Women in Syria talking to CNN aren't wearing hijab (cached), they previously did in rebel held Syrian cities. Hopefully the moderation by the new government lasts. Further, here are some amazing excerpts from an article about the HTS officials asking the Syrian state bureaucrats what their jobs are (cached) surprise! there appears to have been a massive amount of graft. They're moving away from a state controlled economy towards a free market, Francis Fukuyama would be pleased (cached)
This is really impressive. The underlying article argues that the increase in homes built was between 40 and 70 percent. I'd be very interested to see this compared to other policy changes like single stair or dropping height restrictions. Although of course it would depend on other details.

It's apparently Carvana except on Amazon. I clicked around the Amazon interface for this and it seems pretty nice. Given I had to spend like 4 hours at the dealership to buy my Hyundai last year, I'm definitely kicking myself for not having tried harder to buy online (or waited to buy on Amazon)
Half! Geothermal is such a good option for base load, even if it's outperformed by batteries, it's nice to have options.
I have definitely heard that Steely Dan is a divisive band, so I enjoyed this bit
Flotsam and Jetsam
– Noah Smith first explains why people hate health insurance companies (cached) so much, he argues, that really the bad actor in the system is the providers (cached), if you're interested, here's the full article. (src)(cached)
– A US woman was arrested in Sydney for carrying a golden gun worth $3000 in her suitcase into the country. She claims she forgot that she had the gun with her, but later a review of her phone showed that she had searched for whether it was legal to carry a gun into Australia, (it's not), and had set a calendar entry to remind her to put the gun in her luggage. She was visiting Australia to attend clown school. (src)(cached)
– A thread from Crémieux where she collects evidence showing that Americans consume more healthcare than they need. Relatedly, one argument that a huge portion of US healthcare spending is on outliers (cached) who are in and out of care constantly at high expense, mostly homeless drug users. (src)(cached)
– I was unaware that a gene was identified by UCSF in 2019 as possibly being associated with needing less sleep. Pretty rare though, most people who think they need less sleep are probably deluding themselves. (src)(cached)
– One more time on that prospect theory paper, summarized by one commenter as "small fixed costs can really deter people from optimizing", he has a whole thread here of other studies that are explained by this. (src)(cached)
– Two things that are true at once: "Americans spend more than foreigners on out of pocket health care. Americans have a relatively low out of pocket share of health care spending." (src)(cached)
– Ukraine sent drone operators to help Syrian rebels overthrow Assad. (src)(cached)
– Former Cruise employee has some choice words about GM's decision to give up on taxis. The former ceo was also not impressed by GM's decision. (src)(cached)
– Mitch McConnell says this Trump guy is really getting out of control. Real hot dog man moment. (src)(cached)
– Why do some phone spam messages you get not even seem to have any clear angle to scam you? Because they're trying to just get you to reply so they can improve their standing with carriers before going all-out with bulk spamming. So don't reply (src)(cached)
– Biden admin blocking the US Steel Acquisition is absolutely the wrong choice. (src)(cached)
– Rental housing economist admits he was wrong, he now believes that building luxury housing really does filter down to helping lower rents on even the cheapest units in a region. (src)(cached)
– Trump rings the opening bell at the NYSE. "If Biden or Harris went to the stock exchange to talk about how great it is that stocks are up they would have been excoriated by the right *and by the left* as wildly out of touch". That's a bad structural disadvantage for Democrats. (src)(cached)
– Making the case that the 2008 auto bailout was the most successful US industrial policy in history. (src)(cached)
– Student debt forgiveness really was bad economic policy by the time the Biden admin implemented it. (src)(cached)
– Waymo has now passed Lyft in gross bookings in San Francisco (src)
Ironically, geothermal is benefiting from fracking innovations.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/why-geothermal-is-so-hot-right-now/id1728932037?i=1000669915572