Noisy newsletter

The world is being quietly rearranged by people who write very long documents.

3,271 documents ingested · 71 worth reading

All Regulatory Research Development Energy
April 2026
SAM.gov · Apr 15 Private Astronaut Missions 5 and 6 Flight Opportunities Source Selection Statement NASA will buy seats on private space missions, not just build its own
BIS · Mar 12 A public-private partnership? Central bank funding and credit supply Central banks can stimulate the economy with money no one takes
NBER · Apr 1 The Empathy Channel in Fertility People have babies when they see babies, not when they get a tax break
arXiv · Apr 14 Unifying Ontology Construction and Semantic Alignment for Deterministic Enterprise Reasoning at Scale AI can now build its own internal map of a company's data, then reason from it
Federal Register · Apr 14 Differential Pay for Prescribed Wildland Fire Activities Firefighters finally get hazard pay for the fires they start on purpose.
World Bank · Apr 1 Sustainable Energy for Schools and Health Centers : Public–Private Partnerships for People’s Prosperity Schools and clinics in poor countries can now buy electricity as a service instead of owning broken solar panels
NBER · Apr 1 Profit Regulation and Strategic Transfer Pricing by Vertically Integrated Firms: Evidence from Health Care Insurers used their own pharmacies to bypass Medicare profit caps
Federal Register · Apr 13 Airworthiness Directives; Airbus SAS Airplanes Airlines must actually fix Airbus radios instead of just warning pilots
Federal Register · Apr 13 Hazardous and Solid Waste Management System: Disposal of Coal Combustion Residuals From Electric Utilities; Legacy/CCRMU Amendments The EPA Just Made Toxic Waste Invisible
Federal Register · Apr 10 Prohibition on the Use of Reputation Risk by Regulators Public Outrage is No Longer a "Risk" for Banks
NDRC · Feb 10 关于加快招标投标领域人工智能推广应用的实施意见 China is using AI to strip local officials of their power to rig contracts
Federal Register · Apr 10 Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism Programs Banks must now prove their anti-money laundering programs actually stop money laundering
NDRC · Jan 30 关于完善发电侧容量电价机制的通知 China stops paying power plants to exist and starts paying them to perform
Federal Register · Apr 1 Whistleblower Incentives and Protections Treasury turns bank compliance officers into paid informants.
NDRC · Jan 30 关于完善发电侧容量电价机制的通知(发改价格〔2026〕114号) The death of guaranteed coal income
Federal Register · Mar 31 Review of the Commission's Rules Governing the 896-901/935-940 MHz Band Spectrum that couldn't do broadband gets three new ways to try
Federal Register · Apr 10 Collection of Checks and Other Items by Federal Reserve Banks and Funds Transfers Through the Fedwire Funds Service and the FedNow Service; Regulation J Cross-border payments can now use the US domestic network for the first time.
Federal Register · Apr 2 NRC Reviews of Reactor Designs Previously Authorized by U.S. Department of Energy or Department of War The Pentagon is now a nuclear regulatory shortcut
Federal Register · Apr 1 Pipeline Safety: Class Location Change Requirements; Response to Petition for Reconsideration Neighborhoods grew. The law finally noticed.
Federal Register · Apr 9 Modernizing Requirements Relating to Physical Protection of Category 1 and Category 2 Quantities of Radioactive Material Dirty bomb security finally gets a construction bill.
Federal Register · Apr 9 Spectrum Abundance for Weird Space Stuff FCC frees spectrum for spacecraft that was empty all along
Federal Register · Apr 10 Permitted Payment Stablecoin Issuer Anti-Money Laundering/Countering the Financing of Terrorism Program and Sanctions Compliance Program Requirements Stablecoin issuers spent years moving money without knowing who sent it
SAM.gov · Apr 7 VIRGINIA Class Submarines Lead Yard Support and Development Studies and Design efforts Navy pays $2.5 billion to keep submarine factory ready, not to buy submarines
Federal Register · Apr 3 National Environmental Policy Act USDA quietly grants itself the power to decide which projects need environmental review
NDRC · Dec 23 关于促进光热发电规模化发展的若干意见(发改能源〔2025〕1645号) China is keeping the turbines. It's just swapping the fuel for mirrors.
NDRC · Dec 31 关于促进电网高质量发展的指导意见 China orders its power grid rebuilt around distributed solar and wind — not centralized coal plants
SAM.gov · Apr 9 Late-stage development, FDA marketing authorization, procurement, and stockpile of antibiotics for the treatment of drug-resistant secondary bacterial infections and/or the treatment or PEP of infections caused by biothreat pathogens. The Pentagon effectively nationalizes the antibiotic pipeline
NBER · Apr 1 Why Do Americans No Longer Work So Much More Than Non-Americans? Americans worked more than Europeans because of health insurance forms, not values
NBER · Mar 1 Early-Life Sugar Restrictions Reduce Genetic Disparities in Adult Adiposity Genetic obesity risk loses its "fixed sentence" status
Federal Register · Apr 2 Revised Mailing Standards for Firearms Justice Department ends 108-year postal firearms ban
NBS · Mar 16 2026年1—2月份全国固定资产投资同比增长1.8% China reports 1.8% investment growth. Private investment is down 2.6%.
NBS · Mar 16 2026年1—2月份全国房地产市场基本情况 Homebuyers officially resign as China's primary creditors
NBER · Apr 1 Thinking versus Doing: Cognitive Capacity, Decision Making and Medical Diagnosis Same patient, same doctor, 28% more likely admitted when the doctor is overwhelmed
NBER · Mar 1 Cash Transfers and Productive Inclusion: Evidence from Bolsa Familia Giving poor people money helps get them jobs
NBER · Mar 1 In the Fed’s Mind US central bank sees inflation differently based on its cause
NBER · Apr 1 Climate Change, Deforestation, and the Expansion of the Global Agricultural Frontier Heat shocks kill crops, farmers clear forests instead of adapting — and it's getting worse
arXiv · Mar 30 Ruka-v2: Tendon Driven Open-Source Dexterous Hand with Wrist and Abduction for Robot Learning $1300 open source robot hands
arXiv · Mar 30 "Oops! ChatGPT is Temporarily Unavailable!": A Diary Study on Knowledge Workers' Experiences of LLM Withdrawal Workers given four days without AI discover they forgot how to work
arXiv · Apr 6 Automatic Textbook Formalization AI formalized a graduate math textbook in one week for less than it costs to hire one expert
EUR-Lex · Mar 16 Council Decision (EU) 2026/571 of 16 March 2026 on the position to be taken on behalf of the European Union in the Preparatory Commission and at the first Conference of the Parties to the Agreement under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea on the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity of areas beyond national jurisdiction Half the ocean had no rules for 40 years. Now comes the part where rules become real.
World Bank · Mar 30 Urban Heat, Mortality, and Economic Costs : Evidence from Bangkok, Thailand Bangkok spends less on public health than heat quietly costs in lives each year
EUR-Lex · Mar 3 Political and Security Committee Decision (CFSP) 2026/514 of 3 March 2026 on the appointment of the EU Force Commander for the European Union maritime security operation to safeguard freedom of navigation in relation to the Red Sea crisis (EUNAVFOR ASPIDES) (EUNAVFOR ASPIDES/2/2026) Europe stops asking the US Navy to babysit its trade routes, appoints its own commander
EIA · Mar 31 US Solar Generation: 57.3 TWh (Jan 2026) — +15.2% YoY Solar grew 15% in a year. The government ordered the old gas plants to stay open anyway.
EIA · Mar 31 US Coal Generation: 217.9 TWh (Jan 2026) — -12.9% YoY Coal hits 13% annual decline while government pays $615,000 a day to keep one plant running
Federal Register · Apr 3 GENIUS Act Broad-Based Principles for Determining Whether a State-Level Regulatory Regime Is Substantially Similar to the Federal Regulatory Framework Treasury decides which state crypto regulators are real, making fifty separate fights into one test
Federal Register · Apr 6 Medicare Program; Contract Year 2027 and Certain Contract Year 2026 Policy and Technical Changes to the Medicare Advantage Program, Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit Program, and Medicare Cost Plan Program Medicare gave insurers an $18.6 billion raise by deleting the tests they were failing
Federal Register · Apr 6 Work Participation Rate Calculation Changes: Recalibration of the Caseload Reduction Credit and Prohibition of Small Checks in Work Participation Rate Calculation States lose 18-year-old welfare credits. Some were counting $1 monthly checks as job placements.
Federal Register · Mar 30 Risk-Informed, Technology-Inclusive Regulatory Framework for Advanced Reactors New reactor designs no longer have to pretend they're from the 1960s
World Bank · Feb 28 Security and Emissions Constrained Dispatch : Model and Case Study for India - Technical Report (including the GAMS Source Code) India's grid operators can finally price the emissions cost of keeping the lights on.
World Bank · Mar 19 Willingness-to-Pay for Emerging Technologies : A Study of Hydrogen Demand in the Ammonia Industry World Bank finally asks ammonia makers if they will actually buy hydrogen. The answer has a price.
Federal Register · Mar 30 Microbiology Devices; Reclassification of Mycobacterium Tuberculosis Cell-Mediated Immunity Tests and Immune Response Enzyme-Linked Immunospot Tests FDA finally loosens approval rules for TB tests, fifteen years after first trying
EUR-Lex · Mar 16 Council Decision (CFSP) 2026/588 of 16 March 2026 amending Decision (CFSP) 2019/797 concerning restrictive measures against cyber-attacks threatening the Union or its Member States EU stops asking all 27 countries nicely before punishing cyber attackers
EUR-Lex · Mar 16 Council Decision (CFSP) 2026/612 of 16 March 2026 in support of a global reporting mechanism on illicit conventional arms and their ammunition to reduce the risk of their diversion and illicit transfer (‘iTrace VI’) The EU's 'new' arms tracking system is thirteen years old and just got renewed again
EUR-Lex · Mar 17 Council Decision (EU) 2026/714 of 17 March 2026 on the position to be taken on behalf of the European Union at the 237th session of the Council of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) as regards the adoption of the amendment to Annex 13 to the Convention on International Civil Aviation Aviation accident probes can no longer be quietly buried. It took thirteen years to write that down.
arXiv · Apr 2 Agentic AI and Occupational Displacement: A Multi-Regional Task Exposure Analysis of Emerging Labor Market Disruption You will be out of work by 2030
NDRC · Mar 17 关于在全社会推进儿童友好建设的意见 China redesigns its entire society around its most important resource, its children. Aww.
NDRC · Apr 3 关于印发《全国公共信用信息基础目录(2026年版)》和《全国失信惩戒措施基础清单(2026年版)》的通知 China rewrites the blacklist rulebook. Restrictions on travel, loans, and jobs now have sharper triggers.
World Bank · Apr 2 Democratic Republic of Congo Economic Update, March 2026 : From Parking Lot to Fast Lane - Reforming State-Owned Enterprises, Congo's government-run companies are bleeding money: the World Bank says sell them off
World Bank · Mar 5 Incentivizing Transition of Census Towns to Statutory Towns for the 16th Central Finance Commission of India India's ghost cities may finally get legal existence, if state governments agree to give up control
World Bank · Mar 18 Responding to Floods in Pakistan with Adaptive Social Protection : How to Keep an Inundated Country Afloat Pakistan builds a flood aid system that pays people before the bureaucrats finish arguing
arXiv · Mar 30 Development of a European Union Time-Indexed Reference Dataset for Assessing the Performance of Signal Detection Methods in Pharmacovigilance using a Large Language Model Europeans can finally test drug safety alerts against "real" timelines
arXiv · Mar 30 The Competence Shadow: Theory and Bounds of AI Assistance in Safety Engineering AI safety tools are causing engineers to stop thinking, and the math now proves it makes things worse
EIA · Mar 31 US Battery Storage Capacity: 43,232 MW (Jan 2026) The grid solved its storage problem. Washington is paying to ignore it.
Federal Register · Mar 27 Regulatory Capital Rules: Regulatory Capital and Standardized Approach for Risk-Weighted Assets Banks lobbied a capital rule to death twice. The third version, they welcomed.
March 2026
EUR-Lex · Mar 11 Regulation (EU) 2026/667 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 March 2026 amending Regulation (EU) 2021/1119 as regards the setting of a Union intermediate climate target for 2040 Europe just closed the door on industries counting on a slower path to net-zero.
Federal Register · Mar 27 Regulatory Capital Rule: Category I and II Banking Organizations, Banking Organizations With Significant Trading Activity, and Optional Adoption for Other Banking Organizations Banks graded their own capital tests for a decade. Regulators just tried to stop that. The banks are winning.
arXiv · Mar 30 Advancing AI Trustworthiness Through Patient Simulation: Risk Assessment of Conversational Agents for Antidepressant Selection Healthcare AI builds fake patients, for some reason
World Bank · Mar 16 Disruption without Dividend ? How the Digital Divide and Task Differences Split GenAI’s Global Impact Poor countries get AI's layoffs before AI's benefits — the internet gap explains why
World Bank · Mar 17 The Real Price of Going Electric : Benchmarking E-Bus Transition Costs in LAC World Bank finally counts what electric buses actually cost. Latin American cities can stop guessing.
World Bank · Mar 18 Conflicts and Firm Outcomes : Evidence from the West Bank and Gaza over the Last Decade (2016–25) Ten years of data confirm Palestinian economy degrades between wars, not just during them
World Bank · Mar 19 Is Place-Based Green Industrial Policy Effective ? Evidence from the Inflation Reduction Act World Bank checks whether the IRA's $369 billion actually moved factories, or just paid companies to do what they planned anyway