Category: linkstream

A running log of all the links/bookmarks I share.

Obama DOJ Leaves Medical Marijuana Patients Sick and Suffering

Obama DOJ Leaves Medical Marijuana Patients Sick and Suffering.  So apparently the Obama DOJ is now going to pursue marijuana producers, even if they are in compliance with state regulations.  This is a reversal of the administration’s previous position, and it’s absurd.  People are going to use weed.  Nobody takes the “reefer madness” BS seriously, and it’s been illegal for close to 100 years, and usage has only increased.  You can either have it produced by tax paying, locally owned small businesses, or you can funnel a lot of that cash to drug cartels in Mexico and the domestic tax-exempt boutique black marketeers.

Location Efficiency More Important than Home Energy Efficiency

How important is Location Efficiency?  Median US home price: $175k.  With a traditional 20% down 30 year mortgage, total loan payments amount to about $350k.  Utilities over the same timeframe are around $75k.  And the cost of commuting from suburbia?  Roughly $300k!  This is in general agreement with the energy (as opposed to financial) analysis recently published by the EPA.

A license to lie, backdated

Investment management firms have license to lie, backdated, courtesy of the Supreme Court decision in the Janus case.  It’s hard to believe, but the court decided that ultimately, nobody could be held accountable for misleading statements made in the mutual fund’s prospectus.  All the more reason to go with Vanguard, as it is the only mutual fund company which is wholly owned by the people whose money they manage, making it in effect a large investing cooperative.

George Church’s Evolution Machine

George Church wants to automate evolution, in the same way that we’ve now automated genome sequencing.  Any trait that can be easily and automatically screened for should be susceptible to the technique.  You give the machine a rough draft, and let it mutate the genome in fast forward, and iterate with screening/selection.  They’ve already used the technique to engineer a couple of pigments (indigo and lycopene) much more effectively than straightforward genetic designers.  Mmm.  Custom evolved babies.  And virus-proof replacement livers.  Sweet, in a creepy kind of way.

Across Europe, Irking Drivers is Urban Policy

The New York Times almost seems upset that in Europe the mobility of people, not motor vehicles, is the measure of an urban transportation system.  With finite funding and urban space constraints, you sometimes have to choose which mode to prioritize.  Pedestrians, bicycles, and mass transit all move more people in less space, with less GHG emissions, noise and pollution, more safely than cars.  De-prioritizing automobiles also makes streets into vastly more livable public spaces.  It’s not about making life bad for cars, it’s about making it good for people!

The American suburbs are a giant Ponzi scheme

Suburbia as Ponzi scheme.  We have subsidized suburban growth through debt and taxes, and reaped the short-term financial rewards of that growth, but at the expense of taking on ever larger long-term liabilities in terms of infrastructure maintenance and a very energy intensive transportation system.  I disagree with Strong Towns on the appropriate overall scale of habitation (more people and a much larger fraction of our overall economy live in cities, not towns), but this is (another) good critique of the American Nightmare.

Climate of Denial

Understanding American climate change politics by analogy with the World Wrestling Federation.  The Carbon Lobby is the “evil” wrestler, scientists the “good” one, and the media plays referee.  The kind of referee that’s always preoccupied with something outside the ring when the bad guy starts beating the good guy up with a chair.  From Rolling Stone of course.