the only guy that can code in the most boring department at the biggest financial institution you’ve never heard of. alt @granular_flaws
Joined December 2020
- Tweets 12,830
- Following 1,018
- Followers 7,239
- Likes 38,123
1,584 Photos and videos
Jun 12
This (insane) IPO is the ultimate vindication of Elon’s ride or die investing philosophy. Compare to divest and diversify Gates who would be worth $1.3T if he had held onto his 45% of Microsoft post-IPO. EMH fans in the mud.
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Jun 11
Solid point, but 26% of Soho’s population are in social housing and are incentivised to stay even if they’re a bad fit
If I were given such a good deal, I’d stay and moan rather than moving out and losing my massively subsidised home on a lifetime tenancy
Complaining about nightlife when you *checks notes* choose to live in Soho is like living in South Kensington and complaining about the museums.
Or moving to Hackney and grumbling about creatives. Living in Richmond and hating green space.
It's all getting a bit silly, isn't it?
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Jun 10
Sick day from work and am shocked at the number of people in parks, supermarkets, high streets. Most not elderly.
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There's a common narrative around transit: countries like France care about public investment in rail, while the Brits let it languish so fall behind.
This appears to fit reality: after the turn of the millenium France has built 21 new tram systems while Britain managed 2, the French have 5 metro systems that have been significantly extended in the last two decades while Britain has only 1, and it's not just the result of us concentrating everything on London: the Grand Paris Express blows Crossrail out of the water in scale.
Something odd happens when I examine the OECD's rail investment spending data, though. For almost every year post 2000, Britain outspends France on rail. For every Avignon Tramway project (€135m) there was a Birmingham westside extension (£149m), the core difference being the French project is 5.2km while the british one is nearly 5 times shorter at 1.2km.
The more projects you research the more the picture starts to take shape. Britain cares deeply about rail, funds it generously, and yet manages to build very little. It's a testament to our love of trains that Treasury keeps rewarding our deeply inefficient (and thus low ROI) rail construction system with more and more money.
So next time you see someone railing about British railways, tell them the money isn't the problem.
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“I cycle to Kvickly to pick up my salmo-“
“ARRRRRGHHHH don’t you know you are at the thermodynamic limit of the universe”
Everyone who tries to debunk this resorts to sci-fi stuff like asteroid mining, missing out on the much more obvious point that: (at current growth rates) world gdp per capita in 2100 will still be far below Denmark's in 2026
Given the Danes emit less CO2 per capita (4.34T) than the world average (4.89T) and life there shows no signs of butting up against the edges of thermodynamic limits, its clear we are very very far away from this being a problem
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Everyone who tries to debunk this resorts to sci-fi stuff like asteroid mining, missing out on the much more obvious point that: (at current growth rates) world gdp per capita in 2100 will still be far below Denmark's in 2026
Given the Danes emit less CO2 per capita (4.34T) than the world average (4.89T) and life there shows no signs of butting up against the edges of thermodynamic limits, its clear we are very very far away from this being a problem
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This reminds me of the unnerving theoretical physics discovery that there is an upper bound to the amount of computation possible in matter (Bremermann's limit), it's just that it's really really really high: 10^50 bits per second per kg, at least 1000000000000000000000000000000000000x faster than current chips
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Fact check: WRONG. World crop yields are growing (roughly double every 30 years) and the Danes only consume ~25% more (3,734 kcal per person) than the world average (3,006)
x.com/cendosk/status/2063901…
If every country had the same material consumption as Denmark the earth would not be able to produce enough food
The collapse of the gulf stream will soon make Denmark as cold as northern Canada
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Ah yes, because Britain really needs to juice its low productivity non-tradable service sector
Jun 5
🚨 NEW: Andy Burnham has pledged to scrap business rates for shops, cafes and hairdressers - and reduce them by 20% for pubs
It would be funded by increasing taxes on online tech giants and their British warehouses
[@Telegraph]
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Given the massive positive externalities of new housing (rents, energy efficiency, fertility, economic mobility) it is frankly mad that post-2020 the government has decided to raise both taxes and regulatory requirements on building them. Idiotic.
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Since 2020, £76,000 has been added to the average cost of building a new home.
Let’s look at a break down of those costs 👇
🟦 More than £7,000 in taxes and levies, including…
🔸 £2,000 in Landfill Tax
🔸 £2,320 from the forthcoming Building Safety Levy
🔸 £2,055 in other taxes
🔸 £985 from inflationary increases on existing charges such as Section 106 agreements
🟦 Over £23,000 in regulatory costs including…
🔸 £7,770 for building regulations
🔸 £5,700 for Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG)
🔸 £10,200 in costs linked to the Future Homes Standard
🟦 £37,000 in increased material and labour costs due to high levels of inflation
🟦 £7,000 in additional potential site-specific costs, like nutrient mitigation requirements
We’re calling on Government to implement a moratorium on new policy costs, taxes, and levies affecting home building and to conduct a comprehensive review of cumulative regulatory impacts.
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Taxes/requirements on the risky, hard to manage, and delay prone world of construction are extremely damaging: £1 of additional requirements may cost multiple pounds down the line once risk buffers, financing costs, and fudge factors are taken into account.
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I think the core driver of this is that construction costs are highly multidimensional and cost bloat in one dimension multiplies with others.
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Remember build baby build?
Jun 4
"UK construction output falls at fastest pace for six years"
The recent slump in the PMI is mainly due to the fallout from the Middle East crisis, but the sector has been struggling ever since the summer of 2024... 🤔
Housebuilding in particular has been persistently weak.
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May 28
Original Vs the revised approved proposal.
seems counter-intuitive that the planning process is used to shrink new office developments, despite corporate rents being higher in London than NYC and clearly a drag on competitiveness.
May 28
🚨 Approved: 1 Silk Street redevelopment
✅ 86,000 sqm of Grade A workspace
✅ New public plaza by the Barbican
✅ Cultural, retail & community spaces
✅ Greener, lower-carbon design
A major step in delivering a more vibrant, inclusive, 7-day Square Mile. #DestinationCity
Read more here: news.cityoflondon.gov.uk/cit…
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May 28
Goes unnoticed that a large chunk of the British population are stuck in Hobbesian parking hell with no political solution on the horizon.
More bike lanes doesn’t actually fix the acute land shortage in small commuter belt towns
May 28
I don’t think people understand how dire the parking situation is on thin terraced streets in towns where cars will always be needed
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May 28
The biggest Westminster disconnect with the rest of Britain must surely be in transport mode used
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bernoulli_defect retweeted
May 28
If we removed the inward transfers to much of the UK and watched the subsequent spending dissolve (the taxi firm driving kids to school, the paper towel supplier to the NHS, the lawyers and accountants to both) we'd see that much of our country has surprisingly little economy.
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May 27
At the wave of a hand, Shiv adds £2B to the cost of forest city’s 400,000 homes
May 27
Dual functioning heat pumps in Forest City or bust.
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