Favorites September 12th 2023

Toronto, July 2023

The combination of the voice, the lip syncing, and of course the translation, all at once is really magical.

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Poland saw the amazing performance of the 20 HIMARS given to Ukraine and decided that they'll go ahead and defend the rest of Europe. In fact, here's a short thread about how Poland being part of NATO is currently good for Russia, because it means Poland can't rush in and help Ukraine.

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I guess I could have looked it up, but I had never before actually seen the extent of China's claimed ownership of international waters. Oh, by the way, China has just started carrying out their largest ever military exercises with no previous announcement.

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Longer Reads

• Thread discussing how various new zero-emissions technologies are being integrated into the steel manufacturing process (src)
• Thread summarizing how public funding for private schools is quickly becoming standard in red states in just the last couple of years. Seems bad, like "I don't like city parks, I want the government to help me pay for my country club membership". Charter schools had some level of accoutability at least, this is much worse. (src)

Flotsam and Jetsam

– Swiss insurance agency has enough data on fender-benders to pretty clearly indicate waymo gets fender benders at a lower rate than human driven cars. (src)
– Tokyo built more homes in the last 50 years than NYC has total. (src)
– Argument that the Google/Apple deal is more important for Apple than for Google, based on the EU situation. (src)
– Solar now cheaper than wind in the UK (src)
– Grid-scale battery production capacity has shot up way than I had realized. (src)
– Folks saying "why should Taiwan matter to us" seem to have forgotten the entire 20th century (src)
– CBT for police officers helped reduce excessive force and other adverse outcomes (src)
– "Tokyo added more housing in the last 50 years than exists in all of NYC" (src)
– Demographic shifts mean that Trump's electoral college advantage is going away, while his popularity holds steady. (src)
– We should be using policy to encourage EV chargers at offices. (src)
– The most sincere article ever published in The Onion. (src)
– Ho Chi Minh would be happy to see the strong relationship developing between the US and Vietnam (src)
– It seems like it would be a bad idea for someone to try to primary Biden. (src)
– Child Poverty shot up in 2022 after the child tax credit ended. What a shame, we found a way to end child poverty and just decided not to do it anymore. (src)
– China is now the top car exporter worldwide, but remember that most cars are built where they're used, we're not talking about that many cars. (src)
– The senator blocking military promotions maybe doesn't understand anything about how the system he's breaking works. (src)
– List of red flags people look for on dating sites. (src)
– It appears that AI face detection is being used for opposition research, someone managed to find sex videos of a state house candidate. (src)
– Canada is like the farm league for US immigration via O-1 visas. (src)
– Webb telescope may have detected signs of life on an exoplanet. (dimethyl sulphide, which is only produced by microbial life on earth) (src)
– Speed cameras legalized in 6 California cities: Los Angeles, San Jose, San Francisco, Long Beach, Oakland and Glendale (src)