* “China’s iron grip on Hollywood began in 1998 with a Martin Scorsese movie and a groveling apology from Disney.” This is one of these big stories that’s not being told much, and it’s important because the people who tell many of the biggest and most important stories in our society are in effect subject to the censorship of the Chinese government. Weirdly, at least to me, many of the people who profess to be against oppression and such are silent on this issue, which seems proportionally more important than many issues of great media and social media prominence.

* “The high cost of divorce.” That is, literal, legal costs.

* “Rereading Defenders of the Truth: The Sociobiology Debate.” I read Defenders of the Truth a few years ago, and it is a good but very thorough book. Very, very thorough. Few will want to follow all of its twists and turns, I think.

* “Education Week: Educational Assessments are Valid, Reliable, and Remarkably Predictive,” yet extremely politically suspect in some precincts. There is also a great podcast with Marc Andreessen in which he talks about this and related matters.

* Bad apple: the cancelled writer and programmer who was supposed to work at Apple is back.

* “The man whose software ate the world.” Same author as above: worth subscribing to.

* “Where Did the Coronavirus Come From? What We Already Know Is Troubling.” Long, impressive, detailed, and consistent with the “lab leak” hypothesis.

* “Has the Carbontech Revolution Begun?” One hopes so.

* “Mate Selection for Modernity.” Depressing, maybe, but knowledge is also power, I’ve been told.

* “Culture Wars are Long Wars.” Perspective counts.

* “Sixty years of climate change warnings.”

* “Why a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would be a catastrophe for China and the world.” A catastrophic miscalculation, or series of them, have led to a number of catastrophic wars: just because something will be catastrophic, doesn’t mean it won’t happen.

* “The plants that change our consciousness: How three plant-derived drugs – caffeine, opium and mescaline – shape society.”