Favorites March 8th 2022

Mar 09, 2022

Long one today, but I didn’t have to do an addendum at the end, so there’s that.

A good thread on how the nuclear worries around Putin work. TL;Dr he is unlikely to use nuclear weapons but may talk himself into a limited strike in Ukraine. This would be very bad and the West would likely feel the need to respond but NOT with large scale nuclear response.

Alex Wellerstein @wellerstein

So I've had a lot of people in my life asking me, informally, whether I thought Russia would use nuclear weapons in Ukraine. Here's my basic take. 1/

It's an interesting thread, but the topline TL;DR is very useful. Indicates some evidence Putin is still a 'rational actor' but "It's a limited definition of 'rational.'"

Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇦 @Noahpinion

Correct. If we get the same opportunity again, let's not fuck it up the next time. noahpinion.substack.com/p/beyond-sanct…

rev. howard arson @Theophite

i cannot believe how much the united states fucked up by not paying for a marshall plan style reconstruction of the former ussr

If we sanction them back to the 90s, we should be prepared to help them the way we should have in the 90s.

Jeff Stein @JStein_WaPo

NEWS -- WH aides in early discussions over "HEAT PUMPS FOR EUROPE" program to use US manufacturing power to send massive numbers of energy-efficient pumps to Europe to buffer Russia energy blow. Exploring use of DPA, DOD $. Major logistical hurdles

washingtonpost.comU.S. to ban oil imports from Russia as White House explores drastic plans to buffer economy from energy shockThe move represents one of the most far-reaching U.S. actions to penalize Moscow since the beginning of the war.

Heat pumps are great. Technology Connections goes into detail about why they're the future of home heating, interesting stuff.

Timothy B. Lee @binarybits

The US should back this proposal even if it means giving up the US veto as well. We're likely to have a majority more often than Russia or China do. irishtimes.com/news/world/uni…

I don't know if this is a pipe dream, but it definitely seems like it'd be a good thing.

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

Median weekly earnings / gallon of gasoline

This is such an interesting graph! Although of course, gasoline is an input to like, everything, so higher costs also hit consumers indirectly.

Charlie Stross @cstross

Half-watching the Apple event now happening, got to the M1 Ultra CPU, and just … LOLWUT? 117Bn transistors, 2 trillion neural ops/second, 20 CPU cores, 5nm node size, 128Gb RAM? When would this last charted in the world top 100 supercomputers? 2010-ish?

It's a very impressive machine, and they still have one even higher-end machine they haven't yet upgraded to ARM.

Colin McMillen @mcmillen

Senate Republicans are potentially going to block a Ukraine funding bill because [checks notes] that would constitute "funding a vaccine mandate"

Additionally, it is particularly troubling for the President to ask thousands of troops to amass in eastern Europe while simultaneously demanding they get a politicized vaccine.

All Senate Republicans have voted to defund the vaccine mandates. This is a GOP conference position. As such, it should be a part of the negotiation for inclusion in any spending bill.

Amusing also that they're complaining the vaccine is politicised.

affh af @s_damerdji

In this piece, the trades claim CEQA is used to protect low income communities Reality: the trades used a CEQA hearing in Mountain View to oppose a no-displacement project that'd give 48 low income families an affordable home close to jobs & parks

sfchronicle.comBy carving out projects from California environmental law, the state has created ‘Swiss cheese CEQA’In recent years, California lawmakers have added a plethora of amendments to blunt the...

Salim and I were both in the meeting where trade unions threatened CEQA lawsuits to oppose no-displacement projects adding tons of affordable homes. I don't think anyone, least of all trade unions, use CEQA to protect low income communities.