Tag: rss_source

“This trajectory, from simulating future capability on public roads to creating a fantasy world for fantasy cars to show off fantasy capabilities, should worry Tesla’s supporters. We can already see Musk retreating into a misinformation-fueled fantasy world every day on Twitter, and the jarring divisiveness of the Cybertruck suggests that his runaway ego is already making Tesla’s products less palatable. If Musk’s retreat into a self-soothing fantasy bubble is also making his hype game less effective, and the 8% drop in Tesla’s stock price suggests that it is, his most important skill set is on the line”

https://niedermeyer.io/2024/10/11/the-retreat-to-muskworld/

“So then what of the next few months? Activity combats anxiety. Those four movie ideas I’ve been excited about? Pick one and write it, then another, and another. The TV show I was thinking of pitching? Sit down and write the pilot (we’re told no one buys TV specs any more, this, like all the “rules” of Hollywood, is nonsense). 

Keep talking to people. The execs are at their desks with their heads in their hands. Maybe they can’t buy right now, but they can still talk. Be the light, be the energy, be the person who isn’t opining the state of the industry but instead seems to have a ton of ideas and enthusiasm. That person is their first call when the money tap gets turned back on”

https://developmenthell.substack.com/p/where-im-at-october-2024

“Klein’s research concentrated quite a lot on fire chiefs and the decisions that they made on when to bring a crew out of a building. This is an unusual case – it’s a high-stakes decision that needs to be made under time pressure, by a single individual. It turned out that one of the most important inputs to that decision was whether the floor of the building was reported by experienced firefighters to be “spongy”

https://backofmind.substack.com/p/spongy-floors

“That’s another dimension of the problem. Some proportion of people who a decade or two ago might have written a substantial book are now instead dabbling in podcasts, newsletters, or YouTube channels. Some of them find the work as satisfying as writing—the feedback is instantaneous—although it’s equally unremunerative. The new platforms are as susceptible to blockbuster economics as the publishing world. They, too, lack a middle class”

https://shush.substack.com/p/the-us-has-a-nonfiction-crisis

“They really are angry that the Conservatives have the brass neck to attack them for the early release of prisoners, a decision whose alternatives were, broadly speaking, “invent a time machine” or “legalise crime”. They might be wrong. But they do mean it. The best – the true – answer to “why is your messaging so gloomy?” is “We really are gloomy”. Sometimes, it’s not about tactics at all.

Starmer’s genuine anger about the state of the nation was behind what was, for me, the most effective part of his Conference speech: a dividing line about populism as “the politics of easy answers” and the need to be honest about trade-offs: providing more prison places means building prisons, cheaper electricity means overground pylons, having more houses means putting them in actual places, processing asylum seekers means granting asylum, and so on”

https://dividinglines.substack.com/p/doom-and-gloom

“Or if you don’t like the Silver Bulletin or 538 or RealClearPolitics averages, I’ll offer another alternative. Make your own average. Seriously, it’s not that hard. But I do have one stipulation: you have to publicly specify the rules ahead of time. I think you’ll find that when you’re forced to be consistent, to set standards that aren’t governed by your ad hoc sense of the vibes or by your partisan preferences, you’ll have a lot more sympathy for the polling aggregators — and you won’t be as surprised when one of the outliers turns out to be right”

https://www.natesilver.net/p/trust-a-pollster-more-when-it-publishes

“The Constitution’s framers worried that individual states might try to grab too much power in the House by creating dozens and dozens of congressional districts, so they specified that a district could not be smaller than 30,000 people. But they put no upper limit on district sizes. After the 1920 census revealed that urban Americans outnumbered rural Americans, the House in 1929 capped its numbers at 435 to keep power away from those urban dwellers, including immigrants, that lawmakers considered dangerous, thus skewing the Electoral College in favor of rural America. Today the average congressional district includes 761,169 individuals—more than the entire population of Wyoming, Vermont, or Alaska—which weakens the power of larger states”

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/september-20-2024

“On average, the public thinks asylum seekers make up a third of total immigration. The more sceptical about migration they are, the higher the percentage they think it is. People who hold liberal views on immigration think asylum seekers make up 19% of the total. People who hold critical views of immigration think they make up 47%. They’re all wrong, although needless to say the anti-immigration lot are most wrong of all. The actual figure is seven per cent.

More than five times as many people come to the UK to study each year than claim asylum. But the public thinks there are twice as many asylum seekers as international students.

Whichever way you look at it, that is a failure of journalism. Politicians must take some responsibility too, of course, but it’s basically their job to lie to the public”

https://iandunt.substack.com/p/farage-and-his-mortifying-dimwit

Not really the residents of Newham, Hackney and Waltham Forest, thousands of whom have been waiting years for social housing while luxury developments stud the skyline. Of the 33,000 new homes that will be built on or near the Olympic site by 2036, just over a third will be affordable, against the original bid pledge of 50%. And this in itself is a kind of sleight, given that the redefinition of “affordable housing” under the coalition government leaves it beyond the means of most lower-income families. Only around 1,000 social housing units have been constructed.

On the other hand if you are an affluent young professional, perhaps one of the many tech workers priced out of Clerkenwell and Shoreditch, this is your playground. And of course this is a more familiar Olympic story, from Rio de Janeiro to Tower Hamlets: gentrification under the guise of regeneration, a revolution for the moneyed classes that also effectively locks marginalised groups out of their own city. In the two decades to 2021 the Black population of Stratford fell from 31% to 17%. Perhaps, from a certain viewpoint, this is what sparkling success looks like.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/article/2024/sep/10/paris-2024-must-learn-from-london-broken-promises-olympics-paralympics-legacy

“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