* “The Pecking Disorder: Social Justice Warriors Gone Wild: Culture wars over ‘social justice’ have been wreaking havoc in many communities, including universities and science fiction fandom.” Social Justice Warriors don’t matter outside of academia and government, but inside they can wreck a lot of havoc. Always be wary of zealots.

* Related to the above: “It’s worse than Jerry Seinfeld says: PC is undermining free speech, expression, liberties.” I’ve definitely felt these currents throughout my time as a professor. Only from a tiny minority of students, but that tiny minority is vicious, humorless, and vociferous.

* The Electric Car: “The electric car is going to take over the world. Soon. Let me explain.” Linear versus discontinuous effects are underappreciated. Everyone who has driven a Tesla says it’s the best car ever. The mass-market version is supposed to arrive in 2017. See also “How Tesla Will Change The World,” which is long but clever. Good news, too: Electric vehicle batteries are getting cheaper much faster than we expected. The spoils of technical innovation gets turned into the spoils that politicians fight over surprisingly fast.

* “Book Reviewing’s Grunt Squads,” interesting throughout and especially to me for its discussion of Kirkus, whose Indie division I hired to review Asking Anna. My guess is that they produce few truly negative reviews, and, based on the many indie books I’ve been sent, most books are as bad as literary mandarins imagine.

* Jeff on why I’m wrong about poetry and pop music.

* “The rush from judgment,” or, how being superficially non-judgmental can be barbaric and foolish.

* YC Fellowship: “Ten years ago, Paul Graham said there could be ten times as many startups if more people realized they could try.” And: “YC Fellows will receive $12,000 per team as a grant (though if this continues past this test run, we will probably do a more traditional investment with equity for future Fellows) and access to advice from the YC community.” YC is trying to solve the problems people who can’t get $10K together have.

* Uber: twice as fast, half as expensive for poor people.

* Sea levels will rise much more rapidly than anticipated.

* “The old suburban office park is the new American ghost town.” Too many parking lots and too few interconnections to rail.