Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
perhaps i owe Vanilla an apology!
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
i could be remembering it wrong?! maybe milli vanilli, but then what was the scandal that laid Vanilla Ice low? i could look this up, i suppose. but where’s the fun in that?
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
“don’t worry about NIH or NSF. our machines will do the science now and it will be amazing.” they really believe this shit, some of them. you have to admonish yourself (i have to admonish myself) you can’t wish cancer on anyone, that kind of thing is bad for the soul.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
Vanilla Ice was a strangely prescient name and lip-syncing seems now such a quaint kind of scandal.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
from “Children of the Days”, by Eduardo Galeano. bookshop.org/ebooks/quote...
Text: It seems strange, this notion that nature has rights as if it were a person. But in the United States it seems perfectly normal that big companies have human rights.They do, ever since a Supreme Court decision in 1886. If nature were a bank, they would have already rescued it.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
even when a course correction is urgently required, it may not make sense to blow up the plane.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
📌
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
1990s — X Files 2020s — Epstein Files
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
i don’t follow NYC politics all that closely, but i like that sometimes when i’m quickly skimming Mamdani parses as “Madman”.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
"both men start from the presumption that the U.S. government is an entirely corrupt enterprise, with the president in a position to hand out personal favors or engage in personal acts of vengeance." @pkrugman.bsky.social paulkrugman.substack.com/p/wake-up-an...
Wake Up and Smell the Corruption
Link Preview: Wake Up and Smell the Corruption: How far we've fallen, how fast
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
we are so fortunate to have two stable geniuses.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
a hint of sarcasm was intended there.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
“the only country that has both the resources and the capacity to make credible commitments regarding academic freedom is Norway.” @rajivsethi.bsky.social rajivsethi.substack.com/p/body-blows...
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
maybe someone should found a university that — i know this is novel — would be governed by its faculty.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
at the margin, of course particular institutions matter. there is a project on the verge of getting built that will with more favorable institutions but won’t without. but the question is quantitative. 1/
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
one position is basically lots of housing would get built if only, say, zoning laws were more friendly. another position is there aren’t so many projects so close to the margin, given the inherent difficulty of getting infill done in affluent, already desirable neighborhoods, against opposition. 2/
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
i think the second position is closer to accurate than the first. that doesn’t mean some good projects wouldn’t happen with less restrictive eg zoning laws that fail to happen under the status quo. /fin
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
I guess the fundamental dispute is between those who think the change has to do with particular institutions of local democracy vs preferences and enfranchisement of people that will find expression under nearly any stable economic order. @dsquareddigest.bsky.social and i think it more the latter.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
(note that the old “growth machine” urban politics were not primarily infill of already desirable, prosperous, enfranchised neighborhoods. eventually austins become houstons or dallases as a matter of scale and already-developedness, despite friendly zoning regimes.)
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
many dense places people behave quite considerately! no 3am 2 live crew when we lived surrounded by apts in SF.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
i’m a very live and let live person mostly, but i make an exception for gas powered landscaping equipment, my apt complex is neurotic about staying attractively landscaped and it drives me mad.
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
(already did!)
Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
a great, short account of why anti-NIMBY-ism is likely always to be an inadequate solution to the scarcity of desirable housing, by @dsquareddigest.bsky.social.
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