* The Real Reason Your City Has No Money.

* “Peter Thiel, Trump’s Tech Pal, Explains Himself,” wildly unconvincing and specious; it’s bizarre to read Thiel’s criticisms of others that apply primarily to himself. He wrote Zero to One.

* Thinking about the process of being an artist and a writer: Lessons from David Galenson’s Old Masters and Young Geniuses.

* There’s “No proof music lessons make children any smarter.”

* “The Novel as Math Problem: As a formal exercise, Paul Auster’s 4321 is impeccable. As a story, it’s curiously cold.” I’ll pass.

* Why Most Economists Are So Worried About Trump.

* An excellent, important point: “Every movement…has a smart version and a stupid version, I try to (almost) always consider the smart version. The stupid version is always wrong for just about anything.” I have sometimes been guilty of attacking the stupid version.

* “Housing supply is [finally, almost] catching up to demand.”

* “Elena’s career exemplifies two cultures in women’s writing that are not supposed to mix: the unimpeachably high, where abstract desires are worked out in texts accessible only to educated elites, and the thrillingly low—writing that, driven by big, vulgar passions, grips the popular imagination but is not to be taken seriously.”