Favorites June 28th 2022

San Diego Zoo, June 2022

Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla

The price of shipping a 40 ft box from Shanghai to LA “has fallen to $7,952 and that's the lowest in a year, though still is 444% above where it was entering 2020.” - ⁦@pboockvar⁩

I found this graph useful, because I'd heard shipping costs were falling quickly, but the context of where we were pre-pandemic is very useful.

Bill Bishop @niubi

FCC commissioner calls for Apple & Google to ban TikTok

appleinsider.comFCC commissioner calls for Apple & Google to ban TikTok | AppleInsiderAn FCC commissioner has called on Apple and Google to remove TikTok from their app stores, likening the popular social media platform to a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

Yea, India got this right, we should probably follow in their footsteps, (although once again, it's not about the user data)

Renato Mariotti @renato_mariotti

The First Amendment bar to an prosecution of an elected official for inciting violence when giving a political speech is very high, but this quote is awfully damning and gets DOJ in the ballpark.

Ryan J. Reilly @ryanjreilly

"You know, I don't f'ing care that they have weapons. They're not here to hurt me. Take the F'ing mags away. Let my people in. They can march to the Capitol from here. Let the people in. Take the F'ing mags away.” — Donald Trump on Jan. 6, per Cassidy Hutchinson

Popehat agrees that this probably meets the Brandenburg standard for incitement. The key is the order of events, he hears they have weapons, understands who the weapons are for, and gives a speech calling on them to march on the capitol. Seems like incitement. There were tons of other allegations in the testimony today, but this is the important one. Renato also had an end-of-day thread about all the testimony.

January 6th Committee @January6thCmte

We commonly ask witnesses connected to Trump whether they have been contacted by anyone attempting to impact testimony. Below are examples of answers we have received to this question.

Really looks like witness tampering.

BrandenburgTestHat @Popehat

I think our frame of reference for what's normal and what's extraordinary has been so damaged by the last 7 years that we can't grasp how grave and astounding all of this is.

For anyone but a former president, proceedings would be pretty far along at this point.

M. Nolan Gray @mnolangray

For all the kvtching about how Americans don't travel: ~73% of Americans have traveled outside the US, but only ~44% of Europeans have traveled outside the EU.

He goes on to say essentially sure, the Americans are visiting Mexico / Canada, but EU residents are visiting Switzerland / Iceland.

Alex Tabarrok @ATabarrok

We could have done this a year ago. Let’s take advantage of mRNA and make updates routine.

cnb.cxFDA panel recommends changing Covid shots to fight omicron this fallUpdating the shots to target omicron could provide more durable protection against the virus, though current supporting data is limited.

Yes, I love it. These shots formulated against Omicron 1 aren't any good against Omicron like 5 that we're on now. Reformulate and release it faster, it's the whole advantage of mRNA vaccines!

Threads

• A thread with updates on the war in Ukraine. Russia is advancing in Donbas, but slowly, elsewhere things are not moving as much. All signs now point to a more protracted battle, Ukraine holding up, but somewhat short on ammunition. Good news: Germany is finally sending significant weapons systems to Ukraine.

• Singapore is modernizing their ports, spending $40 billion, a short thread about why we should be doing the same (by a congressional candidate)

• A thread with details of what happened when Los Angeles spent $20 Billion over a decade to renovate hundreds of schools. (Spoiler, repairing schools for poor kids worked well along numerous measures and investigation shows that for every dollar spent, they got back a $1.60 in land value alone.