Favorites September 23rd 2022

Agua Caliente, July 2022

Ethan Mollick @emollick

👀 Fast scaling has massive downsides: startups that scale more quickly fail more, but are no more likely to succeed than those that scale slower. Why? Because scaling marks the end of experimenting. Startups that scale after lots of experiments succeed. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…

From the extended thread, the idea here is that larger companies are less capable of experimenting, so it's good to experiment before scaling up.

Rob Lee @RALee85

"Russian authorities plan to conscript 1.2 million people for their 'partial mobilization,' Meduza has learned from a source close to one of the country’s federal ministries." Up to 16,000 people from Moscow are also slated to be drafted. meduza.io/en/feature/202…

And they appear to be getting just 2 weeks of training, plus, they're banning sales of Alcohol? Also, oil prices are falling quite quickly, which is not going to help their finances.

Daniel Swain @Weather_West

Crystal clear skies across NorCal today. Looks like recent rains really did a number on #MosquitoFire--there are currently *no* detectable hotspots! It is still possible that smoldering pockets in heavy fuels could spring back to life, but for now...good news! #CAwx #CAfire

Fingers crossed that we manage to keep this relatively light fire season this year in California.

Federico Masera @masera_federico

We study the 2015-2016 Trump campaign. Using data on 35 million traffic stops we find that the probability that a stopped driver is Black increases after one of his rallies.

I know I pointed to a study yesterday that Americans are surprisingly less racist than people from other countries, but there's still a lot of racism. They controlled for a ton of factors.

Threads

• Thread explaining quite clearly why modern drones appear to have made the F35 obsolete. TL;DR And F35 and it's logistical requirements are just too expensive a target "Drones are to the F-35 logistical supply chain what the machine gun was to the horse."