Favorites November 2nd 2023
TL;DR: Eliminate Parking Requirements, Legalize ADUs, Eliminate lot/size limits, legalize home-based businesses, more minesterial approvals, and legalize all multifamily in commercial zones.
One thing about mixed use that surprised me was that while denser zoning usually results in lower energy use, people living in four story mixed use zones use similar amounts of energy as people living in single use residential skyscrapers. Although getting the corner grocery flywheel going may be difficult in car-centric US cities.
Once you hear the question, "can an LLM identify people from their posts" the answer is "obviously, yes" but it wasn't exactly the first thing I thought of. Here's the paper.
Many of Tuberville's Republican collegues are absolutely furious about this. But Noah points out the idea is that Tuberville is trying to hold these military positions so that they can be filled by an eventual President Trump, because he's mad they didn't back Trump's coup.
I thought this was a useful reminder to have all in one place. Regarding unions, Despite being non-union, Toyota has given significant raises to their workers to keep up with the recent deal detroit's big three automakers came to with the UAW. We sort of have sectoral bargaining in the US.
Longer Reads
• Thread about how US police departments should use drones to pursue stolen vehicles. TL;DR: they're cheaper and less dangerous. Also mentioned, they could be used with shot spotter to arrive more quickly after the shots are detected. (src)
• Story about how Canada requires Engine Immobilizers and the US doesn't and so Canada has way fewer auto thefts. (src)
• Long thread about how Mainland Chinese people are moving to Hong Kong, replacing natives who are fleeing. Noah Smith points out that this should also tell us something about China's desire for Taiwan, they don't want the people, they want the land. (src)
Flotsam and Jetsam
– It's possible for every election to be the most consequential of our lives: it's because of rising polarization, the parties are diverging more and more. (src)
– Realtors found guilty of conspiring to maintain the 6% commission in violation of antitrust law. (src)
– Coal energy generation down by more than half in the last 10 years, and it's speeding up (src)
– Bombing in Gaza seems bad, sometimes there are arguments about civilian casualties as acceptable in service of defeating a truly despicable organization. But the bombing in Gaza doesn't seem like it'll actually help defeat Hamas. (src)
– One interesting part of the AI Risk Executive Order from Biden: monitoring biological synthesis via AI (src)
– Joe Rogan says he had mild arsenic poisoning, but not due to foul play. No, he just eats three cans of sardines per night. (src)
– Pretty much any country would be taking action after an attack like October 7th, but part of the problem is that Netanyahu was funding Hamas up until recently. (src)
– The US should adopt a standard set of building codes (src)
– Intuit is shutting down Mint (src)
– Things in china are not going so hot (src)
– NYC's anti-hotel policies have made it basically too expensive to visit now (src)
– Taiwan is building anti-ship drones based on what's been learned from Ukraine (src)
– We need to stabilize the price of Lithium, it has fallen massively, which may result in reduced mining which would be a problem in the future. (src)