Will Murphy

I think the pity and mockery stems from so many Europeans (usually institutions/"experts") dismissing AC's utility. The vast majority of the debate is not over the mechanics and logistics of deployment, but whether widespread AC is in principle desirable in the first place. I think it garners so much attention from Americans (and Europeans such as myself) because it's a vivid distillation of the self-destructive "degrowth" hysteria that is so prevalent and harmful in many European policy matters. It is the same impulse that led to Germany decommissioning its nuclear capacity, and it is a substantial contributor to the broader economic challenges of the continent.

Offhand — * Vacillation on masks, with abundant motivated reasoning in every case. * Promulgation of made-up thresholds with no evidentiary basis (e.g. 6 feet). * Authoritarian delight in nanny state intrusiveness (policing the beach and such). * 180 on many issues around BLM. * Lack of effective response from science funding bodies. * Denial of aerosolized transmission. * Changing of trial readouts so that they’d occur after the election. (Confirmed to me by senior OWS officials.) * Crazy criteria for vaccine distribution. * Adamant insistence on vaccine efficacy beyond what was supported by data. * Almost complete lack of follow-through on OWS (on pan-variant vaccines). I’m sure there are more, but those are the ones that stick out.

There used to be a fountain at the center of the Civic Center Plaza in SF. It was removed in 2003 because: > It's become an intolerable situation, and we don't have additional resources to continually clean it," said Alex Mamak, a spokesman for the Department of Public Works. Department crews clean out human filth and hypodermic needles every morning, only to find a new mess the next morning, Mamak said. This makes me want a new ranking of cities: ornamental fountains per capita. That is, those with the affinity for beauty to construct them, and with the social trust and dignity to sustain them.