correspondent @heatmap_news matthew at heatmap dot news
Dec 4, 2023 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
“in survey after survey, it is women with the most financial resources, and the highest levels of education, who report the most stress and unhappiness with motherhood” vox.com/features/23979…
“Parenting during Covid-19 was extremely tough, for example, but it’s also true that mothers reported more satisfaction with their lives during the pandemic than childless women of the same age.” vox.com/features/23979…
Jun 20, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
this era of businessweek covers was so goated....
May 17, 2023 • 4 tweets • 3 min read
My first story for @heatmap_news: yes, the new california solar rules have changed the economics of residential solar for the worse, but they are working as intended by getting people to buy storage, which the california grid needs compared to moar panels heatmap.news/economy/califo…
solar companies told analysts and investors that a bunch of customers raced to get solar before april 15 and that people are buying batteries with their systems now heatmap.news/economy/califo…
May 10, 2023 • 4 tweets • 3 min read
I imagine lots of nonfiction/journalism classics of this era would not survive similar scrutiny washingtonpost.com/history/2023/0…
obviously if you compare the transcript and the published text, it's just straight up fabrication, but you can kinda see where haley is coming from, the views are stated more sharply and directly, but not exactly misrepresented washingtonpost.com/history/2023/0…
Nov 16, 2022 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
The effective altruism movement isn’t just dealing with a lack of funds, but an intellectual crisis: Sam Bankman-Fried would tell anyone who asked that his approach to risk was both unconventional and motivated by the same premises as philanthropy grid.news/story/economy/…
Not only did Bankman-Fried claim to have entered finance at the encouragement of senior EAs so he could donate, his view of the good that EA could do made him reject standard notions of risk and utility grid.news/story/economy/…
Nov 15, 2022 • 8 tweets • 4 min read
Talked to some folks in, around, and critical of EA about Sam Bankman-Fried. Two big questions: what's the prospect for funding projects now that he has no money, and did the moral math of longtermism motivate Sam to take on too much risk? grid.news/story/economy/…
And another question: can Will MacAskill, who was as closely linked to SBF's philanthropic work as anyone, still be the public figurehead for EA and longtermism specifically? grid.news/story/economy/…
Oct 30, 2022 • 5 tweets • 3 min read
Culture war as a demand side issue, not a supply side one, voters really do care about guns/abortion/immigration/trump more than economic policy nytimes.com/2022/10/28/pod…
Places where more people died of Covid actually ended up voting a little more for trump nytimes.com/2022/10/28/pod…
Oct 26, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
i truly think everyone who screams about housing all day on twitter could learn a ton from the chapter in city of quartz on the westside slow growth coalition vs the downtown growth coalition, i know i did!
How New England became America's Europe and risks a cold, dark winter grid.news/story/economy/…
About half of New England's electricity (and more than half of its generation) comes from natural gas. But New England has no indigenous supply of natural gas, instead it imports gas from a pipeline network that runs to Canada and the Gulf Coast grid.news/story/economy/…
Sep 12, 2022 • 8 tweets • 4 min read
latest for @gridnews: why are the dems doing much better in the generic ballot, special elections and forecasts than they were in the spring and early summer? two possible catalysts — dobbs and peak gas prices — happened within days of each other grid.news/story/politics…
According to the EIA, gas prices peaked the week of June 13th, while Dobbs was handed down on June 24. The way either could affect the Dems' standing tells us two stories about elections. grid.news/story/politics…
Sep 12, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
went back to @conorsen's election night tweets, this is MJ in the finals level stuff
look at the timestamps, this is two hours before the great needle fipping
Aug 18, 2022 • 7 tweets • 4 min read
Latest for @gridnews: oil prices were supposed to be $130/barrel, now they're more like $90 and gas prices are at their early spring level. What happened? grid.news/story/economy/…
we can look at my past stories about oil and gas prices, where I laid out some reasons why they might stay high: refinery capacity had shrunk and americans typically don't really try to conserve gas by carpooling, picking transit, or slowing down grid.news/story/economy/…
it's kinda funny to see people jump on the "capitalists in the 21st century" paper because they think it shows all rich people are in fact evil republican car dealers when the novel finding is that even at the top of the income pyramid, people work for a living
also the republican car dealers thing, while a fun bit of sociology and a good excuse to talk about television (what everyone really wants to do) has limited explanatory capacity to explain *changes* in political coalitions over time, car dealers have always been republicans
Apr 4, 2022 • 5 tweets • 3 min read
Worked with several @gridnews colleagues on a big piece on the global food supply following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The bottom line: the world can grow enough wheat but it will take around 15 months for supplies to stabilize and come into balance grid.news/story/360/2022…
in the short run much of the middle east and north africa has seen grain supplies they rely on simply disappear, north american winter wheat is in the ground now, canadain spring wheat will be planted soon and australia will plant in the fall grid.news/story/360/2022…
Apr 3, 2022 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
iceland has a smaller population than tulsa and all their energy comes from hyrdo and geothermal, not the technologies (wind, solar) that mckibben argues that we have right now to power the world by 2035 newyorker.com/news/essay/in-…
similar story with costa rica, and this is with the population of alabama and ~1/4 the gdp
Apr 2, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
In New York, as in Maine, environmental groups find themselves on the side of the natural gas industry opposing renewable power nymag.com/intelligencer/…
to be fair to the conservationists, transmission lines require cutting down trees and hydro power requires major alterations to the natural environment, but if you want to maximize acreage of unspoiled land, then you need to embrace nuclear
Mar 29, 2022 • 11 tweets • 4 min read
What happens when some of the leading tax and inequality researchers go into government? The Biden administration's proposed 20% minimum income tax on those with $100 million in wealth or above grid.news/story/economy/…
While many have pointed to ProPublica's groundbreaking series looking at individual tax returns showing the country's richest people only occasionally paying income taxes, I want to point you to something more humble: this chart grid.news/story/economy/…
Feb 24, 2022 • 4 tweets • 3 min read
nymag.com/intelligencer/… i think the conflict is that people who do public health take the social determinants of health very seriously and see right now as a unique time to make social policy more progressive, and think leonhardt is both substantively wrong and weakening resolve
i'm not exactly doing mind-reading here, here's a very prominent epidemiologist and public health advocate and perhaps america's most prominent covid jounralist basically saying that (to be clear yong says he is not specifically talking about leonhardt) nymag.com/intelligencer/…
Jan 27, 2022 • 10 tweets • 5 min read
People are moving around and forming households and we can't build new homes fast enough to keep up. It's happening in Tampa, it's happening in Knoxville, it's happening near you. Thanks @jayparsons@PEWilliams_@robnock_@Hancen4Sale for chatting grid.news/story/economy/…
There's the story we know: people taking advantage of the pandemic disruption to normal work life to move to warmer, cheaper places where they can spend more time outside and get more space. Ergo housing prices and rents shooting up in Tampa and Knoxville grid.news/story/economy/…
Nov 16, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
who are the biggest actors who have never done TV or even streaming (at least since they became stars) Leo*, Tom Cruise and anyone else? Meryl Streep did big little lies, Will Smith had a netflix original, so did George Clooney
*Leo has a Netflix movie soon
Upon consideration, the true "gold star" movie star is Tom Cruise, with Denzel Washington right there as his HBO Max movie was a day-and-date release