Favorites: SpaceX, Liquid Assets, and Whips
June 29, 2026 — California's medical association opposes the Medi-Cal billionaire tax, updated COVID shots cut cardiovascular deaths, Tokyo grows to twice New York's population.
Ah yes, "liquific", you could use it to describe soup. You could use it to describe sauce that's less viscous than you expected: "this mac and cheese sauce sure is liquific". Or get metaphorical, your assets are all in cash and easily salable equities? Your assets aren't just liquid, they're liquific! (src)(cached)
The self-control capabilities of GLP-1s continue to show a ton of promise. we’ll all be on mild third gen GLP-1s soon (cached), hopefully that works out ok. Anyway, here’s the underlying paper (cached) if you want to check it out. (src)(cached)
There was a lot of discussion of this Guardian op-ed by Piketty and friends, including the fact that he couldn’t get his frequent coauthor Zucman to sign on. If you’d like to see a multiple point rebuttal instead of this comparative paper snark, here’s one (cached). But the real highlight was that the entire thing appears to be AI generated (cached), and you don’t have to depend on Pangram, for those who are familiar with the tells it’s quite obvious (cached). Also, there's no math in the Piketty article. (src)(cached)
I’m sure there will eventually be keep 'S&P 500' styling throughout, but until then you can buy this Sharia-compliant S&P 500 ETF that will not include SpaceX, where they believe that the only thing more powerful than the S&P inclusion criteria is the will of god (src)(cached)
Unlike the directed electronic jamming guns, this thing seems like it would work on fully autonomous drones just fine. I’m pretty sure this is a Russian drone actually, but Ukraine has an equivalent. (src)(cached)
archaeology department. (src)(cached)
Flotsam and Jetsam
– I’m not sure my readers need more evidence that the CA ‘Billionaire Tax’ to fund Medi-Cal is a fraud. But you can pile this on the stack: the California Medical Association, which represents thousands of doctors has voted to oppose the measure. Because it’s poorly constructed, the worst possible law that you can make while sounding good to poorly informed voters. (src)(cached)
– Not only has the COVID vaccine reduced the obvious severe COVID deaths, it has also reduced cardiovascular deaths, roughly 16 deaths per 10k people vaccinated. The method of action is that COVID also damages your heart, and protecting against it protects your heart. (src)(cached)
– When NYC passed its downzoning, it was approximately the same population as Tokyo, now Tokyo is twice the population of NYC. (src)(cached)
– Apparently the Shingles vaccine measurably lowers the risk of dementia, (does having shingles cause brain damage!?), but less than half of eligible Americans have taken the vaccine? I’m not old enough to take it but… now I sorta want a doctor to prescribe me this vaccine off-label. (src)(cached)
– Google is going to go ahead and carry out the anti-mosquito procedure widely in California and Florida. I understand this program (“debug”, heh) has been in development for a while, and it’s very cool. They breed male mosquitoes (which can’t bite) in captivity, they infect them with a disease that results in their offspring all being nonviable. They mate with females who then don’t mate with other viable males. When this was first tried in Fresno CA it resulted in an average of 95% reduction in mosquito population. Although sadly you have to keep doing it otherwise the population recovers. If this seems like the kind of thing the government should do, YES, I agree! Unfortunately Trump went the other direction and actually canceled the similar program for preventing the spread of the screwworm parasite that kills cattle. Seems unlikely that they’ll be willing to take on this project. (src)(cached)
– Historians debate whether the US’ use of nuclear weapons against Hiroshima and (especially) Nagasaki was acceptable in wartime. But there’s another layer I’d never heard before: it sure seems like the bombing of Nagasaki was actually a violation of direct orders. TL;DR: they were supposed to only drop the bomb if they could see the target, and at that moment it was literally the only nuclear bomb in existence. They spent so long trying to see a valid target that the plane no longer had enough fuel to return to base. Exact details are tricky, but it seems real unlikely that the clouds opened up at that moment, allowing them to see the target. (src)(cached)
– single-stair proposal to increase the single stair apartment height limit from three to four stories. Eventually we want to get to at least 6, but this is a great start. Deeper in the replies (cached) he gets into yet another explanation of why it’s safe: “A fire that will block one exit will produce enough smoke to fill the corridor and block not just two but the only way out of every unit on the floor. It’s not a good fire protection feature; per-floor unit maximums are much better. Finland allows 52m (17 stories) with one stair.” (src)(cached)