Favorites October 29th 2023
This seems like a very bad way to structure fees! On a semi-related note, Mountain View charges per hour to review applications for new homes. Not to worry though, homes for the rich are exempted from the highest fees, mostly because they're always approved without incident but their fees are capped as well, just for good measure.
Our choices about how we structure decisions about what gets built are now the main impediment to making a better world. Hawaii's Governor's plan to get new homes built was blocked by the Sierra Club, which is bad, but also why is this a question for courts? Anyway, to the particular question of local control vs ability to build, some worry it represents a trade off of democracy vs efficiency. But Demsas points out, that this isn’t actually the trade off, ‘local control’ is not democratic, on multiple levels. Here’s the full article if you’re interested.
This seems impressive, but I couldn't quickly tell if anyone has something like this working on a standalone headset yet. It seems like it'd be at least plausible in a Quest 3. The gif is pretty low quality, but that’s an entirely virtual display, the table is real though, and this is being rendered in a VR Headset.
Longer Reads
• Why authoritarian leaders get worse over time, and how to fix it. TL;DR: they get locked in, such that they can't leave power because they'll face reprisals. One fix is to try to establish term limits ahead of time so that leaders don't do things that will get them reprisals once out of power.
Flotsam and Jetsam
– Economic polling is quite polarized. (src)
– You don't see anti-abortion groups calling for Republicans to publicly commit to banning abortion nationwide, they don't threaten to sit out an election if Republicans don't commit to enough. It would be foolish, they know who's on their side. (src)
– Kids getting their news from TikTok are poorly informed, Who would have thought? (src)
– Anti-Malaria drug from GSK reduces childhood mortality by 13% in a trial in Africa. It'll save tens of thousands if widely deployed. (src)
– The Anti-AIDS program PEPFAR, which has saved millions of lives is being threatened by Republicans in the house. (src)
– Are Traffic Engineers the only Engineers who never have to respond to how their designs work in reality? (src)
– Oh dang, Minnesota is considering a Land Value Tax, combined with their end of Single Family Zoning, seems pretty great. Georgists from across the globe will be drawn to Minneapolis' bright future. (src)
– People's awareness of how the economy is actually doing is way way off base compared to historical figures. (src)
– Less on-street parking can lead to more shopping in city centers. (src)
– Very impressive AI-generated recreation from scratch of a commercial for soap. (src)
– Brightline, Florida's high speed rail project somehow has worse miles per passenger fatality than cars in the US. (src)
– Japan is really making immigration happen, quickly. (src)
– China is upset that the EU is investigating their EV subsidies, but they'd be even more upset if the EU just mirrored China's EV policy, which disallows subsidies for any foreign made EV. (src)
– Here in California people worry about 'historical' buildings that are 40 years old. In Italy, they're putting a tram through a two thousand year old aqueduct. (src)
– Explanation of the equation that drives Twitter's Community Notes feature. Along with a long, detailed article getting into specific examples. (src)
– Mortgage rates in 1999 were the same as they are today. (src)