If I'm lucky, this will close a third of the browser tabs.
- A damning indictment of the state of medical research, in the British Med J, from its former editor. "We have now reached a point where those doing systematic reviews must start by assuming that a study is fraudulent until they can have some evidence to the contrary."
- Jon Brewer is trying to make the MIQ booking system work. It is deeply broken. I hope he gets somewhere. It needs to be fixed.
- It is difficult to take a hard line on covid testing results being a few minutes past the deadline when they aren't even bothering to check most folks' records. Chalk this one up as part of the problem in efficient punishment. Even if it weren't the case that the probability of being caught matters more than the fine if caught for otherwise expected-value-equivalent bundles, governments have a tough time imposing boiling in oil punishments in those cases.
- I wonder whether Georgina Campbell also gets hatemail from the heritage people. Great podcast from her with RNZ on Wellington's heritage encumbrances.
- This is among the silliest arguments I've seen in the past wee while. There are serious issues with after-housing-cost incomes - agree! That can impinge on food budgets - agree! We need to solve the problem by setting a national food policy ensuring that food doesn't get exported if anyone is hungry - WTF? If you've got a housing shortage, a national food policy ain't where you should be looking for solutions.
- We can't expand MIQ because we don't have enough nurses. But the government is refusing to process immigration applications by nurses and doctors who are already here. While the food policy proposal is silly, I doubt it's going to get anywhere. This is existing policy that is just nuts.
- The government didn't bother ordering Pfizer vaccines until this past January. It is hard to explain how we wound up in that spot.
- Me, at Newsroom, arguing that we should flip heritage protection from an off-budget regulatory imposition to an on-budget subsidy. Geoff Bertram disagrees with me in comments, increasing my confidence in the argument.
- Related, on heritage, they're still fighting over the Adelaide Hotel. It's earthquake prone, too expensive to fix relative to its value, and it's all in the courts.
- Adult entertainment establishments decrease sex crime by 13% per police precinct one week after the opening.
- Renting sucks. That's what happens when there are too few places for rent relative to the number of people who want to rent. Building more would be nice.
- Grimes, Reddell and McDermott on inflation targeting and house prices.
- I loved this from Jo Moir in Newsroom's newsletter. On the vaccines mess where we can't build capacity to deliver vaccines without having vaccines but we can't actually order vaccines unless we have the capacity to deliver them: "The whole thing is a dizzying circle of very little sense and not dissimilar to the idea of waiting to build a house until the pipes are in place while the pipes won't be laid until the house is finished. Confused? Me too."
