Right. Presumably a car idling for ten minutes produces less pollution than a car being driven for ten minutes, but a car that is driven for ten minutes and idled for an additional ten produces more pollution than either of them. Any pollution produced by cars idling in bad traffic is superadded to the pollution produced in transit so improving the flow of traffic should reduce pollution even if the total number of cars remains steady.

Correlation may not imply causation, but where there is causation there usually is correlation. So, if there is a rise in homelessness there is likely some factor contributing to that and if a factor is correlated there is a good chance that it's causal. Homelessness may caused by multiple factors but if it's increasing and those factors are mostly remaining static then looking for the one that is also increasing seems like a good bet.

a camp fire gets plenty hot for blacksmithing - just wait for the coals and then blow on them

Maybe if you're working with bronze or copper, but iron forging requires much higher temperatures than a campfire can provide. That's why the iron age took place after the bronze age, forges capable of making iron workable were not yet invented. It wasn't a trivial invention.

> I also think the gruellingly slow death of legacy media and rise of bluesky and X (and mastodon) is a net positive for society, if only for the reason that ~tweets can be immediately and transparently rebutted, whereas brainwashing ‘news’ programs can’t.

The problem with this logic is that for the most part, new media isn't replacing legacy media; it's simply placing new layer of filtering in front of it. The vast majority of people sharing information on these platforms aren't journalists doing their own research. Instead, they're getting their information from journalists and just applying their own filtering and spin. "Rebuting" usually just involves linking to different news sources. You were always better just reading the legacy media in the first place.

Presumably because he owns the site. You would think this would be the one place that PG didn't get much pushback on his opinions. I'm not too surprised though; he hasn't been very involved here for years so the culture has shifted.