The hiring process for federal government employees is unbelievably stupid
Excerpt is from @ezraklein’s excellent interview with @pahlkadot: nytimes.com/2024/11/22/opi…

1. There have been warning signs for years that many blue state policies aren't working.

Especially because states like California make it really difficult to build anything.

Here's a thread with some data... 🧵 2. People have been voting with their feet.

This is 2022-2023 migration data from the US Census.

Top states are Florida and Texas.

Bottom state is California.

The degrowthers want to force you to wash your clothes by hand and then tell you you’re better off Refrigerators are good, actually

One of the most striking charts this year:

China’s startup ecosystem has almost completely collapsed in the last 5 years. VCs in China now spend most of their time suing the startups they invested in to get their money back.

Founders are also now required to be personally liable for their company’s loans.

Hard to imagine why anyone would start a company under these conditions.

One of the worst cases of scientific fraud ever:

>cardiologist fakes data showing better outcomes for patients who were given beta blockers before heart surgery

>Europe changes its medical guidelines based on this research

>turns out beta blockers increase risk of death by 27%

From this must-read piece by @KelseyTuoc: vox.com/future-perfect…

India is in fact sending us their best.

Here are migration rates for top scorers on their college entrance exam:

36% of top 1,000 scorers
62% of top 100 scorers
90% of top 10 scorers

Twice as many migrate to the US as every other country combined 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸



Given that the US is the R&D lab for the world, the positive innovation spillovers from this migration are likely very large.

See full paper from @prithwic @inaganguli @patrick_gaule here:

nber.org/papers/w31308

https://twitter.com/___3Gs/status/1800959354943795332

Austin

https://x.com/sam_d_1995/status/1783852668139491536

Apparently the State Department intelligence unit is extremely goated

Absolute legends

The speed & scale of American mobilization in World War II is hard to even fathom today.

The US increased annual aircraft production by a factor of 70 in just five years. Other incredible stats from the piece:

Semiconductor manufacturing requires a mind blowing level of precision.

https://twitter.com/_brianpotter/status/1786377895234941306

Like it’s crazy we can even do this

The “litigation doom loop” is a huge problem for clean energy deployment.

Solar projects that receive the strictest level of NEPA environmental review have the highest litigation rate:

64%

By contrast, fossil fuel projects only have a 32% litigation rate. .@ArnabDatta321 and @EnergyLawProf have an important piece in @mattyglesias’s Slow Boring today looking at how clean energy projects can get stuck in an indefinite cycle of environmental review, judicial injunction, and then remand for more review.

slowboring.com/p/we-must-end-…

.@NatBullard's annual presentation (200+ slides this year!) on decarbonization is always a must-read for energy nerds who love charts.

Here are my 10 favorites:

1. Solar modular prices dropped by 50% last year — and the panels keep getting more efficient, too. 2. Batteries also returned to their long-run trend of decreasing in price — falling more than 10% last year.

New report from the Center for American Progress claims that "NEPA functions as a critical climate action & environmental justice tool requiring agencies to consider the environmental & public health impacts of projects."

But NEPA is actually delaying pro-climate projects... 1/ The most stringent level of environmental review under NEPA is used way more often for clean energy projects than for fossil fuel projects.

Many fossil fuel projects are “categorically excluded” from NEPA even though similar scale clean energy projects aren't.

Hard to believe that these two countries are on the same island... "As recently as 1960, the two countries had similar standards of living. Today, the D.R., by some measures, is eight times as rich as Haiti, while Haiti’s standard of living hasn’t advanced at all since 1950." @Noahpinion

noahpinion.blog/p/haiti-vs-the…

How it started / How it’s going This is not permitting reform, not even close.

Still lots of work to be done to make a bipartisan deal happen later this year — let’s get back to it.

This is probably just a negotiating position from Republican leadership, but seems like a great way to kill a bipartisan deal.

Democrats in both the House and Senate have been consistently clear that permitting reform must include transmission. The NYT editorial board had a very good article last week explaining why transmission is critical to accelerating clean energy deployment: nytimes.com/2023/05/04/opi…

New statement by the White House in support of bipartisan permitting reform.

List of priorities includes making it much easier to site and build transmission lines.

It’s time to build, folks White House wants to build on Manchin’s bill from last year and recognizes that compromise will be required for a bipartisan deal: whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/…

Very cool chart showing all the American megaprojects and grand programs over the last century.

We need more of these! Here’s an idea for the next one:

https://twitter.com/AlecStapp/status/1655953450574684160?s=20

1/ The Biden administration is committing $5 billion to accelerating the development of new coronavirus vaccines & treatments.

Here’s what the new program can learn from Operation Warp Speed, arguably the most successful government program since the Manhattan Project.

A thread: 2/ First, why is Operation Warp Speed worth copying?

It might seem to us today like the vaccines were inevitably going to be invented, but that’s not what the media was saying back in April 2020.

Here’s The New York Times:

nytimes.com/interactive/20…

More than 15,000 people have participated in human challenge trials over the last 40 years and not one person has died (or even been permanently impaired).

We should have done human challenge trials for COVID but alas… Check out more great research from @1daysooner here: 1daysooner.org/publications

This bill targeting renewable energy in Texas really is insane Also, the narrative that renewables caused the blackouts during the big freeze in 2021 is just wrong.

Glad to see E&E correct the record: