* Firefox’s Fight for the Future of the Web. If you want the web to be open and free, you should choose Firefox.

* Roth/Updike, in case you want to hear more about the topic; both of them have under-plotted books, and the lack of plot makes their work less interesting. I’ve read lots by both, but little sticks. I kept wanting them to get to a point, but the point never arrived. Both are best in shorter works, where lack of plot drags less.

* Interstellar space even weirder than expected, NASA probe reveals.

* “Lotto lout Michael Carroll reveals working as £10-an-hour coalman.” Entertaining.

* “Far From Boring: Meet the Most Interesting Tunnel Boring Machines.”

* “Cities Worldwide Are Reimagining Their Relationship With Cars.” Too expensive, too inefficient, and too polluting.

* Blogs were and are better than “social” media sites.

* The end of babies. Ignore the dumb stuff about capitalism that ignores the role of land-use policies in pushing people against children; parts of the linked essay are painful but there is good material in it. See Bryan Caplan’s book Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids, too.

* Peter Thiel: The End of the Computer Age? Familiar subject for Thiel readers.

* “Why We’re All Wired for ‘Constructive Conspiracism’.” A useful link when your friends talk about conspiracy theories.

* “How America Ends.” Not hysterical and not the usual. Relatedly, “Why social media makes it seem like everything is going haywire.”

* “The Refragmentation.” I have never seen this important idea expressed in anything like this way, anywhere.