reze = crazy without the c | prev @khoslaventures @socialcapital @fgs_global | #lightthebeam
oakland, ca
Joined February 2010
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How to Save Oakland from an Anti-Social Future
1. Recognize the problem.
With presidential drama dominating mindshare, it’s important not to forget local politics… especially when faced with rampant crime, unkempt streets, and inhumane levels of homelessness.
Oakland has seen better days. Incessant car break ins. Reckless driving. Public indecency. Public defecation. This is anti-social behavior.
And it’s not helped by our totally inept elected leaders and their messy trail of failed policies, preoccupation with virtue signaling, performative antics, and fiscal incompetence that got us here.
Ask anyone on the street, and 9 of 10 will agree: what we’re doing isn’t working. They’ll also agree on a vision for a better future: safe and clean streets, thriving families and businesses, and practical, commonsense governing.
2. Cultivate a well-informed electorate.
Thankfully, we live in a country where every couple of years we have the power to overthrow the government… and this November is likely the most consequential election in Oakland history.
The problem is that most Oakland voters (myself included) feel ill-informed (and often misinformed…) about local issues, making it extremely difficult to reconcile the hard truths of living in Oakland today and the future we’d like to see.
So, I’ve teamed up with @gaganbiyani and @lorenmtaylor to launch the next iteration of @empoweroak. Our mission is to educate and mobilize voters across Oakland to make that future a reality.
We’ll have a weekly newsletter covering the most important news and perspectives, as well as a comprehensive voter guide closer to the election.
3. Vote for the future we want.
I moved to the east bay 16 years ago and fell in love, first with Berkeley, and for the past 12 years, with Oakland. I genuinely believe it’s the best place in the world to live.
With the most important election in Oakland’s history upon us, I’m hopeful we can rebuild the Oakland we fell in love with and be proud of it for years to come.
reze wong retweeted
Guy who looks at this chart, and decides to get into sports betting, because the market is rigged
e-commerce company continues to out innovate the competition
Domino's newest menu item is fascinating. The "Domino" is a single-serve, Detroit-style pizza. The idea is that customers can order whatever toppings they want on their pizzas so they don't have to bargain with their friends or family members or whatever.
But it's also the kind of innovation we'll likely see in the pizza space more often. It targets a new occasion, specifically the solo diner. Or maybe it's an add-on item.
Now pizza chains have long tried this sort of thing. Pizza Hut's Personal Pan Pizza was highly popular when it was a dine-in chain. And the entire fast-casual pizza sector was built on the idea that customers wanted freedom from idiot friends who wanted pineapple on their pizzas or hated mushrooms or whatever. And chains have always explored new dayparts or occasions.
Yet there is a real need for this kind of product now. Pizza chains have to find ways to get new customers or new occasions or add-on orders because the business is bleeding share, thanks to the loss of delivery business to third-party players and weakness among lower-income consumers.
So many chains, including Domino's, have resorted to discounts to get traffic. That discount war is going to start causing some real problems for franchisees in this business if the brands can't find other ways to get customers to order. And so this type of innovation is probably necessary.
Will the Domino work? Absolutely no idea, but it looks good and Detroit-style pizza is the shit. (It's also growing in demand, unlike roughly everything else in that business.) But I would suspect we'll see more of this type of thing in the future.
reze wong retweeted
I asked Claude about the air conditioning debate in Europe, and it really didn’t pull any punches.
reze wong retweeted
Earlier this year, I was very skeptical of the claim that smartphones reduced birthrates, because fertility declined so, so long before the arrival of smartphones.
But @JesusFerna7026 changed my mind, and studies like this have confirmed that my mind should stay changed.
The way I think about now is something like this:
One set of factors best describes why birthrates declined toward 2 around the world in the last few decades—modernization, contraception, women's education and social freedom, etc.
But another set of factors seems to better describe why birthrates have fallen toward 1 and below one in many places and among many groups. And smartphones belong in the second category.
More evidence it's the phones:
@Caitlin_K_Myers and Ezekiel Hooper find "the diffusion of the iPhone explains 33–52% of the decline in the general fertility rate among women aged 15–44" since 2007.
nber.org/papers/w35310
reze wong retweeted
One motivation to ban SAT/ACT in UC admissions was to eliminate perceived bias against black and latino students.
But the biggest shift by banning the SAT was a transfer of admit seats from Asian students to white: docs.google.com/spreadsheets…
E->F, rows 12-19.
Pretty damning from two math professors at Cal…
The University of California needs the SAT back. Even the overwhelmingly liberal Berkeley faculty are fed up with the admission of unprepared students, write Svetlana Jitomirskaya and Zvezdelina Stankova
on.wsj.com/3RHHbFo
reze wong retweeted
the thunder play basketball like if the children of rich people was a basketball style
More of this pls
Here's @MattMahanSJ, on the lessons — both politics and policy — of trying to cut unsheltered homelessness in San Jose to zero
reze wong retweeted
36 years on the mic at ESPN.
Thank you, @MarkJonesESPN ❤️
