Favorites May 18th 2023

David Watson

May 19, 2023

See new Tweets Conversation Jim Tankersley @jimtankersley The surprising main character of last year's G7 meetings was a newly invented U.S. idea to put a price cap on Russian oil. There was a lot of skepticism. But a year later, European and American officials agree: It worked. nytimes.com An Untested Oil Price Cap Has Helped Choke Revenue to Russia Group of 7 leaders are prepared to celebrate the results of a novel effort to stabilize global oil markets and punish Moscow. — src

This was such an interesting idea when it was proposed, seems good that it worked.

See new Tweets Conversation Derek Thompson @DKThomp In 1822, the US had more newspaper readers than any other country—but no paper had more than 4K subscribers. All news was narrowcast. When ppl today say we’re losing our sense of “shared reality” they’re right. But we are losing something that was only very recently invented. — src

Probably the most hopeful angle regarding the fragmentation of the media landscape that's been happening. I think the biggest difference is that if the fragmentation is geographic, that's more random than our modern fragmentation, which is largely based on political alignment.

Wally Nowinski @Nowooski The only thing more embarrassing than clinging to an outdated belief you learned in college in the 2000s is clinging to an inherited outdated belief your parents learned in college in the 70s. Defense dominated the budget in the 60s. It doesn’t anymore. Try to keep up! — src

There was a lot of discussion of the old Eisenhower quote worrying about the military-industrial complex. But back then the military was 8% of GDP. Now it's under 3%.

Threads

• Thread summarizing the Supreme Court's decision on Gonzalez v. Google, a case regarding Section 230. TL;DR: Google won, and the court seems to be indicating that they think they maybe shouldn't have even taken the case in the first place.

• California's permanent extension of SB35 made it through committee with minor changes. TL;DR: they've included a union labor requirement, but it'll only apply if there are bids from a significant number of union labor firms.