Favorites November 3rd 2024
Another way of putting this is that the US economy is approximately 2.5 years of growth ahead of where the CBO expected us to be. Here's a thread of overal economic indicators (cached) inflation is down to 2.2% and unemployment is at 4.1% Pretty good!
This fact is wild, although it's worth noting that he is posting this quickly today, because Berkshire Hathaway is just $25 Billion short of the mark and so this may change any day now.
These tapes are from 2017, presumably Epstein would have wanted to play up his connection with Trump at that point, but still, quite big news to drop at this point in the race.
Even as other polling firms have been herding like crazy, Ann Selzer published a poll showing Harris ahead in Iowa, despite everyone else showing her way behind there. It's a gutsy poll to publish, it's almost certainly an outlier, but Selzer has been uncannily accurate in the past. She even says that she doesn't like the 'gold standard' label (cached) people put on her polls. If Iowa really becomes a swing state again, the main bummer would be that it would make it hard to end ethanol subsidies.
Longer Reads
• A long thread with the story of how Senator Birch Bayh, who joined the Senate in 1963, got very close to eliminating the electoral college, just 6 votes shy. (src)(cached)
Flotsam and Jetsam
– Improvements in battery technology over the last decade have made EVs economical, but solid state batteries really are on the horizon and are expected to lead to even bigger improvements in battery performance. Check out the linked article on the subject. The battery chemistry would be different of course, but they still would use lithium, probably even more, as the idea is to replace the anode with lithium, instead of graphite. (src)(cached)
– When designing a voting system, you want small changes in vote share to result in small policy changes. That is not what we have. (src)(cached)
– LLMs still have tons of missing capabilities, but even their current ability to summarize text is quite economically valuable. (src)
– Waymo's scale-up continues, from 50k trips per week in May, to 100k in August, to 150k this month. Hopefully they can continue the rollout at this pace or faster. (src)(cached)
– GOP Speaker Mike Johnson is out there promising to repeal Obamacare. Probably not a winning campaign message? (src)(cached)
– It appears that pretty much all new electrical capacity going forward will be zero emission. (src)(cached)
– One can say some bad things about Florida's governance, but their housing policy is great. After passing pro-production bills and hearing lots of complaints from cities, they passed an even tougher bill that closed loopholes. (src)(cached)
– The largest drone manufacturer has been barred by chinese authorities from buying batteries from China. Drones are the future of warfare, building batteries in the US and allied countries is a must for national defense (cached). (src)(cached)
– A wild scheme for how to make economically viable colonies on Venus. (I'm quite dubious, but it was the first time I'd heard it). TL;DR: farm blimps. (src)(cached)
– Waymo released the overview of their new multimodal driving model (src)
– In 1970s urban planning, pretty much everyone was spouting nonsense. (src)(cached)
– Jesse Singal, who has written for The Free Press in the past, is extremely unimpressed with their investigation into 'Great Replacement' nonsense. (src)(cached)
– American life expectancy is still lower than peer nations, but it's now at least now the highest it's ever been. (src)(cached)
– Seems like honeybee populations are recovering (src)(cached)
– Kids in a city in the nation of Georgia have lower blood lead levels thanks to free testing. The amount of decrease is probably worth a point or two of IQ for a hundred thousand kids per year. Amazing. (src)(cached)
– In discussion of how Peter Thiel is a straightforward fascist, it's noted that in previous fascist groups made up of multiple sub-groups, when they gain power, the Futurists absolutely get crushed. (src)(cached)
– Did you know crows can do very convincing human voices? I did not! The linked video is wild, and there are others. (src)(cached)
– The things GLP-1 drugs are applicable to are getting ridiculous. Now Arthritis? What? (src)(cached)
– One single apartment that was built in Minneapolis due to YIMBY wins could be responsible for Minnesota having 10 electoral votes rather than 9. (Although NY would have gotten the extra vote if MN lost it) (src)(cached)