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playedaroundwith.bsky.social

@playedaroundwith.bsky.social
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Mark Lemley @marklemley.bsky.social · 06/11/2025
Australia has so much electricity from solar power that it is going to start offering free electricity to everyone for at least three hours during the day as the wholesale price of power goes negative electrek.co/2025/11/04/a...
electrek.co
Australia has so much solar that it's offering everyone free electricity
Australia's extensive solar power penetration makes so much energy that the government wants to offer free electricity at peak hours.
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Todd Tucker @toddntucker.com · 25/04/2025
Sherrod Brown: "Lost in the discussion of these tariffs is the reason corporations outsource jobs and the reason they lobbied so hard for “free” trade deals in the first place: They want to pay lower wages and fewer benefits to their workers" and avoid regulation. www.nytimes.com/2025/04/20/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | Sherrod Brown: What Worries Me Most About Trump’s Failing Economy
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Jess Calarco @jessicacalarco.com · 19/04/2025
This country has only ever really "cared" about kids to the extent that doing so serves the interests of White supremacy, patriarchy, and capitalism. www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...
washingtonpost.com
Opinion | Donald Trump’s war on children
The administration is divesting from future generations. It will cost America dearly.
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Mike Inouye @mikeinouye.bsky.social · 09/04/2025
Woah. Survival among the top wealth quartiles in northern/western/southern Europe were higher than that among the wealthiest Americans. Survival in the wealthiest US quartile were similar the poorest quartile in northern/western Europe www.nejm.org/doi/full/10....
nejm.org
Association between Wealth and Mortality in the United States and Europe | NEJM
Amid growing wealth disparity, we have little information on how health among older Americans compares with that among older Europeans across the distribution of wealth. We performed a longitudinal...
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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 08/04/2025
“anything we can actually do, we can afford” stamp this on the head of anyone who asks how we can afford universal health care or universal child care or public pensions or free college
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David Moore @davidrussellmoore.bsky.social · 07/04/2025
Due to gerrymandering, Republicans have a 16-seat advantage in the House, according to nonpartisan groups. Democrats had a bill to end partisan gerrymandering in 2009, when they had 60 Senate seats to pass it, but they did not bring the bill to a vote. Here's the bill's full history.
davidrussellmoore.net
Democrats Could Have Passed Democracy Bills in 2009
In May, former House speaker Nancy Pelosi sent a letter to the editor of the New York Times Opinion section. In the brief missive, Rep. Pelosi pointed to four legislative reforms to reinforce American...
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Scott Santens @scottsantens.com · 03/04/2025
It's extreme wealth inequality, ultimately, that just destroyed our economy. Yes it was the envy of the world under Biden, but because so many Americans weren't experiencing their share of our prosperity for decades, and instead finding it increasingly hard to live, here we all are, royally fucked.
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Melissa & Chris Bruntlett @modacitylife.com · 01/04/2025
A former French military base, Vauban is a thriving neighbourhood of 5,500 residents connected to Freiburg town centre by bus and light rail. Built in the late 1990s as a radical experiment in low-car living, it forgoes virtually all on-street parking in favour of active, green, and social spaces. 🧵
People in casual spring attire walk, cycle, and ride trams along car-free streets lined with colourful low-rise residential buildings in the  neighbourhood of Vauban in Freiburg, Germany.People in casual spring attire walk, cycle, and ride trams along car-free streets lined with colourful low-rise residential buildings in the  neighbourhood of Vauban in Freiburg, Germany.People in casual spring attire walk, cycle, and ride trams along car-free streets lined with colourful low-rise residential buildings in the  neighbourhood of Vauban in Freiburg, Germany.People in casual spring attire walk, cycle, and ride trams along car-free streets lined with colourful low-rise residential buildings in the  neighbourhood of Vauban in Freiburg, Germany.
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Adam Bonica @adambonica.bsky.social · 02/04/2025
1/🧵 "More voters help Republicans" is reshaping Dem strategy after 2024. We put this claim to the test with a deep dive into voter files and survey data. Results? Non-voters remain disproportionately Democratic while GOP simply turns out their base better.
open.substack.com
Does Higher Turnout Now Help Republicans? A Data-Driven Analysis of Partisan Turnout Dynamics (Part 1)
Data analysis reveals Democrats' problem isn't high turnout—it's losing the mobilization battle
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Gordon Padelford @gordonofseattle.bsky.social · 01/04/2025
Red light cameras are a slam dunk safety measure. They reduce fatal collisions by 50%, and there aren't really other tools to prevent people from brazenly running red lights. We should be scaling these widely. (from a presentation at Seattle City Council this morning)
fatal crashes down 50% where deployed
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Nick Hedley @nickhedley.bsky.social · 13/03/2025
Rooftop solar could supply two-thirds of global power, study finds www.pv-magazine.com/2025/03/13/r...
pv-magazine.com
Rooftop solar could supply two-thirds of global power, study finds
Researchers at the University of Sussex have found that widespread deployment of rooftop solar could cover the vast majority of the world's electricity consumption, while lowering global temperatures ...
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Adam Bonica @adambonica.bsky.social · 10/03/2025
As markets plummet again today from Trump's chaotic economic policies, ask yourself: Why would billionaires back policies that tank their own stock values? It’s the taxes. I wrote a step-by-step explainer of how billionaires avoid paying taxes. People are often surprised when I explain it.🧵
open.substack.com
Buy, Borrow, Die: How Billionaires Legally Avoid Paying Taxes While the Rest of Us Can't
A Step-by-Step Guide to How the Ultra-Wealthy Minimize Their Tax Burden While Their Fortunes Multiply
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Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 06/03/2025
Big deal—after correcting, it turns out that moderate candidates do not perform better than extreme candidates in general elections. Kudos to Andy, Dan, and Adam for updating a key question in political science
Andy Hall &
@ahall_research
In 2018, Dan Thompson and I published a paper in the APSR estimating large vote share and turnout effects for the nomination of more-extreme House candidates in the 2006--2014 period. Recently, Adam Bonica showed us an important imbalance in the data from our paper that makes us doubt our findings. We've written an update to the paper explaining this issue here:
andrewbeniaminhall.com/hall
_thompson_...
We have four main takeaways from this exercise:
(1) The evidence in our sample from 2006--2014 that more-extreme nominees cause large changes in a party's vote share or share of general-election turnout is far weaker than we previously thought, and should not be relied on.
(2) Because our sample of years does not provide a sufficiently large, stable effect on vote share, the design is unsuitable for understanding whether there is an underlying relationship
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Martin Naunov @naunovmartin.bsky.social · 05/03/2025
Excited to share that my paper on citizen-to-citizen persuasion, co-authored with Carlos Rueda-Cañòn and @tjryan02.bsky.social, was just accepted at the Journal of Politics @thejop.bsky.social . Link: www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/... 🧵
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Streetsblog USA @usa.streetsblog.org · 18/02/2025
People live healthier lives when they're able to walk places.
theurbanist.org
Walkability Isn’t Just Good Urban Planning: It’s a Public Health Intervention - The Urbanist
# A recent peer-reviewed study of identical twins illustrated the value of living in a walkable neighborhood, showing a strong correlation between walkable neighborhoods, time spent walking, and positive...
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Dr. William Horne @wihorne.bsky.social · 14/02/2025
I've been thinking abt this smart John Ganz essay on the tendency of libertarians to support fascism & it reminds me that if we take a step back from the context of specific historical struggles, American conservatism appears to be less a coherent ideology than a *tactic* of plunder & power.
unpopularfront.news
Gold and Brown
Libertarianism, Fascism, and Democracy
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Krissy Lunz Trujillo @klunztrujillo.bsky.social · 12/02/2025
Polity Score rating for the US has shifted dramatically in the past month down from an 8 to a 0, changing its designation to anocracy. It is no longer considered a democracy.
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Omar Wasow @owasow.bsky.social · 06/02/2025
I’ve been studying civil rights protests for 20 years. With new mobilization against Trump’s agenda, I’m sharing a thread summarizing my research on how nonviolent & violent actions by 1960s activists and police influenced media, elites, public opinion & voters. 1/ www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
Article title: Agenda Seeding: How 1960s Black Protests Moved Elites, Public Opinion and Voting

Article Abstract

How do stigmatized minorities advance agendas when confronted with hostile majorities? Elite theories of influence posit marginal groups exert little power. I propose the concept of agenda seeding to describe how activists use methods like disruption to capture the attention of media and overcome political asymmetries. Further, I hypothesize protest tactics influence how news organizations frame demands. Evaluating black-led protests between 1960 and 1972, I find nonviolent activism, particularly when met with state or vigilante repression, drove media coverage, framing, congressional speech, and public opinion on civil rights. Counties proximate to nonviolent protests saw presidential Democratic vote share increase 1.6–2.5%. Protester-initiated violence, by contrast, helped move news agendas, frames, elite discourse, and public concern toward “social control.” In 1968, using rainfall as an instrument, I find violent protests likely caused a 1.5–7.9% shift among whites toward Republicans and tipped the election. Elites may dominate political communication but hold no monopoly.
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Mark Kayser @markkayser.bsky.social · 04/02/2025
Delighted to see this coming out in @thejop.bsky.social. Some basic science that for data reasons was never done before. www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1...
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Shannon Osaka @shannonosaka.bsky.social · 03/02/2025
First, microplastics are building up in the human brain -- not as people get older, but simply over time. Researchers found 50% more microplastics in brains from 2024 than 2016. That pattern persisted when they looked back as far as 1997.
A chart that shows increasing microplastic concentrations in human brains.
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Brian Goldstone @brian-goldstone.bsky.social · 01/02/2025
"One of the more distressing realities of homelessness in Atlanta is the growing number of unhoused people who are gainfully employed but don’t earn enough to afford rent in the city where they work." A case manager "estimates half of the unhoused people with whom she works have full-time jobs."
atlanta.capitalbnews.org
Why Affordable Housing Advocates Worry Atlanta’s Unhoused Population Is Growing - Capital B News - Atlanta
As Partners for HOME conducts its annual census of people experiencing homelessness in Atlanta, experts fear another uptick.
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Harry Rutter @harryrutter.bsky.social · 31/01/2025
"In the US from 1930s-80s, income tax for high earners was around 80%. This period was one of enormous prosperity for Americans...Reagan cut top-rate taxes in 1986. From 1990-2020, economic growth halved compared with 1950–90. Cutting taxes does not kick-start growth" @richardhorton1.bsky.social
Screenshot of Richard Horton's Offline column in The Lancet 1 Feb 2025. Entitled 'Offline: The journey towards equality' it discusses the lessons of Thomas Piketty's 2024 book, 'Nature, Culture, and Inequality', which "provides at least a glimmer of hope in otherwise overwhelming times: our world is getting progressively more equal."
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David Zipper @davidzipper.bsky.social · 30/01/2025
​The top story on every US media outlet is the crash at National Airport, where 67 people died. Meanwhile, 67 Americans die in car crashes every 15 hours The DCA crash is clearly front-page news. Maybe we should give America's road safety crisis the same treatment.
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Brent Toderian @brenttoderian.bsky.social · 30/01/2025
“One mile on a bike is a $.42 economic gain to society, one mile driving is a $.20 loss.” “Which means that Copenhagen, a city of 1.2 million people, saves $357 million a year on health costs because something like 80% of its population commutes by bike.” #CityMakingMath grist.org/biking/one-m...
grist.org
One mile on a bike is a $.42 economic gain to society, one mile driving is a $.20 loss
Copenhagen, the bicycle-friendliest place on the planet, publishes a biannual Bicycle Account, and buried in its pages is a rather astonishing fact.
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JLRay @jlray.bsky.social · 27/01/2025
While Trump lost badly among young men with actual economic anxiety, he won overwhelmingly among the ~60pct who worried "guys can have their reputation destroyed just for speaking their mind these days" youngmenresearchinitiative.substack.com/p/survey-results-young-mens-support
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Omar Wasow @owasow.bsky.social · 27/01/2025
If you made a horror movie where killer cars killed more than a million people worldwide, folks would laugh. Turns out, “Around 1.2 million people die from road injuries every year. That’s around 2.3% of deaths from all causes.” ourworldindata.org/data-insight...
ourworldindata.org
More than a million people die from road injuries every year
Around 1.2 million people die from road injuries every year. That includes the deaths of drivers, passengers, and pedestrians.
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Jen Mercieca @jenmercieca.bsky.social · 20/01/2025
"Oxfam said billionaire wealth grew by $2 trillion last year, or roughly $5.7 billion a day, three-times faster than in 2023. The number of billionaires rose by 204 to 2,769, and the 10 richest men saw their wealth rise nearly $100 million a day on average, it said." apnews.com/article/davo...
apnews.com
Billionaires' wealth soared in 2024, anti-poverty group says as the elites prepare for another Davos
Billionaire's wealth has grown faster last year, and now the world can expect at least five trillionaires within a decade, even as the number of people in poverty has barely budged since 1990.
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Brent Toderian @brenttoderian.bsky.social · 19/01/2025
“It's not easy to be exact, but studies estimate that tires create anywhere from 10-28% of the world's microplastic pollution, according to National Geographic. These particles don't just disappear — they end up in our water, our soil, and our bodies.”
thecooldown.com
Scientists make disturbing new discovery while studying human urine samples: 'We urgently need to classify [this]'
A recent study found high levels of two potentially deadly chemicals in humans' urine, raising concerns about tire pollution.
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Scott Santens @scottsantens.com · 05/12/2024
I've been researching the idea of Unconditional Universal Basic Income since 2013. Here's a collection of findings I've compiled from various UBI experiments and studies of cash transfer programs around the world. This will be a VERY LONG and ongoing thread focused entirely on empirical evidence. 🧵
OBSERVED EFFECTS OF UBI

No significant reduction in labor supply (38 studies meta-analysis)

Increased self-employment (301%) and part-time employment (17%)

Slight decrease in alcohol and tobacco use (31 studies meta-analysis)

New mothers extend their maternity leaves

Birth weights improve due to better maternal nutrition

Graduation rates and educational outcomes improve

Hospitalization rates decline (8.5%)

Crime goes down (15%–42%) especially illegal hunting (95%)

Domestic violence decreases (30%–51%)

Trust increases (13% in politicians | 6% in other people)

Home ownership rates increase (17%–26%)

Food security increases as does consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables

Improved cognitive functioning (43%) and personality traits (31%)

Savings go up, debts go down


Source: scottsantens
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playedaroundwith.bsky.social @playedaroundwith.bsky.social · 10/01/2025
Seems false. In LA, if everyone accepted just "having less stuff", had a partner who didn't work, per MIT each and every person would need to make at least $36.47 for simple "subsistence", or no money for "savings, leisure expenditures, emergency expenses, or other". livingwage.mit.edu/metros/31080
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playedaroundwith.bsky.social @playedaroundwith.bsky.social · 06/01/2025
"We don’t pay as many formal taxes as they (Europe) do, but when you bring in payments we are compelled to pay and that are deducted straight out of our paychecks just like taxes are, it really does not look that much different, at least as far as labor taxes are concerned."
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playedaroundwith.bsky.social @playedaroundwith.bsky.social · 06/01/2025
We already have the required taxes, just not the benefits: jacobin.com/2019/04/labo...
jacobin.com
US Workers Are Paying High Taxes. But Without Any of the Benefits.
The United States is commonly thought of as a low-tax country. But workers effectively pay some of the highest taxes in the developed world — without getting a decent welfare state in return.
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Gillian Branstetter @gbbranstetter.bsky.social · 04/01/2025
A study of 54 million people living in poverty found direct cash payments of just $120 per month reduced their likelihood of contracting tuberculosis by as much as 60%
The study is impressive in its scale. Researchers combined two Brazilian datasets — one from the Ministry of Health and one that tracks social programs for the poorest half of the population — enabling them to zero in on 54 million people in Brazil living in poverty. In this group, 44% of them received cash each month from a government program while 56% did not. The families that received the cash were significantly less likely to contract TB. Among the extremely poor in this category, TB cases and deaths dropped by more than 50% and in the Indigenous population the drop was even more dramatic: more than 60%.
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David Zipper @davidzipper.bsky.social · 31/12/2024
Americans are ~2.5x more likely to die in a crash than a Canadian, ~3.5x more likely than a Spaniard, and ~5x more likely than a Japanese person. Here are a few of the articles I wrote in 2024 trying to understand why the US is uniquely terrible at road safety. 🧵
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playedaroundwith.bsky.social @playedaroundwith.bsky.social · 30/12/2024
Think the issue here is not just "speaking about a policy", but actually enacting the policies that were promised (15 minimum wage, healthcare public option).
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Brent Toderian @brenttoderian.bsky.social · 21/12/2024
“The long-term health benefits didn’t stop there: commuter cycling was also linked to a 24% reduced risk of cardiovascular hospitalizations, a 51% lower risk of dying from cancer, and improved mental health, as measured by fewer prescriptions for anxiety and depression.” Via @momentummag.bsky.social
momentummag.com
If you bike to work, you live longer, new study confirms
If you’re looking for an affordable and accessible way to live longer, skip the pricey wellness retreats and quirky biohacks—just bike to work.
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Yonah Freemark @yonahfreemark.com · 21/12/2024
25 wealthiest Americans “saw their worth rise a collective $401 billion from 2014 to 2018. They paid a total of $13.6 billion in federal income taxes… it amounts to a true tax rate of only 3.4%.” The median family paid a far, far higher rate on their incomes. US’s inequalities in stark detail:
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The Nation Magazine @thenation.com · 18/12/2024
A survey of of Palestine-Israel coverage by four Sunday morning news shows reveals a startling statistic: With the exception of one interview, thesw shows went 12 months without speaking to a single Palestinian or Palestinian American.
thenation.com
How Sunday Morning News Shows Promote an Anti-Palestinian Agenda for Washington
Since October 2023, NBC’s Meet the Press, ABC’s This Week, and CNN’s State of the Union have not featured a single Palestinian guest.
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Dan Immergluck @danimmergluck.bsky.social · 16/12/2024
"lower-income renter households continue to bear the brunt of the affordability crisis...In 2023, lower-income renters (<$30k) dedicated a staggering 80% of their household incomes to rent and utilities, compared to 60% in 2001 and 68% in 2019." From @airbrycki.bsky.social @harvard-jchs.bsky.social.
While cost burdens have climbed the income scale, lower-income renter households continue to bear the brunt of the affordability crisis. Among households earning less than $30,000, median rents rose 18 percent from 2001 to 2023 as their incomes fell by 12 percent, all in inflation-adjusted terms. These trends have pushed up the share of income these renters spend on housing. In 2023, lower-income renters dedicated a staggering 80 percent of their household incomes to rent and utilities, compared to 60 percent in 2001 and 68 percent in 2019. With this increase, their residual incomes—the amount a household has left over each month after paying rent and utilities—plummeted to a record low of $250, a 55 percent decrease since 2001 (Figure 3). Residual incomes for this group dropped 44 percent between 2019 and 2023 alone.
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Luke O'Neil @lukeoneil47.bsky.social · 14/12/2024
We're so used to avoiding medical care because of the potential cost that we've lost sight of how fucking absurd living like this actually is. It truly does not have to be this way. www.welcometohellworld.com/it-truly-doe...
welcometohellworld.com
It truly does not have to be this way
We've lost sight of how absurd living like this actually is
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Mike Eliason @holz-bau.bsky.social · 14/12/2024
what @annehidalgo.bsky.social and the city of paris have done for public health and quality of life by taming the auto and prioritizing life and sustainable mobility - over autocentricity - should be replicated by mayors who actually care about these issues www.paris.fr/pages/etat-d...
diagram showing progressive improvements in Parisian air quality due to mayor Hidalgo's efforts to reduce car ownership and usage
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playedaroundwith.bsky.social @playedaroundwith.bsky.social · 11/12/2024
Politics/policy still can and do "combine" in certain areas though such as minimum wage... see also Sheinbaum's *overwhelming* victory in Mexico after AMLO tripled the minimum wage...
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ryan cooper @ryanlcooper.com · 11/12/2024
“private insurers currently have administrative costs that are 1,000 percent what they would be under single-payer while hospitals currently have administrative costs that are 158 percent what they would be under single-payer.” www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2024/12/10/h...
peoplespolicyproject.org
Health Care Administration Wastes Half a Trillion Dollars Every Year
Health insurers are actually very bad.
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Brian Goldstone @brian-goldstone.bsky.social · 07/12/2024
Let this sink in: there’s not a single state, city, or county in America where someone with a disability who receives SSI can afford a one-bedroom apartment. SSI payments are capped at $943 a month nationwide. The average monthly rent is $1,399—or an astounding *148%* of an SSI recipient’s income.
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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 05/12/2024
This is a really excellent paper from Italy that shows that austerity fuels far right support. Part of the nostalgia for the past that the populists drew on is a nostalgia for a visible and effective public service. 1/
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Nicolas Fulghum @nicolasfulghum.bsky.social · 03/12/2024
New record low for fossil generation in Chile 🇨🇱 The country has gone from meeting 60-70% of its electricity needs with fossil fuels in 2016 to just 18% in November 2024! This happened despite steadily increasing electricity demand as wind and solar ☀️ are displacing fossil fuels 🔥 at a rapid rate
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