Favorites October 1st 2021

Noah Smith 🐇 @Noahpinion

A better alternative to the "tower in the park" form of dense urban design:

alfredtwu.medium.comTowers in the VillageSince tall buildings have been around, there have been many ways they’ve fit into cities: towers in downtown, towers in the park, and most recently, towers on a whole-block development. Let’s look at…

Towers in the park' is a name for the 'dense sprawl' exemplified in the post I linked a few days ago regarding China. As always, Alfred Twu's drawings are excellent, and I like the planning principle he's suggesting.

Charlie Stross @cstross

This is big: 3rd stage human clinical trial stopped early and emergency permission for roll-out applied for b/c Molnupiravir reduces risk of ICU/death in mild-medium COVID19 cases by 50%—very significant antiviral drug breakthrough.

M @bio_clouseau

$MRK Molnupiravir study stopped early for positive efficacy in mild/mod covid patients. EUA submission ASAP https://t.co/GgGGjQX5Pi

I don't have much to add except that the drug is apparently named after Mjölnir, Thor's hammer.

Colin McMillen @mcmillen

I really should make a news website that just consists of articles from wire services, but with all large numbers replaced by "$ per person per year" as appropriate https://t.co/N5Mu6rhzHE

Noah Smith 🐇 @Noahpinion

The really sad thing about the centrists' attempts to gut the Build Back Better bill is that the bill isn't even that expensive; we just think it's big because its cost is given as a 10-year total instead of a yearly amount.

A rule of thumb offered by mcmillen: "A billion dollars is a coffee per person in the US."

John King @JohnKingSFChron

The S.F. project this fall I’m most intrigued by? The floating fire station on the Embarcadero. Full completion still a month or so off, I’m told, including public waterfront access

Ok, the public works department calls it a 'fire boat station' in some documents. I think the actual trucks still park at the facility on land, but apparently an ambulance can actually drive onto the raft, so I think that qualifies as a ‘fire station’ without the ‘boat’ qualifier.

zeynep tufekci @zeynep

Petition to reverse the order of these meetings. Kids > heterologous boost (including for J&J) > J&J-specific booster.

Benjy Renton @bhrenton

NEW: The FDA's independent advisory committee has announced 3 upcoming meetings for vaccine discussions: - October 14: Moderna booster - October 15: J&J booster - October 15: Mix-and-match boosters - October 26: Pfizer vaccine for kids 5-11 https://t.co/UzEICgkRut

If it's just a scheduling choice to put kids so late on this list, then it definitely seems like a mistake.

Noah Smith 🐇 @Noahpinion

Goddammit Democrats, pass some bills

The Atlantic @TheAtlantic

Joe Biden’s economic plan is stalled in Congress because the warring wings of his party aren’t yet desperate enough to compromise, @russellberman writes: https://t.co/xVVKu12BIj

This ~2 second joke from The Simpsons has been coming up a lot these last few weeks. As you can probably guess, I believe the problem is the Filibuster.

Toronto, 2015