* The chemistry of book smell.

* How does how writers make money affect what writers write?

* “Betrayed by the Dream Factory: My life and career have been scarred by the naïve exchange I made at college: an education of questionable value for a dangerous amount of debt.” I saw this happen to peers in law school in particular. Large swaths of higher education have become extraordinarily vicious and extractive.

* “Musk vs. Buffett: The Billionaire Battle to Own the Sun: Warren Buffett controls Nevada’s legacy utility. Elon Musk is behind the solar company that’s upending the market. Let the fun begin.”

* Joe’s experience of victimhood culture in SF’s tech industry.

* “The Fire Last Time: Bronze Age apocalypse.” A dark story I didn’t know.

* “Trump, Sanders and the Revolt Against Decadence,” or, as Tyler Cowen puts it, “Douthat on whether Trump and Sanders are a response to the great stagnation and loss of faith in the future”

* “A Tesla in Every Garage? Not So Fast.” Note that this is from an engineering professional association and is written by a historian. The headline is slightly deceptive (“battery electric vehicles represent a more thorough upsetting of the existing order of things than Musk and his acolytes might like to admit” appears in the body) but the discussion is excellent.