![Dr. Daniel Swain @Weather_West For all the folks asking: to my knowledge, all the smoke plumes around NorCal today are from prescribed burning--not active wildfires--amid this year's favorable weather and vegetation conditions! #CAwx #CAfire Quote CAL FIRE CZU @CALFIRECZU · Sep 28 We’ve finished burning our 2nd 30-acre plot. We’re getting started on the 3rd 30-acre plot. We anticipate finishing our allotted 90 acres soon. We should be done putting fire on the ground at 3pm. Smoke could be visible into evening hours. #CaWx @MySFPUC @NWSBayArea @AirDistrict Dr. Daniel Swain @Weather_West For all the folks asking: to my knowledge, all the smoke plumes around NorCal today are from prescribed burning--not active wildfires--amid this year's favorable weather and vegetation conditions! #CAwx #CAfire Quote CAL FIRE CZU @CALFIRECZU · Sep 28 We’ve finished burning our 2nd 30-acre plot. We’re getting started on the 3rd 30-acre plot. We anticipate finishing our allotted 90 acres soon. We should be done putting fire on the ground at 3pm. Smoke could be visible into evening hours. #CaWx @MySFPUC @NWSBayArea @AirDistrict](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F18e703c9-faa0-4637-bbad-061bdaa1a905_1158x1210.png)
This seems very good. In a follow-up, he mentions that there's almost no wildfire activity in California right now, so they have plenty of manpower to do this safely.
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Part of this is that car crash deaths have fallen over the last 20 years, but they haven't fallen *that* much.
![See new posts Conversation Jason Furman @jasonfurman The inflation data from PCE--which is what the Fed focuses on--were much better for August than the CPI data. We now have three unambiguously good months in a row for core PCE. Annual rates: 1 month: 1.8% 3 months: 2.2% 6 months: 3.0% 12 months: 3.9% See new posts Conversation Jason Furman @jasonfurman The inflation data from PCE--which is what the Fed focuses on--were much better for August than the CPI data. We now have three unambiguously good months in a row for core PCE. Annual rates: 1 month: 1.8% 3 months: 2.2% 6 months: 3.0% 12 months: 3.9%](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F310fe3eb-f141-4198-be5e-5315a7dbe24d_1158x1494.png)
Here's a thread with a bunch more detail on the most recent inflation report.
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Longer Reads
• Short thread about Facebook's new image generating AI, Emu. TL;DR: it looks very good, probably because it's trained on instagram data, and they can use likes as a signal of quality.
Flotsam and Jetsam
– A ton of democratic senators are calling on Menendez to resign. Zero Republicans though. (src)
– Cool USB-C cable tester, checks max wattage and max data transfer (src)
– US installed municipal battery production is going absolutely crazy. "battery printer go brrrr" (src)
– New paper indicates that the *other* COVID treatment, molnupiravir, really may be responsible for some identifiable new strains of COVID. Paxlovid has not had this problem. (src)
– Life expectancy drop in the US looks a lot scarier when you separate by college degree. (src)
– Gavin Newsom is apparently doing pretty well at being a Biden campaign surrogate. (src)
– Story from Forbes about internal tools at TikTok giving employees access to private info from any user. (src)
– Dang, Target is reporting an incremental increase in shoplifting of half a billion dollars. They operate on pretty thin margins, if that's accurate, it pretty clearly explains why they're closing some stores. (src)
– Anti-Trump Republicans are thinking about bringing in another candidate, but that's insane, what they need is fewer candidates. (src)
– Tanks continue to not be particularly viable in modern warfare, but this is actually making it harder for Ukraine to advance right now. (src)
– Impressive demo of Meta's lifelike VR avatars (src)
– Picking a replacement for Feinstein is going to be tricky (src)
– Requiring daycares to always be on the first floor makes them more vulnerable to flooding. (src)
– Jackie Chan supported the Tiananmen Square Protesters in 1989 (src)
– As EVs become more popular, it will cause a death spiral for gas cars, which has already happened for diesel cars. (src)
– New desalination process appears to be less energy intensive, uses sunlight, could go years without maintenance. (src)