Favorites June 4th 2022

Manufactured Homes, Red Light Cameras, and Office Space

San Jose, June 2022

urbanmountain @urbanmountainv

The call to be an Armchair Urbanist from the book 'Suburban Nation'

These are some good points, although I think I might quibble with #3, but only because I'd just redefine the problem as 'land use', and now it covers almost everything.

David Zipper @DavidZipper

In Nanjing, traffic cameras at crosswalks automatically photograph cars that fail to yield to pedestrians, issuing violators a 50-yuan ($7.50) fine. Researchers found that the cameras make drivers less aggressive and pedestrian crashes less severe. doi.org/10.1016/j.jsr.…

Seattle does something similar, $75 dollar fines. I am once again pointing out that it's insane that this is illegal in California.

Alec Stapp @AlecStapp

60% of homes used to be manufactured in factories (where it’s possible to improve productivity over time) Then HUD regulations strangled the industry…

Now that we're closer to full employment, we have the opportunity to focus on fixing the policy mistakes that were previously justified by 'creating jobs'. Automation is good. Good news, Biden's housing plan looks like it's moving in this direction. It seems like it was essentially regulatory capture that caused this.

Derek Thompson @DKThomp

New study: Pandemic and remote work could obliterate half a trillion dollars of office value: “We find a 32% decline in office values in 2020 and 28% in the longer-run, the latter representing a $500 billion value destruction.”

Arpit Gupta @arpitrage

🚨New paper!🚨 with @VrindaMittal2 and @SVNieuwerburgh: we know remote work has been a big deal over the last couple of years. But what does this mean for the future of commercial offices? draft: https://t.co/fb9FuLyQMd substack: https://t.co/x3fvLBM1Tt thread 👇 https://t.co/jzObJcQEjp

We're going to need to figure out strategies for converting some of these offices to homes.

Michael Lin, MD PhD 🧬 @michaelzlin

Last week Pfizer completed submitting data to FDA on their vax for <5-year-olds, >1mo after Moderna. The more I chew on the whole <5yo vax issue, the worse it tastes. In fact it seems like moving the goalposts to favor one company in the most egregious way. A short thread.

This thread is pretty damning, not only has the FDA moved ridiculously slowly to approve vaccines for under 5s, but they seem to have massively tipped the scales in favor of Pfizer. "It's heads Pfizer wins, tails we flip again."

Threads

• Thread about the absolutely deranged worldview espoused by a relatively influential Russian Nationalist Galkovsky. Seriously Q-Anon level stuff