Mark Calabrese:

Yet while banks must operate with leverage around 10 to 1, the Enterprises have only recently reduced their leverage to 140 to 1. That is not enough capital for them to survive a housing downturn.

When I came into office, the Enterprises were allowed to hold only $6 billion in loss-absorbing capital to back their $6 trillion balance sheets. In September 2019, Treasury and FHFA raised their combined capital caps to $45 billion.

That change saved Fannie and Freddie from failing last year when the COVID shock hit. But it does not mean they are safe. In their current condition, Fannie and Freddie will fail in a downturn in house prices.

But the cyclical history of the housing market teaches that strong house price growth is not a guarantee of future stability.
In fact, FHFA’s data shows that high prices gave Enterprise borrowers a slightly greater share of home equity in December 2005, on the cusp of the last crash, than they had as of December 2020.
We know that just as prices go up, they also go down. It is prudent to prepare for the downturns during the boom times. That is what FHFA’s resolution planning rule helps accomplish.

10 residents live in isolation at Hawaii’s last leprosy community

How I Became a Libertarian

Brookline Will Keep Outdoor Mask Mandate In Place

We Mailed 100 Letters to Test The Postal Service. We Did Not Get Speedy Delivery

Amazon knew seller data was used to boost company sales

How much time and money do commuters save working from home?

Facebook and Instagram threaten to charge for access on iOS 14.5 unless you give them your data

The Washington Post gave its readers a clear-eyed view this weekend of how American intel agencies work with sympathetic reporters to smear and discredit political opponents, ignoring a specific explanation from one of the article’s targets of how reporters were being used, and leading to embarrassing corrections in multiple articles (as well as in The New York Times and at NBC News).

Origin of Covid — Following the Clues

But the COVID-19 debacle is not yet over. Fauci refuses to give up the influence he has held for over a year. Requiring or recommending the public wear masks—even at outdoor events and even after being fully-vaccinated—has moved beyond any semblance of “science,” and is now purely an instrument of social control. As of this writing, vaccines are universally available throughout the U.S. Almost 40 percent of American adults have been fully vaccinated, more than half of Americans have received at least a first dose, and about 2.7 million additional shots are being administered daily.

How photography rose from the margins of the art world to occupy its vital center

I worry that pandemic-era reimbursement practices have taken traditionally free screening calls and rebranded them as billed visits, with no value added.

The NHS is being forced to revise its digital booking system for Covid-19 vaccinations after the shocking discovery that it leaks people’s vaccination details.

“Structures have stories,” writes Roma Agrawal in her book Built. They tell the stories of the people who lived in them and the world they were made for. The same goes for the remains of Shanghai Tower, even after such so much time has passed. Any future explorers, whether an evolved form of life on this planet or from another world, would be able to recreate a picture of 21st Century life in astonishing detail, provided they can use the same techniques that geologists use today.

But from what I can see, none of this fixing would have been aided by waiving the patent rights to the vaccines themselves at some earlier date. The supply of vaccines has been increasing, and would continue to increase without the patent waiver idea. The constraints are physical ones, supply chains and engineering ones, not legal.

These declarations look dopier than ever after a new article was published this week by the journalist Nicholas Wade, who for many years was a science correspondent for the New York Times. At the very least, Wade demonstrates that the “lab-leak” theory ought not to be discounted. But he also goes much further, showing that the theory is in fact highly plausible. The article was first self-published on Medium, then later reproduced by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. While long, it’s worth reading in full even if (like me) you are effectively illiterate in the technical scientific details.

But the most noticeable missteps stem not from the news pages but from the editorial column. For it is here that readers find out what the paper thinks about the great issues of the day. And it is here that mistakes are inked most indelibly into history, whether they relate to suffrage, reform or, most notably in recent years, the debate over Brexit.

To err is human. But making the wrong call is both inevitable and painful. To see why the Guardian thinks the way it does, it is useful to start with the interests it originally sought to advance. The Manchester Guardian was born of moderate radicalism, and began life in 1821 as a mouthpiece for male middle-class political reform.

The social media giant, through its power to target users based on their interests, is especially attractive to pharmaceutical companies looking to sell drugs to potential patients. The Washington Post reported last year that health and pharmaceutical companies spent almost $1 billion on just Facebook mobile ads in 2019. The draw? Unlike a traditional TV or radio ad, Facebook’s ad categories help those companies target their drug ads at users who likely suffer from a specific illness the drug treats.

The dog ate our disclosure

Researchers: Medical errors now third leading cause of death in United States

“I think there is a real chance this is a very bad moment for us – ‘Facebook lies about its user #s to get record profits.'” <- Facebook employee.

You can see (familiar) how they strategize spin 1) captured advertising clients lobbying for them, 2) small business!!! etc etc /5

One finds an uncommon freedom at the Farm, in the company of Peter and Kevin, as well as a certain grief, realizing what we’ve habitually missed, and what it’s cost us. If we ignore those who don’t talk, we fail to develop beyond our words.

To succeed, get other people to pay you; to become wealthy, help other people to succeed.

Publishers like The Guardian become conscientious FLoC objectors, as The New York Times and others open to testing the controversial tech

Separating rumor from fact on Covid-19’s origin

An Interview With Linus Torvalds: Linux and Git

The Rise and Fall of a Double Agent

Where Did the Other Dollar Go, Jeff?

The popular cooking website will not publish new beef recipes over concerns about climate change. “We think of this decision as not anti-beef but rather pro-planet,” an article said.

An Ohio Town Grapples With Tearing Down a Plant From the Cold War}

Everything That’s Ever Gone Wrong on My Camping Trips

Apollo 11 Astronaut Michael Collins on the Past and Future of Space Exploration

These are complex decisions that trade off privacy, ease of use and competition, and they might be made by lawyers.

Among the simple programs Chuck Geschke wrote that summer was a way of printing envelopes for the announcement of his daughter’s birth.

That year we anchored in Greece for the summer and spent winter in a Sicilian marina with a good discount.

In short: Don’t wait for the government to fix privacy. Any attempt to curtail and reverse the growing power of surveillance capitalism will have to start from us — the people — through grassroots mobilization. Pass it on.

Your Car Is About To Be a Software Platform, Subscriptions and All

Toilet to table: Michigan farmers feed crops with ‘toxic brew’ of human and industrial waste

Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam lashes out at Western powers for ‘double standards, hypocrisy and lies’

Havana syndrome: NSA officer’s case hints at microwave attacks since 90s

(From a physician friend: “The flu is gone because everyone is sticking to the rules but COVID is rising because no one is sticking to the rules.”)

Dynomight:

What do you worry about more: Getting exercise, eating vegetables, or the air you breathe?

While most things that clearly improve health are well known, one is insanely underrated: Fixing your air. I suspect this is often the most effective health intervention, period. Nothing else is so important while also being so easy to address.

Let’s do a sanity check: Take the four biggest countries in the world and compare how many people died from various causes in 2019.

A smartphone with a fluid lens

Qwest reportedly balked at NSA records sweep (2006)

Coalition of big investors pushes banks to defund carbon emitters

All the Numbers are US: Large-scale Abuse of Contact Discovery in Mobile Messengers

Facebook Wants to ‘Normalize‘ the Mass Scraping of Personal Data

Life after Merkel: Germany’s ties with China head into the unknown

China’s digital yuan displaces the dollar

Eye in the Sky: Private Satellites and Government Macro Data

Capitalism needs a new Martin Luther to call out the “woke indulgence sellers”

Bill to reveal names of California recall signers won’t move ahead

The Florida House has resoundingly approved a consumer privacy bill that gives the public an opportunity to regain ownership of the personal data collected by companies.

How a Chinese Surveillance Broker Became Oracle’s “Partner of the Year”

They are now speaking out about the horrors they witnessed, when around them, an estimated million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities were forcibly taken to internment camps for “re-education.”

In reality the hearing’s climate alarmist statements and claims represented nothing but conjecture and speculation driven by the political ambitions of politicians and scientists seeking fame and additional government funding. The hearing failed to address scientifically proven and verifiable climate evidence. 

Moneyball With Money: How Billy Beane and Brian Cashman Became Friends, Won Games, and Influenced People

It’s one thing when activists lie in furtherance of their goals. But when the media is deliberately misleading their audience for the sake of a narrative, it’s an enormous, malignant problem.

With the low-cost, reusable Falcon 9 rocket, SpaceX has already badly damaged the commercial launch industries in Europe, Russia, and Japan. For the Artemis Program, Europe is contributing the Service Module for the Orion spacecraft. How would these officials react if NASA now says, “non merci” to that contribution because of SpaceX?

The risk of being exposed to Covid-19 indoors is as great at 60 feet as it is at 6 feet — even when wearing a mask, according to a new study by Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers who challenge social distancing guidelines adopted across the world.

Diess infamously complained to reporters that these workers’ bargaining power meant that a one-litre pot of coffee for a meeting at the plant costs the company roughly €60.

Navalny Has a Lesson for the World. The Russian opposition leader is showing what courage means.

Lockdown proponents can’t escape the blame for the biggest public health fiasco in history

Want to Resist? Delete Your Facebook Account

A smartphone with a fluid lens

Hey, Marc, does it get any creepier than working with Chinese government backed organizations to develop surveillance tools?

“In the long run, talent wins over experience, and an entrepreneurial culture over heritage.”

They seem to be saying (among other things) that government is worse under Republican administrations because Democrats in the bureaucracy are not as loyal to their missions? 

However, the data tells us that attacks have been declining since 2016. Why did they claim the opposite?

According to reports, this is perhaps the first instance of the FBI sanitizing private servers in the aftermath of a cyberattack.

First GMO Mosquitoes to Be Released In the Florida Keys

Ideas of India: The History of Textiles

A look at Próspera, the charter city taking shape in Honduras

JW v HHS Humanized Mice FDA prod 3 00876

Bitcoin miners buying power plants.

SpaceX was one of two providers hired by NASA to fly its astronauts to the International Space Station. It flew two missions with astronauts last year and has its next mission scheduled for Thursday. Boeing is the other company hired to ferry crews to the station and back. But it has stumbled badly, and has yet to fly a test mission with astronauts.

The estimate represents a 52% rise in the nation’s home shortage compared with 2018, the first time Freddie Mac quantified the shortfall.

During the Olympics Tokyo will probably have consistent winds around 7 mph mostly from the South or East.  To establish a record events like the 100 and 200 meter sprint, 110 meter hurdles and the long and triple jumps record the wind velocity and require a trailing windspeed to be less than 2 meters per second – about 4.5 mph – measured at the track.

It’s Leonard Euler’s 314th birthday today. In network circles the grandfather of graph theory is perhaps best known for his 1735 solution to the problem known as the Seven Bridges of Königsberg. Using novel graph theory techniques Euler was able to show that a route across the seven bridges without crossing the same one twice was impossible.

Adobe co-founder Charles Geschke dies at 81