Favorites: Preference Cascades and Progress
No one was expecting Assad regime to collapse (cached) a couple months ago, but this kind of thing, when it happens can happen very fast due to preference cascade. The final collapse of the Assad regime happens in like, one frame in this animation. With Assad out, a reminder (cached) That Tulsi Gabbard met with him secretly in Syria in 2017. The syrian insurgency that is now victorious was previously a branch of al-Qaida (cached). Renaming themselves to appeal to moderates seems like a good call. Apparently they've been extremely effective (cached) at getting city services back up and running after taking over cities along the way.
Really interesting to see the polarization on wealthy people in the context of these other more polarizing groups. Democrats aren't particularly negative on wealthy people and corporations!
Here's another datasource which actually shows a minivan, the Chrystler Pacifica, in the top 10. That makes it even more surprising that there could be models with such a low number of DUIs. Maybe folks with those cars just don't drive them much?
Flotsam and Jetsam
– To expand the tent and win elections it's worth listening to what the people just outside the tent are saying. (src)(cached)
– It's not the first time it's been said, but a reminder that the key to detering crime is to increase the certainty that criminals will be caught, not the severity of the punishment. (src)(cached)
– New developments in the question of "what is the largest area of a 'sofa' that can be maneuvered through a right-angled corner in a hallway of width 1?" (src)(cached)
– Three major transit expansions in the US each had a huge positive impact on ridership, most notably caltrain. (src)(cached)
– Details on the types of new buildings being built in SF based on recent state laws. (src)(cached)
– Talented people in Europe are paid far less, and they want to come to the US, we should let them! (src)(cached)
– Instructions for running ollama locally, it even handles downloading whatever huggingface model you want. (src)(cached)
– I've never heard improvisation on an organ before, and that's what they played at the opening of Notre Dame, it sounds insane. (src)(cached)
– Holding unpopular opinions is fine, but you won't be able to change minds or be effective if you don't know they're unpopular. (src)(cached)
– "More white progressives think that 'racism is built into our society' than black or Hispanic Americans. " (src)(cached)
– Now that Trump won the election, Republicans believe elections are run fairly (src)(cached)
– Sadly, americans are just annoyingly conservative on economic issues (src)(cached)
– Notre Dame was rebuilt in 5 years, which is less time than it took SF to build a bus lane. (src)(cached)
– The big split in US voters has to be by education level, you don't want a professor arguing they're working class. (src)(cached)
– Argument that drone warfare favors motivated countries, if a country focuses, drones can be insanely effective. (src)
– I'm sure you had heard that Succession's core confict was inspired by the Murdochs, but did you know that some Murdoch drama was inspired by Succession? Here's more. (src)