Bernard Stanford ✡︎
@stanfordNYC
Followers
6K
Following
217K
Media
623
Statuses
10K
At some point in TurboTax 2023's development, somebody did a find-replace of "tick" for "checkmark." Which is great, since only Commonwealth countries call a checkmark a tick. But now you can make a donation in New York for "Lyme and Checkmark-Borne Diseases."
21
120
1K
Paying property tax is really not much like "renting from the state." Renters have no equity interest in a property and cannot choose how to dispose of it. Owners can, even if they pay an 0.5-2% of value annually to a government.
22
4
142
A retired, empty-nester couple feeling pressure to downsize because their property tax keeps rising as their home appreciates—is exactly how the system SHOULD work.
3K
749
16K
The idea that the health of the homebuilding sector can be improved by demanding uneconomical activity on pain of withdrawing credit access, does not strike me as likely.
3
1
32
But maybe the sober sports fans SHOULD be cross-subsidizing the beer drinkers.
Price controls for in-stadium beer so that sober sports fan pay higher ticket prices to generate cross-subsidy for drunks is a very bad idea!!
9
18
451
This is a landmark paper on the heritability of human traits👇 Using WGS data from 350K UK Biobank participants, the study shows that rare (>0.01%) and common (>1%) variants across coding and non-coding regions explain almost all (on average 88%) of the heritability (as
21
132
803
The subtext of a whole host of antisocial behaviors, like package theft, is "I am unbound by society's rules, and am perfectly comfortable harming others." But of course a package theft, with the thief unconfronted, is merely a non-violent crime.
The super of a Brooklyn apartment building was killed during a dispute with a man who was part of a crew that had been stealing packages from the building. The 41-year-old married dad was rushed from his building on Ocean Ave. in Ditmas Park to Kings County Hospital Center in
15
79
1K
NEW: UC San Diego has released a new report documenting a “steep decline in the academic preparedness” of its freshmen. The number of entering students needing remedial math has exploded from 1/100 to 1/8. They’ve had to create a second remedial class covering elementary and
2K
3K
17K
Adding it all up, and controlling for the actor's access to information and level of sophistication, and it is a decent candidate for worst strategic decision in world history.
2
0
118
And did so while lacking key resources and being riven with internal conflict. They would have needed repeat freak miracles to have even a hope of achieving a stalemate!
2
0
144
They CHOSE to declare war on a country twice as populous, with an order of magnitude more productive capacity, a completely protected industrial base, greater technological advancement, near unlimited natural resources and better leadership and decision making.
7
1
228
You do kind of have to admire Japan's zeal in launching a war of choice that, if replayed, they would lose literally 99 times out of 100.
Question: Has there EVER been a crazier nation than Imperial Japan? These guys just said, "Our industrial base sucks, our weapons mostly obsolete, our fuel is imported- let's attack the world's two biggest powers under the assumption that they'll just give up. As long as we're
39
58
2K
Boston maintains a Bike Counts database where you can see periodic assessments of cycling traffic. The bridges over the Charles River can evidently get up to 25% bike traffic! But the closest spot to the picture above is under 5%. https://t.co/XYLDHIUeA1
12
1
32
The bull case is that demand will follow, but I'm skeptical for a few reasons, and would be less concerned if bike lane advocates seemed to be open to considering trade-offs and adjustments rather than (usually) staking an emotional, maximalist position.
15
2
58
I have nothing against bike infrastructure, and clearly there are places it makes sense. But I worry that in a city like Boston, a Potemkin system of bike and bus lanes is being implemented mostly for signalling/vibes purposes.
18
5
111
Every day that I go downtown, I walk past totally empty bike lanes. Can this really be worthwhile urban land use?
276
62
675
Caring about a "chopped cheese" is some of the most transplant energy of all time. Maybe 5% of the city had even heard the term before 2014.
Typical NYC resident Vulgar, filled with nervous energy, obsessed with odd ethnic food combinations
91
36
943
A newly published paper reports, "Using an instrumental variables approach that exploits changes in U.S. state-level childcare regulations that effectively shift the price of childcare, I find that higher prices reduce birth rates, delay first births, and lengthen the interval
10
48
258
One interesting example of longstanding respect for China is in the Senate debate over birthright citizenship in 1866. The Chinese are discussed as incurably alien, but "perhaps our superior... of their industry, their skill, and their pertinacity there can be no doubt."
That’s not quite accurate. Bertrand Russell’s The Problem of China (1922) is an eye-opening look at how China was perceived at the time The Chinese were always seen as temporarily embarrassed by observant people. The potential was never in doubt, even during it's chaotic periods
12
58
606
I don't pretend to know the entire story for either of these cases, but firing officials for conveying negative information is just one of the worst possible management strategies you can use, and it sure seems to be a Trump administration theme.
3
3
26