Favorites October 22nd 2021

Ethan Mollick @emollick

@stevenbjohnson A full decade of the Flynn Effect can be explained by iodized salt alone! Before 1924, 26%-70% of kids in the Great Lakes, Appalachians, and Northwest had goiters, just to show how big the issue was.

Ethan Mollick @emollick

I posted about how adding lead to fuel hurt us, so lets talk about an additive that did the opposite: Iodized 🧂 Iodine deficiencies were common, so Dr. David Cowie convinced companies to add it to salt. Average IQ went up 15 points in much of the US! And income went up by 11%! https://t.co/iQEQHVU1sX

Sea salt has a small amount natural iodine, apparently meaning that people living on coasts were less likely to be iodine deficient.

Noah Smith 🐇 @Noahpinion

I still can't believe the U.S. entered a naval war in 1941-42 without working torpedoes, and didn't even realize that our torpedoes didn't work until 1943.

A character mentioned torpedos that just "bounce off" in Cryptonomicon, but until I saw this I didn't realize how bad the problem had been. Here's the full article.

Michelle Goldberg @michelleinbklyn

nytimes.com/2021/10/22/opi…

Nice to see that immigration can work out politically eventually, even if only in Germany with a more stable coalition form of government.

David Lieb @dflieb

Root cause analysis of global shipping slowdown by the world’s #1 expert. White House interns: get this in front of @POTUS and @SecretaryPete today and make your career.

Ryan Petersen @typesfast

Yesterday I rented a boat and took the leader of one of Flexport's partners in Long Beach on a 3 hour of the port complex. Here's a thread about what I learned.

This is an excellent thread, the key portion really reminded me of Factorio: there will always be a bottleneck, if you don't choose where it is, then it'll just be random. Instead: "You should always choose the most capital intensive part of the line to be your bottleneck". I really recommend the whole thing. Anyway, good news, it got to Gavin Newsom in less 12 hours, and the problem has already been aliviated.

Mike Gaines @SnoopMikey

The new Apple Watch Series 7’s new huge edge-to-edge display is perfect and FINALLY allows an authentic viewing experience, just as the filmmaker intended

It's got the Dolby Atmos logo too, so it must be bouncing the sound off the ceiling as well.

Santa Cruz, March 2021

Look, Santa Cruz in the spring was just very picturesque, I’ve got a lot of photos.