Links for May

we're back

this is the last thing i'll say about it, but i finally got fed up with archive.is/archive.ph unreliability & started using a vpn, which solves the issue. probably it's wise to use one regardless, so i recommend that

1. good Daniel Herriges piece on why upzoning is worth doing even if it doesn't immediately lower housing prices. classic Strong Towns fare, pointing to the complex & multidimensional nature of regulation, urban planning & economics

2. long piece on fertility biotech, all very exciting (New Yorker)

3. Nuview, pursuing satellite lidar mapping of earth. extremely cool

4. nice short video about Axon’s new taser products & related initiatives (a sponsored puff-piece, to be clear). developing more effective & reliable nonlethal weapons is an underrated strategy for reducing unjustified police killings, & i very strongly support this effort

5. paper: Anatomy of a Disaster: Why Some Accidents Are Unavoidable by John Downer. academic safety & risk management paper from 2010, about the sociology & epistemology of accidents. main idea is to complicate the distinction between classic "normal accidents" that are inevitable & unpredictable due to high complexity & tight-coupling of system components, vs other kinds of accidents that are in principle predictable & preventable with organizational & technological approaches (e.g high-reliability organizational theory). Downer identifies another set of accidents that are unpredictable, yet not really normal accidents: those where one’s fundamental model of the world is flawed in a way that’s impossible to understand prospectively. an example is Aloha Airlines flight 243, involving metal fatigue. the physics & detection capability of metal fatigue in aircraft was simply underdeveloped at the time, & there was no real way to know that the aircraft was at risk under the existing engineering test paradigms. fascinating stuff

6. update on based Nauru's seabed mining gambit (FT)

7. update on non-invasive brain-computer interface technology

8. good Fin Moorehouse post on ‘clean air’ in the context of infectious disease. improved HVAC & air filters, germicidal irradiation, monitoring… really need to invest in this stuff, both r&d and deployment of existing tech

9. quite interesting update from Cruise (driverless cars). they’re coming, & they’re going to be amazing

10. good post about progress in silicon batteries & their potential in electric aviation, including perpetual-flight drones. the US Army's experimental Zephyr drone (solar + batteries) is totally incredible. it stayed up over New Mexico for over 60 days! a vision of the future

11. many fusion articles. Bloomberg, WSJ, Power… once again, i’m supportive yet pessimistic it will be useful for applications outside of space travel. at this point i'm just tuning it out until an actual grid-connected demonstration project happens

12. good article about electrification of cargo ships at port. i posted recently about train electrification in urban railyards, & this is similar. airports too (you can build electric propulsion robots for taxiing aircraft, allowing them to minimize engine use while on ground). even if it takes longer to completely transition these technologies to cleaner energy for their point-to-point journeys, doing it at the logistics hubs has benefits for air & noise pollution, helping workers & nearby residents (Heatmap)

13. blog post from that guy with the crazy beard arguing that copper scarcity isn't really a huge problem for the energy transition, since substitution with aluminum works pretty well for many things (wires, transformers, electrical coils, EV stuff etc). one can hope, since developing new copper mines is hard (Bloomberg)

14. tacocopters... soon

15. article on Montana’s awesome yimby progress (Bloomberg)

16. profile of Jamie Beard, pursuing geothermal in Texas & founder of Project InnerSpace. way too long & kinda boring. but notable (Wired)

17. Bloomberg piece on bluesky. for the record i am on there, @antirobust.bsky.social. i keep telling myself i might start posting again, either there or on twitter. and i still might. i do miss the social aspect & all the online relationships i developed on twitter. & the intellectual benefits are impressive. but there are just things i don’t like about it, namely the time & brainpower cost, & the competitive pressure to post good stuff & acquire more status. so idk. (Bloomberg)

18. Charles Fain Lehman has been busy. see this good piece on crime & policing. he also started a substack, The Causal Fallacy. the first post about marijuana legalization is good, although i don’t totally agree with it. & then there is this piece on US life expectancy. (National Review). Lehman is one of the more reasonable & intellectually-rigorous rightwing hacks out there. take from that what you will

19. enjoyed this blog post from Nadia Asparouhova on different kinds of talent-utilization profiles across organizations. idk how clean the distinction between pareto distribution & bimodal really is in practice, but interesting nonetheless

20. James Medlock won his bet with Balaji & actually got paid. incredible. article here (Quartz)

21. excellent Discourse piece on 'air travel abundance', arguing for more progress & innovation & competition through govt deregulation (US-focused). i totally agree. the lack of progress in this space is frustrating, & symbolic of broader issues. make it easier to create new pilots & airlines & airport capacity. allow cabotage & overland supersonic. privatize airports, TSA & air traffic control. reform the FAA. & radically streamline restrictions on emerging tech like drones & eVTOL

22. amusing opinion piece from 2013 arguing for consol bonds as a solution to the debt ceiling, wherein US govt sells bonds that pay out interest forever without reaching maturity. this apparently bypasses the legislative fine print for how debt is defined. or something (WaPo)

23. Matt Bruenig on greedflation

24. paper: A Defense of Stigmatization by Joseph Heath. in my previous links post i discussed Richard Hanania's argument for fat shaming. it brought to mind this paper, which is really fantastic (as all Heath content is). the basic idea is simple: stigmatization (a socially-enforced negative status symbol) can in some cases be an important instrument of individual self-control, & ultimately promote autonomy. Heath uses examples like drug addiction, petty criminality, voluntary unemployment, dropping out of school. of course a key distinction is whether the object/characteristic giving rise to the stigma is chosen or unchosen. this is what Hanania's post is about, & why something like obesity is tricky— compared to e.g skin color, with obesity you quickly get bogged down into questions of free will & the high causal density of nutrition science. but Heath goes further & discusses a bunch of other dimensions; voluntary behavior & "victimless crimes", proportionality of social sanctions, moral paternalism, left-vs-right political ideology etc

25. really good Javier Blas piece on US shale oil. it’s been incredibly beneficial for US prosperity & power. but those benefits won't last forever, & switching over to cleaner energy is needed (Bloomberg)

26. Elizabeth Nolan Brown Reason piece on declining fertility rates, the limits of pro-natalist govt policy

27. good Brian Potter post on the Yellowstone supervolcano, & the idea for a massive geothermal project to both generate energy & reduce catastrophic risk. obviously we should do this

28. UK is trying to block the Blizzard-Activision merger. despite their obvious entertainment & artistic merits, i ultimately consider video games to be a 'sin' industry like alcohol, tobacco, recreational drugs, gambling, prostitution, unhealthy food, & arguably video streaming like Netflix. i don't want to ban any of this stuff. but in many cases i’m okay with tighter regulation, if done well. but here, i don't see a problem with allowing more market concentration that could potentially result in less competition, higher prices & less output. maybe that’s a good outcome! but regardless, new technologies are hurtling towards us that will very likely result in unlimited low-cost, individualized, highly-enjoyable/addictive video games, whether incumbent producers are highly concentrated or not. i also think that if you are concerned about big entertainment firms having too much power, the best solution is to obliterate copyright. this would likely result in entertainment becoming less capital-intensive, which would have good results for society (Economist)

29. The Economist did a limited podcast series about Russia & the Ukraine war, focusing on Russian refugees. it's good, & sad

30. long Compact piece arguing for a (almost literal) Butlerian Jihad against AI. it's an insane position, but i suppose someone had to be the first to write it

31. argument for refilling the strategic petroleum reserve now. i probably agree. using the SPR to manage price variability seems simple enough, with obvious benefits. if this new role sacrifices some of the original mission of ensuring emergency supply, that’s worrisome. but probably you can do both to a large degree (Heatmap)

32. nice piece on nuclear hydrogen, additionality & the upcoming IRA tax credit rules. i can’t say i have incredibly strong views on the dilemma. the ultimate solution is to just build way more clean energy — of every kind. but i do think nuclear paired with flexible demand (hydrogen, desalination, carbon capture, computing etc) can work nicely alongside variable renewables. it is amusing how the prospect of this massive hydrogen subsidy benefitting existing nuclear places the nuclear maximalists into somewhat of a bind. they generally oppose hydrogen, seeing it as a thermodynamically wasteful & expensive method to achieve energy reliability through wind/solar. so you could see how from their perspective, nuclear hydrogen is a sort of cannibalizing perversion, taking nuclear’s glorious clean firm power & using it less efficiently to create something that helps its mortal enemy, renewables. but of course in direct financial terms, the subsidy has the potential to really boost US nuclear economics, which is desperately needed. & the actual nuclear industry certainly wants the subsidies, they don't care about your tedious online nukebro vs renewables culturewar. so the whole thing is just funny. regardless of what happens with the rules, some ppl will be furious & there will be a blizzard of catastrophizing takes, i for one can't wait (Heatmap)

books

The Sabbath World: Glimpses into a Different Order of Time by Judith Shulevitz. a bit different from my usual fare. the history of the sabbath & philosophical/religious musings on the topic. largely focused on Judaism, but it discusses the practice in Christianity & other religions too. it was okay. i tuned out during some of the long digressions into biblical history. a key claim is that we should view the sabbath as an institution of social coordination, rather than some individualistic, solitary thing. lots more to say but ironically i’m super busy today and have no time to post more

The Monk by Matthew Lewis. this is a classic, foundational work of gothic horror. it was fantastic. Frankenstein is probably my single favourite novel, but i’ve not read much else in the genre. the writing is great, & it slowly introduces the supernatural horror elements in a skillful way. there are a few storylines, but mainly it’s about a sheltered Spanish monk getting corrupted by horni and devolving into a predatory sex pervert. it’s quite funny at times, and definitely has a satirical element. recommend.