Documenting Life

“Studies like this are why I get supremely annoyed by folks who like to talk about the “size of government” as if it’s meaningful measure of anything. Government should have the resources necessary to do the jobs it has to do and do them well. 

Are there too many people and dollars sloshing around the Department of Defense? Almost certainly! Can we eliminate the billions of dollars and large bureaucracies at the state level doling out corporate subsidies? Yes, we can!

But as this study shows, the prudent thing to do for the public — in terms of dollars and service — is to have more public transportation employees, to ensure that states can fulfill their core function of building infrastructure without blowing money on consultants and mistakes”

https://boondoggle.substack.com/p/the-secret-thats-driving-up-highway

“And really, have you noticed anyone from the anti-regulation, small state-ist, let-the-market-rip side of politics questioning their beliefs or publicly considering the links between those and this disaster? The silence, as Ian Dunt has noted, is deafening.

We’ve been here before. The financial crisis happened under a Labour government – but the decades of deregulation that allowed it was an ideology of the right (albeit one which too many on the centre-left had acquiesced to, too). That crash wasn’t followed by much soul-searching of the “are we the baddies” sort, either. It was followed instead by yet more deregulation, and the dismantling of the state”

https://jonn.substack.com/p/shameless

“These licenses permit the libraries to lend out their e-books, typically, to a single patron at a time per copy, for a fixed number of times or for a fixed duration. This is ostensibly to mimic the wear and tear on typical physical books that forces libraries to periodically purchase new copies, but in reality seems to reflect hypothetical wear and tear on books if they were made of tissue paper and loaned only to people who promise to exclusively read them in the bathtub”

https://www.citationneeded.news/hachette-v-internet-archive/

“Democratic messaging often suffers from the sheer abundance of potential attack lines on Trump, causing voters to tune out. The aforementioned whiny progressive media critics don’t seem to understand that elevating every minor controversy surrounding Trump only reduces the signal-to-noise ratio and makes them look like the boy who constantly cried wolf”

https://www.natesilver.net/p/the-mistakes-of-2019-could-cost-harris

“Took its name from a pub on the nearby corner of Ladbroke Grove, the Admiral Blake, itself named for a man who, having been deemed “too short” to be an academic, became an MP and fought in the Civil War, notably saying he’d eat three of his four pairs of boots before surrendering Taunton to the Royalists. He was then put in charge of key bits of the Navy, introduced such innovations as ‘having tactics’ and ‘reliably winning battles’, and upon his death was buried in Westminster Abbey… for about three years, until the monarchy was restored and Charles II had his corpse booted back out again. Owned.”

https://buttondown.com/mewsletter/archive/1-i-am-just-going-outside-and-may-be-some-time/

“Its leaders did what they always do when threatened by a new regulation: They threw a temper tantrum, in this instance threatening to block all news content in the state of California were AB 886 to become law. But that threat didn’t derail the bill, which kept merrily chugging along after Google made it.

No, they seem to have simply gone over the legislature’s head to the governor, sowing enough fear and doubt that they won the day, flexing their power in the executive’s office with the guy who clearly styles himself a future presidential contender. They banked on Newsom not wanting to take on the major corporations that are synonymous with his state, and they were right”

https://boondoggle.substack.com/p/dear-politicians-dont-help-google

“Perhaps, for the smaller countries at these Games, the responsibility on each individual athlete weighs so much heavier. There are no second chances, no repechages, no other events. This, right here, on a breezy Friday morning in the Paris suburbs, is your window of opportunity, and if you miss it the pain can be unbearable”

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/article/2024/aug/02/these-are-the-slowest-fastest-women-on-earth-and-they-all-have-a-story-to-tell

“Still, if you want to predict what will last I think you should look to what has partisans among dedicated readers—scholars, critics, genre nerds, etc.—rather than what merely sells well with casual readers. Specialists not popularists. And then what work seems influential among younger artists, such as work that seems foundational in a certain style or subgenre. That’s might get you in the ballpark, even if you will strike out more with most swings”

https://countercraft.substack.com/p/what-lasts-and-mostly-doesnt-last

“I’ve always been keen to the idea that most people pay too much attention to national politics; it’s more or less absurd if you know and care more about some Senate race on the other side of the country than about who is running your kids’ school”

https://mattglassman.substack.com/p/join-the-pta-no-seriously

“Elections force candidates and parties to adopt campaign platforms and promote policies. They also reset the time horizon for officeholders, by eliminating it for lame-duck electoral losers, and pushing it maximally far off for freshly (re)elected officials.

And, perhaps most importantly, elections provides a strong signal to everyone involved about what public policy choices will likely succeed or fail in the public sphere going forward. As everyone struggles to understand the meaning of the blunt vote results, elected officials will consider their public policy opportunities. Will new ideas likely be accepted now? Is it the right time for a bold initiative? Are the conditions now right for me to run for Senate, or President?”

https://mattglassman.substack.com/p/so-whos-going-to-win-the-election