* New York’s Incredible Subway. Seattle is actively building subways. Denver is also building light rail (with surprising speed). It’s almost like other metros are learning from New York’s successes and Los Angeles’s mistakes.

* “If the atomic bomb had not been used,” one of the most fascinating pieces you’ll read if you’re familiar with the topic; call this a revision to revisionist history.

* “Henry Miller’s fail.” I tried and failed to read Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn when I was a teenager, and once or twice since, but they do nothing for or to me.

* International Energy Agency: Electric vehicle battery costs rapidly declining.

* “The Economist Who Just Won a Nobel Prize Thinks Owning a Home Is a Terrible Investment: If everyone you know is telling you to buy a house, you should read Robert Shiller’s work.” The more I learn about the economics and opportunity costs of owning real estate the more puzzled I am by the American cultural fascination with ensuring high levels of employment in the property exchange industry.

* “The Venmo Request: A New Wrinkle in Modern Dating.”

* “Why even driving through suburbia is soul crushing”

* Texas is the new California, but its status won’t last: “The cost of maintaining an equally endless amount of horizontal infrastructure will inevitably outstrip tax revenue over the next generation.” I’m not sure, and the argument is less analytic than it should be, but still.

* “The End of Reflection“?

* How they got their guns,” a chilling yet fascinating piece.

* Tom Wolfe’s excellent, prescient Paris Review interview.