#jerusalem demsas

[fritfilter]

Phoebe Bridgers is right. Your phone is bringing bad energy.

And society has struggled to keep up. Is it okay to play a video without headphones? What if it’s a busy street? What about FaceTime? Is that really different from talking to a real person in front of you? What are the rules for behavior?

...Private action to set the rules for behavior is more important in a multicultural society, not less. Having a clear set of rules gives people something tangible to debate over. Everyone knows the discomfort of realizing you’ve broken some unwritten rule and struggling to figure out what you did and why. It’s much better to know that there are strong expectations; then you can decide whether it’s worth it for you to break them.

...More artists should follow Bridgers’ example, but also, more people should get comfortable voicing their opinions. I was sitting in a diner doing some work a few weeks ago, and a couple began watching TV on their iPad. So, I just asked them if they could use headphones, and they turned it off. I did the same at a coffee shop a few days later, and the other person apologized and turned it down.

You shouldn’t call the police on people who irritate you. But you also shouldn’t act as if the social norms of the most disruptive are natural and immutable. At the very least, you should speak up.

[gettothedancing]

Can Blue States Build?

Texas is a national leader in clean-energy generation. Democrats should take note.

Texas has become the nation’s renewable-energy powerhouse. This didn’t happen because Texas Republicans are deeply committed to fighting climate change; it happened because, in Texas, infrastructure projects are easier to build—something that can’t be said for a lot of the country, including in states led by Democrats who claim to prioritize the climate crisis. It raises the question: Is our clean-energy transition seriously at risk if we don’t make building renewable-energy technology and infrastructure much easier? Texas’s largest grid operator announced last year that it had more than 18,000 megawatts of solar-power capacity installed on its grid; California’s largest grid operator had just over 17,000. Although taking California’s solar crown was new, Texas had been a leader in renewable-energy generation for several years. According to Inside Climate News, in 2022 Texas generated more than 130,000 gigawatt-hours of wind and solar electricity. The next best state was California, with less than 53,000.

[injuredcyclist]

Why the Government Is Good at Helping Banks but Not People

State capacity is downstream of ideological commitments: When we have political consensus, we have state capacity, and when we don’t, we don

“Our hands aren’t tied behind our backs, we’re holding them there.”

[injuredcyclist]

The Obvious Answer to Homelessness

And why everyone’s ignoring it

I should be out in the garage working on a blanket ladder I’m trying to build for my wife.  Its one of my first woodworking projects since I’m trying find a sober hobby.  I’m in my living room instead watching the first period of the Winter Classic because my Pens are playing Boston (hockey is the only sport I follow at all, and I’ve been a Penguins fan since I was 7 or 8).

I thought I’d link to this article and mention the author.  Jerusalem Demsas is a staff writer at the Atlantic.  She was formerly at Vox, where she co-host The Weeds podcast (which is great and you should check out for policy deep dives).  At the Atlantic she writes about housing and the economy.  I think her writing is outstanding.  Some of what she advocates would require policy makers in the United States to drastically change their thinking, but big problems oftentimes require new and different solutions.  I think she has a lot of valuable and interesting things to say.  Her writing for the Atlantic can be found at https://www.theatlantic.com/author/jerusalem-demsas/ and her articles for Vox at https://www.vox.com/authors/jerusalem-demsas

[apollopigeon]

“Many New Yorkers consider the city’s proliferating supertalls at best an eyesore—“Awful Waffle” is one nickname for 432 Park Avenue, a luxury condominium that looks like a strip of graph paper stuck on the Manhattan skyline. At worst, they’re considered nonsensical constructions that exacerbate the city’s affordable-housing crisis, contribute to climate change, and stand as totems to inequality.”

Increasing the supply of housing in dense, expensive neighborhoods like Midtown Manhattan is literally the only way to fight the affordable housing crisis and one of the best ways to fight climate change.

I don’t understand how the Atlantic can print weekly bangers from Jerusalem Demsas and then turn around and publish literally the opposite of true stuff like this.

How Tall Is Too Tall?

The rise and rise and rise of the supertall skyscraper

[iheartvelma]

The People Who Hate People

Of all the objections NIMBYs raise to new housing and infrastructure, perhaps the most risible is that their community is already too crowde

The connections between NIMBYism, eugenicist / racist movements like Zero Population Growth, and climate change.

The people that don't want low-rise apartments? in THEIR neighborhoods? or want to PrEsErVe ChArAcTeR!! are creating policies because they don't want THOSE people next door.

They would rather burn the earth to a cinder than have to give up their wasteful car-dependent single-family-home suburbs because they want to preserve their "quality of life."

I wrote recently that there's something about suburbs that is anti-communitarian in spirit. As James Howard Kunstler noted, it's a cartoon of country houses, in a cartoon of the countryside, so everyone can live like Thoreau and not be bothered by other people.

"I won't be told what to do by THOSE people" animates about 75% of these people's politics; the other 25% being "why should MY tax dollars go to THOSE people?"

And that's why car-dependent sprawl suburbs keep getting built, even though it's a terrible land use pattern and financially insolvent.