Links: The financial dangers of college, losing my religion, His Dark Materials, and more!

* “A Very Dangerous Place for a Child Is College.” Yes, and yet we’re not really discussing it.

* More vegetarian options make more people choose vegetables.

* Related to the above: Impossible foods and its efforts to replace burgers.

* America’s New Sex Bureaucracy. And we somehow like this?

* “Three decades ago, Americans lost religion. Why?” The short-term political expediency of twining one political party with religion may have bad long-term consequences. We also seem to have taken up new religions—a common theme on this blog.

* “How climate change is melting, drying and flooding Earth – in pictures.” Source is not bogus, either.

* Research and “gender wars.” I don’t think most of the rhetoric has anything to do with facts or research; it’s mostly tribal and value signaling, so I’m not real optimistic on this one. When an issue takes on tribal valence, quality of discourse and thinking tends to decline.

* “The Atavism of Cancel Culture: Its social rewards are immediate and gratifying, its dangers distant and abstract.” Another of these, “And we somehow like this?” articles.

* “Why It’s So Hard for Entrepreneurs to Get Really Rich in Europe.” I’d frame it differently: “Another reason it’s so hard to scale businesses in Europe.”

* The Fallen Worlds of Philip Pullman. His Dark Materials is great and if you haven’t read it, you should.

* The Seven-Year Auto Loan: America’s Middle Class Can’t Afford Their Cars. The response ought to be to reform zoning laws and support the construction of more and better mass transit, but the likely response will be “business as usual.”

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