Moore's 2nd Law states that the cost of a semiconductor fab doubles about every four years. In the early 1970s a fab cost just $4M to build. Today, modern fabs cost up to $25B. This week on Construction Physics, I look at what it takes to build a fab. construction-physics.com/p/how-to-build…

Puzzle: Why has Texas been so dominant in clean energy deployment—3x as much wind as any other state, installing 3x as much solar—when it doesn’t use many conventional “clean energy” policies?

If you read just one thing today, make it “How to Actually Implement a Policy” from Jennifer Pahlka and Santi Ruiz statecraft.pub/p/how-to-actua…

Spoiler alert: every problem we care about requires that we solve a crisis of state capacity

See also this piece by Marianne Bellotti about absurd government HR:

bellmar.medium.com/sre-as-a-lifes…

'White House HR once tried to reject a candidate whose previous employer was Github because he didn’t specifically list experience with version control on his resume.'

To be clear, we have spent five years studying whether or not it is environmentally permissible to demolish a derelict football stadium surrounded by empty parking lots or whether for some reason it should just stay there forever.

Incredible from Santi Ruiz interview with Jennifer Pahlka about government hiring processes and how absurd they can be.

TBH, I wouldn't be shocked if many large corporations also have unintended perversities built into their initial screening of job candidates
statecraft.pub/p/how-to-actua…

hit after hit after hit, fantastic read.
statecraft.pub/p/how-to-actua…

Peer reviewed publications overstate how well anti-depressants work because the published literature omits lots of conflicting results🧵

When the FDA does their reviews, they notice lots of unpublished studies that tend to show the drugs are less effective.

This new one from Institute for Progress / Statecraft is worth your time. How to make government function in a way that, Rs and Ds can both support. At root a functioning program is about leadership and decision making.

statecraft.pub/p/how-to-actua…

“…we can look at recent research on winners of International Math Olympiads (IMO), and how much more productive they are in the U.S. For equally talented IMO medalists, those who migrated to the United States were two to three times as productive as medalists who migrated to the…

We could be doing much better at recruiting the world's most promising young people to build their careers here

Our immigration system is mostly designed for people already established—not future superstars

In a new piece, Hamidah Oderinwale and I discuss how to fix this huge blindspot⬇️

10 years ago, during the Flint crisis, 1 in 20 kids had elevated levels of lead in their blood. 

Today, in lower and middle income countries, that number is closer to 1 in 2 kids.

USAID is working to stop lead from robbing the next generation of their potential. Hear more:

We should be actively headhunting the most talented foreign nationals.

Here’s a great roadmap on what that would look like.

I once got interviewed for a civil service job at a federal agency. I was recommended for a position by a friend. When the interview concluded, I asked what the next steps were. They said go on USAjobs.gov and find a job posting at their department that I seem…