Spencer Chen, Author at SMMRY.ai

American transit agencies should prioritize ridership over other goals [Matthew Yglesias, Slow Boring]

January 5, 2023

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• The United States struggles to create cost-effective rail infrastructure and attract mass transit ridership due to a lack of clear mandates to prioritize ridership.
• Ridership vs. coverage tradeoffs are common in transit planning, but without a clear mandate to prioritize ridership, agencies don’t ask the right questions.
• Amtrak’s wish list map is an example of a plan that does not prioritize ridership.
• The Transit Cost Project has highlighted the sources of expense in projects like the Second Avenue Subway and the Green Line Extension.
• Ridership is a good proxy for other goals like environmental benefits, racial and socioeconomic equity, and economic development.
• Setting a clear and simple task of spending money on things that people will use is the best way to ensure cost-effectiveness and success.

Published January 5, 2023. Visit Slow Boring to read Matthew Yglesias’s original post.

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Hamline University And Cancel Culture [Ken White, The Popehat Report]

By Spencer Chen

In Ken White [The Popehat Report]

January 5, 2023

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• Hamline University’s decision to not renew the contract of an art history lecturer who showed an image of the Prophet Muhammad in class is an example of “cancel culture” – a response that is disproportionate to the speech in question.
• Hamline’s communications about the incident, which downplayed free expression and academic freedom, were also an example of “cancel culture”.
• Hamline’s student newspaper, the Oracle, engaged in “cancel culture” by deleting a statement from the chair of the Department of Religion defending the lecturer.
• Actionable items to address this type of “cancel culture” include: not firing, disciplining, or non-renewing teachers based on violating sectarian religious rules unless the teachers and students know up front they’re under those rules; not condemning pedagogically appropriate and on-point teaching to soothe sectarian demands; and not issuing vague, ambiguous, and unworkable speech “standards”.
• Student newspapers at non-sectarian schools should not delete defenses of speech because some people think it’s offensive to disagree about whether the speech is offensive.
• The Hamline students’ response to a lecturer showing a picture of the Prophet Muhammad was disproportionate and censorial, and can be fairly called “cancel culture”.
• Demanding that the lecturer be fired, not renewed, or disciplined is wildly disproportionate and should not be condoned.
• Saying “as a Muslim I find visual depictions of the Prophet offensive and blasphemous” is not cancel culture.
• Throwing around the word “Islamophobia” is censorial, entitled, and ignorant, but not wildly disproportionate.
• The criticism of the lecturer is indecent, as the lecturer showed sensitivity and explained the pedagogical context.
• This incident is a huge culture war victory for the anti-progressive Right.

Published January 5, 2023. Visit The Popehat Report to read Ken White’s original post.

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January 5, 2023 [Heather Cox Richardson, Letters From An American]

By Spencer Chen

In Heather Cox Richardson [Letters from an American]

January 5, 2023

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• After 11 ballots, the Republicans remain unable to elect a speaker and thus unable to organize the House, with the Democrats united behind Hakeem Jeffries and delivering 212 votes for him 11 times.
• Kevin McCarthy has allegedly agreed to the demand of the hard-right Freedom Caucus that a single person can force a vote to get rid of the speaker, and has offered them two spots on the House Rules Committee and control over appropriations bills.
• President Joe Biden is working to make sure people understand just how much the Democrats got done in the past two years, and is also stepping up to address the influx of migrants to the border with new measures.
• On Sunday, Biden will go to El Paso, Texas, to meet with local officials and community leaders, and on January 6 he will honor people who distinguished themselves by protecting the country during the 2020–2021 attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
• Trump’s name has barely been mentioned during the fight over the House speakership, and he has gotten just one vote.

Published January 5, 2023. Visit Letters from An American to read Heather Cox Richardson’s original post.

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The Fed is Hiking Up That Mountain [kyla scanlon, Kyla’s Newsletter]

By Spencer Chen

In Kyla Scanlon [Kyla's Newsletter]

January 5, 2023

268 views

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• The Fed is approaching economic switchbacks, which could make the overall endeavor of a soft landing easier, but could also make the climb more difficult if ignored.
• The Fed wants to slow down the labor market, but is cognizant of the potential for an unwarranted easing in financial conditions.
• Complacency is pervasive in the labor market, with workers not being respected and incentives leading to less disruption.
• The Fed is trying to bring the labor market back into balance, but there is a need for central bankers to not always rely solely on their econometric models and instead throw in some human nature common sense.
• Albert Camus said it best when he said “real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present.”

Published January 5, 2023. Visit Kyla’s Newsletter to read kyla scanlon’s original post.

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The Reason There’s Been No Cure for Alzheimer’s [Joanne Silberner, The Free Press]

By Spencer Chen

In [The Free Press]

January 4, 2023

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• In the mid-1990s, Alzheimer’s disease began eroding my father’s brain, and medicine had nothing to offer him or millions of other Americans.
• Recently, a drug called lecanemab has been heralded as a breakthrough, but it only slightly slows a patient’s inevitable decline for a few months.
• The amyloid hypothesis has held a vise-like grip on Alzheimer’s research for decades, despite the fact that drugs designed to address amyloid have shown virtually no beneficial effects on patients.
• The incentives of big academic medicine, big governmental medicine, and big pharma have contributed to the persistence of the amyloid theory, despite the lack of evidence.
• Scientists whose ideas fell outside the dogma have recounted how, for decades, believers in the dominant hypothesis suppressed research on alternative ideas.
• Journals have turned down research papers and grants have been rejected, leading some talented researchers to other fields.
• The FDA recently approved the drug aducanumab, which has been met with criticism due to its ineffectiveness and high cost.
• Biogen and Eisai are now pushing for the approval of lecanemab, which has been touted as a “gamechanger” for Alzheimer’s treatment.
• Clinical trials of lecanemab showed a 0.45 point improvement on an 18-point scale, and three patients died from brain swelling and bleeding as a result of the treatment.
• There is concern that the focus on amyloid-targeting drugs will divert resources away from other possible treatments, such as anti-herpes drugs, antibacterials, and “cocktails” of drugs.

Published January 4, 2023. Visit The Free Press to read the original post.

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January 4, 2023 [Heather Cox Richardson, Letters From An American]

By Spencer Chen

In Heather Cox Richardson [Letters from an American]

January 4, 2023

288 views

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• The Republicans won a narrow majority in the House of Representatives in 2022, but have been unable to elect a speaker due to a group of 20 far-right Republicans backing their own choices.
• The chaos suggests that Republican leadership does not have the skills it needs to govern, and the roots of their current worldview lie in the Reagan Revolution of 1980.
• The Republican Party has been purged of traditional Republicans and replaced with ideological fellow travelers, and their policies have concentrated wealth upward and hollowed out the middle class.
• A new era is pushing the Reagan era aside, with Republicans recognizing that it is our democratic government and the rule of law that protects their investments, and that maintaining the government will take basic laws and the skills to negotiate and pass them.

Published January 4, 2023. Visit Letters from An American to read Heather Cox Richardson’s original post.

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Why TikTok’s future has never been so cloudy [Casey Newton, Platformer]

By Spencer Chen

In [Platformer]

January 3, 2023

187 views

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• TikTok is currently the third most-downloaded free app on iOS and Google.
• 19 of the 50 US states have restricted access to TikTok on government computers.
• The US government has banned TikTok from devices under federal management.
• TikTok is attempting to reach a deal with the Council on Foreign Investment in the US to continue to own the company while putting user data, recommendation algorithms, and corporate governance into a kind of quarantine.
• An internal investigation found that ByteDance employees had used TikTok to record journalists’ physical locations using their IP addresses.
• This has undermined the goodwill the company spent the past few years cultivating and could give President Biden all the reason he needs to finish what Trump started.

Published January 3, 2023. Visit Platformer to read Casey Newton’s original post.

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Wins, Woes, and Changing Diapers [Emily Oster, ParentData]

By Spencer Chen

In Emily Oster [ParentData]

January 3, 2023

260 views

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• Writing a family mission statement can help ground parents when making decisions big and small.
• A reader is struggling with diaper changes.
• One parent overcame bottle refusal by squirting milk in their baby’s mouth while they cried.
• Another parent’s toddler is obsessed with their father, making them feel terrible.
• A third parent found success in making dinner a competition between their two kids.

Published January , 2023. Visit ParentData to read Emily Oster’s original post.

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$858,000,000,000 [Judd Legum, Popular Information]

By Spencer Chen

In [Popular Information]

January 3, 2023

199 views

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• The United States military budget is set to exceed $1 trillion annually, with over half of the budget going to private contractors.
• Congress routinely approves large increases in military spending without public criticism, and the budget is often financed with deficit spending.
• The budget includes $800 million in support for Ukraine, and $452 billion for private contractors.
• The Pentagon has failed to pass an audit five times since 2017, despite spending $1 billion per year on auditors.

Published January 3, 2023. Visit Popular Information to read Judd Legum’s original post.

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Income inequality has been falling for a while now [Matthew Yglesias, Slow Boring]

By Spencer Chen

In [Slow Boring]

January 3, 2023

220 views

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• Obama-Biden economics have achieved more than people realize, with inequality decreasing and median wages and household income reaching all-time highs by the end of Obama’s term.
• Biden’s policies have continued this trend, with inflation-adjusted median earnings in the third quarter of 2022 higher than in the third quarter of 2019 and the lowest-wage workers seeing particularly strong wage performance.
• The tax and transfer system in the US has become more egalitarian since the Reagan era, with the Obama administration raising taxes on the rich to expand the welfare state.
• To continue this trend, Biden should focus on enacting pro-growth, pro-equality regulatory changes on a bipartisan basis and avoiding new rounds of commodity shocks.

Published January 3, 2023. Visit Slow Boring to read Matthew Yglesias’s original post.

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AuthorSpencer Chen

American transit agencies should prioritize ridership over other goals [Matthew Yglesias, Slow Boring]

Hamline University And Cancel Culture [Ken White, The Popehat Report]

January 5, 2023 [Heather Cox Richardson, Letters From An American]

The Fed is Hiking Up That Mountain [kyla scanlon, Kyla’s Newsletter]

The Reason There’s Been No Cure for Alzheimer’s [Joanne Silberner, The Free Press]

January 4, 2023 [Heather Cox Richardson, Letters From An American]

Wins, Woes, and Changing Diapers [Emily Oster, ParentData]

$858,000,000,000 [Judd Legum, Popular Information]

Income inequality has been falling for a while now [Matthew Yglesias, Slow Boring]

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