Favorites May 2 2021

Donald Shoup @DonaldShoup

Pretextual Planning is Absolutely Everywhere

strongtowns.orgPretextual Planning is Absolutely Everywhere<p>Our mission is to support a model of growth that allows America’s cities, towns and neighborhoods to become financially strong and resilient. Join the Strong towns movement today.</p>

This article is short and to the point. I'm proud to say we sent it to an elected official who said it's changed their thinking on zoning.

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias

Reduced US enthusiasm for backing Saudi Arabia in regional struggles with Iran seems to be provoking some useful changes in behavior.

The New York Times @nytimes

Talks between Iran and Saudi Arabia, if successful, could start to lower the temperature on several conflicts across the Middle East. https://t.co/IS0Mt4fR4Y

This seems good, although I'm not exactly optimistic about anything coming of these negotiations

Miguel de Icaza @migueldeicaza

You have heard of cryptocurrencies as a tool for extortion and money laundering. But you hadn’t heard of this white collar scam: like the subprime mortgage crisis of 2008, except it prays on individuals rather than institutional investors - read this thread to learn more:

Stephen Diehl @smdiehl

If you invest other people's money there's a well-known perverse incentive to take on riskier positions because the incentive of your pay is performance-based and tied to outsized returns. And you personally see none of the downside if the positions fail. (3/)

Read the thread if you want to know more, but the upshot is: not only are cryptocurrencies monstrously wasteful, new ones are excellent opportunities to be scammed.

Zaid Jilani @ZaidJilani

Researchers looked at school closures in the Netherlands -- a relatively wealthy country with good broadband access and less inequality than the United States -- and found that kids learned basically nothing during them. So what do you think happened here?

inquiremore.comRemote Learning (What Is It good For?)New research suggests: absolutely nothing.

In person learning is good, we should be moving towards that as fast as possible.

Laura Foote 🌃 @NeverSassyLaura

I've started putting copies of Burrowing Owls in the Little Free Libraries in my neighborhood.

Burrowing Owls' was originally a TechCrunch article, which was later adapted into a book. It's probably the single thing that is most responsible for me getting involved in housing politics.

foone @Foone

it's often said, occasionally by me, that I hate computers. This is actually incorrect! I love computers. I only hate two specific parts of computers: 1. software 2. hardware

I was sure all parts of computers were covered by this

foone @Foone

and firmware is on thin fucking ice.

But I was mistaken