Works in Progress
@WorksInProgMag
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Works in Progress is a magazine of scientific, technological & economic progress. We are hiring!
Joined January 2020
NEW on the Works in Progress Podcast. @danwwang on Chinese engineers versus American lawyers, and what the people who rule China really believe about the world and their future in it. Listen on Apple Podcasts: Spotify:
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Works in Progress Podcast · Episode
Dan Wang (@danwwang) is the most insightful observer of China writing in English today. His new book, Breakneck, explains how China builds so much, and contrasts its ideology of engineering with the sclerotic legalism of the West. He sat down with me and @pietergaricano to talk
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Read the whole article by Jared Hutchins:.
worksinprogress.co
What do cryogenics, butterfat tests, and genetic data have in common? They’re some of the reasons behind the world’s most productive dairy cows. Here's how it all started.
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The proliferation of dairy herd improvement associations (DHIAs) by 1935, which collected data from over 350,000 cows across 800+ cooperatives, provided the necessary foundation for implementing Lush's vision.
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This changed when Jay Lush championed quantitative genetics, advocating for breeding decisions based on daughters' milk production data rather than appearance.
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Initially, farmers could easily measure milk production in cows but struggled to evaluate bulls, and which bulls should be bred with to increase butterfat production.
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This happened because of the development of data-driven dairy cattle breeding, which transformed the industry from subjective physical assessments to objective performance metrics.
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Between 1940 and 1982, the total supply of milk increased by a third, even as the number of dairy cows in the US halved.
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Read the whole article by Salim Furth:
worksinprogress.co
Why do high-cost cities have more homelessness? It's not just about rents — it’s also about the rooms friends and family can’t afford to share.
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Parents’ and others’ ability to offer space is limited by what they can afford in the market. When housing costs are higher, friends and family don’t have space to share, and this is often what puts a vulnerable person onto the streets.
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Both groups forget that people who avoid becoming homeless do so mostly by staying with others, usually their own parents. This happens outside the formal housing market.
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This is why non-YIMBY progressives insist that only more generous vouchers or subsidies can help and non-YIMBY conservatives argue that only behavioral change can help by tackling alcoholism, drug abuse, and mental health problems.
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$800 per month apartments are not any more affordable to most homeless people than $1,000 per month apartments. And homelessness is frequently associated with mental health or drug abuse problems.
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American cities with the highest housing prices have the worst homelessness problems. But the reason is more complicated than just a lack of affordable apartments to move into.
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RT @chalmermagne: new from me for @worksinprogmag: how France achieved the world’s fastest nuclear buildout. I tell the story of how France….
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As a result, David Lloyd George, the man who introduced the taxes as chancellor in 1910, repealed them as prime minister in 1922. The UK has never fully reestablished a working property tax system.
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The tax cost more to administer than it collected, and it was so poorly worded that it ended up becoming a tax on builders’ profits, leading to a crash in the building industry.
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By the early 1900s, Henry George’s ‘Progress and Poverty’ was more popular than Shakespeare among Labour MPs. It suggested taxing land value as much as possible. In 1910, the Liberal government of Henry Asquith implemented a tax on increases in land value and undeveloped land.
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Land value taxes are once again becoming a popular all-purpose solution to housing issues. But implementing them in early 1900s Britain destroyed the then-dominant Liberal Party.
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Read Alfred Twu's piece on why China builds towers and America builds blocks:.
worksinprogress.co
China builds towers in a park, while America builds squat mid-rise blocks. The difference comes down to regulation, not culture.
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But that’s only one of many differences in building regulation - parking requirements, materials, and greenspace mandates have also shaped why America and China build different structures.
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