Favorites October 7th 2023
This attack is horrible, especially since they seem to be trying to provoke a counterattack. Brew went into more detail in a follow-up thread (Iran’s involvement is by no means certain). Either way, this overall impetus for the attacks seems to have been pretty directly confirmed by Hamas. Israel appears to, predictably, be planning the exact kind of out-of-proportion retaliation that Hamas seems to want. Noah Smith's article today was entitled "If you didn't like Pax Americana, you're going to hate what comes after Pax Americana".
Looks like Dalle-3 ends up getting some pretty good results:
Of the output images, I think #1 looks quite good, and only #3 is actually bad.
Even more impressive is this stat he follows up with: the SF Bay Area has a significantly larger population but permitted a fifth as many homes as New Zealand.
Flotsam and Jetsam
– Hollywood reporter ranks the 50 best tv shows of the 21st century. Number one was (spoiler alert) Mad Men (src)
– We just should set up noise cameras rather than debating social root causes of noise. (src)
– The relationship between Fed rates and the market interest rates is clear, but not as strong as you might guess (src)
– Gotta target Trump voters with pro RFK messaging (src)
– Turns out constructing EVs will probably take more workers per car produced than for ICE cars, at least for the next decade or so. (src)
– Kottke links to an interesting digression on whether the US has good food or not. (src)
– Loud Pretzel Paragraph (src)
– The situation around the SF shoplifting is made all the more annoying because none of our data is reliable. (src)
– Offering free therapy to high schoolers without emotional problems seems to give them emotional problems. Seems bad. (src)
– Gavin Newsom vetoed social housing in AB309 saying it was "too expensive" despite the bill being explicitly revenue neutral. Very annoying. I hope the legislature overrides the veto. (src)
– Not a great moment for republicans to continue to hold up nominations to important foreign policy posts. (src)
– Wired pulled their article claiming that google rewrites searches to make more money, admitting that it was not 'up to editorial standards' (src)