Links for August 17th, 2025
This week from me at TVO, a column about how at least some of our politics is, I think, downstream of our frustrations with government that can’t deliver anymore:
Whether it's wildfires, transit operations, or MAID — and frankly, more examples than I have space for in this column — a lot of our political conflicts are at least partly informed by either the belief or the observable facts that individuals are being asked to bear the costs of government inaction or inadequacy. Some conservatives have recently begun talking about the need for “state capacity,” a wonkish term for the more commonsense notion that a) there are real, important things we broadly agree the government should do and b) the government should be able to do those things competently and efficiently. An easy-to-grasp comparison: if Toronto could build subways as efficiently as some of the world’s best cities, the cost of the Ontario Line could build four times as many kilometres of track.
Somewhat related: a plea from me for a future Ontario government to think expansively about how to pay for highways.
Elsewhere:
OLP Leadership: More Karina, less Nate [Relay with Kyla Ronellenfitsch]
The same question is relevant for the continued leadership of Bonnie Crombie. However, while the data was… pretty clear… for Trudeau, it’s less so in this case. This poll doesn’t point to a definitive answer, but it does point to the validity of this conversation. The membership should seriously assess which leadership path makes the most sense.
Whether it’s Crombie at the helm or another candidate, the Ontario Liberal leader will be in brand-building mode. Right now, the political environment is the same as it was on election day. Doug Ford is still Premier and the center of the Ontario political universe. The economic fallout from Donald Trump’s tariffs is top of mind. The party needs a leader who can break through. This means they have to be interesting. They need to be a good storyteller. And they have to modernize the party’s communications. You can read more here about how the Conservatives are killing the Liberal Party in the content war.
The Liberals will hold a vote on Crombie’s leadership in September.
It’s worth noting the shifting of goalposts here…changes in neuroticism were near zero, so we shift to talking about conscientiousness (though those outcomes were only slightly less modest). This goalpost shifting is common to moral panics.
How to explain the discrepancy between the actual data and the transformed data Mr. Burn-Murdoch presented? I did reach out to him about that. He did respond and I really do appreciate that6. He reiterated many of the same points as on the X thread about the raw data being confusing to general audiences and the need to transform them to some more (to his argument) understandable form. However, I remain unconvinced by these explanations. They sound like the kind of data torturing that should make people wary of statistics. And the resultant article is hardly a centerpiece of modest data analysis.
I’d shared the FT piece last week so I thought I’d post this rebuttal.
Unions want to ban driverless taxis—will Democratic leaders say yes? [Understanding AI]
Across the country, states and cities have been grappling with how—and whether—to allow autonomous vehicles on their roads. Red states like Texas, Georgia, Arizona, and Florida have rolled out the red carpet for Waymo. But the technology has gotten a frosty reception in blue jurisdictions like Boston…
In their recent book Abundance, Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson explained how protectionist policies—including overly strict regulations, perpetual litigation, and an unwillingness to say no to special interest groups—have led to housing shortages, high-cost government projects, and other dysfunctional outcomes that harm the quality of life in left-leaning communities.
At last month’s hearing, city council members in Boston talked about driverless taxis in terms that would be familiar to anyone who has read Ezra and Derek’s book.
The People v. Insanity [The Dispatch]
The prosecution didn’t dispute the diagnosis, only that it mattered. Alissa had planned his crime. He’d purchased a gun, chosen a location, and followed through on his plans. These were all clear demonstrations of intent, of the capacity to know right from wrong and therefore of legal sanity. As the prosecutor told jurors during closing arguments: In a court of law, “schizophrenia does not mean insane.” The jury only deliberated for about six hours before returning their verdict: guilty on 10 counts of first-degree murder; guilty on 45 other counts, too. The court sentenced Alissa to 10 consecutive sentences of life in prison, plus 1,334 years.
Beyond its body count, Alissa’s case was not unusual among failed insanity defenses in the United States. It has long been a staple of our laws and of our moral intuition that madness might mitigate responsibility for anti-social acts. But the details—what madness, what acts, what mitigations—both in the law and in our lives have never been more muddled or contested.
Fair Voting BC v. Canada (Attorney General) [Ontario Court of Appeal]
[10] The short answer to the argument that the electoral system violates the Charter is that Canadian citizens are free to vote for anyone they choose, for any reason they choose. Their choices do not constitute state action and cannot give rise to outcomes that violate either s. 3 or s. 15(1), regardless of how their votes translate into representation in Parliament. There is no constitutional requirement that their individual choices aggregate in a way that achieves some ideal of representational diversity. Neither the political party affiliation nor the personal characteristics of the candidates who win election are relevant to the constitutionality of the electoral system.
[11] Changing the electoral system may or may not be a good idea but it is not required by the Charter, nor is there any role for the court in evaluating proposals for electoral reform.
[12] I would dismiss the appeal.
Ontario’s highest court dismisses a case arguing that Canada’s single-member plurality electoral system is unconstitutional, with some harsh-ish language about the lower court decision which agreed in substance but included some commentary the higher court that was unwise.
How Land Use Reform Could Help Solve the Los Angeles Budget Crisis [Streets For All Data]
Multi-family housing and commercial parcels represent 12% of the residential suitable land in the City of LA, but almost half of its property tax revenue.
In LA 45% of residential suitable parcels near high quality transit stops are zoned exclusively for low density
SB 79 would create capacity to grow the City of LA’s annual property tax income by nearly $1 billion
The money saved by this year’s 1,647 layoffs is nearly equal to the estimated revenue created by redeveloping only 20% of parcels rezoned under SB 79
The Political Economy of Incompetence [Paul Krugman]
For the big problem with the picture above isn’t the embarrassing misspelling of “median,” or even the factual errors. It’s the fact that Trump gave a presentation about the state of the economy along with Stephen Moore — who may be the last person on the planet you’d trust to tell you the economic truth.
I don’t mean that Moore is extremely right-wing, although of course he is. I don’t even mean that he’s a dishonest hack, although again of course he is. I mean that even among dishonest right-wing hacks Moore stands out for his pathological inability to get numbers and facts right.
And the fact that Moore was the right’s go-to guy on economics even before Trump tells you a lot about the people who now rule America.
All Quiet on the AI Front [Agglomerations]
One of the most basic indicators we consider is the unemployment rates of the most AI-exposed workers over time, shown in Figure 1 below.
The bottom line: There is no visible effect of AI on unemployment. The most AI-exposed workers tend to have lower unemployment rates than the average worker, but the trends look very similar. Unemployment rates are rising for both workers very exposed to AI and those that are not.
See also: AI and Jobs: The Final Word (Until the Next One)
The GENIUS Act is morbidly innovative in the sense that it skips the first two steps of a Minsky cycle and jumps straight to the third—Ponzi finance. The bill sets the stage for an entire class of speculative assets that have precisely zero underlying cash flows to be integrated into the financial system. All for the purposes of satisfying an industry whose main contribution to most Americans has been scamming them.
This leaves us with the fact that the crypto lobby and the politicians they control—in both parties, to be clear—are are setting the table for the next financial crisis, aided by a President engaged in a massive grift, selling digital meme coins and ramping up his family’s own crypto exchange. If this mess was portrayed in an HBO series, you wouldn’t believe it. And we haven’t even raised the specter of Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, another boneheaded idea whose only possible purpose could be to pump up the value of the President’s favored coins.
Canada is Killing Itself [The Atlantic]
It was not long into her practice, however, that Li’s confidence in the direction of her country’s MAID program began to falter. For all of her expertise, not even Li was sure what to do about a patient in his 30s whom she encountered in 2018.
The man had gone to the emergency room complaining of excruciating pain and was eventually diagnosed with cancer. The prognosis was good, a surgeon assured him, with a 65 percent chance of a cure. But the man said he didn’t want treatment; he wanted MAID. Startled, the surgeon referred him to a medical oncologist to discuss chemo; perhaps the man just didn’t want surgery. The patient proceeded to tell the medical oncologist that he didn’t want treatment of any kind; he wanted MAID. He said the same thing to a radiation oncologist, a palliative-care physician, and a psychiatrist, before finally complaining to the patient-relations department that the hospital was barring his access to MAID. Li arranged to meet with him.
I have substantial reservations about this article but when Canada’s MAID laws get this kind of international attention I get the sense that it will have national political effects.
"Our analysis shows that recent efforts to impose strict regulations or outright bans on short-term rentals, including in one of the world's most must-visit destinations—New York City—fail to have any meaningful impact on the housing market," says lead researcher Professor Peter O'Connor.
"Data suggests that restrictions neither significantly increase the supply of long-term housing, nor reduce rental prices. Instead, in NYC specifically, (long-term) rental prices have increased at a faster rate than comparable cities, and residential vacancy rates remain largely unchanged.
$30K Ford EV truck due in 2027 with much-simpler production process [Ars Technica]
To make these EVs cheaper, Ford had to make them simpler and quicker to manufacture. The simplified SDV domains mean that the wiring harness uses 4,000 feet (1.3 km) less copper. There are 40 percent fewer workstations, 20 percent fewer components, and 25 percent fewer fasteners than in a conventional Ford, and overall assembly time will be 15 percent faster than Ford's average…
Ford is splitting the production line into three. One assembles the front subassembly, another the rear subassembly, and the third the battery pack and interior, which then meet for final assembly. And it's moved to large single-piece castings for the front and rear subframe to allow this approach.
"There are other people that use large-scale castings but not in the way we do. We know of no one that has ever built a vehicle in three parts in this way and brought it together at the end," explained Field. "So it really goes way beyond a typical modular architecture that existing manufacturers have out there," he said.
How the Democrats Became the Party That Brings Pencils to a Knife Fight [NY Times]
Political scientists and historians have observed that while the modern Republican Party became more ruthless about defeating its political enemies, breaking whatever norms were required, Democrats effectively stood in place, hoping for a return to bipartisan comity and defending the status quo that their opponents were smashing. The Democrats became the party of procedure.
“They’re ambivalent about brass knuckles,” said Daniel Schlozman, co-author of “The Hollow Parties” and professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University.
Recent developments around gerrymandering suggest that the party is beginning to surrender an attitude that has defined it for decades. But a more profound transformation will require a shift in how the party conceives of itself. For generations, the Democrats’ love of procedure has wound its way into the party’s voter base, its leaders and its governing philosophy. To really change would require a return to a party that barely exists in living memory.
Inside SpinLaunch, the Space Industry’s Best Kept Secret [Wired]
The idea that an object weighing thousands of pounds can punch its way into space after spinning in circles on Earth’s surface can be hard to fathom. It might even sound crazy, and the company has a lot to prove to shake its critics. So far it has managed to spin an 11-pound dummy payload at more than 4,000 mph and send it crashing into a steel wall. Between those tests and the edge of space, however, are roughly a hundred miles and a whole lot of air resistance. Never mind the engineering work needed to build a centrifuge 100 yards wide, with an arm strong enough to support a roughly SUV-sized rocket….
In SpinLaunch's design, once a rocket is spinning at launch speeds, an exit port in the centrifuge will open for a fraction of a second, sending the rocket shooting out. According to patents filed by the company, a counterbalance spinning opposite the rocket gets released at the same time, preventing the tether from becoming unbalanced and vibrating into oblivion. The rocket coasts for about a minute and ignites its engines at roughly 200,000 feet. At that altitude, there’s hardly any atmosphere pushing against the rocket, so a minute-long engine burn is about all it takes to boost the vehicle to orbital speeds of around 17,500 mph. Another burn, this one lasting just 10 seconds, helps the rocket slide into orbit around Earth.
Scientists find link between genes and ME/chronic fatigue syndrome [Guardian]
Scientists have found the first robust evidence that people’s genes affect their chances of developing myalgic encephalomyelitis or chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), a mysterious and debilitating illness that has been neglected and dismissed for decades by many in the medical community.
Early findings from the world’s largest study into the genetics of the condition pinpointed eight regions of the human genome that were substantially different in people with an ME/CFS diagnosis compared to those without the illness.
The discovery suggests that several variants of genes commonly found in the population raise the risk of developing the illness, though many people will carry the variants and never acquire it.
Real milk proteins, no cows: Engineered bacteria pave the way for vegan cheese and yogurt [Phys.org]
Bacteria are set to transform the future of dairy-free milk products. Scientists have successfully engineered E. coli to produce key milk proteins essential for cheese and yogurt production, without using any animal-derived ingredients. This paves the way for plant-based dairy alternatives that mimic traditional dairy at a molecular level but are sustainable and cruelty-free.
A recent study published in Trends in Biotechnology reported two methods for producing casein (a milk protein) that are nutritionally and functionally similar to bovine casein.
Casein is a highly sought-after component in both infant and adult diets, as it is digestible, of high quality, and provides several essential amino acids our body needs. The global casein market, valued at US$2.7 billion in 2023, comes at the cost of animal cruelty and high environmental impact. This rise in demand for sustainable and dairy-free options has led researchers to seek alternative methods of producing casein.
I genuinely think people are underestimating how fast cellular agriculture is moving to replace big parts of the animal protein world, even if the lab-grown steak never gets here. Also, I have to wonder just how long Canada’s dairy supply management can persist in this world.
And I really enjoyed the latest Climate Town: