* “Study identifies reasons for soaring nuclear plant cost overruns in the U.S.”

* “A Gentle Introduction on How to Use Anki to Improve Your Memory.”

* “Should America Still Police the World?” Probably, because what’s the alternative? China? America’s mistakes are well known but the overall direction is still positive.

* The “Dying Seas” of the Anthropocene.

* OpenStreetMap (OSM) is Having a Moment, maybe. I’ve tried to use Maps.me and, I think, other OSM-derived products on a phone, and they have not been nearly as good as the Apple/Google alternatives.

* Unions versus the gig economy, note:

My experiences with unions have not been good. My father was a Shell Oil union member. His union went on strike long ago when my mother was pregnant with my younger brother. After a few months on strike it was growing obvious (according to my father) that it would end soon in failure from the union perspective. The union bosses feared that my father and others would return to work before the union had formally given up. They came to our house and told my pregnant mother that it would be quite unhealthy for her if my father returned to work.

H/t David Henderson.

* Why Taneer Greer is bearish on Substack. Personally, I don’t entirely get why “email newsletters” are desirable from a reader’s perspective, apart maybe from convenience over RSS. The two or three Substack blogs I’ve followed do have RSS feeds, and that’s the important part to me.

* Better late than never, the Atlantic notices Stripe’s carbon capture and storage plans.

* “Democrats No Longer Have a Coalition:” note the source on this one (the Nation), and its congruence with “the margins are narrow; why?”

* The Right-Wing Medievalist Who Refused the Loyalty Oath.

* Apple’s new M1 laptops appear to be amazing. Nearly all reviews, including from places predisposed towards hostility, have been not just positive but ecstatic.

* “Pigma Micron PN Pen.” Agree with the recommendation here.

* Ann Patchett on friendship, among other things.