Links and tweets, 2022-08-02

by Jason Crawford · August 2, 2022 · 1 min read

Announcements

• Build Nuclear Now, a new policy campaign to enable advanced nuclear reactors (h/t @atrembath). Related, the NRC has (finally) approved the design for NuScale’s small modular reactor (via @NRCgov)
• A new online PhD-level course in the economics of innovation from the Institute for Progress (via @calebwatney)
• DeepMind has released structures for almost every known protein (200M+) (h/t @pushmeet)
• Brad Harris’s podcast series “How it Began” available for only $15.00 through Aug 31 using promo code “humanprogress” (h/t @tonymmorley)

Opportunities

• Convergent Research is hiring (via @AdamMarblestone who says they need “exceptional people with the right mix of ‘crazy’ and ‘grounded’”)
• The Long Now Foundation is seeking a full-time Chief of Operations (via @zander)

Links

• The Wonder World of Chemistry, a DuPont promotional film from 1936. Also, The Fourth Kingdom: The Story of Bakelite Resinoid (1942). (Highlights in this short thread)
• Arnold Kling on GDP as a measure of economic activity, plus a followup on what GDP is and is not (a measure of well-being or even of production).
• Isochronic maps showing how far a 5-hour train ride will take you from any city in Europe (h/t @_benjamintd)
• Casey Handmer’s plan to refill the Colorado River from the Pacific (h/t @natfriedman)
• Lant Pritchett attempts to explain the scarcity of rigorous evaluations of public policy (h/t @michael_nielsen)
• Accountability in Florida for permitting delays (Washington Post). Related, the average San Francisco project takes nearly four years to be permitted (The Atlantic, h/t @DKThomp). Also, a thread from @itsahousingtrap on the irrationality of the housing planning process

Queries

• What are the best movies about progress? (@MoritzW42)
• Why are we seeing a shift towards older people across a broad variety of roles?
• How is the LHC not an absolute disaster? (@albrgr)
• Is there a Thiel Fellowship type program for PhD candidates to bail out of academia? (@tayroga)

Quotes

• Intriguing take: the quantitative spirit of science originated in capitalism?

Retweets

• A new philosophy of the future is needed (@elonmusk)
• Problem-solvers vs. problem-sellers (@BoyanSlat)
• Environmentalists should closely examine how Sri Lanka’s “organic“ policy played out (@stewartbrand)
• Will people in 2122 be even more astonished at our quality of life than we are looking back at people 1000 years ago? (@sama)
• Manchin, Biden, Schumer, and Pelosi have agreed to permitting reforms (@AlecStapp)

Comment: Progress Forum, LessWrong, Reddit