Favorites: Vanishing Acts to Vanishing Vacancies
September 1, 2025 — GLP-1 remakes celebrity bodies, toilet cams promise stool analytics, and small-dollar donations tug Democrats left.
Trump wasn't seen in public, didn't do any impeachable offenses for a few days, so rumors abound (cached) that he's actually dead. But now they say they're holding a press conference scheduled tomorrow morning, so he's probably not dead (cached). Anyway, here's the John Mulaney clip this is from.
This is the end of a thread of specifics of why RFK Jr is horrible. What happened the last time an insane conspiracy theorist was put in charge of a whole country’s policies like RFK? Perhaps Sri Lanka (cached), where they put someone in charge who banned all fertilizers and crashed their economy. That government was overthrown. RFK’s appointment might be one of Trump’s most consequential bad decisions (cached). He rejects germ theory! These are "Actual, honest-to-god medieval peasant beliefs" (cached) about medicine.
I’m pretty sure there are some other political alignments not on this chart, but it came up in response to Syria's new leadership continuing their relatively neoliberal transformation.
Here's the video clip (cached) this was from, in which Jon Lovett interviews a local politician who opposes SB79 and it's author, Scott Wiener at the same time. If you want yet another explanation why it’s important to supersede the byzantine local processes that block new homes from getting built, check out this clip where a city councilmember sincerely believes she’s helping with affordability by holding meetings, delaying the project, and reducing the size of the apartment building that was finally built.
Longer Reads
• A thread discussing a new study indicating new evidence that tenant protection laws drive up rents, especially among the lowest income renters. (src)(cached)
Flotsam and Jetsam
– Texas has now also banned lab grown meat. Not just limited government purchases, not just required labeling, but full-on banned a product that doesn’t exist yet. It’s pure protectionist capture by existing livestock interests. (src)(cached)
– Lizzo and Meghan Trainor have both lost a ton of weight. GLP-1 inhibitors truly represent the end of celebrities being overweight. (src)(cached)
– “ideal borders of Chinese territory” circulating on the tightly-CCP-controlled Chinese social media are… expansive. (src)(cached)
– The previous reporting from the NYTimes that restaurant reservations in DC are down appears to be incorrect according to OpenTable. (src)(cached)
– New device performs image-based analysis of every stool using a camera under the lid of the toilet. Cool idea, although I have absolutely no idea how useful that type of data is. (src)(cached)
– Grade inflation is bad, and what’s worse is that if you model the student as the customer, it seems likely this will get worse. Average Harvard GPA is 3.8 now (cached) (src)(cached)
– Yglesias argues that money in Democratic politics no longer pushes candidates to the center, since progressive small-dollar donations easily outweigh more centrist rich doners. (src)(cached)
– Reporting from the BBC that the civil war in Sudan seems to be reaching the point where an entire city of 300k people is being surrounded with the intention of starving the populace. (src)(cached)
– Some moron is getting tons of attention for calling for “Deportations until the average 28 year old can afford to buy their first home”. The obvious response is essentially “do you think reducing the low-skilled labor supply will make homes cheaper?”. But Medlock goes a step further and actually cites a study! (src)(cached)