https://t.co/cxQWOq8Prm

States deciding to just stop using the popular vote to decide the presidency is a real danger.

Jonathan Chait @jonathanchait

Feinstein defends filibuster by citing an example that proves the precise opposite of her point

nymag.comDianne Feinstein’s Confused Nostalgia for the FilibusterThe system worked in the old days, before the filibuster was routine.

And this is why we can't actually pass laws to fix the state-level gerrymandering that makes the state legislatures so dangerous

Dr. James O'Donoghue @physicsJ

Little-known fact: the Moon has a tail and every month we pass through it. Earth's gravity focuses the tail's atoms into a literal Moon-beam that can be seen at night during a New Moon with special cameras!

I had never heard about this, the visualization really hits the spot.

abag 9k, phd @woolie

The first high-rise timber structure in California might be this approved 18 story building in Oakland, which has filed for building permits and could begin construction soon. aca-prod.accela.com/OAKLAND/Cap/Ca…

This is cool, it's good to see that California is now allowing tall timber buildings. Previous regulations would have made this impossible to build. (The previous max was 5 or 6 stories)

Will Wilkinson 🌐 @willwilkinson

You got zoning in my racism! You got racism in my zoning! My latest at Model Citizen.

modelcitizen.substack.comDoes Zoning Cause Racism? Does Negative Polarization Cause Woke YIMBY Reform?TLDR: Definitely; Maybe

This includes a bunch of excerpts from segregated by design, which I read, but felt like I hadn’t fully understood before.

March 2018