Reading List 05/24/25
Tulsa’s remote worker incentives, the “stolen iPhone building”, the Trump administration’s shipbuilding struggles, falling traffic law enforcement, and more.
Welcome to the reading list, a weekly roundup of news and links related to buildings, infrastructure, and industrial technology. This week we look at Tulsa’s remote worker incentives, the “stolen iPhone building”, the Trump administration’s shipbuilding struggles, falling traffic law enforcement, and more. Roughly 2/3rds of the reading list is paywalled, so for full access become a paid subscriber.
Lots of interesting things this week, so I’m experimenting with a slightly different format of more items and shorter summaries of each one. Let me know your thoughts on the 1-question survey below.
Japanese shipbuilding reading list
This week’s essay was about the invention of modern shipbuilding methods in postwar Japan. If you’re interested in reading more about the subject, here’s a list of sources I found useful. None of these are especially compelling as reading for entertainment, so I’d only check them out if you’re deeply interested in researching the topic.
The Japanese Shipping and Shipbuilding Industries: A History of Their Modern Growth, by Chida and Davies (1990). This book is the best overall history I found on the topic. Covers the periods from the late 19th century up through the late 20th century.
The History of Modern Shipbuilding Methods: The US-Japan Interchange. Short paper on the introduction of US WWII shipbuilding methods into Japan.
A Hundred Years of Shipbuilding in Japan. Another relatively short paper on the broad history of shipbuilding in Japan, covering the late 19th through late 20th century.
Shipbuilding Innovation: Enabling Technologies and Economic Imperatives. Short paper that looks at the broad evolution of shipbuilding methods, starting from the development of steel ships through the large-scale shipbuilding efforts of Korea and China in the late 20th and early 21st century.
The Progress of Production Techniques in Japanese Shipbuilding. Paper on the evolution of Japanese shipbuilding methods, written by Hisashi Shinto, one of their inventors.
Japan’s Phenomenal Shipbuilders. Short paper from the 1960s on the progress Japanese shipbuilders had made.
IHI’s Experience of Technical Transfer and Some Considerations on Further Productivity Improvements in US Shipyards. Paper written by an executive at Japanese shipbuilder IHI about efforts to help improve US shipbuilding. Gives some good information on the state of Japanese shipbuilding in the 1980s.
Technical Collaboration Between Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Todd Shipyards. Another retrospective paper about Japanese efforts to improve US shipbuilding, this time from the perspective of the US shipbuilder
Housing and buildings
An analysis of Tulsa, Oklahoma’s program to attract remote tech worker residents by paying them $10,000 (one of many such programs). The analysis found that benefits of the program outweighed the costs 3 or 4 to 1: new residents spent more at local retailers, attracted more high-tech companies, and in some cases started their own companies.
A tornado in St. Louis last friday damaged or destroyed 4400 buildings, and caused an estimated $1 billion worth of property damage. Five people died, in part because tornado sirens didn’t go off.
A new study finds a supposed link between living near a golf course and increased risk of Parkinson’s, blaming pesticide runoff. But some folks are skeptical of it, as the area studied is right next to the Mayo Clinic.
Inside the “stolen iPhone Building”. Stolen iPhones from around the world often end up near Shenzhen, where they’re broken down and sold for parts.