Works in Progress

I've come to the conclusion that high housing prices are pretty much the root of most of our problems and is probably the biggest factor in increasing wealth inequality. I came across the housing theory of everything recently [1][2]. Disappearing third spaces, out-of-control inflation. homelessness, etc can all be traced back to housing affordability being the primary factor.

I tend to abhor buying vs rent calculators. I always have. Why? Because of inelastic demand. You can't opt out of the housing market. Well you can. It's called being homeless. If you rent, you have in effect taken a short position on the housing market. If house prices go down, rents tend to follow and you're better off than those that bought. If house prices go up, you're worse off. That's a short position.

So, by buying a house, all you're doing is closing out a short position. You might argue "but you still win or lose depending on the housing market's movement" but that's not actually true. Why? Because if all houses double in value, you still own 1 housing unit's worth of wealth. You're actually no better off. Who is? Corporate landlords and those that own swathes of houses. But your "investment" in tdhe housing market is used to buy your vote. You have a tendency to become a NIMBY. You tend to think of rising house prices as "good" despite the ultimately destructive effect on society.

Once again, China has been proven to be correct. Xi Jinping said back in the 2010s "houses are for living, not…

General aviation has been on the decline primarily because of the way US liability law is structured and the cost of FAA airworthiness certification. A quirk of legislation made it such that old models of planes are shielded from lawsuits, among other issues. If you are a manufacturer, why bother designing a new plane when you can keep selling the same world war 2 era stock? It's not like you will have any competition. The cost of certification is also why Boeing tried to avoid certifying the 737 max as a new plane.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Aviation_Revitalization_Act

https://worksinprogress.co/issue/planes-claims-and-automobiles/

Fewer people are learning to fly except to go work for the airlines. Most of the small aviation manufacturers and engine producers have been snapped up by China. It's so expensive to certify an engine for flight that most of general aviation is using engines where you burn leaded fuel and manually control the carburetors and fuel injectors. In aviation, a 1940s era airframe is considered perfectly safe, and it is completely acceptable to use vacuum pneumatic instruments despite them being significantly less reliable than MEMS or solid state ring laser (or fibre optic) gyros. Even something as simple as a radar altimeter would cost well into the 5-6 figures. It's a very backwards industry similar to medicine and pharmacy. The doctors believe in hazing new grads through residency, while biotech legislators holds the view that right to…

This article definitely flipped my "let's assume this is bullshit until proven otherwise" bit. That bit really ought to be on by default, come to think of it.

I think about this quote when reading articles like this (to say nothing of the research it draws on):

> The best way to identify sketchy scientific claims is by their level of abstraction.... if a new paper claims that attractive people are more (or less) generous than ugly people, I would be highly suspicious. “Generosity” is a very abstract and nebulous quality, and I would want to know how it was measured...The profound abstractions of everyday life—happiness, relationships, sleep, nutrition, motivation, pain, belonging—are the concepts most vulnerable to scientific abuse. (https://worksinprogress.co/issue/how-trust-undermines-science/)

The phrase "hurts children's brains" seems almost ludicrously abstract to me, so it's a little suspicious from the get go.

Then I get to their examples. The example of a train track literally running next to a classroom is one thing—I can see that being a problem—but it's a bit different than being next to a city street, which is where the article immediately pivots. Is the average classroom so loud that people physically cannot concentrate? Quoting studies that say that loud classrooms affect student performance doesn't demonstrate that most classrooms are too loud to concentrate, and that anything needs to be done about it. And even if classrooms in Barcelona are all too loud…

From https://worksinprogress.co/issue/how-madrid-built-its-metro-cheaply/ contrast Madrid's train stations, copy and pasted as much as possible, vs London's, where each has its own interesting and complex architecture. The article claims simple, consistent Madrid stations were easier to build. Idk if it's true or not, but it's an appealing argument that architects are interested in architectural uniqueness and complexity which adds costs.

Similarly, the data viz architect sort of assumes more complex visualizations would be helpful if the public wasn't so phone addicted and inattentive: "some data stories are just too complex and nuanced to be aggregated in bar charts and line charts. Surely, they’d be curious about more complex visualizations" ...well where's the discussion of if visualization complexity is actually good for data stories? If everyone knows how to read a bar chart and a line graph, that's a point in favor of standard copy and paste visualization.

The one case where imo fancy visualizations actually help is maps. Not only is the example of facebook friendships in 2010 cool, a world map really is the best way to show where people/connections are (ofc maybe it's just a heatmap ie https://xkcd.com/1138/ idk if they divided by how many people live there but still cool). So there are probably lots of stories a map visualization helps tell by showing where stuff is.

But yeah in general I felt like the article spoke to data viz only as art to wow data…

> your network will not have a jump start on everyone else

I think this is not the most useful frame. You don't necessarily need to outcompete people for limited spots (I think a lot of people's definition of success or greatness is very narrow, and mostly informed by what others are vying for)

I think the bar for doing something great is shockingly low, most people aren't even trying. That's the impression I get every time I read a patio11 article (most recently the super long but worth it "story of vaccinate CA" [1]. This is not patio but same vibe, "Lies, Damned Lies, and Manometer Readings" [2]). My takeaway from these is that there are big problems in society that nobody is working on.

This is kind of a good thing for ambitious folks: everywhere you look there are problems everywhere, the bar for making something better than what is there is low. I think the network & support is critical but it isn't always given. I think great things happen when we start to move towards what we are capable of fixing, what is within our control, finding others who have that attitude and supporting each other.

I think for me now, the point isn't to outcompete everyone/make it to the top 1% or whatnot, it's to make it as far as is possible with what I have. Those two approaches are identical if you have the support to reach the 1%. But if not, why worry about what is outside of my control? I have plenty within my control in the menatime.

[1]…

For my part, I've been building an AI agent that watches the daily change feed from clinicaltrials.gov and sends out a personalized newsletter that filters for specific trials and answers specific questions about those matched trials: https://zeeq.ai. Hopefully a useful tool for anyone that is interested in participating in or tracking clinical trials.

Thank you for making it. From what I've seen and experienced, the problem has been "garbage in, garbage out"—that is, there isn't sufficient data posted publicly on clinicaltrials.gov to figure out which trials are best and which are actually open and available. My wife wrote "Please be dying, but not too quickly: a clinical trial story. A three-part, very deep dive into the insanity that is the 'modern' clinical trial system" on using the system, and the actual experience of it: https://bessstillman.substack.com/p/please-be-dying-but-not-too-quickly

To figure out what's actually going on, we've had to make a lot of appointments and talk to oncologists to understand what is available and what isn't. The AI companies whose systems we tried missed the better treatments (e.g. BCA-101, or petosemtamab / MCLA-158), although we did not try yours, so perhaps it's capturing material others aren't. "Phone calls and appointments" are how I wound up learning about Seagen / Pfizer's antibody drug conjugate (ADC) PDL1V:…