May 10th 2022: Ghostwriting, Magnets, and Prediction Markets

Lake Tahoe, January 2022

Brian Beutler @brianbeutler

As long as you control the floor, there’s no reason not to run these votes in a ladder. Start at the lowest possible bar, then keep raising it, and stop when you’ve reached the point of uniting the GOP and dividing your own caucus. https://t.co/8XKgx7hJ1s

Tim Miller @Timodc

@mattyglesias @JHWeissmann You know what would be a good “message bill?” A guarantee right to abortion in the case of rape, incest, and life of the mother. Make the republicans vote on something 80/20 against them that’s easy for voters to understand in an ad. They are doing the opposite for no good reason

Brian follows up, "It’s not like they’re busily passing Biden’s economic agenda or anything."

Andrew Prokop @awprokop

Good succinct, clarifying summary of the ACLU / Amber Heard oddness theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…

Yikes, this is not a good look for the ACLU. Is this kind of thing super common with nonprofits? Prokop goes on to speculate that it is, it seems like a big distraction from a nonprofit’s core mission, but I guess it’s hard to not chase money like that.

Katie Mack @AstroKatie

If you were on the nearside of the Moon during a total lunar eclipse, it would go from light to dark and back over a few hours. If you looked up at the Earth, you'd see a dark disk ringed by a red glow. That red glow is all the sunsets and sunrises of the Earth, viewed at once.

The description of this phenomenon from the Apollo astronauts is really something. I couldn’t find any good photos of it though.

Freethink @freethinkmedia

Scientists created the strongest magnet ever... Then it blew up their lab. Here's how: 🧵 Photo: @UTokyo_News_en

The thread is quite short, here's video of the event. The magnets could potentially be used for fusion reactors, sounds pretty cool.

Victoria Guida @vtg2

First Black woman VP is the tiebreaking vote on the first Black woman confirmed as a Federal Reserve governor. The nomination is confirmed.

Victoria Guida @vtg2

We have a 50-50 vote on Lisa Cook for the Fed, ladies and gents! That means we'll need VP Harris for the tiebreaker.

I really can't imagine how poorly things would be functioning if we didn't have 50 senators.

Joe Weisenthal @TheStalwart

Somehow I’d never seen this brilliant @hasufl piece on the problem with Prediction Markets and why they’ve never really taken off. insights.deribit.com/market-researc… HT @powers_chris

The prediction markets that actually get a ton of usage, (predictions for what the Fed will do), are unique in that there are many people with an economic need to participate.

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