American lawns: Designing an end to the toxic yard - "Lawns are an American obsession. Since the mass proliferation of suburbs in the 1950s and '60s, these pristine carpets of green turf have been meticulously maintained by suburbanites, with grass length and other aesthetic considerations enforced with bylaws and by homeowner associations.But for nature, lawns offer little. Their maintenance produces more greenhouse gases than they absorb, and they are biodiversity deserts that have contributed to vanishing insect populations. Residential lawns cover 2% of US land and require more irrigation than any agricultural crop grown in the country. Across California, more than half of household water is used outside of the house... Images of intensely irrigated lawns in Phoenix, ringed by the red sand of the Arizona Desert, were once a disturbing case study of America's lawn addiction. But in recent decades, the state has taken action, charging more for water in the summer and banning lawns on new developments. At the turn of the millennium, 80% of Phoenix had green lawns, now only 14% does... "There's certificates that homeowners can get that certify that a front yard is wildlife friendly, or attracts butterflies, or is certified by master gardeners.""
We’ve just had the best decade in human history. Seriously | The Spectator - "We are living through the greatest improvement in human living standards in history. Extreme poverty has fallen below 10 per cent of the world’s population for the first time. It was 60 per cent when I was born. Global inequality has been plunging as Africa and Asia experience faster economic growth than Europe and North America; child mortality has fallen to record low levels; famine virtually went extinct; malaria, polio and heart disease are all in decline. Little of this made the news, because good news is no news... Perhaps one of the least fashionable predictions I made nine years ago was that ‘the ecological footprint of human activity is probably shrinking’ and ‘we are getting more sustainable, not less, in the way we use the planet’. That is to say: our population and economy would grow, but we’d learn how to reduce what we take from the planet. And so it has proved. An MIT scientist, Andrew McAfee, recently documented this in a book called More from Less, showing how some nations are beginning to use less stuff: less metal, less water, less land. Not just in proportion to productivity: less stuff overall. This does not quite fit with what the Extinction Rebellion lot are telling us. But the next time you hear Sir David Attenborough say: ‘Anyone who thinks that you can have infinite growth on a planet with finite resources is either a madman or an economist’, ask him this: ‘But what if economic growth means using less stuff, not more?’ a normal drink can today contains 13 grams of aluminium, much of it recycled. In 1959, it contained 85 grams... The quantity of all resources consumed per person in Britain (domestic extraction of biomass, metals, minerals and fossil fuels, plus imports minus exports) fell by a third between 2000 and 2017, from 12.5 tonnes to 8.5 tonnes. That’s a faster decline than the increase in the number of people, so it means fewer resources consumed overall... experts in the 1970s forecast how much water the world would consume in the year 2000. In fact, the total usage that year was half as much as predicted. Not because there were fewer humans, but because human inventiveness allowed more efficient irrigation for agriculture, the biggest user of water... Efficiencies in agriculture mean the world is now approaching ‘peak farmland’ — despite the growing number of people and their demand for more and better food, the productivity of agriculture is rising so fast that human needs can be supplied by a shrinking amount of land... we use 65 per cent less land to produce a given quantity of food compared with 50 years ago. By 2050, it’s estimated that an area the size of India will have been released from the plough and the cow. Land-sparing is the reason that forests are expanding, especially in rich countries... all this energy-saving might cause problems. Innovation requires experiments (most of which fail). Experiments require energy. So cheap energy is crucial — as shown by the industrial revolution. Thus, energy may be the one resource that a prospering population should be using more of. Fortunately, it is now possible that nuclear fusion will one day deliver energy in minimalist form, using very little fuel and land. Since its inception, the environmental movement has been obsessed by finite resources... The Limits to Growth predicted that if growth continued, the world would run out of gold, mercury, silver, tin, zinc, copper and lead well before 2000. School textbooks soon echoed these claims... A modern irony is that many green policies advocated now would actually reverse the trend towards using less stuff. A wind farm requires far more concrete and steel than an equivalent system based on gas. Environmental opposition to nuclear power has hindered the generating system that needs the least land, least fuel and least steel or concrete per megawatt. Burning wood instead of coal in power stations means the exploitation of more land, the eviction of more woodpeckers — and even higher emissions. Organic farming uses more land than conventional."
Policymaking Is Not a Science (Yet) (Ep. 405) - Freakonomics Freakonomics - "LIST: So Dana and I met back in 2012 and we were introduced by a mutual friend and we did the usual “ignore each other for a few years” because we were too busy. And push came to shove, Dana and I started to work on early childhood research. And after that, research turned to love.
SUSKIND: I always joke that I was wooed with spreadsheets and hypotheses"
How much does Airbnb really affect rents and housing prices? - "A 1 percent increase in Airbnb listings led to a 0.018 percent increase in rental rates and 0.026 percent increase in housing prices. But consider that the median year-on-year growth rate in Airbnb listings was roughly 28 percent across ZIP codes in the paper's data."
So the median annual increase in housing prices due to Airbnb was 0.7%
Regulation and Housing Supply - "a modest relaxation would lead to an average increase in utility of 2% of household income, while a significant relaxation would result in an average increase of roughly 4% of income.In summary, most models and empirical estimates suggest that regulation reduces aggregate welfare, on net. And the estimated effects are often economically large."
In other words, AirBNB is not a big reason why housing is so pricey
Who’s to blame for high housing costs? It’s more complicated than you think. - "For all the animosity targeted at developers, landlords, and bankers, the largest group of beneficiaries from regulations that restrict housing supply aren’t these for-profit corporations. Homeowners who were lucky enough to purchase their houses in earlier periods have enjoyed substantialwealth gains, most of which areexempt from taxation. Small wonder that homeowners exert theirpolitical muscle to continue restricting new housing supply.State andlocal policymakersacross the U.S. are grappling with how to make housing more affordable. But because our housing production system is so complicated, it’s difficult to even reach a shared understanding of the problem. Making the development process simpler, shorter, and more transparent would be a good start."
Bots and Political Influence: A Sociotechnical Investigation of Social Network Capital - "our expectation was that our intervention would make a significant difference to the evolving network, but we found that the bots we used had very little effect on the conversation network at all"
Blaming bots is a great excuse when "your side" loses (or "loses", e.g. wild claims about the Last Jedi or covid-19)
During the 2019 Finnish parliamentary election there were more bots on Twitter than expected but their impact was negligible - "the impact of bots on Finland's political environment on Twitter is limited despite the fact that bots clearly enhance the visibility of certain politicians"
Cursed Baizuo Opinions - Posts - "@edenblackart Eden Black: "It's important to know how orcs were made to fit into pre-existing racist and colonial ideas, and how that has tainted their portrayal.I think by diversifying and humanizing them, we can keep the good parts and toss out the racist trash.So here, have some soft, queer orcs.""
Woops, Wrong Zoom — Chartr: Data Storytelling - "Some investors have been buying Zoom stock as its popularity explodes. Some thought they were buying Zoom stock, but actually weren't... some people who thought they were investing in Zoom Communications (the real one) were actually buying Zoom Technologies (the other one) by accident. Those mistakes pumped the share price of the wrong Zoom up by 1800% at one point -- a tidy return to anyone who made the mistake early and benefited from others doing the same later. To try and minimise the confusion and protect investors the SEC actually had to suspend trading in Zoom Technologies for a brief period. This isn’t even the first time this has happened. When Zoom Communications went public in April 2019, uninformed investors also poured money into Zoom Technologies, which saw its share price go from less than a cent to almost $6 in about a month... Similar looking tickers have misled other investors in the past. When Twitter (TWTR) went public in 2013, investors bought Tweeter Home Entertainment (TWTRQ) which on one day increased by 1,500%. And in 2017 when Snapchat (SNAP) went public, the stock price of Snap Iterative soared 164%."
Proof of the efficient markets hypothesis!
Arthur Chu on Twitter - "*Picture of girl who can't be more than 6 interacting with 3 men in puppy play outfits* How are countries less accepting of LGBT people going to progress while the west spews out these images?This is deeply sad & worrisome.This is something new to me.I'm shaken by it."
"Please summarize the 'gender critical' belief system in three words or less"
"Oh hello @arthur_affect, how lovely to see you pop up in my mentions again. Of course, you know that this tweet refers to the photo above it, of a child with some fetishists in pup-suits at Montreal Pride, right? Course you do."
"That's right, how dare a child be exposed to *checks notes* ...friendly gay men at a pride parade."
"Friendly gay men - fine. But pup-play is a sexual fetish, not just a sexual orientation. Can you see the difference? Or do you think children should be encouraged to engage in adult sexual fetishes?"
"Children should be encouraged to see the accouterments of "fetishes" as a normal part of adult life, since they themselves will soon be adults and probably have their own "fetishes" (The key problem here is seeing "fetish" as a terrifying virus infecting vulnerable minds)"
Of course, we are still told that the sexualisation of children by LGBT activists is a paranoid right wing conspiracy theory
Cursed Baizuo Opinions - Posts - "Age of consent laws are a reactionary part of bourgeois culture centrally used against young men. If you are ignorant of this and how those laws are used to suppress all sexual expression you should read the following articles"
PC Master Race. - Posts - "Apple: our laptops are so thin that the LAN port cannot be installed!
Fujitsu: HOLD MY SAKE"
Greta Thunberg Bristol strike: Row over College Green damage - "Oh the irony, hundreds of people turning up to talk about our planet dying end up destroying a green area"
Infographic: How To Tell Nazi From Antifa | The Babylon Bee - "Nazi: Beats you up for liking Jews
Antifa: Beats you up for liking Ben Shapiro
Nazi: Thinks Trump is Hitler
Antifa: Thinks Trump is Hitler
Nazi: Widely rejected by own political party
Antifa: Hailed as heroes by own political party"
